Exporting from Canada

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada, Too Good to Be True: Toronto in the 1920s, and
Global Spin: Probing the Globalization Debate.

Exporting from Canada—by Anne Curan, a writer who also runs an
import/export business with her husband, and Gerhard Kautz, a domestic
and international marketing consultant who spent 25 years in the
Canadian navy—“focuse[s] on the concerns of small- and medium-sized
businesses.” Its 10 concisely written chapters walk prospective
exporters through the most obvious subjects, from “Doing Your
Homework: The Market Study” to “Export Financing.” The text is
accompanied by 10 “figures,” four “worksheets,” and two
“samples.” And there is some sound advice right up front: the
financial “rewards” of exporting can be dramatic, but “[they are]
not a ‘quick fix’ for a troubled company, nor [are they] a part-time
activity for managers only half-interested in exploring [their]
potential.”

As the authors themselves stress, in the world today both Canadian
federal (and provincial) government support agencies and the
international economy at large are changing very rapidly; thus a few of
the details included in the book are already out of date. Of course no
sensible organization, even if it were small, would try to launch a
major exporting drive strictly on the basis of what can be learned from
a publication of this sort. The publishing of a third edition
nonetheless testifies to the book’s usefulness as a straightforward
introduction to a complicated field.