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The Canvas sums up on one sheet how your business creates, delivers and captures value. In foreign trade, each block must answer for a specific buyer, a country and the costs of exporting.
Goal: Describe an export business with the nine blocks of the Canvas, with a concrete segment, and mark the hypotheses you must test.
A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value. Put simply: what you sell, to whom, how you reach that person and how you make money. The Business Model Canvas (in Spanish, “lienzo de modelo de negocio”) draws that model on a single sheet with nine blocks. It was popularized by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur in the book Business Model Generation (2010). It does not replace the business plan: it is the draft that organizes your ideas before you calculate anything.
The nine blocks are read in two halves. On the right is the customer: customer segments (whom you serve), value proposition (what problem you solve and why they would choose you), channels (how you reach them), customer relationships (how you serve them) and revenue streams (how they pay you). On the left is your company: key activities, key resources, key partners and cost structure. A healthy model is coherent: what you promise on the right must be sustainable with what you have on the left, at a cost the customer is willing to pay.
When you sell abroad, each block becomes more demanding. The segment is no longer “Europe”: it is a type of buyer in a specific country, for example small coffee shops in Santiago, Chile. Your value proposition must hold up against local and other countries' competitors. Channels include distributors (companies that buy your product and resell it), importers, online platforms, fairs and services such as Exporta Fácil, an export promotion service for micro and small businesses (MYPE). In revenue, currency, payment term and the Incoterms® rule appear, the international rule that splits transport costs and risks between seller and buyer (covered in module 4). In costs come freight, insurance, certifications, destination-country tariffs and bank fees.
The blocks on the left also change. Your key partners are no longer just suppliers: a freight forwarder (organizes the transport), a customs broker (the specialist who processes the clearance of your goods with SUNAT), a bank that collects in dollars and, sometimes, a distributor or representative in the destination country are added. Your key resources may include a certification, a health permit or working capital to produce before getting paid. Your key activities include preparing documents and coordinating shipments, not just producing and selling. The detail of the procedure is covered in the Exports course.
Work on the Canvas in pencil, not in ink. Each block is a hypothesis, that is, an assumption you have not yet tested. Start with the customer and the value proposition; only then fill in the rest. If you want to sell to two markets with different channels, make one Canvas per market. Then test the hypotheses with little spending: ask for quotes, send samples, talk to two real buyers, visit a fair. What you learn corrects the canvas, and the corrected canvas feeds the plan you will see in the next topic.
| Canvas block | Key question when exporting | Example from Café Rumi (fictional company) |
|---|---|---|
| Customer segments | What type of buyer and in which country? | Independent coffee shops in Santiago, Chile |
| Value proposition | What makes you better than the local supplier? | Traceable-origin coffee, roasted in Peru, with a cupping sheet |
| Channels | How do they contact you and how does the product arrive? | Direct sales by email and video call; consolidated air cargo |
| Customer relationships | Language, hours, restocking? | Recurring monthly order and service in Spanish |
| Revenue streams | Currency, price, payment term and Incoterms® rule? | Price per kilo in US$; 50% on confirmation and 50% before shipment; CPT Santiago |
| Key resources | What do you need to have? | Lots from 15 producers, roaster, brand and packaging |
| Key activities | What must you do very well? | Source, roast, pack, document and export |
| Key partners | Whom do you need to ally with? | Producers, freight forwarder, customs broker, bank |
| Cost structure | What expenses appear only because you sell abroad? | Coffee, roasting, packaging, freight, insurance, fees, samples |
Result: Café Rumi went from “sell to Europe” to a testable hypothesis: independent coffee shops in Santiago that value origin. The Canvas already shows what to test, whom to ally with and which costs to calculate next.
14/11/2024
On 14/11/2024, during APEC Peru 2024, the port of Chancay was officially inaugurated, with a first phase of about US$ 1,300 million. A PROMPERÚ presentation of 26/08/2026 in Lima estimates that it cuts transit by 10 to 12 days compared with the previous route and that direct services reach Shanghai in about 23 days. For an exporter, a new route changes the channel, time and cost blocks of its model.
Review your Canvas whenever a route or a port changes: it may open a market that was not worthwhile before.
10/2026
As of October 2026, SUNAT's Electronic Government portal presents Exporta Fácil as an export promotion service for micro and small businesses. SUNAT simplified the customs procedure, with the participation of SERPOST, PROMPERÚ, MINCETUR and other entities, and the portal associates SERPOST with lower rates and arrival times. It is an example of a channel and a partner that a MYPE can note in its Canvas from the start.
Before designing a channel from scratch, check whether a State service exists that reduces your costs and paperwork, and note it as a key partner.
2010
The Business Model Canvas comes from the book Business Model Generation, published in 2010. Strategyzer, the company that created the canvas, presents it on its site as a sheet that describes how a company creates, delivers and captures value, and offers the official template free to download and share with your team. Any Peruvian entrepreneur can use it to organize their export idea without paying licenses.
Use the template as a draft: what matters is not filling in all nine blocks, but that they are coherent with each other.
Practise with the calculators, the COMEX Simulator and the review questions on the main page.
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