Breaking Into U.S. Lab Benches

• Why “a marketing plan and a distributor” isn’t a U.S. market-entry strategy on its own — a lesson learned firsthand bringing a Korean UV-Vis spectrophotometer into the U.S.
• Why the price that looks reasonable in your home market often isn’t once shifting U.S. tariff policy gets factored in
• Why most research tool manufacturers don’t actually need FDA approval to enter the U.S. research market — and why that’s a bigger advantage than most companies realize

Ernesto Chanona spent his early career at the bench as a pharmacologist before moving into economic development — helping life science companies enter the U.S. market — and later into regulatory affairs, working on FDA approvals for drugs and medical devices. Last year, ABD turned what it learned bringing products like a Korean UV-Vis spectrophotometer into the U.S. into a practical framework for research tool manufacturers looking to do the same.

The starting point: succeeding in the U.S. research tools market takes more than a marketing plan and a distributor relationship. Between shifting tariff policy and a market that’s larger than most companies expect, the pricing and positioning decisions that work at home often don’t translate directly.