MaryBeth Matzek: Program helps businesses fast track exporting program

This is an excerpt from a column posted at BizOpinion.

Exports are big business for Wisconsin companies. Whether it’s heavy-duty equipment from CNH and lawnmowers from Ariens Co. to Harley-Davidson motorcycles and specialty foods, products from Wisconsin go around the world.

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently reported that exports supported 126,147 jobs in Wisconsin during 2013. It’s those kinds of numbers that sparked the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership to launch its ExporTech program in 2010 to encourage businesses to not only look outside of Wisconsin, but the United States for potential customers.

ExporTech features three training sessions where companies receive targeted training for their specific needs, individual support from export specialists and how to increase a product’s speed to market time. It’s designed for manufacturers with less than 500 employees.

“The program fast tracks Wisconsin manufacturers to the best export markets for their products, provides personal coaching to build their value proposition and their export expansion strategy, introduces them to a whole international resource community, vets their export expansion plan with experts, and stays with them to remove roadblocks should you get stuck in implementation,” says Roxanne Baumann, WMEP’s director of global engagement.

Read the full column for more