Grow your small business internationally with help from the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia

Kaushik “Kosh” Daphtary started his West Chester-based chemical distribution company Chemtech International Inc. with just $400 and a vision to sell his products to companies all over the world. For a number of years, he struggled to understand the complex rules for doing business in different countries. He also found it challenging to make contacts and expand. But about 2002 he was introduced to the team at the then-fledging World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia. He hasn’t looked back.

“The World Trade Center helped us to set up meetings with potential customers and distributors overseas,” he said. “They helped us by acting as a representative for our company in different countries. We could not have done this on our own.” Chemtech became one of the center’s first members, and Daphtary has been actively involved ever since.

More than 20 years after its founding, the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia — a nonprofit, membership-based organization — has become instrumental in helping local businesses such as Daphtary’s do business overseas by performing market research, setting up meetings with potential vendors and customers, hosting trade conferences, offering counseling and financing service, and generally serving as a networking conduit to connect Philadelphia-area companies with like-minded business people across the world.

Employing fewer than 10 people, the organization says it has served as a “catalyst for regional economic growth and job creation” and has helped companies in the area to generate more than $2 billion in incremental export sales to support more than 26,600 jobs in the region.

“Our staff of trade specialists have an average of 15 years of experience living and working abroad and working with companies,” said Linda Mysliwy Conlin, the organization’s former president. “We spend the time to understand our members, their products and their services, and then we recommend and then help implement the best strategies for them to identify new markets and potential customers and suppliers.”

Daphtary’s company took advantage of the center’s free services for its small and mid-sized company members looking to trade overseas. He then used the organization — which is part of the World Trade Center Association’s network of 327 offices in more than 90 countries — to help him identify the risks and rewards of selling into different countries, understand the rules of conducting trade in various regions, and helping to make critical introductions to potential customers.

“In the beginning when our company was very small, they were instrumental in helping us set up meetings and assisting us with trade missions overseas,” he said.

Bob Kritzer’s company, Harold Beck & Sons in Newtown, has also taken advantage of the World Trade Center’s services when it needed to consider diversifying its product offerings and expanding overseas.

“At first, I was just Googling ‘how to do business in Mexico’ and trying to figure out how export sales worked,” he said. “And then I stumbled on the World Trade Center.”

After just a few exchanges, Kritzer was introduced to the organization’s contacts in different international markets. They helped him schedule trips and set up meetings with various potential sales agents and were vital in helping his company expand into Mexico, Australia and India.

Small businesses in the Philadelphia area looking for customers and suppliers overseas have a lot of excellent resources available to help, including Pennsylvania’s Office of International Business Development, the U.S. International Trade Administration, and the Small Business Administration’s Office of International Trade. The World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia works with — and in some cases gets funding from — these and other organizations to help its members get access to foreign markets. For Kritzer, the organization’s “more personal” approach was what appealed to him.

“The people that they had on the ground were much more grassroots-oriented and approachable,” he said. “So when I would go to communicate with their representatives in India or Australia I found that they were very willing to help with introductions to all sorts of people that they had worked with in the past, because they had been through similar assignments.”

Kritzer said that he had good experiences with the International Trade Administration, but that it wasn’t as “precise and personalized” as the World Trade Center.

“We’re members of many organizations,” he said. “But this is the one that actually has a measurable return on investment.”

Gene Marks is a certified public accountant and the owner of the Marks Group, a technology and financial management consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd.