We bridge Canada and the world — for companies going out, and investors coming in.
IB7 Consulting is an FDI intelligence and market-entry firm in Winnipeg. We choose the market with evidence, plan the entry, find the partners and stand behind the launch — in English, Spanish and French.
Tariffs redrew the map. Most export plans still describe the old one.
One-market dependence stopped being efficient and started being exposure. The companies moving first are not the biggest ones — they are the ones who can defend a second market with something other than instinct.
The U.S. is no longer a default
It is still the largest lane on the continent, and it is now a lane with political weather. That changes how much of your revenue should sit in it.
Mexico is a market, not just a factory
Nearshoring made it a production story. The demand side — a large, urbanising consumer and industrial market — is the part most Canadian firms never price.
CETA is still under-used
Preferential access into the EU exists and goes unclaimed, usually because nobody ran the rules-of-origin arithmetic on the actual product.
Capital is looking at Canada
Foreign companies and funds are screening Canadian provinces right now. If you are a facility or a region, you are being compared whether you participate or not.
Programs expire
Support for market development and tariff response is time-boxed and sequence-sensitive. Applications filed in the wrong order lose eligibility.
Evidence is now the gate
Boards, lenders and grant committees have stopped accepting a narrative. They want a comparable result with the reasoning attached.
Four ways in. One method underneath.
A company climbs the same staircase with us. You can get on at any step, and most companies start lower than they expect to.
IB7 EDGE Talk
At a chamber, association or webinar. One idea, three checks to run on Monday, and a one-page takeaway.
See the Talk →IB7 EDGE Lab
Hands-on work on a single question — tariff exposure, landed cost, certification — with a read on your own company waiting at the door.
See the Lab →IB7 EDGE Workshop
The whole plan: which market, how to enter, with whom, and how to launch. Ends in a Draft Entry Brief you can take to a board.
Register →IB7 EDGE Engagement
The full IB7 diagnostic and entry plan, carried phase by phase from market decision to launch. You buy only as much of IB7 as your decision needs.
See the Engagement →Three service lines, one mandate.
The method chooses the market. These are what we build once it is chosen.
Intelligence & Advisory
Four-factor market reads, the Country Market Brief, and the phased IB7 EDGE Engagement that carries a decision through to launch.
IB7 Soft Landing — Mexico
Turning an entry decision into an operating presence: entity, tax, compliance, banking, people, IP and a first commercial pipeline.
IB7 Air Cargo
Commercial representation on the Canada–Mexico air lane — bidirectional lane development, yield modelling and cold-chain qualification.
Landing in Canada
The other direction, and our origin: foreign companies and investment choosing a Canadian province, city or facility.
The IB7 FDI Platform
The intelligence underneath every product, built for embassies, agencies, economic development offices and funds.
Licensed firms in market
Regulated work — legal, tax, customs, formation — is carried out by licensed firms in each country, who bill you directly.
What IB7 does that a bigger name does not.
Six reasons companies on both sides of the corridor bring the decision to us.
Both directions of the corridor
Outbound: Canadian companies selling into new markets. Inbound: foreign companies and investment landing in Canada. The second one is our origin, and it is why we read a market the way an investor reads it, not the way a brochure describes it.
One method at four depths
Talk, Lab, Workshop and Engagement run on the same four questions and the same intelligence. Nothing is relearned at the next step and nothing is charged twice. You buy depth, not another consultant from the beginning.
Read on your own company, not a generic deck
Every step returns a read scored on your products and your target markets — bands, ranks and traffic lights. Each one arrives with its inputs and its sources attached, so you can challenge any line of it.
Built on the corridor we actually work in
CUSMA across Canada, the United States and Mexico, with CETA into Europe and CPTPP across the Pacific. Four-factor market reads from live trade, tariff and regulatory data rather than last year’s report.
One firm accountable, licensed specialists in market
IB7 coordinates the mandate and stays answerable for it. Licensed firms in each country carry out the regulated work and bill you directly. One answer and one owner instead of four invoices and nobody joining them up.
Every step ends in a decision
Not a report. A decision in money, time or risk, with the next step named — including the decision not to go, when the numbers say so. We would rather lose the mandate than sell you a market that does not fit.
Two years in, built from a question nobody could answer.
IB7 Consulting Ltd. was incorporated in Winnipeg to answer a question that kept coming back from both directions of the corridor: which market, and can you prove it? Companies had opinions. Nobody had a comparable result.
So we built one — a four-factor read that scores candidate markets against each other and hands over the reasoning, not just the recommendation. Everything else at IB7 is downstream of that: the workshops teach the method, the Brief applies it to one market, the Engagement carries it to launch, and Soft Landing makes the result exist as a company on the ground.
We work the CUSMA corridor across Canada, the United States and Mexico, with a growing European focus through CETA, and we deliver in English, Spanish and French.
The team is small and the network is not. IB7 holds the mandate and stays answerable for it; licensed firms in each market carry out the regulated work. That is the whole operating model, and it is why a client talks to one firm rather than four.
The questions we are asked first.
Do we have to start with a workshop?
Do you give legal or tax advice?
Can you work in Spanish?
What if the answer is that we should not go?
Start with thirty minutes.
Tell us the product and the market you are wondering about. We will tell you what we already know, what we would have to find out, and whether you need us at all.
Book a free 30-minute readoutIB7 outputs are indicative and built on public data. They are not legal, tax, customs, regulatory or investment advice, and IB7 does not guarantee market results. Regulated work is carried out by licensed firms in each country.