London, Paris, Berlin, Milan. There are a dizzying array of cities a company to open a foreign office in, so where to focus? Steve Potash, president and CEO of OverDrive Inc., fixed his compass to Amsterdam.
“We were looking for a central base of operations to serve not only our partners on the Continent, but also our expanding partners in the U.K.,” Potash says. “Amsterdam was geographically well-situated, it was also a good hub of transportation for international air flight, and rail service within Europe.”
OverDrive is a digital publisher based in Valley View with customers in major European markets including France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain. The company’s Amsterdam office provides technical and customer support for its growing list of publishing and digital content customers in Europe.
Potash says the key is to narrow your search to cities in a location central to your clients. But he also offers some other factors to consider during the search.
Open for business
A drawing point of Amsterdam was its business-friendly attitude and the willingness of its chamber of commerce to help OverDrive open an office there, Potash says. Most major Western European cities offer incentives to help American companies — especially those in safe, high-tech industries — open an office in their city.
“Setting up your mode of operation is a lot less onerous than it is in some of the other markets where there’s a lot of legal barriers to setting up a U.S. company doing business,” Potash says. “It’s just easier to do business there.”
Find an insider
The local chamber of commerce is good first step, but try to find other business professionals, preferably from the area in which you’re planning to locate, who know the area and can advise you on customs and cultural differences.
Make sure these advisers are objective. An eager city official who wants to bolster the local economy with an American company might gloss over a city’s crime rate or unreliable work force.
“We’ve opened up operations in some other foreign countries and we’ve found that the money spent on advisers was well-spent,” Potash says. “Planning and finding trusted partners that you can rely on is a practice we’ve benefited from.”
Patience is a virtue
Not all companies work at the same whiplash pace as most American companies, especially in the high-tech sector. Some transplanted workers are surprised, and often a little irritated, when their European colleagues don’t move at the same pace.
“(American companies) really need to allocate more time for everything,” Potash says. “The things that you take for granted, getting a phone number, negotiating certain services, locating vendors, suppliers and employees. Everything is not at the same pace.”
IT backbone
Although the city’s first settlers arrived in the 12th century, Amsterdam quickly adapted to the new economy in 1990s by installing a strong telecommunication infrastructure in its central city. The same is true for most major cities in Western Europe, and the trend is spreading to the smaller ones. How to reach: OverDrive, (216) 573-6886
Morgan Lewis Jr. ([email protected]) is a reporter at SBN Magazine.
