Stop Treating Regulated Hardware Like Parcels

Your sales team closed a great deal. Your ops team can't execute it. The problem isn't logistics—it's the contract you already signed.

There's a CHF2 million unit on your loading dock. Built. Packed. Ready. Not moving.

Everyone was rational

The Sales wanted Ex Works—"keeps it simple." The CFO wanted a Letter of Credit—"keeps it secure." Everyone agreed. Handshakes. Celebration.

Now no one can pick up the goods. The customer's forwarder can't handle Swiss dangerous goods regulations. No pickup, no shipment. No shipment, no Bill of Lading. The LC requires a Bill of Lading to release payment.

Hardware stuck at your door. Cash stuck at the bank. The deal closed successfully. It just can't execute.

How This Happens

Three beliefs kill deals before they ship:

EXW keeps it simple.

Sales strips out logistics to lower the price. Let the customer handle shipping.

What actually happens: You hand the hardest part of the transaction—exporting regulated hardware from Switzerland—to someone on another continent with no local network, no DG expertise, and no idea what they just agreed to.

The forwarder handles it.

Forwarders move boxes. They don't classify products. They don't verify end-users. They don't check if your payment terms are compatible with your shipping terms.

You're expecting solutions from partners who were hired to execute.

We'll figure it out later.

This is the real killer. The belief that logistics is downstream. That it can be solved after the sale. That commercial success and operational success are different problems.

They're not. By the time you're staring at a stuck shipment, you're renegotiating a contract, not routing a crate.

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"The deal closed. It just can't execute. That's not a logistics failure. It's a contract failure."

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Three Questions Before You Sign

You don't need to become an export expert. You need to ask three questions before terms are locked:

What is it?

Export classification. Dangerous goods class. Batteries, pressure vessels, radioactive sources. The answer determines licensing timelines, packaging requirements, carrier options.

If you don't know, you can't promise a delivery date.

Where is it going?

Destination risk. Documentation requirements. Local partner availability. Whether air freight is even legal for your cargo.

If you don't know, you can't quote logistics costs.

Who receives it?

Commercial or government. Tax exemptions. Verification requirements.

If you don't know, you can't finalize Incoterms.

Thirty minutes before signature. That's all this takes.

The Trap

Here's the specific problem with EXW and Letters of Credit:

EXW means the buyer arranges transport. The buyer's forwarder controls the Bill of Lading.

If your LC requires you to present a Bill of Lading to get paid, you've built a deal where payment depends on a document you cannot obtain.

This isn't bad luck. It's a predictable outcome of terms negotiated without operational input.

The Math

The upstream check takes 30 minutes.

The downstream fix—renegotiating Incoterms, amending the LC, taking over logistics you thought you'd avoided, rebuilding customer trust—takes weeks. Sometimes months. Always money.

Your ops team stops supporting ten deals to rescue one. Your CTO gets pulled into freight calls. Your CFO explains to the board why revenue slipped.

All because no one asked three questions before the signature.

Key Takeaways

Deals fail at the contract stage. By the time hardware is on the dock, the problem is locked in.

Your real competitors are habits. "EXW keeps it simple." "The forwarder handles it." "We'll figure it out later." These beliefs cost more than any competitor.

Three questions prevent most failures. What is it? Where is it going? Who receives it?

EXW + LC is one of the structural traps. You lose control over the sequence of details, you won’t get paid.

Sales needs a gate, not training.** Thirty minutes to check upstream before locking terms.

What To Do Now

Before your next contract: Run the three questions. If you can't answer them, don't sign the delivery terms.

If you're staring at a stuck deal: It's fixable. Faster is cheaper. We've unstuck these before.

If you want a gate in your sales process: We build upstream checks into deal workflows. Sales closes, ops executes, revenue flows.

The first conversation is 20 minutes. We'll tell you if we can help or if you don't need us.

hello@flowspex.com

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FlowSpex: 10+ years moving controlled hardware globally. We work upstream. Because by the time it leaves the dock, it is too late to fix the strategy.

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