One day while we were in a meeting discussing how we were going to get ourselves through this problem, it occurred to us that the one thing that we had not really tried to do was market our products outside the United States. We had not considered Exporting as a new market for our products. So, we started as many companies do by going to the United States Export Department and we got a crash course in the difficulties involved in Exporting! 

I can still remember all the books and brochures we received. It seemed like the books were stacked 2’ high on my desk. The first thing that we quickly found out was that the Government had a willingness to give us more literature than we ever had time to read and it seemed like the more we read, the more difficult it became! 

We found out that it was never an issue of 'lack of information', but just the opposite, the problem was too much Information and the wrong kind of Information!

It quickly became obvious to us that the support systems that were in place for helping companies like ourselves was designed around 'self-education'. 

In other words, all the information we ever wanted was available for the taking. In fact, the Government was even willing to send it to us free of charge. The problem is exporting is a very complex subject and the rules change all the time. So, there is an enormous learning curve that creates a barrier to exporting for most companies!