The Brown & White

On Monday, eight Pennsylvania authorized trade international representatives gathered with local small business owners for an International Breakfast Briefing hosted by Cora Landis, program director of the Small Business Development Center at Lehigh.

As a part of Pennsylvania International Week, Lehigh hosted the event for small businesses of the Lehigh Valley. The day-long event consisted of the breakfast briefing with multiple speakers and was followed by one-on-one meetings between the representatives from overseas and small businesses.

"There are 24 offices representing Pennsylvania in countries overseas. The representatives are contractors paid by the state of Pennsylvania," said Landis. "They are people who understand the markets of the countries they live in and have grown up there."

Wilfred Muskens, deputy secretary of International Business Development, was one person who attended and spoke at the breakfast. "None of the representatives are state employees. We hire people who are local to their countries, who have knowledge of the country and can speak the native language," said Muskens.

The regions represented included Brazil, Canada, Chile, Central Europe, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Taiwan, and there was special attention on Brazil.

Joel Sutherland, managing director of the Center for Value Chain Research at Lehigh, gave a special presentation on Brazil, focusing on the future of the country.

"The upcoming Olympics in 2016, the World Cup in 2014 and the supply of oil will boost Brazil's global stature, adding 3 to 4 percent to its GDP," he said.

The representatives usually visit and meet with Pennsylvania businesses twice a year; however, this year they will only meet one time.

"This has been a bad budget year with a 40 percent cut. We will not be cutting any overseas offices, but we will not be having as many events and programs," said Landis. "So instead of having all of the representatives come and travel from region to region, only a third of them are coming now and the rest in the spring."

"There was a three month period this past summer where the program had no budget at all. There was uncertainty of whether or not we had a program," said Muskens.

Muskens said he and Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell are very supportive of international trade. "I attend regional events to support export opportunities. The governor also believes in the importance of global trade," said Muskens.

"Governor Rendell is pro international trade. He has always been supportive of economic development in general, especially international trade. His support has helped the state, and exports have improved substantially," said Landis.

There were many small businesses present at the breakfast. They were all interested in learning about exporting their products overseas.

Jim Cielinski, general sales manager of Weldship Corporation, a producer of gas containment transportation, said the company looked overseas because there are many opportunities there.

Matt Thierer, national sales manager of Brey Krause, a company that manufactures commercial bathroom accessories, said his company is looking to expand internationally. "We are testing the waters to see what is available. Brey Krause is looking for opportunities to expand because many of our competitors are large internationally, while we are still only within the United States," he said. "All of our factories are in the country and people see our products as high quality because of that. Small Business Development Centers is looking to help smaller companies like us."

The International Breakfast Briefing was sponsored by three local Lehigh Valley Businesses: Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba, Milestone Bank and the Lehigh Valley Foreign Trade Zone.

Timothy Charlesworth, attorney at law, attended the function as a representative for Fitzpatrick, Lentz & Bubba. "Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba is sponsoring this event to promote the importance of exports," he said. "We already represent companies with international business and are here to let other local businesses know that we can assist them as well."

Landis said the meeting is a great chance for companies to network.

"We hope these meetings will result with getting new clients into the network. We are giving new companies the opportunity to meet with representatives and to talk about developing markets in their countries," she said. "These inexperienced companies want to find out if they have potential overseas and these representatives are good at giving whether or not the companies would be a good pick. We are bringing the world to these small businesses."