Business in Brief:
Polictics, marketing, trade and trends
Entrepeneurship: Think Big, Think Fast
By Conrad Dahlson
Marcelo Claure’s Brightstar Corporation has to leave a lot
of entrepreneurs wondering how he does it. How do you
start distributing cellphones from a modest warehouse office
in Miami and decide to take over the world?
What Claure did was head back to the continent of his
birth, South America—he left Bolivia as a kid—and in a scant
eight years became the continent’s absolute leader in cellphone
distribution. Now he’s opened up in Asia, where the
numbers of people entering the middle class on the back of
an economic boom are growing exponentially. In India. Singapore.
Hong Kong. China. And of course so are the numbers of
cellphones they’ll all need.
The opportunity is clear enough, but how can he seem
poised to take advantage of it so effortlessly?
Begin at the beginning. When he was a
distributor for established brands like Ericsson
and not a manufacturer, he simply tried
to distribute better. Brightstar cut out the red
tape, streamlined delivery—no more freight
forwarding or letters of credit—and made
seamless deliveries to any country and billed
clients in the local currency.
Clients loved it.
His success naturally built strong ties with
cellphone manufacturers like Motorola and
network operators including Telefonica—he
was selling their goods and services bigtime. So he was able to
accrue peripheral enterprises around his core business —integrated
supply chain and logistics services, sales of wireless
Internet devices, investment in emerging technologies.
Now he even has manufacturing facilities in Tierra del
Fuego, Argentina, and Mexico City, where he turns out phones
for ... Motorola, Sagem, Audiovox and UT Starcom.
Fine. Now on to the other side of the world. In March
Brightstar signed to supply Australia’s giant telephone
company Telstra with over 2 million phones from global
suppliers, at more competitive prices, while “introducing a
number of inventory management tools, driving costs out
of the business and giving Telstra a long-term competitive
advantage.”
Yet that deal may soon look like small potatoes
compared with projected sales in India,
where Claure is said to consider setting up his
own retail network, and in China through his
Hong Kong operation.
In fact, Claure has been reported as saying
that the boost from Asian sales should bring
in $3 billion for Brightstar this year, compared
with $2.2 billion in 2005.
That’s success the Brightstar way—one
continent at a time.
Retail: Edgy, Upscale Online Boutique
Jennifer Terzian and Kristie Quiñones, both 28, are longtime
friends who share such a passion for shopping that it became
their expertise. Tired of so-five-minutes-ago Miami boutiques
and not-those-same-mass-market-mall brands, Jen and Kris
decided to serve the segment they knew so well. Their business
plan was to create a website touting emerging designers
with the style and attitude their segment longed for.
TheFashionPulse.com purveys hot newcomers the likes
of adam+eve, Alessandro dell’Acqua, Sass & Bide, Kiss My Axe,
and many more that if you are female and between 19 and 35,
you’ll know what we’re talking about.
Kris and Jen have found to their undoubted delight that
this is a two-way street. Not only have they built a loyal international
customer base but, according to South Florida CEO magazine, the mentions they have gotten in various national
shopping magazines such as InStyle and Lucky have up-andcoming
designers of clothing and accessories standing in
line to appear on TheFashionPulse.com—which means Jen
and Kris are negotiating from a position of strength.
So before hitting the mass-market shopping malls, women
might well stop in at TheFashionPulse.com—provided
they’re hot and hip.
Trendwatch: Self-Employed
“Despite the growth in the number of Hispanic companies
in this country ... the great majority of them (83 percent)
are small and do not create jobs except for their owners,
according to 2002 statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau.”
—EFE News Service
Trendwatch: Purchasing
Hispanic purchasing power was estimated at $700
billion in 2005. In years to come more growth is expected;
by 2007 it is forecasted to hit the $928 billion mark, and by
2010 Hispanics could have $1.2 trillion in purchasing power,
according to the Santiago Solutions Group.
Executive Calendar: What Not To Miss
June 12-13:
The New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier
Development Council’s Business Opportunity Expo 2006,
considered New York City’s largest conference on Fortune
500 outsourcing to minority businesses; at the New York Marriott
Marquis. For more information, visit www.nynjmsdc.org.
June 27-30:
U.S. Department of Energy Small Business
Conference, Seattle, WA; For more information, visit
www.smallbusiness-outreach.doe.gov.
