Export Opportunity to Sweden and Europe

November 19th, 2008 at 02:06pm Bob Trojan

At the invitation of the Rockford Area Economic Development Corporation (Mark Podemski and Marie-Louise Pettersson), I took advantage of meeting with them and Leif Eriksson from the Sweden Export Sales company called ITM.  Marie-Louise is an intern from Sweden working with RAEDC and helped to organize maybe 10 companies for Mr. Eriksson to visit.  Mr. Eriksson is the Director, Industrial Development of the City of Lidkoping, Sweden.

An interesting concept that Sweden has developed.  Thanks to Mark who saw this as an opportunity for local area manufacturers to enter Sweden/Europe by training a Sweden sales representative to sell their products in Sweden and other parts of Europe.

The  program works by a local company agreeing to hire on a pre-screened young person from Sweden to work and train in his/her company for 6 months.  There would also be a training program on various sales modules that would include International Trade Strategies, International Market Research,International Law and several others over an 11 day period, most of which would be back in Sweden.

At the end of the 6 months, the trainee returns to Sweden to a facility that acts like an incubator and for low facility costs, the newly trained sales representative begins selling for the Rockford company as their employee.

It looks like a good way for a company to begin the journey of exporting into Sweden/Europe.

If you’d like more information, contact Marie-Louise at mlpettersson@rockfordil.com or 815-987-8118.  Better hurry, she retuns to Sweden in February!

Entry Filed under: Management, Export, Economy