May 15, 2006
Globetrotter | Atlantica Group and its founder Perry Newman help make business happen between New England and the world
By Jeffrey Bouley
In the business world, success can depend as much on who you know as what you know. That's the essence of networking. So for Portland-based international consulting firm Atlantica Group, it's a good thing that founder Perry Newman knows everybody.
Well, maybe not everybody, but through his work as an international lawyer, as the former head of the Maine International Trade Center, and now as the principal of his six-year-old consulting business, Newman has built up an extensive set of contacts and clients in places like Canada, France, Germany, Israel, China, Japan and Taiwan. Those connections help Newman offer Atlantica's primary services: helping New England companies find business opportunities abroad or domestically, and assisting foreign companies looking to enter the New England market. Newman often is hired to research potential markets, develop new projects, validate potential partners and locate funding sources ˆ tricky tasks when the client and their targeted market are often thousands of miles apart.
Yet in the decade he's been focused on international business, Newman says he's seen more companies realize that the challenges of doing business overseas are becoming just another reality of an increasingly global economy ˆ even in small-business states like Maine. "In the past decade certainly, and probably more like the past 20 years, policy-makers and business leaders in Maine have realized that Maine is not going to progress and grow unless we adopt a broader global perspective," Newman says. And while he thinks the state has done a good job developing export markets, he believes Maine still has a ways to go in attracting foreign investment. "We have to not only embrace it when it's here but court it as well," Newman stresses.
To better do his part in courting such investment and meeting the needs of his clients outside New England, Newman recently decided he needed a partner that was as globally active as he was, but could offer additional resources. He started by buying out the interest owned in Atlantica by the Portland-based law firm Curtis Thaxter last December. Then, in February, Atlantica became a subsidiary of Pierce Atwood, a law and consulting firm with offices in Augusta and Portland, as well as Boston, Concord, N.H., and Portsmouth, N.H.
Although Pierce Atwood's law practice is very international in scope ˆ with 50 clients in 50 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, says John Gulliver, a partner and head of the firm's Energy Practice ˆ its consulting firm lacked the contacts or expertise to offer business consulting to those international contacts. So the firm looked to Newman and Atlantica to help bridge the gap. "Maine is inevitably part of the globalized economy and Pierce Atwood is part of that globalization," says Gulliver. "Having the Atlantica brand name, as it were, to facilitate that [business] is very helpful."
In fact, Gulliver sees Maine on the verge of what he calls its third wave of globalization. The first, he notes, was when Europeans first settled here and exported raw products overseas. The second was when Maine was a heavy exporter of finished wood products, textiles and shoes ˆ industries that have declined sharply. "Now we see that the next great global opportunity is in services ˆ not just law but business insurance, financial services and environmental science," Gulliver says. "Having Perry sitting right next to our own business consultants and bringing that international experience could be a big part of making that happen."
Prying open the door
It's been a winding road to get to that point, though. Newman didn't start out as a business consultant. In the 1980s, he practiced law, serving as chief law clerk to a Missouri Supreme Court judge and then moving into private law firms in St. Louis, Seattle and Cleveland.
Despite gaining corporate law experience at those firms, Newman says he didn't have an inkling to toss away his law books until 1992, when he joined Hahn Loeser & Parks, one of the largest law firms in Ohio. There, he headed the firm's international business practice, helping foreign clients document their domestic transactions and implement business plans in the United States. His international frequent flyer miles began to ramp up, he says, and he started to see his career from a different angle. "What really intrigued me was actually the work that went on even before we lawyers were needed," says Newman, "The assessment and development of new markets, and understanding how receptive people in those areas were to new products and technologies or to new business entrants from another culture."
Newman's work with Hahn Loeser also gave his first taste of international business from both directions: companies in the States seeking opportunities abroad, and companies abroad seeking opportunities here. His work included assisting U.S. clients with projects in Russia, the United Kingdom and Korea, and representing French, Italian and German clients in their U.S. activities. By 1996, Newman moved on to Maine and out of the legal profession altogether.
