Austrade is hoping a seminar series to be held in Perth next week will help it tap into an as-yet underdeveloped export resource – women.
Austrade is hoping a seminar series to be held in Perth next week will help it tap into an as-yet underdeveloped export resource – women.
Austrade research indicates that Australia’s 1.6 million small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) will provide the majority of the nation’s future export growth. And with one third of such businesses headed by women, females are now seen as a key target area.
Recent ABS figures show that, as of June 2003, about 63,600 WA women own and run their own small business (one third of all people operating a small business in WA), but less than 700 currently exported.
According to the organisation’s WA manager, Jenny Mathews, Austrade wants to educate more of the state’s female-led companies about exporting.
The ‘Women in Export – Ticket to Export’ seminar series has been devised to develop this resource.
“Many new businesses in Perth will be run by women entrepreneurs or have female involvement in key positions in the new companies,” Ms Mathews said.
“Already more than 10,000 women executives have registered with Austrade and are active in the Australian exporting community. Austrade would like to double that figure.”
Ms Mathews said the Perth seminar was dedicated to raising awareness of the opportunities to export for women entrepreneurs and to encourage networking and mentoring among women exporters and business groups.
“WA is an export-oriented state and I hope that feeds onto women in businesses,” she said. “The best prospects for growth are women.”
Ms Mathews said women made good exporters because they often produced innovative and niche products.
“Women are very strong in consumer goods services, including health and beauty, baby wear, gourmet food and wine, management, consultancy and HR.”
Two local exporting success stories are those of Mary Nenke, founder of Cambinata Yabbies, and Punch Coffee director and founder, Judith Darlington.
Ms Nenke hadn’t intended to get into exporting, but in the late 1980s the family was spending more money than it was making.
“We had four children being schooled in the city and two being home schooled,” she said.
“We were spending more money on education than what we were earning through farming sheep and wheat.”
However, in the early 1990s things started looking up for the Nenkes. The family’s hobby of yabby farming turned into an exporting business and they started selling them around the globe – Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe and Dubai.
“We had our first export in 1993 after we placed a listing on the Austrade website and a US export businessman stumbled across it,” Ms Nenke said. “We buy yabbies from a huge area. We source products from more than 700 farmers in WA. As many as 90 per cent of them [our producers] are women.
“We already have clients in the US but we want to expand. It is a huge market.”
Ms Darlington is also involved in a niche market, albeit with a foodstuff that has long-recognised worldwide appeal.
The perfect cup of coffee requires the perfect coffee bean, and that is what Ms Darlington believes she has captured in her Punch Coffee product.
Four years ago, Ms Darlington started to research everything coffee and heard about a type of coffee grown in New Guinea.
“It is a very different type of coffee and it is very special. It has all the elements a good coffee needs,” she said.
It was Ms Darlington’s career in hotel public relations that helped her find her market for Punch Coffee.
“Having worked in public relations in five-star hotels for many years I got to know the specific needs hotels had to having products that couldn’t be found everywhere,” she said.
“We knew our coffee would meet that need around the world.”
Packaged in a wood humidor, Punch Coffee is exported to the UK – including to Fortnum and Mason – France, Belgium, Malaysia, and Mauritius.
Ms Nenke and Ms Darlington will both expand on their journeys at the seminar.
