Global trade | Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global

Archive for the 'Global trade' Category

Everything You Need to Know from Our wegginar® with Cristina Bandal

This past Wednesday, wegg® had the pleasure of hosting the Industry Segment Manager of Retail and Consumer Goods for UPS, Cristina Bandal. Bandal lead one of our free online wegginars®, which provide monthly, accessible education to women entrepreneurs everywhere. Bandal’s talk covered how to overcome the obstacles that people face when trying to sell their products to the global market. She also answered the questions of wegginar® participants. Read their inquiries, and her responses, below:

What’s the single biggest challenge on why people don’t setup an online storefront? Setting up an international store may sound complicated if you are thinking of creating a country site – but with only a few enhancements, you can make international customers feel at home.
What are your thoughts on how to factor in taxes, (shipping and duty), to price my products profitably, yet make them affordable to my customers? With the solution available, your catalogue will provide the information needed to calculate a duty and tax, and offer a landed cost to your customers (and protect you from abandoned goods!)
How does our current trade war with China impact the information presented in this wegginar®? Whatever tariff regulations are passed are updated to protect the shipments.
Is there a way to target one foreign market when I launch my e-commerce site so that I can test the waters? YES!! You can choose what countries to target.
What’s the best way to setup a payment method, in your own currency or the customer’s? International consumers would like to see their own currency to avoid surprises. By using the UPS i-parcel solution, you are protected by allowing transactions to be processed through UPS, and provide fraud protection.

To read Bandal’s extended answers to these questions, and more, you can view the full presentation (PDF) from the wegginar®, here. wegg® was honored to have Bandal share her experience and knowledge with us.

If you were not able to participate in this month’s wegginar®, we already have registration open for our 12/5 talk with Andrew Molinsky, Ph.D. He will talk about how, “if you are not outside your comfort zone, you won’t learn anything.” Register here.

Show Me the Data Supporting Women in Trade!

Published November 5, 2018 Barriers to trade , Education , Equality , Gender challenges , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Research , Supply Chain , Sustainability practices Leave a Comment
Tags: better data, exporting firms, inclusive trading system, show me the data, UNCTAD, women in global trade, women trade, women-supporting trade policies, World Trade Organization

Panelists at the recent World Trade Organization’s Public Forum event in Geneva, chaired by UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Isabelle Durant, asked which data were necessary for formulating gender-responsive trade policies and how to improve their availability.

Analysis of global value chains – the complex international supply and manufacturing chains along which modern goods pass – can show the important part played by women in global trade but which is missed by trade statistics alone.

“A way to solve this would be to establish a link between exporting firms and their employees to enable better analysis of gender roles across the whole value chain over time,” Nadim Ahmad, chief of the Trade and Competitiveness Statistics Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said. “In the absence of this, collaboration with the private sector presents opportunities for filling data gaps.”

With the work that wegg® does, we would be pleased to collaborate with UNCTAD to ensure that no woman is left behind on opportunities for exporting and expanding a business globally. We are also happy to work with the World Trade Organization to craft a policy whereby we offer sustainable trade, technology-enabled trade, and a more inclusive trading system.

Read the entire article about women-supporting trade policies need better data, experts say. wegg agrees.

wegg® keeps energizing women entrepreneurs the world over. We can help you build confidence, find great resources and show you the steps you can take to go global. Join us for our FREE wegginar® on 11/7 with Cristina Bandal. You can find all of the details, and register for the event, here.

Make Your Global Online Shoppers Feel at Home Wherever They Are

Published October 15, 2018 Announcement , Business Development , e-commerce , Economic growth , Email marketing , Enlighten Me! , Exporting , Foreign office setup , global branding , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , How-to , Importing , Innovation , Inspiration , International business , Logistics/transportation , Management , Manufacturing , Mobile , Networking , Outsourcing , Risks , Sales & Distribution , Scaling a business , Social Media and Network , Strategy , Technology , Training (entrepreneurial) , Transportation , Trends , Web globalization , wegg event , wegginar , World entrepreneurship , World Travel Leave a Comment
Tags: Cristina Bandal, Education, free, free education, free event, free resources, global online presence, go global, online shopping, shopping, small business online community, Technology, trade resources, UPS, WEGG, wegginar, women around the world, women business owners, women entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurship, women in business, women's empowerment, women-owned businesses

Registration is still open for our FREE November 7th, 2018 wegginar®, with presenter Cristina Bandal, Industry Segment Manager of Retail and Consumer Goods for UPS.

