Like all business opportunities, some of those found on the Internet are real, some are not. Some are frauds. Some are just insubstantial. This is really no different from the non-cyber world. The difference is the immediacy of the information. Are the opportunities real?
Some good stories:
- A woman on Long Island who was downsized from a semiconductor manufacturer decided to put up a low cost Web site advertising secondary market semiconductors. Within a few weeks she was getting serious orders from the U.S., Asia and Europe. Indeed, Japanese manufacturers themselves were sending purchase orders to buy their own products! She now runs a thriving business out of her basement. Alone! -- 90% of it off the Web.
- A man in Colorado put a catalog of basic hardware items on the Web as what he thought would be a supplement to his regular distribution business. He now does 90% of his business from his Web site (rumored to be a few million dollars per year).
- The Irish Trade Council has a full- time person searching the Web for opportunities to help Irish businesses. A few months ago they noticed someone had posted a trade lead looking for cigars. They contacted an Irish cigar manufacturer that did not even have a computer and put the leads in touch with them. Two months later the cigar manufacturer set up a Web site. Their business tripled and they bought a computer and Internet access.
Larger companies are also seeing great success, particularly with hi-tech products:
- Dell Computers is now selling more than $1 million per day from their Web site
- Cisco Systems sells more than 1/3 of their $1 billion in annual sales over the net.
- Upstate New York power companies exchange billions of dollars of power though Web transactions
Where and how do you find business opportunities? It happens in several ways:
1. Your own Web site
If your company has a product that you want to publicize to the world, get a Web site. Costs can range from free (at Geocities, Tripod or from AOL, CompuServe or many other Internet service providers) to $11 million (rumored to be General Electric's latest investment). If you are a small operation, find a professional graphic designer who understands Web design and a professional advertising copywriter. This is how your business is presented to the world. It perhaps cannot be left up to your 15 year-old son. (I've heard this many times!)
2. Trade Leads
There are now hundreds of trade lead systems on the Web. Trade lead systems are bulletin boards where companies can post offers to sell and requests to buy almost anything. For a substantial listing of them, go to the Web site of the Federation of International Trade Associations' trade lead system listings page. The largest of these systems is the United Nations Trade Point Development Center "Electronic Trading Opportunities" (ETO) bulletin board. Sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), this is a system that boasts having listed over 1 billion leads since its inception in 1993. And they pour in by the hundreds every day! Part of the ETO system's plan is to one day provide a smart card capability of doing transactions without need for letters of credit or other bank documents. Unfortunately the site is vast and not well organized. Some other sites have tried to make the ETO listings more user friendly in addition to listing trade leads of their own. The no cost Trade Point Finland lists substantial information about Finland in addition to an orderly index of ETO leads. The Trade Compass Trade Broker, part of the huge and substantial Trade Compass international trade Web site.
has a search engine of all ETO's in addition to 30 other trade leads sites, with more than 10,000 trade leads posted every week. International Import Export Bulletin Board, sponsored by the Journal of Commerce is another major site, which lists ETO leads as well as leads contributed from IEBB subscribers from around the world. Yet another company has a service called Trade Leads.Com that has a search engine of ETO and other trade leads as well as a wealth of trade information. IMEX Exchange, in addition to a massive amount of free international trade information has an attractive trade leads system which allows instant submission and response to trade leads posted on the system.
Finally the U.S. Department of Commerce maintains one of the best international trade sites on the Internet for international trade. The National Trade Databank (NTDB) lists all trade leads that are submitted by Foreign Commercial Service posts in U.S. embassies throughout the world. These leads include some basic information about the company such as number of employees, banking and annual turnover. NTDB is also one of the foremost sources of market information about specific goods throughout the world and is the prime source of U.S. trade and business statistics
The big problem with trade Leads is their reliability. Anybody in the world with access to the World Wide Web can post a notice that they are selling or buying anything. The post can be from someone dreaming about trading commodities in the middle of India (or Brooklyn) to a multinational trading company or manufacturer. How do you know what is what? It takes judgment, experience, patience, investigation, due diligence. Major credit rating services such as Dun and Bradstreet have developed credit report products at reduced cost for users of their Web sites. But the understanding of human nature and business experience must still rule.
3. Usenet Newsgroups
Newsgroups are the chaotic meeting places of the Internet As of this writing here are at least 50,000 groups. Topics of these groups range from serious technical and business discussions to the most profane and absurd topics imaginable. There are also local groups in most major languages of the world.
So how does one do business in these groups? First of all, there are industry specific and international business discussion :groups. These include alt.business.import-export and
biz.marketplace.international. Specialized business groups include alt.business.import-export.computers and alt.business.import-export.food. These groups list a combination of trade leads, serious discussions, get rich quick announcements, gossip and various other things. Alt.business.import-export receives more than 800 posts every day from all over the world. Each major country in the world has business groups. If you can read Russian, for example, you will find 35 Relcom newsgroups devoted to commerce. The same for other major countries.
All this, of course, begs the question: How do I use this? One way is to visit relevant newsgroups, read what people are writing and contribute messages yourself which are, perhaps subtly, marketing your products while also participating in a "thread" of conversation.
Another way of using this vast resource is by searching for words relevant to your business or interest.
The site Dejanews catalogs most of the messages appearing on these news- groups. Search on a company name, and you may find immense amounts of company information and informal gossip by employees and clients. Search on words pertaining to your product line, and you will find people all over the world who are buying and selling it. You may even learn some new technical facts about it. And this information can be used for lead generation and market research.
4. Mailing Lists
Mailing lists are email groups devoted to a particular topic. This means that you subscribe to the group and then receive messages from other members of the group who have also subscribed. In the best cases, they are continuing conversations among many, sometimes thousands, of people, all with a common interest. The best of these groups tend to be "moderated," meaning that someone is reading each message as it comes in and is deciding whether or not to send the message to all members of the group. There are several
international business newsgroups. For a full list go to www.reference.com and search on "international business" or "international trade" (or any other topic of interest). You will get a series of e-mail addresses with hyperlinks to descriptions of each list and instructions on how to subscribe. Similar to newsgroups, these lists can be used for market intelligence, discreet marketing messages and exchanging news and gossip.
All these (and other) ways of finding and doing business are just the first stages in an evolutionary process of how the Internet is and will change business practices. Never before has international communication been so inexpensive and easy. Innovations in Web commerce are announced daily.
The Thunderbird magazine welcomes articles by Thunderbird alumni on how to do business better.
Barney Lehrer '89 (webmaster@fita.org) wears many hats. He is president of the New York City Chapter of the Thunderbird Alumni Association, owner of lnternational Internet Strategies, a consulting business that advises international businesses in Web marketing and creates specialized Web directories, and he is Director of Information Technology and Webmaster for the Federation of International Trade Associations, a service organization serving the international trade community in North America.