Insta Graphic Systems of Cerritos has received the President’s “E” award, given by the Department of Commerce to six companies annually for excellence in exporting. The award was to be presented late last week to company president, CEO and co-owner Janet Wells in Washington, D.C.
The 120-employee company manufactures heat transfer equipment that is used by apparel companies to put logos and images onto clothing, and 60% of the company’s equipment sales come from exporting the equipment to more than 100 countries.
Wells herself has been active in issues related to international trade and small business.
For the last three years, Wells has served as the U.S. co-chairperson of the Small & Medium Sized Business Working Group of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), which was created in 1995 by then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. The TABD tries to streamline trade policies and enhance trade cooperation between the U.S. and the European Union governments and business communities.
Wells was a member of the first TABD delegation, which met in Spain in 1995, and has served in subsequent delegations, along with CEOs such as Alex Trotman of Ford Motor and Michael Dell of Dell Computer.
Insta Graphic’s customers include Nike, Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss & Co., Giorgio Armani, Esprit and Old Navy.
Insta Graphics has made brochures and advertised in four different languages. The company has also traveled the globe to attend trade shows and meet with distributors worldwide.
“It’s a great example of what a small business can achieve in the export business,” said Marianne Hughes, an international trade specialist with the Department of Commerce.
Role Model
TABD deputy director Jeff Werner said that Wells has helped to rally the small business community and “get small companies to raise their voices”
Wells’ experience in international matters began during her college days at UCLA in the early ’70s. She spent time in France in an overseas educational program, where she also learned French. She returned to UCLA to finish her bachelor of arts degree, learned German and got a scholarship to a school in Germany.
She joined Insta Graphic in 1974 as a translator, to translate letters the company received from foreign countries. Until then, those letters often wound up in the trash.
She contacted the Department of Commerce on how to do business with foreign companies and also took international trade classes at her alma mater. In 1975 she launched the company’s international division.
She set up a booth at a Paris fashion trade show, hiring some of her former European classmates. “It was an overwhelming reception,” Wells said. “It was a very American product, putting graphics on t-shirts.”
And the company expanded its international presence ever since.
Imitations a Problem
Today, Wells said that the company is having some problems with foreign competitors copying some of its patented equipment features. However, she said the company does not want to get involved in any “tricky” patent suits.
“Our strategy is to put money into R & D instead of legal battles,” Wells said.
In the next year, Wells will be participating in a working group of the TABD to address the issues of the World Trade Organization. “The WTO does not have an avenue for small and medium-sized business issues and that is a recommendation we’ve made,” Wells said.
Wells said that the WTO dialogue hasn’t got as much attention in the U.S. as it has overseas. “The Europeans are more concerned about international business. Americans are more worried about domestic affairs.”
Wells said that one of the major problems for her company is dealing with rulers and scales. “We have to start thinking globally. The U.S. is the only country in the whole world that doesn’t use the metric system.”
It may cause a problem since the European Parliament issued a directive for metric-only labeling, which Wells said would cause her company and others to have dual inventory. But the TABD was able to postpone the directive for 10 years.
Safety issues also cause a problem for her company, she said, since her company’s equipment has to conform with safety regulations in each country it sells to. Wells said a goal of the TABD is to have reciprocal agreements to standardize safety requirements.
Insta Graphic is not just busy in the international arena. The company has found a new application for its heat transfer equipment. One of its customers, The Magic Touch, developed heat transfer paper to transfer logos and images to materials other than clothing, such as tile, glass and metal. Kinko’s is also trying the new application. n
