UPS, U.S. Commercial Service partner up to spur global shipping processes
Jeff Berman, Senior Editor -- Logistics Management, 3/6/2007
WASHINGTON—UPS and the Department of Commerce’s U.S. Commercial Service, a trade promotion unit of the International Trade Association that helps companies enter international markets, announced today that they are collaborating on a new initiative, which is designed to grow exports from United States-based small and medium-sized businesses.
The mission of the U.S. Commercial Service, according to an organization spokesman, is to help small and medium-sized businesses sell their products and services around the world, and this is done through a network of offices and trade experts in 108 offices known as export assistance centers. These offices are staffed by U.S. government employees that are experts at the entire exporting process and can help companies by providing customized solutions, such as developing export plans and market research, among others. The U.S. Commercial Service has colleagues in 85 countries and 135 global offices that help U.S. companies find foreign buyers for their goods and services.
The organizations said in a press release that this arrangement is designed to provide companies with both public- and private-sector resources to help simplify exporting processes. With this arrangement, UPS will be able to provide various resources to small and medium-sized shippers—along with its portfolio of shipping services— such as TradeAbility, a system that enables shippers to identify specific county tariff codes to calculate duties, and QuantumView, a tool which identifies every package moving toward a specific location.
“This partnership is geared to help small and medium-sized businesses looking to grow,” a UPS spokesman told Logistics Management. “This gives them direct access to commercially-available services like ours. And by leveraging UPS’ financial and capital capabilities, it provides the opportunity to offer these companies our services in a formal manner and provide educational information to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking for efficient ways to ship.”
The U.S. Commercial Service spokesman told LM that the concern has a similar agreement in place with FedEx, which has been in place for a number of years. He added that the U.S. Commercial Service is in discussions with the global services branch of the United States Postal Service to fashion a similar kind of partnership, which would leverage the close relationships the USPS has with sister postal services in foreign countries. And he added that the USPS’ 50-kilogram box, which he described as a niche product, along with express documents that U.S-based companies use, could be an asset when small and medium-sized businesses are exporting goods.
“Our goal—and UPS’ goal—with this initiative is to not only get more companies into not just a single market, but to help them enter multiple markets,” said the U.S. Commercial Service spokesman.
He added that 65 percent of the more than 239,000 U.S. exporters [in 2006] only exported to a single market, and noted that the goal of small and medium-sized companies having multiple customers worldwide is more feasible through this type of endeavor.
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