BizBuzz

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EMPLOYMENT: Free service helps Latinos market themselves

At 25, most people think about going out to get a job. Elias Portnoy thinks about getting other people a job.
Specifically, his bilingual website BuenaChamba.com links Latino workers who either speak little English or only speak Spanish with employers who need willing workers.
He makes it easy on the immigrants, too, providing the service free—that’s right, free—on his website. Free to the jobseekers, that is; he charges would-be employers a flat rate of $69 to list all their available openings.
When a good match comes up between employer and jobseeker, “We call you on the phone and tell you about it, or we get the employer to get in touch with you directly,” Portnoy said in an interview with La Opinion in Los Angeles.
Anyone registering with BuenaChamba.com—which takes all of five minutes—gets another great advantage. The information entered by the jobseeker is automatically formatted as a curriculum vitae that can be printed out and taken around to potential employers.

Hershey’s sweet deal

Giant U.S. chocolate maker Hershey is moving part of its production back to where chocolate started—Mexico. The ancient cultures of Mesoamerica, including the Aztecs and the Mayas, mixed ground cacao seeds with various seasonings to make a spicy, bubbly drink. Spaniards took it to Europe, sweetened it up and the rest is history.
Now the maker of Reese’s Pieces, Peanut Butter Cups, Mounds Bars and the perennially favorite Hershey Bar is headed for the birthplace of chocolate to create a production process that is more efficient and flexible, and of course to save money in the process by cutting down overhead costs. As part of the restructuring some 1,500 workers are being laid off in the U.S.
The new plant will be built in Monterrey, Mexico, with an investment over three years of between $525 million and $575 million. Hershey expects to realize annual savings of between $170 million and $190 million from now until the year 2010. Sweet.

AVIATION: Spirit of the south

South Florida is the gateway to much of Latin America, and Spirit Airlines, which operates out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, has decided to make the most of it.
Spirit Marketing Director Barry Biffle recently indicated in the daily El Sentinel that the company is bent on going farther afield than the Caribbean it currently covers so intensely. Flights to Caracas have been approved by the U.S. government and Spirit has been waiting for the green light from Venezuela.
Perhaps even more interesting are plans for direct flights to Peru, especially considering that some 20,000 Peruvians live in Broward County, where the Fort Lauderdale airport is located, generating a lot of traffic to and from the home country. Despite the fact that three airlines already offer direct flights to Lima, Spirit feels those fares are expensive and that one of its new Airbus A319s on the same route could easily compete on price.
“We have found that when flights are offered at a reasonable price, many people are willing to travel, and many of them for the first time,” El Sentinel quoted Biffle as saying.
—By Conrad Dahlson

EXECUTIVE CALENDAR: what not to miss

June 12: Shomex Productions Diversity Career Expo, Georgia World Congress Center, 285 International Blvd., Atlanta. For more information visit www.diversitycareerexpos.com

June 11-12: Business Opportunity Expo, New York & New Jersey Minority SupplierDevelopment Council, Marriott Marquis Hotel, 1535 Broadway, New York For further information, (212) 502-5663 or www.msdcnynj.org

June 20: Shomex Productions Diversity Career Expo, Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, Boston. For more information visit www.diversitycareerexpos.com

July 9-14: 78th LULAC National Convention, Navy Pier, Chicago. League of United Latin American Citizens meeting with theme of Empowering Latinos: Building Prosperity Through Partnerships. For further information, (202) 833-6130 or visit www.lulac.org

July 21-24: 2007 National Council of La Raza Annual Conference, Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach. Meeting of the largest civil rights and advocacy organization working to improve opportunities for Hispanics. For further information visit www.nclr.org

July 26: Minority Business Opportunity Expo, Northern California Supplier Development Council, The Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason, San Francisco. For further information, contact Eileen Lopez Rider at (510) 686-2568 or visit www.ncsdc.org

Aug. 4-8: ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting) 35th Annual National Convention, Walt Disney World’s Contemporary Resort, Orlando. For more information visit www.alpfa.org

Sept. 19-22: USHCC (U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce) 28th Annual National Convention & International Pavilion, San Juan, Puerto Rico. For more information visit www.ushcc.com/2007

Trendwatch: Money Matters

For the first time in U.S. history, the purchasing power of Latinos, estimated at $798 billion in 2006, is greater than that of African-Americans. By 2011, projections suggest the buying power of Hispanics will have grown 457 percent since 1990, a gain that far outstrips the 176 percent growth in the same period for non-Hispanics.
—Jeffrey M. Humphreys in The Multicultural Economy,
a study by the Selig Center for Economic Growth

