And who said anything about looking for a "US agent"??? That's really close to spam. Good luck, but another Cobra manufacturer, especially foreign, in a market where consolidation is happening isn't likely to be too successful of a business venture. Good luck though. Advice to agent: Don't put up any cash.
Let me explain a marketing 101 concept. There is a thing called Total Available Market (TAM). When a market is for a commodity product, ie, in oversupply or close to it in the steady state, then two things occur. 1. There is no new market. Everyone that needs some has some (corn,
oil). 2. Prices fluctuate to move market (ie,
oil, corn), but no new market is created; like chess pieces market only moves between suppliers until a piece is taken (consolidation).
So, if you're you are a new Cobra manufacturer (a boutique product with a very small TAM, with an overabundance of suppliers) the addition of a new supplier DEMANDS that every car you produce be one stolen from someone else. As a new supplier that is a huge hurdle since the top tier manufacturers that exist today have stellar reputations and you'll have to do something very special (very low cost, superior quality (very difficult to prove when new)) to steal a car from them. Your foreign market is a different story, but import restrictions for the places that love Cobras (Australia, for example) make this very difficult.
In short, this is not a business plan that I would be involved in.
PS. This is not the first time I've explained this.
Note 1: Commodity consolidation is almost always brutal. I "grew up" in the hard drive industry so I can relate to this personally. In the 80s there were probably close to 20 people making disk drives (many of them were in the "computer room" class of drives, ie, big huge things that sat on raised floors, Sperry, ISI, etc) and they had consolidation but all disappeared as the washtub drives got replaced by the 5-1/4 drives. But there were many small drive manufacturers (ie, at the time, 5-1/4 then 3-1/2) all competing for business, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum, IBM, DEC all sold commodity drives. Then consolidation happened. Quantum bought DEC. Hitachi bought IBM, WD bought Hitachi, Maxtor bought Quantum then Seagate bought Maxtor. Seagate bought Toshiba, etc. To a "T", those acquisitions were closing the doors. Except for one, every acquisition was to gain access to technology and talent, but not a single one (except for one) of the acquired products survived. All of the products were migrated from the bought company to the buyer's product lines. The only survivor in name of the acquisitions is the Hitachi brand owned by Western Digital. The reason is that WD didn't have a true enterprise or mobile product line, which the Hitachi (formerly IBM) line was known for, so WD continued the Hitachi series. They are a minor player today, mostly as second source to Seagate's enterprise products. [Few major consumers single source commodity items.] This was in the second semester of marketing 101.
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