Massachusetts Export Center

Client Profiles

CSMi, Stoughton
NutraMax Products, Gloucester
Toner Plastics, Agawam


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Computer Sports Medicine, Inc.
Stoughton, Massachusetts
www.csmisolutions.com

Potashes"The MSBDC’s Massachusetts Export Center helps us by doing research that we can’t do," observes Rob Potash [photo right], marketing director of Stoughton-based CSMi, a leading designer and manufacturer of human performance testing, rehabilitation, and documentation equipment.

CSMi serves the physical therapy, sports medicine, industrial rehabilitation, and exercise science markets. Founded in 1982 by Potash and his brother, Rich Potash [photo left], the company for its first 21 years designed and sold a software product (HUMAC) to owners of the CYBEX Extremity System, which is used in the testing and rehabilitation of human joints. “Owners of the CYBEX System would buy our software, which replaced the system’s chart recorder, to improve their machine’s performance. With our product, they wouldn’t need to buy a new machine,” explains Potash.

In December of 2003, CSMi purchased the rights to the CYBEX Extremity System product line. “That not only changed us overnight from a software developer to an equipment manufacturer, but to a substantial exporter,” notes Potash. “Before we bought the CYBEX line, exports accounted for 10% of our sales. After that, we realized that at least 50% of our sales would come from exports,” he recalls. That’s when, Potash and his firm first contacted the Massachusetts Export Center in Boston.

“Within a few weeks, the Export Center delivered a report with the names of prospective customers and distributors—typically five to ten per country—for us to consider,” Potash continues. “The depth only listed distributors in our market, but included the products that those distributors were selling. That allowed us to pinpoint our interviews to distributors with like products (i.e., capital goods for physical therapy in exercise science), learn where our distributors were selling those products, and provide our distributors with prospects for our products.”

The Export Center offered CSMi a wealth of additional services, including research and advice on tariffs and other taxes, guidance with unfamiliar product registration regulations, and news about international trade show opportunities. Says Potash: “The Massachusetts Export Center is a great resource to help answer what may be commonly known questions that are not so obvious to the new international marketer. Those questions might involve subjects like proper export documentation, what agencies and people to contact for export licenses, and recommendation on common export practices in different countries.”

The Export Center’s director, Paula Murphy, has an unrivaled grasp of exporting and its nuances, emphasizes Potash. The Export Center’s BreAnne Yothers not only helped CSMi find new distributors in Australia, but helped those distributors to identify new prospects, including hospitals and sports medicine clinics. To acquire a special export license to do business in Iran, CSMi drew on Murphy’s expertise in navigating through a labyrinth of U.S. agencies including the Commerce, Treasury, and State Departments. In the end, CSMi gained a narrow exemption to sell its CYBEX system in Iran as a medical device.

“Four years after our first contact with the Massachusetts Export Center, I’ve learned a great deal about the basics of exporting, but I continue to communicate monthly on an ad hoc basis with Paula and the center,” observes Potash. With the center’s encouragement and assistance, CSMi today exports to over 30 countries. Exports account for 60% of its revenues and the company’s overall sales exceed $4 million. Before buying CYBEX and moving decisively into overseas markets, CSMi was a fourperson business. Today, it employs fourteen. Potash travels overseas about twelve times a year to participate in trade shows and to do business with customers and distributors. What’s next on the horizon for CSMi: “With the Export Center’s help, we expect in the near future to establish distribution in Russia and Poland,” notes Potash.

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Toner Plastics
Agawam, Massachusetts
www.tonerplastics.com 

“Thanks to Ann Pieroway [Western Massachusetts Program Director of MSBDC’s Massachusetts Export Center], my business now generates 5-7% of its sales volume in Western Europe. Within the next three years, we expect those numbers to double,” observes Agawam entrepreneur Steven L. Graham (right). Graham owns Toner Plastics, which manufactures CraftLace™ (gimp) and which assembles a variety of children’s activity craft kits, sporting monikers like Poseable Pals, Natural Knots, and Noyds.

