The World is Your Oyster - Never before in history have conditions been more favorable for small businesses to go global in the search for markets. In the United States alone there are 230,000 small businesses exporting. These small businesses export nearly US$182 Billion annually. This means that in the 21st century, nearly one-third of all U.S. exports come from small businesses with under 500 employees.

Even more interesting is the fact that a mere 10% of small businesses are exporting. Obviously, there is plenty of room for more small businesses to get their share of global markets.

Which small businesses are doing the most exporting today? They fall into three categories:

• Companies which manufacture or distribute niche products. Finding markets for export products depends not so much on price as on uniqueness and expertise. Trying to compete with very low-cost providers in places such as China on basic, undifferentiated goods is not what we are talking about. But we are talking about changing the paradigm, and exporting goods which are the best in the world at their intended purpose. Niche products which require special expertise to manufacture or create, or which fill specific market needs are hot exports today. Examples include home furnishings, sporting goods and recreational equipment, and software applications.



• Internet-based businesses or online services that can be delivered across borders. The Internet is a crucial tool for exporters. Businesses which have an online presence are far more likely to find markets for export -- by a ratio of 20-to-1. Even service businesses are more likely to be able to find export markets, if they have an online presence. Examples include eBay sellers, site translation services, search engine optimization services, eLearning businesses, logistics coordinators, and border compliance providers.



• Construction materials and energy sources. China has a red-hot economy right now. It is consuming huge amounts of construction and building materials and related services. Supplying China with the basic materials it needs to manufacture end goods is a key area of exports from the U.S. and other Western countries today, including: steel, scrap metal, engineering services, architectural services, environmental consulting, and of course building products.

The world can indeed be your oyster if you keep up to date on what is happening across the globe, and get the right help to get into exporting.

Editor's note: We're very pleased to bring you the thirty-second in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...


This week we review the @rgumente blog.

The @rgumente blog is a Romanian business blog, written entirely in English. This is a gem of a blog that keeps getting better and better.

Dragos Novac, a software entrepreneur, edits @rgumente. He offers keen insights about business in general and specifically about business in Romania.

Romania is a big mystery to many in the English-speaking world, in part because the Romanian language is not often taught in English-speaking schools and universities.

A source like @rgumente is indispensable if you want to understand the Romanian business environment -- and make connections there. With the Romanian software industry playing an increasing role in outsourced software development, that could be very important.

In addition to Romanian business matters, @rgumente covers European Union business and cultural issues, software industry issues, and general business issues of all kinds.

Recent posts covered everything from the Romanian environment for high-tech business as compared with the U.S., to commentary on what blogs are good for, to the IBM/PeopleSoft deal.

This post with insight into Romania's culture and the whole outsourcing situation is the sort of unique insight you can expect at @rgumente:

"Understanding the cultural differences and acting accordingly is clearly one of the sensitive issues on the whole offshoring agenda. For example in India they discovered that fingerprinting the programmers for security reasons touched a very sensible chord on the Indians - fingerprinting is considered offensive in the Indian culture. I think that this is an important card Romanians can play in the offshore project contracting - besides being Europeans Romanians are fairly adaptable and rather open minded."

"@rgumente is a great tool helping me synthesize topics of interest for me and my business. As such, besides acting as a business intelligence repository, the writing gives me the opportunity of crystallizing my thoughts and ideas while having permanent feedback from my readers. Last, but not least, it gives me the chance of meeting very interesting people both online and offline, people otherwise I wouldn't have had the chance of meeting."

"A small steady migration is taking place toward privatizing hotels. Hotels that have been part of a chain are breaking off and new ones are being put up without a franchise. These small private hotels are sought after mostly for something they offer that is different. It could be a mystical offering or just something romantic or representing the environment of the area in which they are located. The franchise hotels, on the other hand, deliver consistency no matter where you stay across the globe."

"Surprisingly, no one had ever aggregated my peer group for travel marketing. Fundraisers alone spend millions on hotel rooms per year. Add to that admissions counselors, museum curators, visiting lecturers, social services administrators, recruiting coaches...and you have a very large market indeed."

"The small boutique hotels, which are the model partners for this service, have limited ad/marketing budgets. They rely on word of mouth and favorable PR. What I have provided is expedited (electronically) word-of-mouth marketing for them (for free!).

They love the exclusivity of this arrangement as there are now more boutique hotels than ever with still more in the planning stages."

"You will start to see the filling of the gaps to avoid competition and increase notice. It does take some vision, however, to see Knoxville as the next profit center.