Newman became the first president of the Maine International Trade Center and the first director of international trade for the state of Maine ˆ a position he gained through appointment by former Gov. Angus King. During his four-year tenure, Maine exports increased from $1.47 billion to $2.2 billion annually, the largest increase the state had ever seen. He also organized and led trade missions to Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Iceland, Brazil and Argentina before leaving MITC when he felt he'd accomplished what he wanted to do with the organization.
But the host of contacts among overseas business owners and trade promotion officials he'd built up at the MITC gave Newman a good base to start Atlantica Group in 2000. "[My contacts] looked to me as a resource in New England who understood international business development," says Newman. "So, my name and my firm's name got circulated a lot, particularly in Canada and France, and those referrals precipitated a lot of the work I began to get from outside the country."
In fact, getting so much work from overseas companies looking for U.S. business opportunities was surprising, he admits. Newman originally conceived Atlantica as a vehicle to help U.S. companies ˆ particularly those in New England ˆ identify business opportunities abroad. "In some ways, a lot of what I do is, I guess, the inverse of what I did for the Maine International Trade Center," Newman says.
New England, he says, is well known to many businesses abroad ˆ particularly in certain segments such as higher education, medical research and biotechnology. The region also has an active venture capital community, which gives it additional cachet. Still, New England often isn't the first place a country considers investing, so Newman likes to point out one of the region's big advantages: accessibility. "It is often easier to pry the door open to opportunities for foreign companies in New England because of the smaller size and relative lack of competition compared to places like California or New York," he says.
That market accessibility proved a powerful draw for several companies in Nova Scotia. Newman is working with the government of Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia Community College to bring a group of Canadian companies to Maine from May 23-25 to scout out potential business opportunities in southern Maine. Proximity also played a big part of the companies' interest in Maine. "For companies relatively new to exporting, it's conceptually easier to get their heads around shipping to clients who are a few hundred miles away as opposed to cross-continent," Newman says.
The four companies are diverse, says Helen Gromick, project manager for Nova Scotia Community College, made up of a boat-building operation, a food manufacturer, a maker of high-end knitted wear and a provider of environmentally-friendly cleaning products. The broad range of products and potential customers represented by these companies is one of the key reasons they need someone like Newman on the ground in Maine to do the homework and make introductions, Gromick notes. "Often with businesses, it's a scary prospect to go looking at new markets in another country, even one just across the border," says Gromick.
Newman doesn't limit the scope of his consulting work to the New England region, though. Among his current projects is an engagement with an Israeli company, Silentium, which develops and markets an embedded noise reduction technology. Potential customers for the technology include computer makers who wish to reduce noise from the machines' cooling fans and luxury car makers who need to cut down noise in air conditioning and heating systems ˆ and Newman already has found the company such opportunities in Canada and Europe. Newman is also helping the company find technology development funding.
The French connection
As befits a business with many overseas clients, some callers to Newman's office will hear their own language coming through the wire. With his extensive business in Canada and France, Newman's voicemail message is in both English and French, as is Atlantica's newsletter. Although he studied French "a thousand years ago" and his skill level is far from perfect, he says that "speaking that language shows an extra level of commitment to the culture of many of the French and Canadian companies I work with."
So far, French is the only foreign language Newman has at the ready, but with an estimated 60% of his clients either French Canadian or French, it's a key language to keep in shape. With his business in Israel increasing, though, he says learning Hebrew is an enticing prospect ˆ albeit a multi-year project, if he decides to take it on.
Newman's language considerations are key business decisions because Atlantica Group essentially is a one-man shop, both headed and staffed by Newman alone. Over the years, though, he's developed relationships with other consultants he can call on to help with specific projects. Most important is his long-standing partnership with Paris-based PAN Consulting France, which is headed by Alain Lombard and provides Atlantica clients with resources on the ground in Europe ˆ particularly those U.S. companies looking to establish operations there. "So many companies are looking for expansion overseas but they eventually shy away from it," Lombard wrote in an e-mail message. "We help them overcome the barriers and it is a wonderful job to be in between. I can smooth up the 'arrogant American' image in France as much as Perry can greatly improve the image and strategy of French firms who try to penetrate the U.S. market."
