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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

101 Corridor Companies Take World View

Global is the word for many of the companies in the 101 Tech Corridor who are peddling their products overseas, discovering new revenue streams and revolutionizing the way they conduct business. Gerald Vaughn, director of the United States Export Assistance Center for Ventura County, has noted explosive recent growth in the amount of companies looking to export their products. “Post 9-11, there was a major slowdown because business suffered from its aftereffects. But right now, there’s a huge demand from companies wanting to export and expand their markets overseas. We can see that from the number of companies that come to us for help in exporting. The amount of globalizing companies started picked up in the middle of last year and has rapidly increased in 2005,” Vaughn said. Vaughn maintains that many of the tech corridor’s companies have been making headway into the Asian marketplace, particularly Japan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. John Dilts, president of the Los Angeles and Westlake Village chapters of venture capital angel group, Keiretsu Forum, believes that the increased viability of selling internationally will lead to new businesses focusing themselves globally from the moment of startup. “I’m very convinced that entrepreneurs whether they are in the tech corridor or otherwise, are going to build businesses that are globally focused from the start. I’ve found that there is a common language of entrepreneurship across the globe, driven by the successes in California and the rest of the United States, There’s the understanding that it’s possible to build a scalable business with a global focus like never before,” Dilts said. A business consultant who helps smaller firms export their products, David Brown has helped myriad companies land deals overseas. The president of Camarillo-based World Business Consultants, believes that the wireless Internet sector might have the greatest potential to boom in the coming years. “Wireless is starting to change worldwide. In Brazil they skipped railroads, and went straight from roads to airplanes. That’s what’s going to happen in the next few years around the world. Countries that lack the basic substructure for the wired Internet are going to go directly to wireless. Wireless is going to be a hot market. It’s the next big thing with globalization,” Brown said. Declining dollar Additionally, Brown believes that the declining buying power of the United States dollar will only increase the ability of local companies to market their products globally. “The weakness of the dollar is going to play an extremely important part in Europe. Europe is going to be a much more competitive place and since the United States is known for its high quality tech goods, the weak dollar will help them. Furthermore, the Australian market is coming back, the Brazilian market is coming back and Chile is very strong for American communications products as well,” Brown said. Founded in 2000, Calabasas-based Strix Systems, has had a global focus from its inception. Since its product lines debuted in 2003, the wireless networking manufacturer has seen its international business grow steadily. “Our international sales efforts are pretty key to our business strategy. The wireless market is growing extremely rapidly overseas,” Doug Huemme, Strix’s assistant vice president of marketing, said. “We’ve focused on the Asia Pacific market and the European market as our two main ones internationally. In Asia, we’ve focused specifically in Japan and China, gaining distributors in those markets. In Europe, we’ve targeted primarily Spain, France and the United Kingdom, though we have distributors in other European markets.” Rise in foreign sales Westlake Village-based semiconductor manufacturer Diodes, Inc. has conducted its manufacturing overseas for a decade, yet it only started to sell its products in foreign markets several years ago. Since then, it has seen its foreign sales exceed its domestic ones. “In 2000, roughly 60 percent of our sales were in North America and the other 40 percent came in Asia. Currently, 58 percent of our sales are in Asia, 37 percent in North America, 3 percent in Europe and the rest scattered in miscellaneous markets across the globe,” Mark King, Diodes’ vice-president of sales and marketing, said. “We’re focused in Asia as a whole but do have an extra emphasis on the China market because it’s growing so rapidly. It’s booming.” If it hadn’t expanded globally, Camarillo-based power supplies manufacturer, Power-One would likely have remained a relatively small niche company. “We’ve made investments in China, Singapore and Australia, in terms of marketing and sales. Five years ago we were basically only a domestic company. Now we’re global with operations and salespeople all over the world,” Dave Hage, Power-One’s executive vice-president, said. “If we hadn’t gone global we would’ve been limited to being a niche supplier. Now we can do things on a global basis that our smaller competitors just can’t.”

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