Rob Finley never takes the Canadian culture for granted when he travels to Toronto on company business. “Canadians are sensitive to the fact they are not Americans,” he says. “You have to honor and respect that nationalistic pride.”
Finley, vice president of international sales for Fortessa Inc., travels to Canada frequently because that’s where the tableware company opened its first foreign subsidiary in 2003. Canada looked promising because hotels represent one of Fortessa’s largest client groups. “There are two key hotel groups based in Toronto, Four Seasons and Fairmont,” notes Finley.
Loudoun County-based Fortessa designs, develops and markets tableware, which gives Finley entrée to some of the most prestigious high-end retailers and luxury hotels in the world. Altogether, the company sells to more than 20 countries and has 70 employees and associates in its global markets.
Twenty percent of the company’s sales come from outside of the United States. “We expect our export sales to grow rapidly in the next three to five years,” says Scott Hamberger, one of the company’s founders.
Besides Canada, Fortessa has subsidiaries and partnerships around the globe, from Europe and China to the Middle East and Australia. “By 2006, we had added the term global to our company descriptor. Since then our international sales have doubled,” says company CEO Scott Hamberger. “We expect them to approximately double again in the next three years.”
One of the keys to the company’s international success is securing a strong local partner in each area. “You can’t have a U.S.-centric view of the brand or business and expect to be successful in replicating it around the world,” Hamberger says. Canadians, for instance, prefer doing business with a company that has a Canadian connection. “To be truly successful you must have a presence in Canada. You have to treat it as a priority.”
The population of the greater Toronto area is more than 5.5 million. “That’s a huge captive market in a small geographic space,” observes Finley. As the fifth largest city in North America, Toronto has a cosmopolitan culture. “It’s a world-class city,” he adds.
You can find our more about Fortessa by going to: www.fortessa.com
