Oxnard Woman at Home With the Language of Global Export

A company in Italy is looking for titanium oxide. A man in London wants some furniture from Mexico. A fellow in the Philippines needs car alarms.

The three prospective customers might not seem to have much in common. But they do--Oxnard’s Mary Ellen Toffle, who is attempting to connect these would-be buyers with appropriate sellers through her home-based business, Magellan Enterprises.

Magellan locates and negotiates international business deals for owners of small- to medium-size businesses worldwide.

Although Toffle assists in many areas of manufacturing, she specializes in business transactions involving companies that produce petrochemicals, automobile and industrial lubricants and related products.

She recently completed her largest transaction to date, negotiating an approximately $1.2-million deal between the Gard Corp., a lubricant manufacturer in Kansas City, Kan., and the Abdullah Mohammed Al Goss Establishment for General Trade, a leading retail distributor in the Republic of Yemen.

Toffle, a part-time instructor of international business at Oxnard College, credits the success of her negotiations with the Yemenis, and the success of her business in general to her extensive knowledge of foreign cultures and business customs.

“Half of international business is being able to communicate effectively,” Toffle said. “My passion has been cross-cultural communication, learning how to understand our own culture and the culture of other people and make something together.”

Toffle brings to Magellan a background that includes bachelor’s degrees in Spanish, Italian and education and a master’s degree in international management with a focus on marketing and cross-cultural communication. She is fluent in three languages and has lived and worked throughout Europe and South America.

To complement her skills, Toffle has independent agents in London, Paris, Rome, Pakistan and Mexico and subcontracts with other trade experts in the United States. For the Gard Corp. transaction, Toffle enlisted the assistance of Oxnard’s Richard Simons, a licensed U.S. customs broker.

The Center for International Trade Development at Oxnard College has proved valuable, she said, providing international market research, consultation and training, and the Commerce Department and World Trade Center also have provided resources.

“We use all the different types of trade information available and use it to make marketing plans and market studies for companies. We can help them every step of the way,” she said. “First we were consultants, but now we’ve kind of evolved into different things--the most in demand is actually doing the international sales, taking over the product and marketing it myself.”

Toffle began her international consulting business as a hobby but converted it into a business in 1993. She said she saw a need for her services from the start.

“Small businesses, if they want to grow, and even if they just want to survive, have to export. And I’m not talking about just sending or dumping products on another country. You can do a venture with a company in another country, you can license, there are so many ways of doing it,” Toffle said.

“I knew there was a demand, because I know if this country does not export, we are going to be in big trouble.”

Toffle finds foreign business leads by reading and advertising in trade periodicals and overseas publications and by maintaining her network of contacts abroad. Her services attract both buyers and sellers.

“There are a lot of smaller manufacturers that either don’t have the resources or the time or the expertise or don’t feel like learning to market themselves internationally,” Toffle said. “It’s hard. You have to know what you’re doing, take a risk and be willing to wait. It often takes time to make money.”

Ben Wolf, export manager for the Gard Corp., said Toffle differs from other trade consultants because of her varied background.

“Most try to serve as matchmakers. They may have a contact or some kind of customer base or corporate base,” he said. “She’s more of a facilitator in a cross-cultural sense because she is so multicultural. She can bridge the gap that we Americans might have a problem with. I, quite frankly, knew nothing about Yemen.”

Wolf is a former classmate of Toffle at the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Ariz.

The Gard Corp. manufactures automobile and industrial lubricants for automotive clients, the military and general consumers. Gard, as part of the recent deal, will be the exclusive supplier of lubricants to the Yemeni distributor over the next few years.

“In terms of sales volume,” Wolf said, “it’s one of the largest [transactions] we’ve had this fiscal year.”