Drug makers generally launch their products in the large and wealthy markets of developed countries. Pharmacies, clinics and doctors in small, lesser-developed countries may learn of the medicinal breakthroughs but typically have to wait for them.
That is, unless they go to niche suppliers like Roberto Saverin and Michael Dranoff's Expomed Medical. The 16-year-old Miami company takes small orders from abroad for urgent and hard-to-find products and fills them at manufacturers and wholesalers in the U.S. and Europe. It sells to clients -- not consumers -- in 21 countries in Latin America, Europe (where U.S. vitamins and supplements are in demand), Asia and Africa. Earlier this year, it won a U.S. Department of Commerce export achievement award.
Saverin, 48, who directs operations, and Dranoff, 43, who directs marketing, won't reveal revenues but say the five-employee company is small. Saverin founded the company as an importer to his native Brazil. He relocated to Miami a decade ago and expanded his list of countries served. Dranoff, also a Brazilian, marketed Eveready batteries and Minolta cameras in Brazil before partnering with Saverin.
Dranoff says Expo will grow "little by little" into new markets and with new clients -- emphasizing fast service for customers who need a particular medicine quickly. Expo is frank about making its living in markets the drug makers ignore.
"We don't get in the big labs' way," Dranoff says. Indeed, once a drug maker decides to export to an Expo market, Expo's days with that product there are over. "We are cut out of the loop," Dranoff says. But, he adds, "you know, at that point, there's always something new."
INCOMING
Bryon Woram has been attaching parachutes to things -- big heavy things -- and throwing them out of airplanes for 30 years. Starting as an engineer with a parachute company, the Canadian native moved through a succession of airdrop companies until 1996, when he founded Airlift Technologies International in Milton. The 18-employee company makes aluminum platforms that cradle bulldozers, tanks, field kitchens and any other cargo the military wants to drop by parachute.
Woram, 58, says the company's reputation for quality is its edge. The edge is paying off in exporting. Annual revenues run from $3 million to $6 million with $1 million to $3 million from foreign sales.
Airlift workers, many retired military personnel, write the manuals and train the plane crews for governments overseas that are approved by the U.S. to use the technology. "The most important thing with international business is you've got to have the personal contact," Woram says.
Airlift sells to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and European and Middle Eastern countries. His company did the qualification tests for airdropping a Canadian search-and-rescue boat.
All the government contracts shouldn't obscure the fact that Airlift is a small business whose chief hurdle is the comfort level of local banks with offshore letters of credit. "When you start to deal with these countries on the other side of the globe and you're not a big corporation, the banks have trouble understanding it."
WENDEL'S STORY
Wendel R. Wendel has stories. He has a story about holing up in a hotel during a coup in Africa. He has a story about working with the CIA to build in Baghdad before Saddam proved to be a rogue. He has a story about dealing with Russian gangsters. "We've had lots of adventures," Wendel says.
Wendel's ticket to international intrigue is spaceframe construction --the hub-and-strut metal frames that bring airiness and geometric dynamism to design. Starnet International's projects include the inverted pyramid at the new Hard Rock Cafe Vault museum in Orlando, the dome entrance at the Naples Philharmonic and structures under way at Parrot Jungle on Watson Island in Miami.
Wendel, 55, ("feel about 35") is a Long Island native who founded Starnet 31 years ago. "I've been unemployed ever since," he cracks. He relocated to Longwood in 1992.
Internationally, his company built the dome at Santo Domingo Stadium in the Dominican Republic and a 78-foot crystal-like star on top of the Al-Faisaliah Foundation building in Saudi Arabia, among other projects. His exporting tip: "Get paid almost fully" before your product leaves the country.
These days, he's developed software, TekCAD 2002, that he says will improve dramatically the ability of architects to design -- not just draft -- on computer. "To me, architects still build boxes," he says. He has a headline ready to cover his software and construction interests: "Two sides of Wendel."
And he has a goal. "Wendel has developed 36 pyramids. Egyptians did 80. Wendel can't retire until he develops another 44 pyramids."
By the way, his parents didn't name him Wendel Wendel. He didn't like his given name and won't reveal it. When he was 18, he petitioned the state of New York to formally change it -- to Wendel Wendel, or, as he says, Wendel "squared".