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BizBuzz

business in brief
Politics, marketing, trade & trends

LATIn AMERICA’s MOMENT

Cultural affinities and personal connections are excellent assets, but Hispanic entrepreneurs thinking of doing business in Latin America are well advised to get some hard facts on how things are going. Overall, the news is good, according to a new Cisco Systems report by G. Patrick Pawling.
The region, he says, is emerging from the generalized slump of recent years and looks forward to an average annual GDP growth of 4.8 percent through 2008.
Points in favor of taking the plunge and doing business down south: currencies are stabilizing, inflation is moderate, debt is being managed, and while interest rates are high in some countries, politically the region looks stable.
Of the 33 Latin American countries that are home to some 500 million people, the most thriving economies are to be found in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru and Chile.
One area of opportunity is IT, since up to now Latin America has invested less in the computer field than any other region—just 1.4 percent of its GDP, according to the Cisco report (www.developers.net/ciscoshowcase). Nonetheless, “access to technology and the money to buy it are both becoming easier to obtain.” Connecting the dots, that sounds like a whole lot of expansion ahead.
Ricardo Villate, program manager of Enterprise Solutions for IDC Latin America, sees the way ahead as fairly clear of threats, with only the mildest of caveats: “There is always uncertainty, but these days things are much more under control.”

SNIPPET
DRIVING FACTORS

The service sector, which includes such companies as airlines, beauty salons, accountants, doctors, dentists and plumbers, are driving the economy in the midst of a slump in the manufacturing sector. “The activity of non-manufacturing businesses increased for the 50th straight month in October,” said Anthony Nieves, president of the ISM (Institute for Supply Management).
—La Voz, AzCentral.com

TREND Finance

With lenders spooked by late summer’s credit crunch and the housing market continuing its slide, many entrepreneurs are finding capital harder to come by. Banks have tightened the spigots, and even Small Business Administration 7(a) loans may be tougher to land. Declining home values in many parts of the country are limiting the amount of equity that business owners can use as collateral for loans, as well as the amount of credit available to them.
—Business Week

APPAREL All trendy and eco-friendly

The North Pole is melting, water in the South is scarce, wildfires have devastated vast tracts of California—isn’t it time we paid a little attention to the environment? That’s what Marta Soto thought when she started Bangledox Eco-Friendly Urban Clothing. Her conscientious company makes organic T-shirts from “organic cottons and earth-friendly inks and dyes,” plus equally green accessories such as Paparazzi sunglasses and truckers’ caps. Marta Soto’s experience echoes many other entrepreneurs’ beginnings—when she lost her job it was, “Great, now I can start my own business.” She parlayed her natural devotion to the environment into a green T-shirt line that she began selling, modestly enough, in flea markets around St. Roberts, Missouri, in 2003. She then went on to set up her own online store. Soto’s “all trendy and eco-friendly” gear is not yet in stores, although that seems to be on the horizon. It is available online at www.bangledox.com.

TRENDWATCH
health care costs

The cost of providing health-care benefits to employees increased by an average 5.3 percent in 2007, less than the 7.9 percent increase in 2006 and the lowest increase in nine years.
—Victoria Knight, AP

ENTERTAINMENT CROSSOVER GAME

There must be an entrepreneurial formula in a new game being sold in Texas that can be applied in many other fields—because it’s making a killing for its inventor, Cristina Sosa Noriega. She took the time-honored game of lotería from Mexico, the land of her forefathers, and imported it. She calls her version My Lotería.
“I wanted to make a new version but for people like me—people who are equally proud of being American and proud of their Mexican roots,” Noriega told Celina Alvarado of the Laredo Morning Times.
For those unfamiliar with lotería, it has 54 different cards with images which Noriega either updated or reinvented. She says she included things that were familiar around her Texas neighborhood, like the lowrider, an accordion and more. And an icon that is traditionally “la bandera” she modified to make it “las banderas,” featuring the Mexican and American flags together. To complete the crossover, there is an English translation on the back of every card.
Noriega’s creativity has produced more than 200 different My Lotería products, according to the Laredo Morning Times, including ceramic platters, stoneware plates, mugs, grilling accessories, aprons, oven mitts, pot holders and tableware line of melamine plates, bowls, serving trays and acrylic glasses. My Lotería is available at H-E-B stores around Texas.

