As the White House looks to increase export opportunities for small business, Connecticut”™s chief export officer has turned to a state agency for help advising companies how to obtain trade financing.
As Anne Evans puts it, call it the “old girl”™s network.”
In late May and continuing this month, Evans is expounding on President Obama”™s National Export Initiative, as Connecticut”™s top federal export official in charge of the U.S. Export Assistance Center in Middletown.
Evans is doing so despite the schedule of the initiative”™s White House steering committee, which is not expected to release initial recommendations until later this summer. Evans said enough detail is known to proceed with a pair of conferences on the topic, one last week in Rocky Hill and the other scheduled for June 22 in Stamford.
Evans said the proposal has led to an increase in inquiries at her office, and recently she turned to the Connecticut Development Authority for help with the work, after meeting CDA president Marie O”™Brien at a Sunday event and discussing the increased workload she was facing.
“What we are seeing is that companies are very interested in export finance, and working with the CDA has been great,” Evans said. “Our only real difficulty is we have no more resources than we had six months ago ”¦ I can”™t be everywhere.”
Despite the recession”™s impact on Connecticut, businesses here did a remarkable job themselves of “being everywhere” during the downturn. Connecticut exports totaled $14 billion in 2009, an 8.4 percent decline that was measurably better than the drops experienced by New England as a whole (15 percent), New York (30 percent), and the United States (18.7 percent).
What”™s more, in the fourth quarter exports from Connecticut came up just short of a record $4 billion.
While the state”™s exports are dominated by the building and aerospace products of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., including helicopters made by its Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. subsidiary in Stratford, UTC does not tell the entire story of the state”™s strong export performance. Nearly half of the state”™s exports originate from the Fairfield County area, with Sikorsky comprising only a portion of that amount.
Still, France knocked Canada off the top rung among the largest importers of Connecticut-made products, likely due to UTC shipments of aerospace products for use in jets manufactured by Airbus.
Separately, a month after its acquisition by UTC, Clipper Windpower Inc. received the 2010 “deal of the year” award from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, for breaking into the global marketplace with an $81 million shipment of wind turbines to Mexico.
Evans and O”™Brien want to improve the state”™s ability to help the smallest businesses to similarly find and exploit overseas markets. Toward that end, the Obama administration wants to increase loans issued by the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank), from $4 billion to $6 billion; and to increase by half the number of businesses that sell into more than one market overseas.
Fairfield County Bank is strongly represented on Ex-Im Bank”™s leadership, with former Westport Selectman Diane Farrell one of five board members; and two others on the banks advisory board: Steve Parrish, a Westport export consultant previously with Altria Group, and Thomas Malloy of Stratford-based Risk Protection International.
Parrish and Malloy are only two of a small army of export experts in Fairfield County.
As important as are financial and operational know-how, breaking into international markets requires the gut checks small business owners are well familiar with, according to Nico Hogeveen, a former PepsiCo Inc. executive who now runs a consulting company called Terma-Praxis L.L.C., who spoke at an international business breakfast in mid-May hosted by HSBC Bank and the Fairfield County Business Journal.
“As much as anything, its about attitude,” Hogeveen said.
