Bellroy co-founders Andy Fallshaw, left, and Hadrien Monloup. In the US the original Blundstone boot is available at fashionable retailers like Steve Alan and J. Crew. This year the brand was the official sponsor of the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City. The main change to the Blundstone brand happened in 2010, when the company decided to take steps to make sure there were fewer restrictions around its international and domestic marketing. Gunn says in Germany Australiana was used to market the company. He wanted to move away from that because it limits the brand. "We see ourselves as being an international brand that just happens to be headquartered and designed in Tasmania and we're now using Tasmania more in our messaging both here as well as overseas, rather than [a more generic image of] Australia, because it softens the brand," he says.

As a result of Blundstone's move to consolidate and urbanise the brand's positioning it has started selling some of its more urban style boots in Australia. This means the days of 'blunnies' simply being a pair of hard-wearing work boots might be numbered. While Blundstone has succeeded in marketing its products to far-flung corners of the globe the time frames in which it developed new markets are in stark contrast to another, much younger, Australian company that found itself reaching offshore on only its second day in business. Bellroy is a Melbourne-based business that was founded in 2010 with the core objective of slimming down and simplifying the male wallet. Like Blundstone, Bellroy has enjoyed international success and, according to the business's co-founder, Andy Fallshaw, sells into at least 130 countries each month. Bellroy has found a strong market in Italy, the spiritual home of leather accessory making. While the business has benefited from an online sales strategy from day one, like Blundstone it has allowed plenty of room for its products to develop organically in different markets.

"In the US and Australia and many other countries you say just don't put coins in a wallet and everyone says, 'Yeah ok, that's cool,'" Fallshaw says. "Whereas in Japan they don't accept this as their coins have a greater value and because there's less acceptance of credit cards many of their transactions involve coins. "And so when we launched our wallets [in Japan] there was only one wallet that took coins and then we had to find subtle ways to give functionality to wallets before the Japanese would really start to buy them." Fallshaw says Bellroy also tailored its Japanese web content to appeal to a local audience. While the 'placeless-ness' of cyberspace can often gives marketers the impression that going online is the elixir to dealing with regional and cultural differences, Peter Guenther, a lecturer in marketing at Melbourne's RMIT University, says this is a flawed approach as people in different countries will often value different things about a product.

"Even if it appears there is not much difference between markets, businesses should always test and take an analytic approach," he says. "If you want to do it right, you'll probably end up with very different versions of your website and very different versions of your selling proposition." Food for thought for the many Australian businesses presently building their business internationally with e-commerce strategies.