Perspectives
Frank Lavin has spent years giving business owners a single piece of key advice: expand abroad.
Over the years, though, the Commerce Department’s former undersecretary for international trade realized this was easier said than done.
“To say ‘why don’t you go to Mexico or France or China?’ is really tough,” said Lavin, also a former U.S. ambassador to Singapore. “The smaller the company, the less practical it becomes to learn a new language, deal with new tax codes and currencies and to take a huge global risk.”
Lavin is hoping his new Internet service Export Now can fix that by connecting American businesses with Chinese consumers.