Do Business With Latin America And The Caribbean

Written by Joshua Adekane Wednesday, 27 April 2011 08:34

With the world economic crisis, most of the modernized countries have been badly hit financially. Import, exports and spending have dramatically decreased in most countries. This has left companies all over the world wondering about ways to increase their sales in tough economic times.

With the world economic crisis, most of the modernized countries have been badly hit financially. Import, exports and spending have dramatically decreased in most countries. This has left companies all over the world wondering about ways to increase their sales in tough economic times.

Companies around the world most probably share one thing in common: they do not have distribution channels in Latin America and the Caribbean. This is a golden opportunity as the region represents 42 countries and 609 million potential customers.

The obstacles of doing business:

*Languages: Latin America and the Caribbean has several languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Creole.

*Difficulty in finding information online: Many friends of mine always complain about how hard it is to find reliable information about doing business in Latin America online in English.

*Hard to find Trade leads from companies. Trade Leads are basically buying and selling offers. These offers are usually published online on B2B Trade Portals in order to help connect buyers and sellers from all over the world. The Asians are the leaders of B2B Trade portals with successful websites such as Alibaba, Tradekey, EC21 etc.

How to start doing business with Latin America and the Caribbean?

Finally, I found a serious, well designed and easy to use B2B Trade Portal for Latin America and the Caribbean. MercaTrade.com started back in 2009 and already has over one thousand trade leads.

I like several things about this website:

*MercaTrade.com is available in both English and Spanish.

*The website is very easy to use and has a minimalistic design. It does not have banners at every corner which I usually dislike in other websites.

*The prices for their premium services are quite affordable and filled with useful features. Their PowerTrader Virtual showroom allows users to post unlimited trade leads with pictures, post the latest company news, display Tradeshow attendance, send out product updates and a lot more. The cost of this service is just $500.00 USD/year which is minimal considering that I would need to spend over $2500.00 USD/year for other leading Trade Portals.

*Free Services are also available.

*Good news. They are adding several more features in 2010 at no additional cost to current premium members.

*Over 200 articles about doing business in the region such as country profiles, trade agreements, business etiquette etc.

*Other services such as translation are also available.