With the success of the boutique hotel you are also seeing the big chains get into the act. The "W" hotels, for example, reflect the funky style originated by the Kimpton Chains and others. They do this on a very large scale, however. And something is lost."

• Published an article on The Four Bases of Organizational DNA
• Published an article on The Seven Types of Organizational DNA
• Developed an online five-question survey that lets you profile your organization's DNA

DNA is used as a metaphor for the intrinsic attributes of an organization. An organization's DNA is made up of its criteria for:

• Examining opportunity and risk
• Selecting and retaining people
• Processing information
• Distributing resources

An organization's DNA governs its existence in the same way biological DNA governs an organism's life.

The concept of organizational DNA is particularly interesting because it is one of the few metaphors applied to businesses and other organizations that has been organic. Most of the widely accepted metaphors have been along the lines of the reengineering craze of recent years. While these approaches have resulted in valuable examination of how organizations do things, they are not as good at illuminating the why. Why is a motivational question. People, not machines, have motivations. Organizations are made up of people with their emotions and thought processes. Organizations are collective organisms. As such it's time to view them through an organic rather than a mechanistic lens.

Editor's Note: A few weeks ago Dr. Scott Shane, a very talented professor here in our home town of Cleveland, Ohio hit our radar screen. He recently was named as principal investigator for a new study commissioned by the Ewing Marion Kauffmann Foundation to examine what factors affect the performance of newly founded companies. We are very pleased to have Dr. Shane offer the following insights about one recent entrepreneurial trend.

Dr. Shane, professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University, says starting a business is more popular than ever in the United States. But he also says it is harder to be successful at a new business:

"Entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly popular activity, with 4% of the population annually starting a new business -- more individuals than get married each year. But success rates at entrepreneurial activity are not keeping up with start-up rates, making it harder than it used to be to become a successful entrepreneur."

1. Select the right industry
2. Identify valuable business opportunities
3. Manage technological transitions
4. Identify and satisfying real market needs
5. Understand customer adoption
6. Exploit established company weaknesses
7. Manage intellectual property
8. Create barriers to imitation
9. Choose the right organizational form
10. Manage risk and uncertainty

Franchising is big business among small businesses in the US according to a study by the International Franchise Association Educational Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study reports that franchised businesses account for 9.5% of the US private-sector economy.

According to the study, franchises directly employ 9.8 million people, about the same number as the US durable-goods manufacturing sector. Combine direct employment with indirect, and the study says the job total grows to more than 18 million, nearly 14 percent of US private-sector employment.

Two types of franchises are identified by the study:

1. Business-format franchises such as automobile services, convenience stores, hotels, restaurants, and tax-preparation services.

2. Product-distribution franchises such as gas stations, vehicle dealers, and beverage bottling and distribution.

Data for the study was collected from a variety of sources and much of the statistical information reflects 2001 numbers when 767,483 franchises were operating in the US.

Franchised businesses play a far larger role in the US economy than a surface view might suggest. While everyone recognizes the corner McDonalds as a franchise, how many realize the local Ford dealer is also one? Businesses that sell to small business would do well to recognize the growing trend of franchising and develop strategies for selling goods and services to master franchise holders. Pricing and service should take into account the value of building relationship with both individual franchisees and parent companies.

Editor's note: We're happy to present the thirty-first in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...


The Playmakers blog is a lot of fun because it is about toys.

The blog is the online home for the book The Playmakers, by author Tim Walsh.

Of course, there's a lot more to this blog than promoting a book. The blog is also a place to find information on toys, games, dolls and play sets ... and the people who created them.

The book and the blog are about classic toys -- the kind of toys that we grew up with. Many of these toys are now collectibles. Some can be found in museums and have real monetary value as collectibles. Others will be found only in our attics and basements, and have value of a different kind -- nostalgic value.

In this blog you'll find information on everything from Crayola crayons (remember the big 64 crayon box that every kid wanted?), to Play-Doh, to G.I. Joe.

One of my favorite posts highlights a visit to Babyland General Hospital, home of the Cabbage Patch Kids (who could forget them?):

"Call them funny looking, but don't call them "dolls." Cabbage Patch Kids may have a certain homely allure, but it was the elaborate fantasy surrounding them -- the pretense of their being real -- that drove their popularity from the start. While other dolls crawled, ate, cried, slept or mimicked some other human bodily function in an effort to create realism, Cabbage Patch Kids sustained an illusion that was bigger than anything the dolls themselves could do. They weren't for sale, they were "available for adoption." They weren't found in any stores, only at "Official Adoption Agencies." They weren't made, they were "born" in a hospital staffed by women in white nurses' outfits and a man with no medical degree named Dr. Roberts."

