This article features hand-picked international business experts who will present at Utah Business Forward. With five distinct tracks covering entrepreneurship, international business, marketing, people & culture and strategy, this dynamic event will be hosted on November 16, 2023, at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Click here to learn more about the event.

 

In January 2020, just as a then-novel coronavirus was beginning to spread and the global marketplace was a handful of weeks out from total lockdown, Mike May started a new global shipping job.

It would be a tense first year, but not just for May. The virus disproportionately affected older populations, members of racial and ethnic minorities, in-person and physical laborers, and the global south. Most of those hit hardest are crucial to the global economy and supply chain—groups the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre refers to as the “hidden workforce of global production.” May’s industry transformed practically overnight, as did most.

India’s lockdown amid staggering deaths left hundreds of thousands of migrant workers stranded to return home on foot. China’s manufacturing regions shut operations in the wake of virus spikes. The United States government buckled; months into lockdown came reports that there was no comprehensive plan to mitigate or stop the pandemic.

The earthquakes in the global workforce, combined with border closures, led to ships lined up at ports with no way to unload their cargo, derailing supply chains. For more than two years, container vessels were queued in southern California—peaking at 109 ships waiting to access their ports.

The pandemic brought to the forefront the importance of improvisation and understanding nuance in the global marketplace, and international strategists like May took note.

Find flexibility

As the business development manager for Air & Sea International, managing supply chain shipments and customs paperwork for companies was May’s specialty. In his first year, May says he would learn a crucial lesson: the global marketplace is far more fragile than he’d realized, and flexibility was key to staying afloat.

“I kinda got to live the whole supply chain crisis,” he recalls. “I got to see things go absolutely crazy, and it’s back now to lower than normal, what everybody’s calling the pre-pandemic normal.”

May says he has learned how crucial it is for companies to have backup plans when conducting business internationally to account for geopolitics, disruptions from extreme weather and other unpredictable issues. Despite the risks, the opportunity for growth is big if companies are smart about navigating the field.

Utilize Utah’s community and opportunities

Getting into international markets isn’t about knowing everything, Utah’s international business experts say, but about finding the right partners abroad and being light on your feet.

COVID-19 is just one example of the lessons learned. As Utah’s economy has exploded, the global marketplace has taken notice. In 2000, the state’s gross domestic product was $92.5 billion, according to data aggregation firm Statista. In 2022, it was nearly $192 billion. Now, many international opportunities have cropped up for companies in the region. With entire offices and organizations dedicated to the issue, like World Trade Center Utah (WTC Utah), the number of grants and potential partnerships abroad grows each year.

According to Jackie Hobson, who works in the marketing and outreach office of the Small Business Association’s (SBA) Utah branch, there are many programs within the state that companies can take advantage of to reach international markets.

“A lot of that international trade money that’s coming in is from small businesses,” Hobson says. “I think partners are huge.”

She listed the WTC Utah and the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity as two of the larger bodies responsible for connecting small businesses to opportunities abroad. She says both offer powerful tools for companies looking to expand their connections abroad because they “bring in the partnerships you need; they’ll do those introductions.”

Hobson says the SBA had made available more than $2 million in STEP fund grants at the beginning of this fiscal year, a number that has gone up in recent years as the federal government appears to be recognizing the growth in Utah’s economy. 

“What we do is we provide that grant to the World Trade Center Utah, and then they disburse it,” Hobson says. “And it can honestly be used for tons of different things: help with market research, doing a market analysis to identify the potential opportunities there, making sure the customer base is there. They kinda help you with that whole strategy.”

Consider an uncommon customer with new partnerships

According to Dustin Daugherty, companies can be hesitant about growing their customer bases abroad as it can feel fraught with risk and requires detailed knowledge. As the managing director of Global Business Services at WTC Utah, his organization seeks to bridge those gaps and help companies grow internationally.

“Tech’s becoming much more willing to attain growth markets beyond the U.S.,” Daugherty says. “If they haven’t maxed out in the U.S., a lot of times they just don’t see the value in trying to grow in other markets, … but there have been a lot of success stories for companies here in Utah that have done really well in international markets.”

To make these business successes happen, the WTC Utah hosts trips abroad and brings international partners to Utah to meet with potential partners. But on top of these events, Daugherty says companies will often need to maintain an on-the-ground presence with international partners to make sure the relationship is well maintained. 

“There’s a lot of things you can’t do from the United States,” he says. “You need partners abroad.”

According to May, one of the best ways to overcome complex problems is to connect with people from those markets. Still, having experts on their team as well as local partners that know the law in the countries they are operating in, issues can crop up.

