SBA to Conduct Small Business Export Matchmaker Conference as Part of President’s National Export Initiative

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The U.S. Small Business Administration will hold an Export Matchmaker Trade Fair & Conference at the Westin Hotel in Jersey City, N.J., on September 20, 2010. The event, organized in the context of the President’s National Export Initiative, aims to assist New York-New Jersey small business manufacturers and suppliers with exporting their products.

“Tapping the export potential of more small businesses through events like this will get us closer to that goal.”

The matchmaking conference is designed to bring together small businesses looking for additional markets together with export management companies (EMC), export trading companies (ETC), brokers and agents. Also known as trade intermediaries, EMCs and ETCs are export specialists that will buy a company’s products and sell them in foreign markets or represent a company’s products in foreign markets through a distribution or similar contract.

Working with an EMC or ETC is often the fastest way for small businesses to either begin exporting or expand export sales because they do not need to commit additional staff to the effort. By using trade intermediaries, small businesses can make it easier and quicker to begin marketing and selling to the nearly 96 percent of the world’s population living outside the U.S.

Nearly 280,000 small businesses account for 97 percent of all exporters in the U.S., exporting almost $500 billion annually.

“One of President Obama’s goals stated in the National Export Initiative is to double U.S. exports in five years,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills. “Tapping the export potential of more small businesses through events like this will get us closer to that goal.”

The SBA is encouraging trade intermediaries from across the country, as well as foreign buying missions and other trade facilitators such as foreign consulates and bi-national chambers of commerce, shippers, and other trade- or export-services organizations to participate in the event.

For more information and to register for the event, visit www.exportmatchmaker.org.

Release Number: 10-46