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World waiting for county’s exports

Never considered a global market? Help's available for first steps

By Aaron Corvin, Columbian Port & Economy Reporter
Published: March 28, 2011, 12:00am

For more information about export assistance for Clark County businesses, contact Bonnie Moore, director of business services for the Columbia River Economic Development Council, at 360-567-1055 or bmoore@credc.org.

It’s relatively easy for a Clark County company to sell and ship products to another American company, even if it’s halfway across the country.

No mysterious shipping rules to scratch your head over. No language or cultural barriers to surmount. Everyone’s pretty much on the same page.

Try making the same deal overseas, however, and you could end up buried in a litany of arcane tariff rules and foreign shipping conundrums, and violating international trade laws you never knew existed.

For more information about export assistance for Clark County businesses, contact Bonnie Moore, director of business services for the Columbia River Economic Development Council, at 360-567-1055 or bmoore@credc.org.

But if you do your homework and meet the right people, you’ll stand a good shot at becoming a successful global exporter with all the opportunities, revenue and growth that come with it.

That was the central message delivered to area business leaders by experts who gathered at the Port of Vancouver last week for the five-hour seminar, “Spring Into Exports Forum: How to Expand Your Business to Global Markets.”

The forum, attended by more than 20 representatives of the business, government and nonprofit sectors, aimed to help local companies — especially small- to medium-size firms — decide whether exporting is for them and, if so, how to do it.

“Exports aren’t for everyone, but there are so many companies out there that ought to be looking at it,” said Stan Lance, international trade specialist for the Washington State Small Business Development Center.

It’s a timely topic, too. To create jobs, the Obama administration has set a goal of doubling the nation’s exports over the next five years. Washington is the fourth-largest exporting state in the United States. One in four jobs in the state is tied to exports. And more than 70 percent of the world’s purchasing power is located outside the U.S., according to the U.S. Commercial Service, the trade-promotion arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Lance, who spoke about global markets as a member of one of the forum’s two panels of experts, said there’s another reason for companies to expand into global markets: The U.S. dollar isn’t as strong as it once was, which makes American products cheaper — and therefore more competitive — in international markets.

“I can’t understand why a company wouldn’t consider it,” Lance said.

Experts said companies throw up their own barriers by thinking nobody overseas wants to buy their products or that it will take too much time and money to figure out how to land business deals in foreign countries.

Yet there are many guides who will walk you through the exporting process, including how to bridge cultural divides, how to choose a company that will effectively — and legally — ship your freight to another country and how to obtain financing and insurance for the business you do overseas.

Help for the asking

Some of the services these guides offer are even free.

Take, for instance, Jennifer Woods, senior international trade specialist at the Portland office of the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is a guide to becoming an exporter, offering — free — “business counseling to identify target markets,” she said.

And once you get involved in the world of exporting, you have to be willing to learn as you go and make adjustments accordingly. That’s what Camas-based CID Bio-Science Inc. has done, and the financial returns have been “fantastic,” said Phil Berger, director of sales for the company, who spoke as a panelist during last week’s forum.

The company, a maker of portable instruments for agricultural and environmental research, does business around the world, including in Europe, Brazil and China. Find good, reliable distributors in foreign countries, go meet them, and train them in handling and selling your products, Berger said. And don’t underestimate the power of the “Made in the U.S.A.” label, he said. “It still carries a lot of weight.”

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Columbian Port & Economy Reporter