July 26-29:
31st Annual Convention & Expo TAMACC (Texas
Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce),
El Paso, TX. For more information, visit www.tamacc.org/
convention/.
June 26-July 1:
LULAC (League of United Latin American
Citizens) National Convention & Expo, Milwaukee, WI
www.lulac.org.
July 27-28:
3rd Marketing Financial Services to Hispanics,
New York, NY. For more information, contact: conference
@marcusevansbb.
August 10:
2006 Make the Connection
Hispanic Business Expo
2006, Illinois Hispanic Chamber
of Commerce, Navy Pier, Chicago,
IL. For more information contact
cornelio@ihccbusiness.net.
August 25-26:
National Small Business Federal Procurement
Summit, Summer Session, Washington, D.C. For more information
visit www.sblink.us/html/nps-summit-summer.aspx.
September 20-23:
USHCC 27th Annual National Convention
and Business Expo, Philadelphia, PA. For more information, visit
www.ushcc.com.
Quips & Quotes: What They Are Saying
“We’re going to see a growing influence of Hispanics in
this country. Salsa already sells more than ketchup.”
—Michael Barrera, president,
U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
On the Iran crisis and $70-per-barrel oil: “The fundamentals
for crude oil really don’t justify a bull trend, but the political
front supports it.’’
—Ed Silliere, vice president,
Energy Merchant LLC
On immigrant protests: “The voice of the community that
defends its dignity, recognition and respect is breaking
through the walls of Congress.”
—Frank Sharry,
columnist, in La Opinión.
On borrowing money from family members to start a
business: “A banker will send you a nasty letter. A relative will
remind you [about the money] every time they see you.”
—Paul Karofsky, family business adviser,
as quoted in BusinessWeek.
On how to combat companies that hire illegal immigrants:“We use intelligence to define the scope of the organization,
and then we ... come down as hard as possible and
break the back of those organizations.”
—Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary,
as quoted by The New York Times.
“Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.”
—Jack Paar, comedian, as quoted
on makethemaccountable.com
Snippet: The Anti-Heroes
“On behalf of the 40 million Hispanics in the United States,
I extend my gratitude to the three people who have done the
most to energize the ‘Latino power’ in the United States: Immigrant-
phobic Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI.; CNN’s Lou
Dobbs, and Harvard Professor Sam Huntington. Without the ‘three amigos’ of the anti-immigration cause, we would have
never seen the unprecedented crowds of Hispanic protesters
that filled the streets of more than 100 U.S. cities.”
—Andres Oppenheimer,
columnist, in The Miami Herald.
Trendwatch: A Day Without a Mexican?
The movie of the same name shows the sorry fate of
California if a third of its population vanished overnight. But
what if something similar happened to the United States as
a whole? Here’s what the U.S. Census Bureau of 2002 says
American business would be missing: 698,314 firms with
owners of Mexican descent, of which 275,055 are in California
and another 234,732 in Texas; $96.5 billion in sales and
receipts for firms owned by people of Mexican origin; and no
less than $100.4 million in shipments by the nation’s manufacturers
of Mexican food.
Innovation: Vento Goes with the Wind Change
As HISPANIC TRENDS goes to press, the price of oil has
been driven to over $70 per barrel by the Iran crisis and
China’s increasingly huge hydrocarbons consumption. In every
crisis, however, there are people who look to see which way
the wind is blowing and set their sails accordingly. Isaac Calderon,
a Mexican immigrant to California, is one of them.
Calderon’s firm, Vento Motorcycles USA, makes not only
cycles but also motor scooters, and in an interview with La
Opinión in Los Angeles, he said his mini-vehicles are ready to
take maximum advantage of crippling prices at the pump.
He’s already had a taste of that kind of success: Last
year Vento sales surged 80 percent due to the high gasoline
prices yhat sent many motorists looking for cheaper ways
to get around.
Now his firm is launching a motor-scooter for beginners
called the V-Thunder—a kind of lowcost,
high-quality introduction to a kind
of transportation many might not have
considered before.
But wait a minute—motorcycles
and motor scooters have been around
forever. Why should a new one be any
different?
Calderon says it’s a question of
what people think the two-wheelers
should be used for. In Latin American
countries, he said, “Both motorcycles
and scooters are part of the transport system; in the United
States it’s different because the consumer (still) buys a motorcycle
just to go for a spin.”
But by building and occupying the lower end of the transportation
system in the U.S., Calderon sees a distinct possibility
of parlaying high gasoline prices into mega sales.
