Export training set for manufacturers

Nevada Industry Excellence is offering northern Nevada manufacturers help with growing their revenue through exports.

ExportTech, an educational event the group has conducted several times in southern Nevada, is coming to Reno in February. The three-day seminar spread out over three months is designed to give companies the tools to expand their markets through exports.

"We get six to eight companies together and get them up to speed on developing their own export plan," says Sandy Haslem, director of Nevada Industry Excellence, formerly known as MAP. "The first meeting they get fundamentals and are assigned a coach and intern to do research. They do their homework, come back with targeted needs, whether it's financing or shipping or navigating regulation and we focus on that in the second session. They get additional assignments and in the third session we critique their plan."

Haslem says the program has produced phenomenal results for manufacturers in southern Nevada, including Chef Rubber, a maker of specialty professional cooking items in Las Vegas, which said it doubled its sales within a year and half, and Las Vegas-based instrument maker Sable Systems, which said exports helped it increase net income 8 percent. Reno manufacturer ElectraTherm, maker of the Green Machine, which uses heat waste to generate power, said it doubled exports in a year after attending ExportTech.

The event is scheduled Feb. 7, March 7 and April 11, 2013, and will be held at the University of Nevada, Reno, Redfield Campus on Wedge Parkway. The cost is $1,500 after a $1,000 reimbursement through a grant from Nevada Investment & Trade Revenue Opportunities administered by the Nevada Office of Economic Development.

More information is available online at www.nevadaie.com.