Cristina has an extensive career with UPS, working within the marketing functions. She has worked with merchants in the retail and high tech industries. Cristina makes customer experiences valuable, by improving the shopper’s experiences. Her most recent assignment helps enable merchants to sell outside the US through UPS technology.

If 95% of the worlds population lives outside the US, why are some merchants still only selling to the domestic market? Complex rules, costly risks and high transportation costs make it difficult for small businesses to merge into new markets. UPS i-parcel not only offers a solution to these merchants, but provides a frictionless experience to international consumers.

wegginar® participants can expect to learn how to…

Offer international consumers the same shopping experience on your website that you offer to shoppers in the US.
Avoid complicated and costly international shipping that will ultimately improve your conversion rate.
Enable new international markets with just a click and reach a world of consumers.
Make your online shoppers feel at home anywhere

wegg® aims to make resources for going global accessible to all women entrepreneurs, and our wegginars® are free thanks to our sponsors. To register for the event, visit this link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8810009934736118275

Female Entrepreneurs Are the Engine of Global Growth

Published October 8, 2018 Economic growth , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Gender challenges , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs Leave a Comment
Tags: be their own bosses, beyond borders, Exporting, female entrepreneurs, global growth, global women entrepreneurs, wegg®, women business owners, women entrepreneurs energize economies, women will conquer the world

Bonnie Chui, contributor for Forbes, writes a thoughtful piece about how female entrepreneurs are going global and that new policy attention may close the gap. At wegg®, we are closing that gap — whether there is new policy attention or not.

We not only serve women entrepreneurs by educating them on how to go global, we are women entrepreneurs, and through our educational efforts, we continue to energize economies worldwide.

Further, based on my experience running a successful global business and serving as a consultant to countless global women business owners, my observations indicate that women entrepreneurs must condition themselves to be risk oriented, innovative, and proactive (RIP) in order to achieve any reasonable level of success in the export marketplace.

Like everyone else, they must also achieve five things before venturing out beyond borders:

Becoming ready mentally, particularly emotionally
Being ready operationally
Having run a successful local business
Knowing how to use the latest technology
Having a business with export potential.

Also, in my view, a perceived lack of credibility is the number one barrier for women doing business globally. This perceived deficiency lack makes it difficult for women to access markets, market information, and establish relationships. If you don’t already have an influential person in your life who can tout your capabilities, find one and cultivate the relationship, or just reach out to wegg.

Most of the above referenced facts are covered in my Exporting: The Definitive Guide to Selling Abroad Profitably, Chapter 27, “Women Business Owners: Engine of Global Growth.”

Let’s face it, women launch businesses for the same reasons men do — to build wealth, to capitalize on their ideas and to be their own bosses.

Oftentimes you must learn about starting a business and taking it global the hard way — by doing it — and getting assistance from programs such as wegg’s helps enormously.

Female entrepreneurs are the engine of global growth and with appropriate support, will conquer the world. Just you watch.

President and CEO Julie Smolyansky on “Following Your Gut”

Published September 17, 2018 Business Development , Culture , Economic growth , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Event , global branding , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Innovation , Inspiration , International business , Leadership , Sales & Distribution , wegg supporter , wegg workshop , wegginar , Working abroad , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: business mentoring, ceo, follow your gut, go global, lifeway, lifeway kefir, risk taking, WEGG, wegg workshop, wegginar, women business owners, women entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs grow global, women in business

This past Wednesday September 12th, President and CEO of Lifeway Kefir, Julie Smolyansky lead a wegg® workshop about the importance of following your gut on business and personal endeavors. Her inspiring talk covered the journey of Lifeway beginning in her parent’s basement, in the mid-eighties, when they began making Kefir, a food inspired by their home country, the former Soviet Union. It is now a $120 million publicly-traded company, thanks to Julie. She grew Lifeway to the size it is now, without a business degree, and became CEO at age 27, when her father suddenly passed away. Smolyansky shared the story of how one of her father’s friends reacted when he died and she was made CEO…

“[He said] ‘forget it, the company is done. Sell all of your stock tomorrow. There’s no way a 27 year old girl could run a company.’ This is done. Lifeway is over…I go into the office Monday morning…and everyone had sold their stock….It was devastating…[I] picked my head up and moved forward. Then, we had 70 people, today we have 320. We’ve grown our business from 12 million to 120 million…We continued to execute on the strategy we believed in, and continued to follow our gut, and worked really really hard….That man who said ‘she’s never gonna do it,’…I literally think about him every day. I say ‘thank you’, ‘thank you so much for underestimating me, for pissing me off, and making me angry…You gave me the fuel to move forward.”

