SMBs and exporters delve into China's highly saleable populace
Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2004 6:00:00 AM
Thoughts of expansion into China aren't restricted to the Fortune 1000, says the recent TEC International Confidence Index. TEC, an executive development organization, found in its recent quarterly survey released in June that 24 percent of responding CEOs of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are exploring business opportunities in China.
One Jacksonville, Fla.-based business that successfully made the journey is Putnam Lumber and Export, a $17-million wholesaler of lumber primarily to the Caribbean market. Last year it formed a joint venture with a Chinese partner and built a production facility for pressure-treated lumber, looking to sell into the Chinese construction and finished wood products markets.
"Most people look at China as cheap labor; we look at it as a market of 1.3 billion people. We want to sell to them," says Ellis Crosby, Jr., who heads the lumber business his father started in 1945.
Together with American partners from Maine, Putnam worked two years to construct the deal and set up the processing plant that today is the basis of the Changchun New Sunlight Wood Preservation Co.
"We don't have the luxury of a brand name, but we're tough enough to compete with anybody in the commodities business," Crosby says. "We're the thin blue line that is crashing over there to balance the trade deficit," he adds wryly.
Changchun is a city of seven million people located nearly 500 miles northeast of Beijing. Putnam exports mostly untreated lumber cut from Southern yellow pine, which will be used to build homes and other wood products for the Chinese consumer market.
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