Located at Bryant, RIEAC offers advice, guidance through thicket of trade rules
Rick Fiske, president of Lloyd Manufacturing in Warren, knows there are plenty of European customers who would be interested in buying the company’s precision-tolerance rubber-sheeting products. Now he just needs to find them.
"We’ve been selling in Europe for several years, just not very aggressively," Fiske said, adding that exports account for about 10 percent of Lloyd’s overall revenues. "But we feel like we have enough of a competitive advantage to seek more business over there."
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With just 30 employees, Lloyd Manufacturing lacks the manpower necessary to pinpoint prospective European customers through market research – let alone negotiate the thicket of cumbersome and disparate export regulations imposed by each country.
Enter the Rhode Island Export Assistance Center, a non-profit outfit housed at the John H. Chafee Center for International Business at Bryant College in Smithfield. Fiske said the center "has served as a good compass for targeting specific markets and identifying potential customers."
Raymond W. Fogarty, the center’s director, estimates that the RIEAC has provided some assistance to "just about any (Rhode Island) company involved in international trade."
Established in 1988, the center’s role is to assist companies as they enter the global marketplace – which Rhode Island firms have been doing at a quickening pace. Since 1988, the number of Rhode Island companies that export products has doubled to 2,000, and the state’s total value of exports also has grown from $500 million to $1.2 billion last year.
RIEAC offers a one-stop shop for companies facing the daunting task of shipping products to foreign markets for the first time.
"Companies will come to us overwhelmed, asking ‘Where is my product wanted?’ or ‘How do I begin the exporting process?’" Fogarty said.
Most companies are looking for help with exporting basics: How do I work with foreign currencies? What transportation grid should I use? How do I insure products during shipment? How do I service products after shipping?
Most of the center’s services are free for Rhode Island companies. Businesses have access to the center’s library of streaming videos, half-hour online seminars each covering a different aspect of exporting. One seminar gives an overview of the codes exporters use to classify their products for tariff purposes; another offers information on export-financing tools.
The center also maintains an exhaustive International Trade Data Network, a Web-based compilation of more than 60 country-specific databases containing detailed information about cultural, political and business environments.
For example, manufacturers shipping products to Taiwan – the United States’ seventh-largest export market – should know that Taiwanese importers are notoriously price sensitive, according to RIEAC’s data network. Taiwan companies generally only pay higher prices for product if they see immediate cost savings, rather than considering the life-cycle cost of a product.
U.S. companies exporting to France sometimes complain of the country’s tedious testing requirements for certain products, particularly for electronics and telecommunications equipment. In Spain, all shipments must be accompanied with three copies of a certificate of origin.
Autocrat, the Lincoln-based maker of coffee, flavored syrups and coffee extracts, has leaned on RIEAC to help it weed through those sorts of tedious exporting requirements while the company has penetrated the Asian and Latin American markets in recent years.
"You wouldn’t believe the documentation that goes into (exporting)," said Noreen Carroll, director of sales for Autocrat’s food-ingredient division. Carroll said Autocrat must tick off a checklist of 35 requirements for each shipment of coffee extract to markets as far-flung as South Korea, Scotland and the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean.
In some markets, every piece of documentation – from labels to invoices – requires five copies, Carroll said. "The center has been helping us get through the masses of paperwork."
RIEAC has taken local businesspeople to Malaysia, Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica and Germany in recent years for international trade missions. It also hosts the annual World Trade Day to highlight international trade opportunities.
Local businesses also are able to tap the extensive network of high-level contacts that RIEAC has forged with trading partners all over the world. In just the past few months, Fogarty said international visitors to the center have included India’s counsel general, a trade delegate from Hong Kong, the vice president of El Salvador and the Swiss ambassador to Moscow.
More than 70 percent of Rhode Island’s exports are shipped to Europe and Canada, while Mexico and Canada make up 10 percent each. Fogarty said Latin America is gaining ground, and he expects China, India and the countries in the former Soviet Union will begin to account for a larger share.
The center is financed through state, federal and local funds, as well as revenue it generates from contracts with out-of-state clients. (It sells subscriptions to its International Trade Data Network for $175 to out-of-state groups, for example, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce).
RIEAC has 20 full time employees, as well as 15 consultants who are considered experts in a particular area of international trade. They work one-on-one with businesses, often going on site to evaluate operations and help the company devise a strategy for penetrating foreign markets.
The center also makes use of 80 work-study students – roughly 60 from Bryant and 20 from other schools in the region – who compile endless reams of market data on foreign markets for more than 200 research reports churned out by the center each year.
For more information on the center’s services, contact RIEAC at (401) 232-6407 or visit its Web site at www.rieac.com.