“We’ve had experiences where we thought we were okay to export to this country, and it turns out, there are regulations,” May says. “Usually, it’s a hard stop that either results in your freight getting sent back to the United States or lost time.”

Joe Newell started a company just before the 2008 financial crisis and has learned to pivot to keep things going year after year. In 2012, he transformed his work into Newcorp International, which seeks to help other brands manufacture and develop their products internationally. Working in supply chains across the globe, he says, means it’s extra important to choose partnerships and nurture relationships carefully—both with clients in the U.S. and their partners abroad.

“With respect to going into how we access those individual organizations, first and foremost, we’d want to see if we can add value to what they’re doing,” he says. “If we’re not going to add value and we’re not helping in some way, we’re just going to like be in between doing this and that. It’s not really interesting for us to do because it’s a lot of short-term relationships. Our organization, in particular, operates on a lot of lower-margin, higher-volume deals, so it doesn’t make sense. We have to really focus on finding a way to create longevity in the relationship.”

Give international markets a chance

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, again derailing otherwise solidified supply chains. Global grain markets were disrupted, rippling into tons of other products. Fertilizer’s price shot up. Fuel became more expensive, too. According to the Utah experts, adaptability means having backup plans in your supply chain and access to global markets.

Many parts of the world offer key opportunities for growth. According to May and Daugherty, many retail companies based in Utah have found success in marketing and selling their products in Canada. Daugherty says other key go-to markets for international growth are the U.K. and Germany.

“While these are awesome markets and probably should be the first stop for a lot of companies, the kind of dynamic, future-facing countries that we see a lot are Vietnam, Mexico,” Daugherty says. “Colombia is an interesting one.”

Southeast Asia, in particular, is benefitting from capital flight from China as lockdowns and changing circumstances have disrupted manufacturing there, says WTC Utah’s senior director of strategy and operations, Jim Porter. He also points to South Korea as a potential area of connection for Utah because many life science businesses are cropping up there.

“It is really dependent on industry, but there are things you can consider. There are considerations you should take regardless of what kind of business you are,” Porter says. “Ultimately, you want to enter any market where you can earn above your costs.”

He says the competitive and consumer landscapes are key areas to look at when entering a new market to determine whether it’s worth the potential risks.

“What we look at in a new market when we’re dealing with one of our clients, we look at three different factors. The first is market potential,” Porter says. “How mature is the market? Is there room for a company to come in and grow or is it going to be tough?”

The other two factors his team considers are political security and the ease of doing business.

Utah’s international culture tracks toward success

Meanwhile, connections abroad are more important than ever in Utah because the state’s culture is becoming more international.

“We are a very diverse state in terms of where people come from; we have a large refugee community,” Daugherty says. “But even more than that, with the dominant religion here and the missionary system and the languages that people learn and experiences that they gain because of that, makes it, at least on a per capita basis, an extremely international state.”

He says these kinds of international cultural connections abroad and the norms around traveling abroad for missionary work have helped create a globally connected mindset among Utahns. Anytime he has to work abroad, he can often find members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that will help establish connections back to Utah.

To strategize this process, Daugherty says companies will have to consider their industry, size and needs before making moves to grow abroad. To that end, WTC Utah and the Governor’s office are providing the tools for those front-end development phases.

According to Hobson, the programs to help connect businesses to the global marketplace are crucial because most companies aren’t coming in with huge staffs and an international presence. She says 95 percent of Utah’s companies are considered small.

“People are interested in global trade, but they have no idea where to start.” She points to WTC Utah’s programs and global business management courses offered by various colleges in the region. “It’s those little things that make Utah unique and awesome; we have so many different types of resources, and we can use them together to better the business.”

Finally, growing businesses abroad comes down to financing and strategic partnerships. Golden Moore, the SVP of international banking at Zions Bank, says the motivation for entering new markets needs to be profit-driven.

“I would always ask why,” Moore says. “A lot of Utah companies will say, ‘I went on a trip there; I was a missionary; I was in the military there.’ … I need to make sure I’m not going there just because I like the people but because my product will work there.”

To help figure that out ahead of time, Moore says there are resources. There are grants available to help businesses test the waters, and banks like Zions will create loan funds that cover businesses taking a product abroad and showcasing it at a trade show to find out if there is interest in that market.

He also points to a global management class at Salt Lake Community College, which runs for 10 weeks.

“I would recommend anyone who has never gone to go for it,” Moore says, pointing out that there are even scholarships to help cover the cost. “It helps navigate some of those dynamics before they dive in.”