South of the Border

Product: Hard-to-find items for the Caribbean basin and Bermuda, including household appliances, furniture and construction materials

Markets: Barbados, the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Caribbean basin

How She Got Started: It was 2004 when a friend in Bermuda lamented to Johnson about the difficulty in finding construction materials for a home she was building. Johnson took off in search of products she could buy in the U.S. and ship to Bermuda -- and make a percentage for her efforts. Johnson took courses in exporting at the University of South Florida Small Business Development Center, and today procures and ships a variety of products throughout the Caribbean.

Working with her marketing partner in Chicago, Johnson sends e-mail solicitations to new business leads given to her by island governments, Enterprise Florida or Export.gov, the U.S. government's exporting site. Bermuda, for example, regularly sends Johnson names of people building or renovating their homes. She follows up on responses with a phone call. She cuts out the middleman, negotiates wholesale prices with suppliers stateside, drop-ships directly from the Port of Jacksonville -- and shaves upward of 15% off the customer's procurement costs, she says.

Sure, issues arise. After $150,000 in sales in 2005 (her first full year in business), sales fell 50% in 2006. She also got stiffed twice last year for a total of $13,000. Not a lot of money, she admits, but enough to "feel it." Now, she gets a signed contract and demands up to half up front by either a wire transfer or direct deposit to her accounts in the islands. "I don't pay for anything out of my own pocket," she explains. Still, Johnson is hardly buttoned-down. "I'm not just about doing business. I'm about building relationships."

Product: Exports and finances irrigation and plumbing products

Markets: The Caribbean and Latin America

How He Got Started: It was the early 1990s and Christopher Fulton was a 27-year-old export trader ("Everyone in Miami was an export trader back then," he jokes.) shipping diapers, batteries and auto parts to anyone overseas. But Fulton's success came when he honed in on a Jamaican supplier of irrigation pipe who constantly was seeking fittings. "I got to be an expert in humble T's and elbows," he says. Today, Fulton supplies pipes and fittings throughout the region, from small resellers to a major aqueduct in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. With three full-time employees, revenues topped
$5.5 million in 2006.

Fulton has a few hard rules. The first: Figure out how to get paid. That could mean demanding up-front payment, or taking partial payment and trusting your customer for the back end ("I always get nicked for a few grand a year," he admits). Second, take out export or trade finance insurance from the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. ("Exim," for short). This allows exporters to extend their customers credit -- without the exporter going on the hook personally. Third, be transparent. If customers want to know your source, tell them. "They'll be surprised that you helped them." Finally, embrace their culture and language. Fulton knows that "mariposa" is a butterfly valve and "junta rapida" is a gasket joint. And he knows that "Christopher" is easier on the Latino tongue than "Chris," as he's called in the U.S. "You cannot build trust until you demonstrate an appreciation for their culture, and nothing does that better than speaking their language."

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