If that happens, Calderon, who has lived in the U.S. for only
the past five years, is ready. He started his company in Mexico
but now has his international headquarters in San Diego and
an assembly plant in Laredo, Texas—and in China. He also has
a team of former Honda and Kawasaki engineers designing
new models down under in Australia.
Vento sales are strong in Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
Mexico and Venezuela, Russia and Puerto Rico—and
very respectable in the United States.
But with the new entry-level VThunder,
and the expected marketing
and sales push from new offices in Florida,
many consumers may be convinced
to donate fewer of their hard-earned
dollars to ExxonMobil and Chevron.
Cars aren’t going away, of course,
but if Calderon is right, more and more
Vento customers will have the satisfaction
of laughing while they do wheelies
around SUV owners pouring their paychecks
into their gas tanks.
Marketing & Advertising: Desperate Housewives
Mexican-owned Alen Americas Corp. recently teamed
up with Hispanic ad agency OLE in New York to market
Alen cleaning products into the U.S. mainstream market for
the first time—by putting a little glamor into housecleaning.
An impossible task, you say? Enter the Cleaning Hunk,
who in the TV commercial strips off his T-shirt so that a desperate
housewife can swoon over his muscles while he takes
over her housecleaning chores using Alen’s Xtra Pine cleanser.
Later, she implies, other services might be required.
OLE Creative Partner Paco Olavarrieta—who thought
up the idea for the initial tri-state campaign in New York,
New Jersey and Connecticut—not only hooks desperate
mainstream housewives with a hunk, but leads them salaciously
on to his website—cleaninghunk.com—for the
chance to win a year’s worth of free housecleaning or a
$5,000 check.
Of course it worked. According to Advertising Age, Alen’s
senior VP-sales in the U.S., Pedro Somarriba, says that some
20,000 eligible visitors registered for the prize—meaning
20,000 mostly mainstream desperate housewives who are
not only aware of, but involved with, the brand. Or at least
with its spokeshunk.
Economics: Business is Business
The U.S.-Cuba Trade Association met recently in Orlando,
Florida to talk up, as their slogan said, “Doing Business
in Cuba.”
Those attending the conference including Pedro Alvarez,
president of Cuba’s import agency Alimport, and the Washington-
based association’s president, Kirby Jones, not only tried
to create awareness of trade opportunities in sectors that are
legal for humanitarian reasons according to U.S. statutes such
as food, agriculture and medicine, but also discussed how much
better it would be for business if commerce with Cuba could
be opened up altogether. We sell stuff to communist China,
don’t we?
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) joined the meeting via a conference
call supporting an end to the embargo.
Meanwhile the majority of the Cuban community in
Florida is generally dead set against removing the embargo
since it could strengthen Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, known for human rights violations.
Florida’s Cuban Americans are a very powerful voting
bloc in a key state; so the embargo is likely to remain a
political tug of war between the two until Comandante
Castro is no longer there.
—Conrad Dahlson
Media: Money Talks, but in what Language?
What does it mean when a Spanish-language radio station
brings in greater revenues than any other radio station
in a major American market? It happened in South Florida
where Spanish Broadcasting System’s Zol 95.7 FM beat all
others in any language during 2005 with a gross income of
$23.3 million, according to a company press release.
What it means is that mainstream advertisers have
decided once and for all that ignoring this market will cost
them money.
And what it particularly means to Spanish Broadcasting
System CEO Raul Alarcon Jr. is that if radio is good, television
could be even better. So in April, SBS launched South
Florida’s Mega TV Channel 22, sticking to its already winning
formula by spinning off much of its radio content into video.
Media: Money Talks, but in what Language?
Come summer, Liborio Markets, a Hispanic grocerystore
chain based in Pasadena, California, is opening up in
the Denver suburb of Commerce City, Colorado, on the
sound principle of going where their potential customers
are and giving them what they want.
After all, their slogan tells Latinos, who U.S. Census Bureau
statistics say make up more than half the city’s population,
this is where to get the real thing: “Si es de allá, lo
tenemos aquí”—if it’s from there, we’ve got it here.
Liborio Markets President Enrique J. Alejo and his team
are already planning to open a couple more stores in Colorado
this year and four more next year. The demographics
are promising: In 2004 over 20 percent of greater-Denverarea
inhabitants were Hispanic.