Obviously, making it easier for entrepreneurs to start new businesses is good for growth. The same seems to be true for the other activities the report tracks, which include trading property, ease of hand allowing the use of collateral to get credit. It should come as no surprise that countries with streamlined, efficient regulation of these areas enjoy higher growth.

Independent opticals and small local or regional chains are owned by optometrists or opticians, who lack basic retail security knowledge. They, like their corporate counterparts, fail to put security measures into place, not out of a lack of concern, but because of ignorance. On the whole, optical personnel are not in tune with the business realities of today. When it comes to security, they don't even know where to begin asking the right questions, and they are paying the price for it.

As the deterrent measures taken by some retailers such as the banks and the financial sector take effect, criminals are forced to focus their attention on "softer" targets such as chemists and opticians.

Opticians are considered to be softer targets because we have failed to keep up with the deterrent measures taken by others. At the same time, the nature and value of opticians' goods has significantly changed over the last decade - as has consumer perceptions of eyewear.

Designer frames and sunspectacles are now stocked in greater volumes than before, to satisfy increased public demand for branded "fashion" goods.

Opticians are now high profile targets.

A burgeoning trend that hasn't yet come to light in the form of a formal report, but is being recognized at the ground level is that organized retail crime plays a huge part in the funding of terrorist activities. Shoplifting and burglary crews target optical goods, among others, and feed the rings of fences that funnel the profits into terrorist organizations.

According to CIS Robert W. Nolen, a lead trainer in a course developed with Bureau of Justice Assistance grant money called "Understanding, Combating and Surviving Terrorism," one of the niches exploited by many criminals from terrorist "countries of interest" is the resale of stolen consumer goods.

As more and more corporate managers abandon the security of a weekly paycheck for the satisfaction of running their own show, many choose to buy shops, restaurants and other retail businesses.

***

Business brokers and small-business consultants report an increase in the number of entrepreneurs looking to buy a small business this year. Ned Minor, a lawyer with the Denver law firm of Minor & Brown, said calls seeking advice on such transactions were up by 20 percent.

As incomes go up, Americans spend a greater proportion on intangibles and relatively less on goods. One result is more new jobs in hotels, health clubs and hospitals, and fewer in factories.

In 1959, Americans spent about 40 percent of their incomes on services, compared with 58 percent in 2000. That figure understates the trend, because in many cases goods and services come bundled together.

Misallocated capital

Weak banks

Needed economic liberalization

Economic disparity between rural and urban dwellers

Editor's note: We're pleased to present the thirtieth in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...


This week we review the Oklahoma Wine News blog. It has one of the most interesting concepts for a blog that I've run across. That's why I like it so much.

The blog promotes the winemaking industry in northeastern Oklahoma, USA. The title says it all: "Oklahoma state wine industry news and vineyard events. Never miss another local wine tasting. Site includes online archive of winery newsletters, festival dates, recipes, trivia, grape growing info, etc."

This blog is run by the people at Nuyaka Creek Winery, a family-owned business. It's also a generations-old winery.

If you are looking for information about the business aspects of wineries, you've just discovered a gold mine of information. You'll find posts such as How a Winery Operates and Learn the PR Secrets of Successful Wineries.


There are even posts on the nuts and bolts of growing grapes such as Excellent Article on Whip Grafting.

Want to find out about legal developments affecting sales of wine in certain states and over the Internet? Yep, you'll find lots of posts here.

Maybe you are not interested in the business side, but just like wine. Well, there are links galore to all sorts of wine-related sites that I'll bet you never knew existed, such as Wine Television and wine and grape jewelry. You can even find wine blogs (such as here and here).

One of the best things about this site is the way it supports other wineries and businesses in Oklahoma. If you want to know about wine tastings, events, restaurants and places to visit in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Wine News has it. The blog routinely plugs other wineries in Oklahoma, too.


The Power: The Power of the Oklahoma Wine News blog is in the creative way it supports local tourism and the wine industry as a whole, while at the same time promoting its own business. It's a creative concept that could be applied to just about any consumer-oriented small business.

We've all read the obituaries of organized labor in the U.S. But, there is one segment that has seen a growth in unionized workers: service businesses. And who is leading the way in growth in service industries? That's right, entrepreneurs.

