It's a Small World for Niche Players

Daryl-Lynn Carlson, Financial Post

That success on a global scale is looming for a small, family business in Prince Edward Island is not a forecast of fortunes to come for industry in Canada. Belfast Mini-Mills Ltd. has found demand for its miniature textile producing mills in far-flung regions of the world but how it achieved those inroads was more fortuitous than deliberate strategy based on a conventional business plan. Still, the company is representative of the diverse nature of independent businesses that are finding viable markets for their products and services worldwide.

"When we first started out, we weren't looking at that [global] market," admits Doug Nobles, who took the helm of Belfast Mini-Mills three years ago from his late father-in-law and company founder, Larry Sutherland.

"But after a few years, we had customers coming out of the woodwork like Scotland, which was a complete surprise to us," he says.

The client in Scotland is a small village surrounding a lighthouse on a remote island of 2,500 sheep and less than 70 residents. The mill, which Belfast builds "cottage-industry" size for portability, enables the village to export luxurious textiles culled from the sheep's wool, creating a dependable livelihood.

Belfast has sold mills to villagers high in the Andes of Bolivia, to the Falkland Islands, and South Africa, as well as to fashion astute textile entrepreneurs in New Zealand, Australia, England and throughout North America.

The company is finalizing a mill for a village in Mongolia and Mr. Nobles says its next big project will be a textile mill powered by wind to broaden the remote village market. "A lot of cashmere and alpaca are in very remote areas ? that have no industry or no power," Mr. Nobles says. "But they have lots of wind so coupling our concept with a wind mill goes so well for these small villages."

Perhaps most remarkable is how people located in such remote, distant communities hear about Belfast Mini- Mills. Some clients come across the company Web site that Mr. Nobles says "we've only upgraded once in 15 years."

The only other exposure, which seems to draw the lion's share of clients, is a simple ad Belfast runs regularly in a handful of textile industry magazines such as Wild Fibres, Alpaca World and the Calgary-based Camelid Quarterly.

Word of mouth in the tight-knit but global boutique textiles industry is also a key promotional tool for the small family business as alpaca and llama farmers readily share secrets for the production of exotic weaves. "All over the world it seems alpaca is the 'in' thing," Mr. Nobles says. "I would say 90% of our mills are producing alpaca fibre."

Mr. Sutherland founded Belfast 15 years ago after selling the family weaving- loom business in Vancouver. He called upon his son Clive, who was working in a sawmill, and Mr. Nobles who worked at a cement company, with the idea of building cottage industry, portable high-tech textile mills that could be operated by two or more people. Clive Sutherland now oversees the machine shop while his mom, Sheila Sutherland, at 73, helps with administration.

Belfast has 14 different types of textile producing machines, including carders and pickers that are electronically run with computer technologies. They range in price from $5,500 for a basic machine to $210,000 for a mill operation complete with a ball winder for different yarns.

The company uses a shipping service, and delivery of its machines to as far as Australia is within three days, Mr. Noble says. The company has a facility at its headquarters on Prince Edward Island to train buyers to use the equipment. As well, an in-house driver and a technician deliver equipment throughout North America while making service calls to clients along their delivery route. "Our biggest attribute is our knowledge and our service, and it's pretty hard for someone to compete with that," Mr. Nobles says.

Another Canadian entrepreneurial venture that has similarly cracked the international market with very little effort is Ottawa-based Unlimi-Tech Software Inc. Its primary market audience is Web-based and its premier product is niche-specific. Its software, FileCatalyst, enables the quick transfer of large data files such as movies and music on the Internet and targets large entertainment and media companies as clients.

"Ninety per cent of our customers are outside of the country," says Chris Bailey, chief executive of Ulimi-Tech. "We're technical guys, and when we started we had to do trial-and-error marketing. We knew from the outset we weren't going to be selling to only a Canadian market, but we figured it'd be more U.S. and Canada. We never thought it'd be just 5% to 10% Canadian versus 90% everywhere else."

Mr. Bailey says his company buys limited advertising and attends large media trade shows, but it has focused its investment on ensuring related key words for its product rank high with search engines so prospective customers seeking digital transfer programs on the Web would find Unlimi-Tech's site.

The company has sold its software to clients in dozens of countries, from Europe to Malaysia, he says, and it is currently negotiating a deal with a reseller to target India.

Rain Network, a Brazilian company, uses FileCatalyst to send upward of 250 movies a month in digital format by satellite, cable and DSL to 130 South American, 23 U.S. and five U.K. movie venues.

But neither Belfast Mini-Mills nor Unlimi- Tech are typical, international sales case studies. Most companies seeking to break borders in sales need to do much homework in advance, experts say.

Jennifer Henczel, a Vancouver-based import-export "coach" who advises clients on how to tap into foreign markets, says first and foremost, companies should contact the Canadian consulate located in the country they want to do business in to find out who to sell to, and how.

"The Canadian government has very good system to help companies get their products out there," says Ms. Henczel, whose Web site, www.ImportExport-Coach.com, is aimed at small business owners. She suggests companies first try to target the United States before any exotic locations. "The market is huge there, the numbers are astounding in terms of much larger markets than what we're dealing with in Canada," she says.

As well, entrepreneurs should seek out similar-sized firms in their region that have achieved international sales and "have coffee and talk about getting over the hurdles in various markets," she says.

© National Post 2007

Click here for original article in the Financial Post, National Post

Click here to contact Jennifer Henczel today!

If you are interested in having Jennifer speak at your next event, click here

If you are interested in using this article, please click here for article guidelines.