Smolyansky went on to describe how being a young CEO became a strength for her. She followed her gut and made Lifeway one of the first businesses ever to have an active social media presence. She explained, “We were ahead of the game…Vogue called us ‘avant garde’ for being on social media.”

She also shared her beliefs on the importance of female entrepreneurship,

“If women were employed at the same rates as men, we know the global GDP would rise exponentially…That I think is really important. A rising tide raises all ships, and when women create jobs, an entire community is more safe and stable….Women are the key to saving the world…Entrepreneurship…can heal the world.”

Other inspiring takeaways from Smolyansky’s talk…

Keep moving ahead no matter what your challenges are in life.
Make a big impact: it only takes one person one step at a time to change the world.
Follow your gut (we should all listen to our intuition on important matters in life).

Thank you to Julie, and her team, Justine and Maria, for making our on-the-ground wegg® workshop a success. And thank you to Bank of America, Moji Eagan and Aneta Mazur, for hosting us.

If you were not able to make this wegg® workshop, we are having a wegginar® on Wednesday, October 3rd with Katie Kollhoff, CEO, NUMIX. She’ll present on “Small Startup, Big Impact.” Thanks to our sponsors, IBM, UPS, Bank of America and GlobalCare Clinical Trials, the program is no charge but you must register to attend, here.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Women- led SMEs in Indonesia

Published August 20, 2018 Business Development , Country specific , Culture , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Finance , Gender challenges , Global news , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Innovation , Inspiration , International business , Leadership , Social Entrepreneurship , Sustainability practices , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: global small business, indonesia, small business ownership, SME Toolkit, SMEs, women around the world, women business owners, women entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurship, women in business, women's issues, women's rights, women-led SMEs, women-owned businesses, WSMEs

In a recent East Asia Forum article, “Unleashing the capabilities of women-led SMEs in Indonesia,” author Naimah Talib reports that 43 percent of the 26 million small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia are women led or women owned (WSMEs). Not only do these WSMEs make up for ten percent of the country’s GDP, they also lead to social development of the culture by empowering women economically. Besides these major benefits, support of WSMEs aids Indonesia in achieving the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals”, specifically the tenets of ‘gender equality,’ ‘decent work and economic growth’, and ‘reduced inequality’.

The advantages of backing WSMEs are clear, but why are there limitations on the growth of these organizations? This is the question that Talib proposes. She illustrates just some of the difficulties women who head businesses face. Talib explains,

” …common difficulties for expansion [for WSMEs] include limited access to information about financial support, lack of business and entrepreneurial skills, lack of professional networks and limited government support and services at the local level. Financial support is available for WSMEs, but female entrepreneurs tend to lack information about these options. Female entrepreneurs find that information about government funding programs is often limited, difficult to access or unclear.”

One of Talib’s main arguments suggest that Indonesian policymakers fail to effectively provide WSMEs with the necessary resources to solve these issues. Talib writes of the necessary reform,

“Three areas require greater attention: increasing the accessibility of information, strengthening the institutional capacity of the Creative Economy Agency and improving government services at the local level.”

To read more about the specific solutions posed to the pressing issue of the neglect of Indonesian WSMEs, read the article here.

_______________________________________________________

JOIN us for our morning wegg™ workshop on September 12th and hosted by Bank of America (135 S. LaSalle Street, 44th Floor). Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO, Lifeway Foods, will present “Follow Your Gut,” covering:

How global factors influence company values and mission
Why we should empower women entrepreneurs around the world
How to channel inspiration from travel experiences into marketing initiatives

Tickets $40 ($20 for students); includes Continental Breakfast. To learn more and to register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/weggtm-workshop-follow-your-gut-presented-by-julie-smolyansky-tickets-48655708534
__________________________________________

Women Entrepreneurs, the Global Market Needs You

Published July 23, 2018 Business Development , Economic growth , Education , emerging markets , Equality , Exporting , Gender challenges , global branding , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Importing , International business , Marketing , Research , Sales & Distribution , Strategy , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: Entrepreneur Magazine, gender equality worldwide, global economic growth, global growth, global impact, global marketplace, global reach, going global, Laurel J. Delaney, SMEs, WEGG, WEGG women, women business owners, women entrepreneurs

According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, In 2016, 97% of all exporters in the U.S. were small and medium-sized companies. The other statistic from this study that can’t be ignored is that only 12% of businesses that export are owned by women. Why are more women not accessing the vast world that is global business?