David Swardlick, the president and founder of Swardlick Marketing Group in Portland, is one of Atlantica's clients who appreciate having both Newman and Lombard at the ready. His company is looking for opportunities in France, hoping to find regions that would like to hire his firm to promote travel to Americans, and looking for food and beverage makers who want to export their products to the United States. Swardlick already knew Newman from when he directed the MITC, and says Atlantica's current set up with PAN Consulting provides him with "double-barreled" impact. "It's a fantastic situation to have someone close to home you can see and someone right in the thick of things over there who can follow up on things for us directly," says Swardlick.
Now, Newman is hoping the firm's acquisition by Pierce Atwood will further enhance Atlantica's reach and services. By joining Pierce Atwood, for example, he can offer clients the legal expertise that he couldn't provide alone, since he hasn't actively practiced law in years. And because those attorneys have a list of overseas clients of their own, the relationship could help introduce Newman to more potential customers.
Pierce Atwood, for its part, is happy to keep the Atlantica name around. Gulliver admits that Newman's consulting firm could perhaps one day be absorbed into Pierce Atwood Consulting, but for the foreseeable future, he acknowledges that all the work Newman has put into Atlantica has made other business owners aware of it. Nor is Newman thinking of turning over Atlantica to other managers just yet.
Although the travel is daunting ˆ sometimes keeping him out of the country for four weeks at a time ˆ Newman says he still enjoys the work and regularly being exposed to new people and cultures. And despite his decade-long tenure facilitating international trade, he expects there will always be new challenges in linking businesses across borders and oceans. "The way I judge whether Atlantica is on the right track isn't so much in whether an engagement is profitable to me immediately, it's the nature and complexity of the engagements," Newman says. "We'll pursue a project even if it isn't as profitable as one we did the year before, because there is something we can learn from it."
Well, maybe not everybody, but through his work as an international lawyer, as the former head of the Maine International Trade Center, and now as the principal of his six-year-old consulting business, Newman has built up an extensive set of contacts and clients in places like Canada, France, Germany, Israel, China, Japan and Taiwan. Those connections help Newman offer Atlantica's primary services: helping New England companies find business opportunities abroad or domestically, and assisting foreign companies looking to enter the New England market. Newman often is hired to research potential markets, develop new projects, validate potential partners and locate funding sources ˆ tricky tasks when the client and their targeted market are often thousands of miles apart.
Yet in the decade he's been focused on international business, Newman says he's seen more companies realize that the challenges of doing business overseas are becoming just another reality of an increasingly global economy ˆ even in small-business states like Maine. "In the past decade certainly, and probably more like the past 20 years, policy-makers and business leaders in Maine have realized that Maine is not going to progress and grow unless we adopt a broader global perspective," Newman says. And while he thinks the state has done a good job developing export markets, he believes Maine still has a ways to go in attracting foreign investment. "We have to not only embrace it when it's here but court it as well," Newman stresses.
To better do his part in courting such investment and meeting the needs of his clients outside New England, Newman recently decided he needed a partner that was as globally active as he was, but could offer additional resources. He started by buying out the interest owned in Atlantica by the Portland-based law firm Curtis Thaxter last December. Then, in February, Atlantica became a subsidiary of Pierce Atwood, a law and consulting firm with offices in Augusta and Portland, as well as Boston, Concord, N.H., and Portsmouth, N.H.
Although Pierce Atwood's law practice is very international in scope ˆ with 50 clients in 50 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, says John Gulliver, a partner and head of the firm's Energy Practice ˆ its consulting firm lacked the contacts or expertise to offer business consulting to those international contacts. So the firm looked to Newman and Atlantica to help bridge the gap. "Maine is inevitably part of the globalized economy and Pierce Atwood is part of that globalization," says Gulliver. "Having the Atlantica brand name, as it were, to facilitate that [business] is very helpful."