True, union membership as a whole continues to decline. But groups active in professional and service industries are booming, their ranks swelled by workers who fear increased health insurance costs and the outsourcing of jobs to Asia. IT staffers, graphic designers, and engineers -- this is the new face of labor. And guess where many of them work? The average workplace organized last year had just 53 workers. "More attention is being paid to smaller workplaces," says Bob Bruno, a labor and industrial relations professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who adds that "organized labor has a higher success rate in small businesses." There are several reasons for this. Labor activists have discovered that unlike large corporations, small businesses often lack the resources and the know-how to fight unionization. Plus, their employees are often more receptive to organization because union reps can make a personal, individual appeal for their support.

- Players' salaries
- Changes in technology
- Pricing
- Internationalization
- Innovation
- Illegal activities by athletes

• Home Renovation Services - this is a hot trend. As the population ages, people want to stay in their homes and make them more livable.



• Pet-based Products - Pet owners are indulging their pets. The sky is the limit on what pet owners will spend.



• Catering Services - These services are not just for parties anymore. People are having everyday meals catered.



• Cleaning Services - Domestic cleaning services are in high demand. This is not a glamorous business, but there is a good market for it.



• Fall Prevention Products - Susan says falls are a major cause of injury among seniors.



• Wedding Planner - Marriage has not gone out of style.



• Dietary Consultant - This one is not just for weight loss, but for healthy eating in general.



• In Home Beauty Services - Personalized service for those who desire to look younger is the trend driving this business.



• Sewing and Alterations - Tailoring can be a lucrative business.



• Life/Business Coaching Services - Having a personal coach is a hot thing right now.

"Since the days of the Internet boom we've been hearing that ecommerce is going to change the way Africa does business. The details of this transformation always remained somewhat fuzzy so it's time to take a look at the nuts and bolts of ecommerce in Africa and to evaluate how its doing so far. As it stands the ecommerce in Africa is worth about $31 million - with $30 million of this coming from South Africa."

• Connectivity and software were once a problem in Africa but are now sufficient. All the capitals of Africa today have adequate connectivity, and there are plenty of capable IT companies ready to provide software and hardware.



• Taking credit card payments is a major barrier to eCommerce. Sub-Saharan African businesses find it very difficult to secure payment services for the major credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard. It's especially tough following 9/11, due to legislation closing business residency loopholes that legitimate businesses had relied upon.



• Marketing is expensive for most African businesses. So far Africa has no eCommerce success stories.



• Shipping and trade barriers are the same problem on the Internet as off the Internet. African sellers still have to deal with export/import issues, middlemen who control markets for certain commodities and goods, and restrictive trade agreements -- all of which drive up the costs for African sellers.



• Finally, Africa is facing competition from those two low cost providers, India and China. African sellers now have to worry about holding their own against not only the West, but also against a rising Asia.

Editor's note: We're excited to present the twenty-ninth in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...


Lip-Sticking is a fun and useful blog that is full of personality. As the title says, the site is all about "Smart Marketing to Women Online."

This blog is run by one really savvy woman, Yvonne DiVita. Yvonne is a business and technology writer who blogs from Rochester in the Fingerlakes region of New York, across the Great Lakes from Toronto, Canada.

Lip-Sticking helps businesses online market successfully to women. Yvonne combines technology knowledge with the ability to write -- and wow does she write! She is the author of Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online.

Yvonne told me that she was urged to start a blog by her fiance, who also has a blog.

Like many business bloggers, at first she had reservations about blogging, because it seemed like a tremendous amount of work for little return. But now she is convinced of blogging's business value.

Blogging has brought her new clients and new business. And the return on investment has been a speedy one. Yvonne says the blog has given her recognition and opportunity faster than any other marketing tool she's ever used.

What I like best about Lip-Sticking is the way Yvonne speaks in her own true voice (often as alter ego Jane) giving tips and insider tricks about marketing to women online. As Yvonne says:

"Shopping online is so different than shopping offline that if a business owner doesn't take the time to learn and understand those differences, it could spell disaster for her or him. Women LIKE shopping in general, and it's natural for them to adopt shopping online for convenience and savings. To understand how that works -- what the women like and don't like -- as well as how shopping online works in general, is what I write about. I'm proud of the fact that my blog provides research and statistics to show ecommerce businesses how to get the right message to the right person, via the right medium."

• Germany - Mobile.de (autos)



• India - Baazee.com



• China - EachNet



• Korea - Internet Auction Co.