Small Firms Get Help in Selling Goods Abroad : Exports: Growing numbers of international marketing experts are leaving big corporations to work as consultants.

After years of peddling soft drinks, laundry detergent and other consumer goods for major corporations, Bob Wallace decided two years ago to take his experience and strike out on his own.

Armed with a few thousand dollars and years of marketing savvy, the former Los Angeles marketing manager for Pepsico Inc. and Lever Bros. started an export management company to help others do what he does best: sell in the international market.

His goal is simple: “I’m giving the little Davids of this world a shot at the world market,” Wallace said. “I’m the scout sent out to reconnoiter for the advancing troops.”

Wallace, marketing director of Exports International Co. in Santa Ana, is among a growing pool of former international marketing managers who have left large corporations to work as export consultants for small and medium-size companies.

“Most export managers have previous corporate experience and have an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Edward Chavez, president of Anaheim Marketing International, an export management firm in Anaheim. “And export management is one area that allows them to use this entrepreneurial characteristic to exploit their marketing abilities and knowledge of the international market.”

Demand for export assistance has increased as more small and medium-size companies--many with no prior experience in foreign markets--try to peddle their wares abroad, said Martin Magdaleno, president of Sel Pro International, an Anaheim export management firm. Also, many companies can’t afford to hire a full-time international marketing manager, he said.

“A lot of times, the local manufacturers have a great product but they don’t export because they don’t want to be bothered with the extra paper work and bureaucracy,” said Magdaleno, a former manager of Beckman Instruments international division.

Moreover, many U.S. companies are reluctant to take the time and effort to understand a foreign nation’s culture and trade practices--often a key to success abroad. And companies that are doing brisk business in the U.S. market are sometimes reluctant to spend money on a possibly risky overseas marketing program, said Patrick Killeen, marketing vice president for PEC International Trading Co. in San Marcos.

“It’s very expensive to market products abroad because so many things fall through. Unless you stay on top of things, you’re not going to make any foreign sales,” said Jerry McSpadden, president of Custom Business Solutions Inc., a Rochester, N.Y., firm that manages the export activities of 135 U.S. small and medium-size companies abroad.

Export managers typically perform a number of services for their clients, from handling export paper work to performing market research and designing product brochures.

“What we really do is find buyers for U.S.-made products,” McSpadden said. “We act like the export department of a major American company. We’re the conduits between the companies and their foreign buyers.”

Most export management companies are paid a percentage of the foreign business they help generate, usually 10% to 15% of the total sales.

Wallace, of Exports International, said many of his clients paid scant attention to export business and started selling abroad only after landing an unexpected foreign order.

Susan Francis, president of Market Visions International, a novelty gift manufacturer in Santa Ana and a client of Wallace, said selling abroad “was an afterthought” for her firm. “Like many small companies, we were intending to sell only to the U.S. market, which was more lucrative,” she said.

But that changed when orders from overseas distributors who saw her products at U.S. trade shows began pouring in last year. Market Visions’ hottest-selling items, particularly in Japan, are men’s and women’s underwear rolled into plastic stems to resemble long-stem roses, or underwear and socks tucked into plastic Easter eggs. These products are marketed under such labels as Panty Rose, Jockey Eggs, Jock in the Box and Just Hatched.

“I didn’t know what to do with those orders since I’ve not handled anything like this in my life,” Francis said. “As it is, I’m busy enough running the company, and I can’t take on an extra load.”

So she hired Wallace to manage all her export activities on a commission basis. So did Nine Eagles Golf Co. in Santa Ana, when the golf club maker decided to take a swing at the foreign market last year. Today, Nine Eagles does not just import golf club components from Taiwan, but also sells the finished goods back to the Taiwanese, and to Japan and other countries.

But with international trade heating up, some export managers have entered the export business for themselves. Some companies buy directly from manufacturers and sell to foreign distributors at a profit.

For instance, Custom Business began marketing on its own wooden neckties, made by Timber Ties Inc. near Boston. The ties retail at $20 to $40. This week, Custom shipped a container full of stain-resistant wooden ties worth more than $100,000 to a South Korean distributor.

Stephanie Bogan, a consultant to the Export Managers Assn. of California in Van Nuys, said large companies don’t often use export management companies. And when they do, it usually involves sales of product lines the manufacturer is not familiar with.