TRENDWATCH: the value of hard work

Among the world’s greatest economies (G7), the percentage of the national income for workers has been gradually diminishing so that it represented 54 percent in 2006. The profits obtained by company owners and shareholders went from 10 percent five years ago to 16 percent, according to a study published by Morgan Stanley.
—Pedro Pulgar, columnist in La Opinion

QUIPS & QUOTES:
What they are saying

“Don’t ignore the importance of cockiness. Many new ventures might not be started were it not for the confidence and optimism of the entrepreneur.“
—David E. Gumpert, columnist in BusinessWeek
.
“A lot of immigrants are the cream of the crop...They took big risks and sacrificed a lot to get here, and they put that same spirit into their companies.”
—Jonathan Bowles, director, Center for an
Urban Future, as quoted in USA Today

“In the greatest economy in the world by a wide margin—almost quadruple that of runner-up Japan—personal savings have almost disappeared.”
—Roberto Alvarez Quiñones,
columnist in La Opinion

On U.S.-Latin American relations: “So far, enlightened self-interest has trumped personal dislike for Mr. Bush in the region”.
—From the article “Spring Break” in The Economist

“Excellent communication begins not with speaking, but with listening.”
—James Olan Hutcheson, family enterprise
consultant, in Business Week

marketing & advertising: showbiz salesman

Instead of going to college to study marketing and advertising, young Bronson del Rio went on the road.
The founder and CEO of Del Rio Advertising left his hometown of Texas as a lad and found his calling in California, where he began organizing and promoting tours for musical groups like Los Mojados that took him all over Mexico and the United States.
When his mother’s illness brought him back to Brownsville, according to an account in Rumbo newspaper of San Antonio, Texas, Del Rio put the wisdom he picked up on the road into founding a small shop that today has such big clients as TimeWarner Cable and Univision Media Group. His 17 employees are all specialists in showbiz marketing and come from as far afield as Venezuela, Great Britain and Mexico, as well as the U.S.
According to Rumbo, Del Rio’s latest project is producing the program 24/12 about Latino life in the U.S. The show will air on Azteca America but will also be available to other Spanish-speaking audiences including Argentina and Spain.

SNIPPET: Welcome Signs

In the end, are immigrants welcome or rejected? Which of these two tendencies predominates in the United States: that which discriminates against immigrants or that which, on the contrary, opens doors to the new arrivals and helps them find a better life?
—-Jorge Ramos, columnist in the
San Luis, Arizona Bajo El Sol

trendwatch: Export Benchmark

The U.S. Small Business Administration made a record number of export loans in FY 2006 and surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time in the history of the program. The SBA Office of International Trade reported 3,302 loans for $1.03 billion to small business exporters in FY 2006, doubling the number of export loans made in FY 2003.
—-SBA news release

music distributors: discs, noT DOWNLOADING

With all the downloading, iPods, file sharing, MP3 players and more, the public’s ways of acquiring and listening to music has undergone a significant change in recent years—everywhere except in the Latino barrio.
Elsewhere, traditional record stores may be under siege, but in Latinolandia they are still strong.
An AP story on Examiner.com quoted Enrique Reyes, one of the country’s biggest Latin music distributors through his company Reyes Musica in Miami, as saying that “Latin Americans still have not gotten into the habit of downloading music.”
A recent Nielsen survey reported that out of 32.6 million albums downloaded in 2006, a mere 293,000 were Latin American favorites.
It may be that Latinos have relatively less access to high-speed Internet connections, or the music they like isn’t available online, or their existing collections are on CDs. So why change?
The upshot is that traditional purveyors like Reyes Musica can still count on customer loyalty, and amid the shifting tides of the music industry, they stand out as islands of stability.

TRENDWATCH: Gaining something in The translation

A couple of companies that characteristically do business in English in the U.S. have started speaking Spanish.
As a bow to the booming Hispanic market in Dallas, Pizza Hut announced that it has developed Spanish online ordering through its website www.espanol.pizzahut.com, or by visiting www.pizzahut.com and clicking on “En Espanol.” The whole menu is available in Spanish, and customers can opt either for home delivery or take-out.
Meanwhile, the dieter’s meal-substitute shake Formula 1 by Herbalife has a new flavor, and it’s Piña Colada. The new tropical flavor is just the tip of the iceberg of Herbalife’s big opening to the Latino demographic. The company also announced that it is “acknowledging the importance of the Latino distributor” by going forward with its website in Spanish and developing Hispanic-specific sales tools.