COME BACK TO MEXICO

For all of Mexico’s perennial charms to American tourists, problems have surged that are keeping many away. Enchanting Spanish colonial cities and amazing Mesoamerican ruins, the stunning beaches and mountains, churches and museums, the food, music, dancing and fun are being overshadowed by a crime wave, political unrest and pollution that drive tourists elsewhere.
While the government is making an all-out effort to correct the problems—even deploying the army to fight drug gangs—the Mexico Tourism Board is working on the area’s image.
The board is preparing a $40 million campaign with intent “to promote the benefits of travel to Mexico among the general market and Hispanic market in the United States and Canada.”
Mexican tourism officials have selected the Miami-based Hispanic ad agency Machado/Garcia-Serra, known for its work for such clients as Toyota, Coca-Cola and Florida Power & Light, as the agency of record for media planning and buying in the United States and Canada. The new campaign launches in the U.S. February in TV, print, radio and Internet.
—Conrad Dahlson

X-ECUTIVE CALENDAR: what not to miss

December 18: Showcase 2007, Northwest Minority Business Council, Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, Washington. For more information call 206-575-7748 or see www.nmbc.biz

January 11: Franchise Expo South, Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach. For more information call 201-226-1130 or see www.mfvexpo.com

January 26-27: National Franchise & Business Opportunities Expo, International Exposition Center, One I-X Center Drive, Cleveland. For more information call 905-477-2677 or 1-800-891-4859

February 9-12: International Franchise Association’s 48th Annual Convention, “Building the Future Together,” Marriott World Center, Orlando. For more information, contact Lynette Darby at 202-662-0782 or see www.franchise.org
March 4-5: 11th Annual LULAC Legislative Awards Gala & Policy Summit, J.W. Marriott Hotel, 1331 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington D.C., For more information call 202-833-6130 or see www.lulac.org

April 10-12: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademarks showcase, Main Office, Alexandria, VA. See www.uspto.gov/surveys/tmexpo2008.htm

April 11-13: 17th Annual International Franchise Expo, Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. For more information, call 201-226-1130 or visit www.ifeinfo.com

April 23-25: DiversityBusiness.com’s 8th Annual National Multicultural Business Conference, Disney Broadwalk Resorts, Orlando. For information contact Bill Stokes at 203-255-2972 or see www.DiversityBusiness.com

QUIPS & QUOTES:
What they are saying

“A client will often prefer to do business with a smaller company since it offers better attention to the client than a big company does.”
—Maria Contreras-Sweet, Founder/Chairwoman, Promerica Bank, as quoted in La Opinión

“We have an obligation to pay attention to the growing sophistication of Latino consumer—their greater mix of language ability and preference, their broader media exposure, external forces such as the immigration debate—all of which are fueling how we are defined.”
—Carl Kravetz, Past-Chairman, Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies at AHAA 21st Conference

“There are times when it makes good business sense to give up on extremely high-maintenance customers who are a drain on resources.”
—Terrie Piell, columnist, writing in BusinessWeek

“Improving our trade relations with Latin America can open the door to an incredible potential for economic power and growth for both small business owners in the United States and for the U.S. economy as a whole.”
—Michael L. Barrera, CEO and President, United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as quoted on ushcc.com

“Consumers are growing more pessimistic about the short-term future, and their rather pessimistic outlook suggests a year’s end that is not exactly stellar.”
—Lynn Franco, Director, Consumer Research Center, The Conference Board, as quoted in La Opinión

language training
GIFT OF TONGUES

Love it or hate it, globalization is here to stay. For multinational corporations, the question is how to survive and come out a winner.
One absolute necessity is having executives as fluent in the languages of the countries where they are posted as they are in the language of their home office. And that, as Brenda Arbelaez of the language instruction service Pals International learned when she was teaching in bilingual schools back in her native Bogotá, is as much about understanding the culture as translating the words.
After coming to the U.S. in 1975 as a Spanish-as-a-second-language teacher, she spied a future for herself on the corporate scene and was soon teaching executives assigned to Spanish-speaking countries.
Her foot was in the door of globalization, and in 1983 she founded Pals International (www.palsintl.com) as a linguistic passport for executives being posted anywhere in the world. Today her most requested languages are Spanish, French, German, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Russian and Portuguese, with still more available if required.
Multinationals counting on Pal International include Chrysler, General Motors and the Robert Bosch Corporation.
And as Arbalaez understood from day one, there’s a lot more to language than translation. So besides language instruction, Pals International also offers cross-cultural training programs, accent reduction, global relocation support services, business consulting, language translation and interpretation.