In fact, Gulliver sees Maine on the verge of what he calls its third wave of globalization. The first, he notes, was when Europeans first settled here and exported raw products overseas. The second was when Maine was a heavy exporter of finished wood products, textiles and shoes ˆ industries that have declined sharply. "Now we see that the next great global opportunity is in services ˆ not just law but business insurance, financial services and environmental science," Gulliver says. "Having Perry sitting right next to our own business consultants and bringing that international experience could be a big part of making that happen."
Prying open the door
It's been a winding road to get to that point, though. Newman didn't start out as a business consultant. In the 1980s, he practiced law, serving as chief law clerk to a Missouri Supreme Court judge and then moving into private law firms in St. Louis, Seattle and Cleveland.
Despite gaining corporate law experience at those firms, Newman says he didn't have an inkling to toss away his law books until 1992, when he joined Hahn Loeser & Parks, one of the largest law firms in Ohio. There, he headed the firm's international business practice, helping foreign clients document their domestic transactions and implement business plans in the United States. His international frequent flyer miles began to ramp up, he says, and he started to see his career from a different angle. "What really intrigued me was actually the work that went on even before we lawyers were needed," says Newman, "The assessment and development of new markets, and understanding how receptive people in those areas were to new products and technologies or to new business entrants from another culture."
Newman's work with Hahn Loeser also gave his first taste of international business from both directions: companies in the States seeking opportunities abroad, and companies abroad seeking opportunities here. His work included assisting U.S. clients with projects in Russia, the United Kingdom and Korea, and representing French, Italian and German clients in their U.S. activities. By 1996, Newman moved on to Maine and out of the legal profession altogether.
Newman became the first president of the Maine International Trade Center and the first director of international trade for the state of Maine ˆ a position he gained through appointment by former Gov. Angus King. During his four-year tenure, Maine exports increased from $1.47 billion to $2.2 billion annually, the largest increase the state had ever seen. He also organized and led trade missions to Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Iceland, Brazil and Argentina before leaving MITC when he felt he'd accomplished what he wanted to do with the organization.
But the host of contacts among overseas business owners and trade promotion officials he'd built up at the MITC gave Newman a good base to start Atlantica Group in 2000. "[My contacts] looked to me as a resource in New England who understood international business development," says Newman. "So, my name and my firm's name got circulated a lot, particularly in Canada and France, and those referrals precipitated a lot of the work I began to get from outside the country."
In fact, getting so much work from overseas companies looking for U.S. business opportunities was surprising, he admits. Newman originally conceived Atlantica as a vehicle to help U.S. companies ˆ particularly those in New England ˆ identify business opportunities abroad. "In some ways, a lot of what I do is, I guess, the inverse of what I did for the Maine International Trade Center," Newman says.
New England, he says, is well known to many businesses abroad ˆ particularly in certain segments such as higher education, medical research and biotechnology. The region also has an active venture capital community, which gives it additional cachet. Still, New England often isn't the first place a country considers investing, so Newman likes to point out one of the region's big advantages: accessibility. "It is often easier to pry the door open to opportunities for foreign companies in New England because of the smaller size and relative lack of competition compared to places like California or New York," he says.
That market accessibility proved a powerful draw for several companies in Nova Scotia. Newman is working with the government of Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia Community College to bring a group of Canadian companies to Maine from May 23-25 to scout out potential business opportunities in southern Maine. Proximity also played a big part of the companies' interest in Maine. "For companies relatively new to exporting, it's conceptually easier to get their heads around shipping to clients who are a few hundred miles away as opposed to cross-continent," Newman says.
