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Opening Up The World
Women-owned businesses find opportunities overseas.
by Carol Carter
July 1, 2008
I
f Christine Plott Redd ever comments that she is up to her neck in alligators, believe
it. Redd is sales and marketing manager for American Tanning & Leather Co., a family-owned
business in Griffin that processes, tans and sells reptile hides, namely the skins of alligators
and crocodiles. Yep, the company has a processing plant in Louisiana, where Redd's dad and brothers
buy the freshly killed gators.Their crocodile skins come mainly from Australia and Africa.
Because 60 percent of her company's business is overseas, Redd regularly travels
internationally, selling, she says,"to big brands, small independent manufacturers of handbags or
belts, fashion designers, shoe manufacturers, upholsters." So far this year, she has been to Italy,
Hong Kong, Paris, London and Tokyo. She estimates at least three more international trips await her
before the year is over.
"The world is a small place," Redd says."I go to a trade show twice a year in Bologna,
Italy. I see the same people."
Ann Huff, co-owner of Buckhead's Huff Harrington Fine Art Ltd., travels to France four times
annually to buy art for the gallery she started with partner Meg Harrington two years ago. Although
she has her bachelor's in art history, Huff had never sold fine art before she started this
business. But when she and her family moved back to the United States after living in the south of
France for a year, a French artist she had met over there shipped - much to Huff's surprise - 10
paintings to her. The uninvited gesture launched her business.
Women conducting international business should be right at home in Georgia, considering that
a woman, Heidi Green, is deputy commissioner for global commerce at the Georgia Department of
Economic Development. And that's not all. All the leaders of Georgia's international outreach are
women. Gretchen Corbin is director of international operations; Kathe Falls is director of
international trade; and Carla Plouin is director of the new Global Georgia program. Five of the
directors of Georgia's 10 international offices are women.
"In Georgia," Green says,"women-owned businesses are the fastest-growing segment of
businesses, and they represent the second fastest-growing rate of women-owned businesses in the
United States." Green's office works both to bring international businesses to Georgia and to help
Georgia companies do business overseas.
One of her newer projects is creating a supplier database so that, she says,"We can show our
prospects a list of people and companies in Georgia that supply certain products. Right now, it's
more ad hoc than that."
At Georgia Tech, Associate Professor Kathy Roper has just been named to the board of
directors of the International Facilities Management Association. "The association supports
chapters all over the world," says Roper, who when she worked for Sprint Communications helped open
an office in the Caribbean.
During that process, Roper learned one rule of conducting international business:
"Investigate first. There are lots of import requirements and regulations you might not be aware
of. We ended up having to purchase our furniture from a local dealer rather than shipping it
because it would have cost an extra 80 percent by the time we paid the taxes and the surcharges."
On a recent trip to Chile, Roper says,"Nobody warned me there's an entrance fee - $100 - to
come into the country."
All three businesswomen - Roper, Redd and Huff - note that the culture in many countries
demands that social graces come before business. "A lot of countries don't have the immediate
get-down-to-business attitude that we do in the United States," Roper says,"and it's considered
rude not to come in and talk about, 'How's your family.' All sorts of social things should occur
before you ever bring up any business. People can sometimes get into trouble that way when we go
bombarding into these cultures assuming they operate just like we do."
Huff found out just that when she and her husband wandered into an art gallery in Arles,
France. "We saw a painting that we just loved, and we went in and started talking to [the artist],"
she says. "And the bell started ringing for lunch time. He looked at his watch and said,'We've got
to stop, it's lunchtime. Why don't you come to lunch?'"
Huff and her husband were an hour from their home in France, and their children were in
school. "We thought, 'We can't do this. We can't just go have lunch with some artist that we don't
know.' But he said, 'My mom is cooking lunch for me and a bunch of friends.' So we went," she
says,"It was him and his mom and girlfriend and a colleague of his and myself and my husband."
After lunch, the artist opened champagne."By the time we left, it was, like, 3 o'clock. We
had to head back as fast as we could, so we never did buy a painting from him, but it didn't
matter; that was the way business was done," Huff says. Ultimately, that Frenchman became the first
artist she ever represented.
"Americans are usually very fast to make a deal," Redd says. Not so in Asia."You can work on
something forever in Asia. It just takes a long time to close a deal.You have to be patient and not
push too much and not seem too desperate."
And you have to know the details. In Asia, she says, most of her clients want insurance and
freight included in the price, so she has to know how much the freight is going to be. To
cover herself for such information, she uses a freight forwarder and also a customs broker.
Because she ships exotic skins, Redd's packages must go through the U.S Fish & Wildlife
Service. "Everything I ship requires a special permit. It doesn't cost a lot of money, but it's
time consuming and tedious.You have to make sure you do everything right. Last week, I had a
shipment of crocodile skins that was coming in to me from South America, and the South American
government didn't fill out the paperwork properly.
When the goods got to Atlanta and were inspected by Fish & Wildlife, they refused the
shipment and sent it back. It has happened to me twice this year."
And that is why Redd employs the services of Karen Myers at CST Inc., a Fayetteville customs
broker and freight forwarder. "We're kind of like the middle man," Myers says. "The importer, their
responsibility is to purchase the stuff, get it here and sell it to their customer. They really
don't have time to deal with Fish & Wildlife and sit and listen to them blab about things on
the paperwork that are not correct. That's my job. I listen to what they say, and I report back to
the customer. I know the rules and regulations. That's my job, to do that for my customer."
Huff likewise works with a customs broker, and also has, she says, "A good currency exchange
person out of Washington, D.C., that we send our money through."
Both Huff and her partner speak French fluently. They could do it without speaking the
language, she says, "but it would be very difficult. Not just speaking the language, but
understanding the culture. More than anything, it's important to follow up, be nice, be polite and
respectful, ask about the family. These are all the things that go into doing business. I am amazed
how money is almost the least important thing to these people."
Having grown up in her family's business - when she was 11, her dad let her speak with
clients and send faxes overseas - Redd minored in Mandarin Chinese at the University of Georgia."I
would definitely say I'm not fluent, but I can get around. It opens a lot of doors. I speak
about the same amount of Spanish, and it kind of translates into and I can understand a lot of
Italian."
But, she says, most people she deals with speak English. To help her, though, Redd has an
agent in Italy she has known since she was about 10 years old, and he sometimes travels with her.
"He's like an older brother to me," she says,"and in Europe he helps me out a lot."
But he was not with her right after she graduated from college and took her first solo trip
to Italy. Departing a rural area after calling on a shoe manufacturer in a small town, she boarded
a train without a ticket.
"I was so nervous, thinking, 'They're going to kick me off. 'The ticket man asked for my
ticket," she says. And in her best broken Spanish- Italian, she thought she told him that she was
running late and needed to purchase her ticket. "He laughed," she says, "and in broken English with
an Italian accent, he told me I had said that I arrived there retarded and needed to buy a ticket."
Regardless of such gaffes, Redd advises that people are the same everywhere. For someone
just starting out in the world of international business, she suggests attending trade shows.
"There are trade shows for every industry. If you can't exhibit, just go and make contacts. Don't
be afraid to engage people and ask them for meetings. Find yourself a good ally, a good agent.
Someone you can trust.
"Just go after it," Redd says."No guts, no glory."