In Devishobha Chandramouli’s recent Entrepreneur article, “6 Global Trends Reveal How Women Are Redefining Entrepreneurship,” she reports the ways in which women entrepreneurs are critical to the global market. Within Chandramouli’s findings, WEGG founder, Laurel Delaney, reports on why women are often absent from business at a global level:

“Even in a developed economy, women business owners are less likely to explore and expand their products or services because they think they can’t do it, or that they don’t have access to the right training, education, advisory networks, mentorships and community programs. This perceived deficiency makes it difficult for women to access markets, conduct marketing and establish relationships.”

If women do not believe they are capable of global success, they will not achieve it. The secret is, that women are not only capable of global business, but are also exponentially beneficial to their communities when they have it. Chandramouli notes,

“As globalization is breaking down the barriers that limited businesses by cultures, gender and geography, many partnership and trade agreements have been developed in an attempt to encourage global economic activity among women. Women are known to give back about 90 percent of their earnings to the health and education of their communities and families, contributing to development directly, so it’s easy to see why it is critical.”

Women entrepreneurs, the global market needs you.

You can read Chandramouli’s article here, to learn more about how women have the ability to transform global business, for the better, from within.

_______________________________________________________

Why go global? How do you start? Where can you find customers? How do you get paid? Find out these answers and learn other best-kept secrets to expanding a business globally.

JOIN us for our first weggchat™ (#weggchat) Wednesday, August 8 from 11:00 a.m. — 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central time on “Take Your Business Global!“ and facilitated by Laurel Delaney, President of WEGG and founder of GlobeTrade.com. Laurel will field questions and add insights on how to take a business global. Small business owners can join the conversation by using the hashtag #weggchat to chime in with questions and answers.

Event is free of charge but you must use tchat.io or twubs.com to follow the conversation using the hashtag #weggchat. See you there!
__________________________________________

Everyone Can Compete on the New Global Playing Field

Published May 12, 2018 e-commerce , Global trade , Logistics/transportation , Supply Chain , Transportation Leave a Comment
Tags: big dogs, e-commerce, Jeremy Melis, new global playing field, size doesn't matter, UPS

Think your business is too small for globalization? If so, change your attitude because according to Jeremy Melis, Director of Small Business Marketing at UPS, size doesn’t matter.

“The world’s electronic commerce system has transformed retailers into e-tailers, attracting and retaining consumers around the corner and around the globe. So, brands of various sizes and scope can now compete on the new global playing field, valued at $2.3 trillion and projected to almost double by 2021,” says Jeremy.

So what’s a small business to do in order to compete?

Start small, take baby steps, and as Jeremy highlights, “Other advancements and technologies are also making it easier for small businesses to launch, manage and dominate in the world of e-commerce. The key is to understand the many options available to drive business to the next level.”

See what those resource options are by clicking here.

A quick thank you to UPS for their support to WEGG. We could not provide the incredible educational programming at WEGG without them.

_______________________________________________________

Note: Did you just bag a customer in Argentina, Ireland or Korea? How do you structure the deal? Don’t let lack of financing knowledge be the reason you lose the contract.

Join us for our next WEGGinar™ 6/6/18 on “Grow Globally By Offering Competitive Financing Solutions” and presented by Tamara Maxwell, Director, Minority and Women Owned Business & Multiplier Outreach Division, Office of Small Business, Export-Import Bank of the United States. She will guide you on how to get paid. Register here.

Event is free of charge but you must register in advance to attend.
__________________________________________

Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global

Archive for the 'Global trade' Category

Show Me the Data Supporting Women in Trade!

Female Entrepreneurs Are the Engine of Global Growth

President and CEO Julie Smolyansky on “Following Your Gut”

Women Entrepreneurs, the Global Market Needs You

Everyone Can Compete on the New Global Playing Field

WEGG Mission

Donate Your Gift Card to WEGG!

Connect

WEGG Feed

Partners

Resources

Social Good

Webinar Recordings

World

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Ask a Question

Find an Opportunity

Honors & Awards

Copyright Notice

Archive for the 'Global trade' Category

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

Share With The World:

Like this:

WEGG Mission

Donate Your Gift Card to WEGG!

Connect

WEGG Feed

Partners

Resources

Social Good

Webinar Recordings

World

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Ask a Question

Find an Opportunity

Honors & Awards

Copyright Notice