Before connecting with Pieroway in 1998, Graham had floundered for five years on the waiting list to display his wares at Nuremberg’s giant annual toy fair. “The Nuremberg Fair is to Europe what the annual February toy fair in New York is to the United States: if you want to win friends and influence people in the toy business, you exhibit there,” remarks Graham. Working with the Massachusetts Port Authority, Pieroway secured booth space at Nuremberg for Toner in 1999. Since then, the firm has returned each year. “With Massport, you exhibit first class,” observes Graham. “We had a very comfortable three square meter exhibition space; Massport negotiated the booth space and did all the leg work. They helped get accommodations for us right in Nuremberg [no mean feat] and helped us arrange transportation and shipping. They also got a translator for us and worked with us on multilingual product descriptions and packaging. Several months before this year’s fair, Ann alerted me to new labeling regulations. Without that heads-up, I might have had trouble exhibiting."

“Like much else in life, doing business in Europe comes with a learning curve. We’re now in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.—every country has its own nuances in consumer tastes and distribution. In the United States you do business through distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. In Europe, almost all of my export contacts are with distributors.” Not so for importing and sourcing, he adds. “Quite unexpectedly, I met a manufacturer in Nuremberg from whom I’m directly sourcing hemp for some of my craft kits. I’m also discussing the prospect with a second European manufacturer of being their U.S. distributor for a line of wooden construction toys.

The Massachusetts Export Center had additional impact at Toner Plastics. Through the center, Graham attended a trade conference in Boston, where he learned some of the ropes of doing business with the European Economic Community and met Massport representatives assigned to various European countries. In the Spring of 2001, Pieroway assigned a student intern from Western New England College to help Graham pursue trade leads that he had obtained the previous February in Nuremberg. “I can’t emphasize enough how savvy, proactive, and congenial Ann has been,” remarks Graham. “Without her and the Massachusetts Export Center, we might still be on the Nuremberg Fair waiting list. Instead, we’re looking at sales in Western Europe that might soon equal 15% of our revenues.”

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NutraMax Products, Inc.
Gloucester, Massachusetts
www.nutramax.com

"During the past decade, Paula Murphy and the MSBDC's Massachusetts Export Center have been a critical resource for the export side of our business," observes Steve Zafron of NutraMax Products, Inc. Steve is manager of international sales with the Gloucester-based firm, which develops, manufactures, and markets over-the-counter health care and personal products. NutraMax product lines include cough drops and throat lozenges, adhesive bandages, medical gauzes and tapes, first aid kits, toothbrushes, dental floss and dental accessories, travel kits, dietary supplements, ready-to-use enemas, disposable douches, pediatric oral electrolyte maintenance solution, and disposable baby bottle liners. The firm-the largest employer in Gloucester-is a leading private label provider to America's supermarkets, drug stores, and mass merchandisers. It also markets its own products under specific control brands and manufactures and distributes products for strategic partners in consumer products and related industries.

Ten years ago, NutraMax had little overseas presence. Today, it sells products in seventeen countries (many of them in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East), which account for a growing profit stream. "With our diverse product lines in place domestically, leveraging them overseas made a lot of sense: our pricing was already highly competitive and many of our target countries had a great need for our products," notes Steve. "Mastering the details and nuances of international business, however, has been challenging. That's where the Export Center has been a critical resource," he emphasizes. "Over the years, the center has introduced us to freight forwarders, international distributors, and international brokers who send us leads. They've also helped us with the considerable compliance and other detail work that accompany exporting. Putting your tax ID number on invoices and your ID on shipping containers might seem obvious, but learning the ropes about these and other details from experienced counselors can move you much faster down the learning curve. I've attended free Export Center seminars on a variety of topics and have gotten fast answers to specific questions via a simple phone call to Paula or Kathleen Newell. "If, for example, I can't get through to officials in Taipei, Paula or Kathleen typically can."

A year and a half ago, the Export Center played a critical role of a different sort on Nutramax's behalf. Although the firm's products are freely sold in the United States, many countries that import them require accompanying certificates of resale from government authorities in the United States. When the Massachusetts Department of Public Health abruptly discontinued certifying all nonfood products (including Nutramax's exports), the firm was left without a government resale certifier. "I was in panic mode, because I couldn't find a suitable alternative. We could have used the FDA, but their turnaround times were too slow," Steve recalls. Instead, he turned to Paula Murphy at the Export Center, who joined forces with US Commercial Service's Jim Cox, and State Senator Bruce Tarr. Three months later, Nutramax had a new certifier, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture, which offered a streamlined certification process. "Over the years, I've learned the ropes of exporting, but I know that I can always turn to Paula and Kathleen for information and during a crisis," observes Steve Zafron. "They are true champions of small manufacturers in this state."

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