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President
Tony Livoti
MBITA

Vice President
Shay Adams
AIM Medical Sales

Members

Dr. Edward Valeau
Former President
Hartnell College
Salinas

Marcelo Siero
IdeasSiero

Jim Faith
Trade Export Finance Online
(TEFO)

Staff

Cristina Polesel
General Manager

Emi Hirano
Marketing Assistant

This newsletter has been
created by MBITA's editor
Cristina Polesel
cristina@mbita.org

MBITA New Corporate Sponsor

MBITA welcomes their new corporate sponsor Richard Schneider Enterprises (RSE). Richard Schneider grew up in Mexico City after his birth in Brooklyn, New York. Years after his return to the United States it became clear that the experience had given birth to a language interpreter who had a sincere desire to help people communicate.

In 1980 Richard materialized his earlier desire to enable communication to take place over the language divide by creating Richard Schneider Enterprises. With an initial investment of $30.00 he added enormous energy and sincerity in his commitment to serve which enabled him to quickly recover his initial investment and grow the company into a venture that presently serves thousands of clients in 170 different languages.

Having grown up in a different culture and through subsequent travels Richard was continually amazed by the variety of human thought, culture, literature and social conditioning expressed in the diverse languages of the world. The only way to discover what people are thinking is through the language they are speaking, so with the purpose of assisting people in communicating their thoughts, ideas and desires Richard Schneider Enterprises, Inc. became a bridge to the one language of clear understanding.

At the inception of the company the focus became serving the legal and medical professions. Since that time Richard Schneider Enterprises, Inc. has served clients well beyond the legal and medical professions to include the Federal Government of the United States as well as State, County and local governments in addition to the aerospace industry, insurance industry, entertainment industry, cosmetic industry, garment industry, and the business community at large.

“What is Credit Insurance and How to Use It to Expand your Sales”

By MBITA Member Martin T. Goppelt

Credit Insurance is a valuable tool for managing your accounts receivable. Credit insurance protects against bad-debt losses caused by customer insolvency (most commonly bankruptcy), slow pay, and political events in foreign countries, such as civil war, inconvertibility of currency, discharge of debt and government moratorium.

Now in 2008, credit insurance is an excellent solution to help you expand your business in these difficult economic times where we are facing a weak economy; weak U.S. dollar; rise in commercial bankruptcy filings; increase in A/R aging (DSO up); decrease in consumer spending and confidence and the bank credit squeeze. All insurance companies are bracing for the worst year in terms of losses in more than a decade.

The key is to turn this fear into an opportunity.

Sales Growth/Competitive Advantage: Be more aggressive in a down market, while your competitors tighten up. Sell more without the additional risk and use the profits to offset the cost of the policy. Let your credit insurance carrier help you assess the credit of your export debtors, insure the sale, and help you collect if you encounter slow payments.

Trade Financing: Improve your bank relationship. Lending conditions are changing and will impact many borrowers. Credit Insurance is often used to secure the position of the bank and often times has a favorable impact on the terms of the loan.

Credit Enhancement: Become better and more efficient at credit and selling. On-Line and instantaneous credit assessment systems are available to all Policyholders. They also offer advanced online systems to help you manage your coverage and customers.

Credit Insurance can be especially useful with export sales. Take advantage of the declining USD and seek out new or increased opportunities to export your goods.

Case History #1: We have a client in the consumer audio business that would only export under L/C or pre-paid terms. They found they were able to use the online system to do credit approvals and set up new accounts quickly as well as extend credit to customers previously on pre-pay. They doubled their export sales by efficiently adding on new accounts as well as expanding their sales to their existing customers. These customers previously on pre-pay terms, started to buy 2-3 times as much product once they were given open account terms. Additionally, by reducing the usage of L/Cs, the Credit Manager was able to spend her time on productive issues like setting up new accounts instead of the time-consuming task of preparing documents and haggling with the bankers over fees.

Case History #2 : Agricultural commodity exporter with very limited export market in terms ofthe number of potential buyers. This company needed to extend large credit limits to a handful of processing facilities worldwide and since they work on razor-thin margins, could not afford any losses. So, they purchased credit insurance and only sell to customers that are insurable. This has made their sales efforts much more efficient in that they are able to pre-qualify buyers and focus their sales efforts on insurable customers. Those that cannot qualify have to issue L/C’s or pre-pay. This basically guarantees they will not have a bad debt loss.

Sponsored by FedEx and Alibaba.com, the conference lined up six panels discussing challenges and solutions for online global trade, for Global market research, web marketing, shipping logistics, global trade finance, security and translation-interpretation services that are now all available on-demand at the convenience of your computer.

The conference theme was how consultants, micro-enterprises and SMEs can compete cost-effectively and efficiently with their goods and services in the global marketplace utilizing the latest web-based technologies.

For example, FedEx gave a presentation on their online service called the ‘Global Trade Manager’ where a company can instantly give their customers accurate shipping quotes by utilizing the FedEx service and its one-stop solution for international shipping assistance.

This tool can also be used to identify individuals and companies that have been placed on the ‘denied party’ list established by the U.S. Department of State. The ‘Global Trade Manager’ also provides online access to obtain regulatory information specific to a shipment and to find the necessary documents based on commodity and country for a specific global trade shipment. 

Also, the conference featured a special presentation by Alibaba.com which described how their very popular website for global ‘sourcing’ is now focusing on helping American companies export to the growing ‘middle-class’ in China. They also demonstrated a new feature called TrustPass which further qualifies companies that post products on the Alibaba website.

A complete agenda for the conference can be seen at http://www.mbita.org/gc2008/agenda.html. Please go to http://tradeport.org/news/index.html to see PPs on the 5th Annual Global California conference.

Free Service Offered by TradePort.org

TradePort is now offering a very powerful and free web-based service that offers U.S. entities (citizens, industries, organizations) an opportunity. to review and comment on proposed foreign technical regulations that can affect their businesses and their access to international markets.

This service and its associated web site is managed and operated by the National Center for Standards and Certification Information (NCSCI), an organization within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce's (DOC) Technology Administration.

Please go to http://tradeport.org/Standards_and_Certification/index.html

See TradePort's Global Trade Compliance Service

Join the TradePort Global Trade Center’ and obtain information on import, export and investment opportunities from all points on the globe.

With a focus on global trade industry companies and professionals, the MBITA Global Jobs Center offers its members—and the industry at large—an easy-to-use and highly targeted resource for online employment connections in global trade.



Both members and non-members can use the MBITA Career Center to reach qualified candidates. Employers can post jobs online, search for qualified candidates based on specific job criteria, and create an online resume agent to email qualified candidates daily. They also benefit from online reporting that provides job activity statistics.

For job seekers, the MBITA Career Center is a free service that provides access to employers and jobs in the global trade industry. In addition to posting their resumes, job seekers can browse and view available jobs based on their criteria and save those jobs for later review if they choose.

 Job seekers can also create a search agent to provide email notifications of jobs that match their criteria.

Start using the MBITA Career Center TODAY!