International trade would seem to be limited to businesses big enough to handle complex language and cultural barriers, currency risks and unfamiliar logistics, legal, regulatory and financing issues.
But 95 percent of the world's population lives outside the United States. As Christian Conroy, Pennsylvania Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) director, points out with understatement, “That's a pretty significant potential market for businesses to consider.”
So it is that Analytical Graphics Inc. in Exton, which worked with the Wharton SBDC in Philadelphia during its early growth, has grown its sales outside the U.S. by about 40 percent. A trade show in Peru led to a trailer contract for Rogers Brothers Corporation in Albion. Solar Technology of Allentown sold $230,000 of its solar traffic-control systems to the U.K. And Bassett's is shipping America's oldest ice cream from Philadelphia to China.
Now the Pennsylvania SBDC has a new working agreement with the U.S. Commercial Service (CS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce, aimed at generating more export opportunities for Pennsylvania's small companies and helping to reverse the balance of trade by generating more referrals, information sharing and cross promotion.
The 18 SBDC offices around the state will do the necessary groundwork – helping small businesses, for example, with quality control, business and financial plans – before referring them to CS centers in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh for help with export strategies.
The CS notes that export can help Pennsylvania companies ride out fluctuations in the domestic economy, that exporters realize higher employment growth than non-exporters and that export wages are typically 13 to 18 percent higher than non-export wages.
Source: Christian Conroy, Pennsylvania SBDC
Writer: Elise Vider