Perspectives
Export Now has been featured in the news recently on both Businessweek, and China Daily. We are extremely proud to be at the forefront of small business expansion into China, the biggest market in the world, at present.
Here’s what we’ve been up to behind the scenes lately.
Bloomberg Businessweek: Small Business
Lavin’s connections are helping him build a new kind exporting business. Export Now (it shares his book’s title) is a middleman for U.S. manufacturers that want to sell their consumer products in China. Headquartered in Akron, not far from Lavin’s hometown of Canton, Ohio, the 15-person business handles the headache-inducing back-end work for its clients, from customs clearance to trademark registration to order fulfillment. Lavin says Export Now, which also has an office in Shanghai, is backed by “a few million dollars” in equity capital.
Rather than negotiate with retailers as a traditional distributor would, Export Now posts product descriptions on its storefront on Alibaba Group’sTmall.com, an Amazon (AMZN)-like shopping colossus in China that is adding more foreign retailers as demandamong its nearly 500 million registered users increases for U.S.-branded goods.
– Making It Easier to Sell US Made in China
China Daily USA
The idea for Export Now arose in December 2010 after months of talks with Alibaba Group, China’s biggest e-commerce provider, through Tmall.com and Taobao, another online shopping site.
“Tmall.com shares a common objective with Export Now, which is to enable a more-rewarding trade experience through e-commerce and provide access to a wider selection of high-quality and authentic products, be they domestic or international,” Alibaba spokeswoman Florence Shih said.
A surge in demand for US brands through Tmall.com, she said, reflects Chinese consumers’ increasingly sophisticated demand for high-quality goods and services.
– Small US Businesses Get Into Exporting with Expert Advice
Here at ExportNow, we hope to make the Chinese market more accessible to small business everywhere. If you are a small business considering pursuing expansion into China, please don’t hesitate to contact us here, or check out our book here.