NEWS & UPDATES

June 2, 2008 In By Advent

Exhibit Internationally

The Ben­e­fits of a Weak Dollar?

EXHIBIT INTERNATIONALLY: A weak dol­lar means good news for exports

The experts can’t agree.  Geoff Colvin of For­tune Mag­a­zine reports that Mer­ril Lynch’s chief econ­o­mist says we are in the thick of a reces­sion while Gold­man Sach’s chief econ­o­mist believes one is loom­ing dark on the hori­zon (Read the arti­cle).  Still oth­ers like Lehman Brother’s chief econ­o­mists do not even expect a reces­sion.  Maybe this debate over what is hap­pen­ing is best left between the chief econ­o­mists and the clouds.  There is one thing that is clear.  The dol­lar is hit­ting new lows against global cur­ren­cies.  Sounds bad?  Not for everyone.

A falling dol­lar in the face of ris­ing global cur­ren­cies means that imports cost more.  That’s the bad news.  Likewise, if you plan on sum­mer­ing in St. Moritz, you lose.  But if you are a man­u­fac­turer look­ing to increase for­eign sales, you win.  The good news is that weak dol­lar means for­eign com­pa­nies can afford to buy more stuff.  David Ellis, of CNNMoney.com reports, “The dol­lar has helped lift sales at U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ers that export their goods, includ­ing large multi­na­tional com­pa­nies like Boe­ing (BA, For­tune 500), Gen­eral Motors (GM, For­tune 500) and Apple (AAPL, For­tune 500). Trade num­bers pub­lished Tues­day by the Com­merce Depart­ment showed that exports jumped 1.6% per­cent in Jan­u­ary.” (Read the arti­cle)

It appears to be a good time to exhibit abroad and grow inter­na­tional sales.  Moira Allen of Entrepreneur.com com­ments on the bur­geon­ing for­eign trade show indus­try.  In her inter­view with Chris Grif­fin of Expanded Learn­ing Inc., he points out, “While the U.S. may have the rich­est econ­omy, we rep­re­sent only 4.5 per­cent of the world pop­u­la­tion,” and “That [leaves] a lot of peo­ple who need prod­ucts and ser­vices.” (Read the arti­cle)  Cur­rently, the high­est growth rates exist in auto, health care, and technology.

If you are look­ing to exhibit inter­na­tion­ally, be pre­pared.  Grif­fin cites a lack of prepa­ra­tion as exhibitors’ num­ber one pit­fall.  Research and plan­ning are impor­tant ingre­di­ents to any suc­cess­ful trade show.  How­ever, add in the myr­iad of vari­ables that come with exhibit­ing abroad and earnest, dili­gent prepa­ra­tion becomes an imper­a­tive.  Ship­ping, tar­iffs, cus­toms, elec­tri­cal, and lan­guage all become major issues.  A help­ful option is to colab­o­rate with an exhibit house or mar­ket­ing agency with inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence to help you nav­i­gate through the labyrinth of logis­ti­cal issues.  By work­ing with a com­pany like Advent you can cap­i­tal­ize on their rescources and exper­tise.  Exhibit­ing inter­na­tion­ally might be scary, but with a lit­tle prepa­ra­tion it can be a fea­si­ble and lucritive endeavor.  You′ve heard the old quote, make hay while the sun shines.  Well, its shin­ing abroad.  Maybe we would be bet­ter to amend the quote and make hay ′where′ the sun shines.

Advent thrives at the fore­front of the cut­ting edge expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing indus­try and for 20 years has helped rapidly grow­ing com­pa­nies com­mu­ni­cate the essence of their brand and vision domes­ti­cally and abroad through exhibits, events, and office envi­ron­ments.  Based in Nashville, Ten­nesse, the com­pany is a cre­ative indus­try leader with For­tune 500 clients like VF Corp and Mars, Inter­na­tional. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.adventresults.com.

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