The four companies are diverse, says Helen Gromick, project manager for Nova Scotia Community College, made up of a boat-building operation, a food manufacturer, a maker of high-end knitted wear and a provider of environmentally-friendly cleaning products. The broad range of products and potential customers represented by these companies is one of the key reasons they need someone like Newman on the ground in Maine to do the homework and make introductions, Gromick notes. "Often with businesses, it's a scary prospect to go looking at new markets in another country, even one just across the border," says Gromick.
Newman doesn't limit the scope of his consulting work to the New England region, though. Among his current projects is an engagement with an Israeli company, Silentium, which develops and markets an embedded noise reduction technology. Potential customers for the technology include computer makers who wish to reduce noise from the machines' cooling fans and luxury car makers who need to cut down noise in air conditioning and heating systems ˆ and Newman already has found the company such opportunities in Canada and Europe. Newman is also helping the company find technology development funding.
The French connection
As befits a business with many overseas clients, some callers to Newman's office will hear their own language coming through the wire. With his extensive business in Canada and France, Newman's voicemail message is in both English and French, as is Atlantica's newsletter. Although he studied French "a thousand years ago" and his skill level is far from perfect, he says that "speaking that language shows an extra level of commitment to the culture of many of the French and Canadian companies I work with."
So far, French is the only foreign language Newman has at the ready, but with an estimated 60% of his clients either French Canadian or French, it's a key language to keep in shape. With his business in Israel increasing, though, he says learning Hebrew is an enticing prospect ˆ albeit a multi-year project, if he decides to take it on.
Newman's language considerations are key business decisions because Atlantica Group essentially is a one-man shop, both headed and staffed by Newman alone. Over the years, though, he's developed relationships with other consultants he can call on to help with specific projects. Most important is his long-standing partnership with Paris-based PAN Consulting France, which is headed by Alain Lombard and provides Atlantica clients with resources on the ground in Europe ˆ particularly those U.S. companies looking to establish operations there. "So many companies are looking for expansion overseas but they eventually shy away from it," Lombard wrote in an e-mail message. "We help them overcome the barriers and it is a wonderful job to be in between. I can smooth up the 'arrogant American' image in France as much as Perry can greatly improve the image and strategy of French firms who try to penetrate the U.S. market."
David Swardlick, the president and founder of Swardlick Marketing Group in Portland, is one of Atlantica's clients who appreciate having both Newman and Lombard at the ready. His company is looking for opportunities in France, hoping to find regions that would like to hire his firm to promote travel to Americans, and looking for food and beverage makers who want to export their products to the United States. Swardlick already knew Newman from when he directed the MITC, and says Atlantica's current set up with PAN Consulting provides him with "double-barreled" impact. "It's a fantastic situation to have someone close to home you can see and someone right in the thick of things over there who can follow up on things for us directly," says Swardlick.
Now, Newman is hoping the firm's acquisition by Pierce Atwood will further enhance Atlantica's reach and services. By joining Pierce Atwood, for example, he can offer clients the legal expertise that he couldn't provide alone, since he hasn't actively practiced law in years. And because those attorneys have a list of overseas clients of their own, the relationship could help introduce Newman to more potential customers.
Pierce Atwood, for its part, is happy to keep the Atlantica name around. Gulliver admits that Newman's consulting firm could perhaps one day be absorbed into Pierce Atwood Consulting, but for the foreseeable future, he acknowledges that all the work Newman has put into Atlantica has made other business owners aware of it. Nor is Newman thinking of turning over Atlantica to other managers just yet.
Although the travel is daunting ˆ sometimes keeping him out of the country for four weeks at a time ˆ Newman says he still enjoys the work and regularly being exposed to new people and cultures. And despite his decade-long tenure facilitating international trade, he expects there will always be new challenges in linking businesses across borders and oceans. "The way I judge whether Atlantica is on the right track isn't so much in whether an engagement is profitable to me immediately, it's the nature and complexity of the engagements," Newman says. "We'll pursue a project even if it isn't as profitable as one we did the year before, because there is something we can learn from it."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments