Overseas Sales Potential Said High For Numerous Midwestern Products

But Manufacturers Called 'Uninformed, Scared'

Overseas Sales Potential Said High For Numerous Midwestern Products

(Editor's note:  This article is the first in a series on unusual local businesses and smaller industries new to the area within the past five years.)

By Jack Lewis

Scores of midwest manufacturers are producing goods with high sales potential on the international market, but they're either unaware of this, uninformed or scared of foreign trade problems, a local import-export professional said today.

Lionel N. Berck, president of the recently created Seaway Associates, Inc., which is headquartered in Ann Arbor, gives area manufacturers advice against the backdrop of  prospective higher production, added profits and added economic contributions to the community.

"Look to international trade," he said.  "We cannot isolate ourselves, commercially.  We are as dependent on the consumer in Patagonia as we are on the consumer in nearby Monroe."

Berck, who is operating a several-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year-import-export business from 808 Oakland Ave., believes the U.S. must increase its international trade objectives "to strengthen the dollar."

Foreign markets are becoming bigger because of the "astounding growth" of the Common Market and emergence of so many new nations with new wants, Berck said.  He added:

"The climate of international business is changing in favor of greater and greater amount of trade, and we, as Americans, must become much stronger internationally; we must think more in terms of international trade."

Berck said the single biggest block to foreign trade revolves around many manufacturers' fears that they won't get paid, without costly delays, for goods shipped.

Seaway has eliminated that drawback by putting cash for U.S. producers' goods in their hands before the goods even leave this country's shores.  Here's how it works:

Berck said his firm's offices aboard or those affiliated importers-exporters negotiate letters of credit forwarding them to Seaway here.

The letters of credit, which are as good as cash, are taken to banks along with bills of lading of goods put aboard ships and drafts made out, paying manufacturers.  "It's strictly a cash arrangement and that's important to us; we want to get our commission," Berck said.

The former Australian-now a U.S. citizen-has traveled more than 1,000,000 air miles since 1948 in connection with marketing goods abroad.  His experiences have resulted in what Berck sees as a unique Seaway Association organization.

That firm's services include consultation on probability of good sales abroad and free market testing of manufactured items, market development for goods, sales work-even licensing of firms abroad to produce goods under American patents.

Seaway, which expects to move corporate offices soon to a local commercial building, employs six persons locally and 12 persons at Seaway offices in Southampton England; Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanganyika, and Johannesburg, South Africa.

In addition, the concern is affiliated with import-export firms in Japan and France plus one in Johannesburg, which has nine branch offices in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Portuguese East Africa.  Those affiliates employ 60 persons, Berck said.

Seaway has just been named by Crofton Garage of London, England, as sole distributor in this country of Crofton "land yachts"-five-berth cab-over-engine vehicles for summer touring and skiing.  Headquarters for U.S. sales of $4,000 vehicles will be in Ann Arbor, Berck said.

Items being shipped through Seaway are machine tools to automotive parts and airplanes, steel products to granite and deep frozen foods to canned pineapple.  The range of items encompasses the industrial and commodity worlds, Berck said.

Berck, 39, who called Ann Arbor the "best place in the midwest for my business," first came here to take post-graduate work at the University of Adelaide in Australia.  He married the former Margaret O. Gunther of Ann Arbor.

The Bercks returned to the community this year to operate Seaway after Berck had served Kaiser Industries as regional manager in Africa between 1955 and last August.

Previously, he did export work for three national concerns between 1948-1955.

Berck's background led him to comment to manufacturers:

"There is less exposure of credit in international trade than there is on the domestic market."

He said that Seaway sets forth specifications for packing goods for overseas shipment, preventing, any costly errors and eliminating another block to getting domestic-made goods on the foreign market.

Berck concluded:

"It is unfortunate that exports have produced such a small percentage of revenue of many U.S. companies.  But we're in a transition period now, and this percentage is bound to increase.  Producers are discovering a new source for wealth overseas."