Finance Pointers for Importers

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When you run a small business, it's best not to put all your eggs in one basket.  Diversification is the key to weathering economic head winds that come your way.  As you grow, consider exporting to boost revenues but don't forget about importing.  Importing can help you expand your existing product line without a big capital investment.

Read:  Top finance tips for importers

Related article:  6 Ways to Save Money Importing

From Home Business to a $3 Million Global Business

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Jellaine Ross, designer and founder of Brisbane, Australia based Cherry Blooms, talks about how to take your business global.  Cherry Blooms designs bag organizers, shoe clips and brush on eyelash extensions.

Quick snippet:

She founded the business in 2008, and started by selling her products at the local markets in Brisbane. Today, she has transformed Cherry Blooms into a global success. Her products have been featured in the Golden Globes and Oscars swag bags, and are sold online and stocked through 1,000 retail stores across the world.

Read the entire article:  How to take your business global

Hedging Against Foreign Exchange Fluctuations

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Regardless of payment method, keep the international payment process simple. Transacting business in multiple currencies spanning several countries might be beneficial to a big operation interested in hedging against currency fluctuations, but for a small business, if not managed well, it can hurt the bottom line. It’s best to negotiate terms in your country’s currency because fluctuations in foreign exchange markets can significantly impact on a businesses profits.

Further, hedging against foreign exchange fluctuations can be confusing and expensive – particularly for SMEs.  Enter:

Kantox, a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform for business foreign exchange, matches companies who want to buy and sell foreign currency, allowing them to bypass expensive bank and broker fees.

Here's how it works:

... you are a company located in Europe, importing goods from China and paying your Chinese provider in US Dollars. In the Kantox marketplace, you can find another company, located in Europe, exporting goods to the US who has US Dollars to sell in exchange of your Euros.

Learn more:  Helping SMEs deal with fluctuations in foreign exchange markets

Most Beautiful Great City Left in the World

©2014 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world." - Frank Lloyd Wright

Opinions Matter in the Global Marketplace

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Companies who ignore customer feedback risk their very survival.  As the late Theodore Levitt once said, "One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints from a customer.  Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an extended period of time.  The customer is either not being candid or not being contacted.  Probably both."  (Source:  Theodore Levitt, "After the Sale is Over ...," Harvard Business Review, September 1983, http://hbr.org/1983/09/after-the-sale-is-over).

Enter Irish company Instant Opinion with its QnA product that offers a private and secure way to capture event interaction in real-time.  And, they've allegedly gone global with contracts secured, for example, with the Canadian government and the NUI Maynooth Innovation Value Institute (IVI) Spring Summit in New York.

What's QnA do?

It's a tool that enables you to capture both positive and negative customer feedback and deal with any issues before they get shared with the world.  Further:

Because the system is real-time, the service provider can respond and react to this feedback immediately, resolving the issue for the customer and ensuring that the customer leaves happy.

Oh how Professor Levitt would love this.

Read more:  Irish Company Instant Opinion's real-time engagement product goes global

Visit:  Instant Opinion

Go With Your Product or Service Wherever You Have To in the World

How high-end, and handmade in USA, shoemaker Allen Edmonds exports all over the world through the FedEx network.  The company was established in 1922.

How to Take a Small Business and Turn It Into a Global Powerhouse Worth Millions

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We all have dreams but how do you turn a dream into a reality? Take Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell, who runs a company that went from being a British sensation to a global corporation over the past seven years.

Huddle is a business-grade tool for project management and document collaboration that started out small and now serves the likes of Kia Motors, Procter & Gamble, and arms of the U.S. and U.K. governments.

Back in 2007, Huddle was a bedroom startup with a team of two. (Note:  This is Mitchell's third Internet startup.)  How did it grow to more than 150 employees operating in four different cities and worth millions?

Read the entire article:  Going Global:  How Huddle Handled The Challenge

Gear Up Retailers! Ecommerce Will Become the Platform of Choice in 2014

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In the article below for Pitney Bowes eCommerce Solutions, I write about how commerce is the ticket to a more prosperous future.  Here’s why.

Read the entire article:  Retailers, Gear Up for Explosive Growth in Ecommerce in 2014

Selling Goods Overseas Is Easier But Still Challenging For Small Businesses

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While selling goods overseas is easier due to the Internet and the vast amount of information available on the subject (including this blog), it's still hard for small businesses to get paid on exports.  This is the #1 challenge for small businesses.  (Here is an article worth reading and re-reading:  An Insider's Guide to Making Payments and Getting Paid on Overseas Transactions).

Read the entire article:  Small Business:  The Cost of Expanding Overseas (WSJ.com)

Note:  Laurel is mentioned in the WSJ article along with new her new book!

The Dignity of Movement of an Iceberg

©2014 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.  The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water." - Ernest Hemingway

Is China the New Idol for Emerging Economies?

International economist and author of NY Times bestsellers "Winner Take All," "Dead Aid" and "How the West Was Lost," named by @Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world -- Dr. Dambisa Moyo gives powerful talk for TED that:

makes the case that the west can't afford to rest on its laurels and imagine others will blindly follow. Instead, a different model, embodied by China, is increasingly appealing. A call for open-minded political and economic cooperation in the name of transforming the world. 

4 Strategies For a City to Implement On An Export Plan

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If you live in San Diego, California and desire to export, you're in the right place because San Diego embraces going global.

San Diego is one region to embrace this "metropolitan first" ethos. This week, EDC – along with numerous regional partners – released the “Global San Diego Export Plan” which focuses on growing our metropolitan economy and creating jobs through exports. The release of the export plan is part of San Diego’s continued participation in the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of the Brookings Institute and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The four strategies San Diego's core team are streamlining to implement its export plan:

•  Leveraging the diversity of regional markets

•  Developing and increasing small- and-medium-sized enterprises’ capacity to export

•  Concentrating on San Diego’s unique infrastructure assets

•  Leveraging the trade potential of the CaliBaja Bi-National Mega Region

Read more ... Global San Diego:  Engaging World Markets