Offbeat Exports

Small entrepreneurs do well

As founder and president of World-Wide Sires Inc. of Hanford, Calif., Willard Clark has an occupation that would stump the old What's My Line? panel: he sells bull semen. Acting as a broker for nine artificial-insemination cooperatives, Clark ships the frozen semen of prize U.S. bulls (mainly Holsteins) to more than 40 countries, including the Soviet Union. Now Clark is looking to China, where he also hopes to hog the market for swine semen. His business is only seven years old, and he expects sales this year to reach $5 million.

Clark is only one of many small, imaginative entrepreneurs who are successfully pushing a wide variety of U.S. exports. Hurdling problems of language, complex export red tape and trade barriers that have daunted bigger U.S. businessmen, the new entrepreneurs are shipping some unusual products abroad.

Trees from the Angelica Nurseries in Kennedyville, Md., will soon be planted for shade and beauty on the wide boulevards of European cities. When Europe's nurseries were unable to meet the high demand for the large-leafed, pollution-resistant trees of the London plane variety, Angelica's owners, Thomas J. Kohl and his three sons, saw their chance. From their 1,000-acre tree farm this year, they sent 5,000 sycamore hybrids to Hamburg at $24 to $30 each and expect to ship as many as 10,000 next year.

Rexton Corp. of Los Angeles buys leftover orange peels from Sunkist and ships them to Tokyo to be used in making marmalade, soy sauce and whisky. Katsumi Sato, the Japanese-American owner of Rexton, investigated the budding Japanese market for orange peels last year, liked what he saw and went into the business. Sato expects to earn close to $250,000 next year. He is looking into two other exports for Japan: shark fins for soup and jackets from the Los Angeles Police Department, popular with teenagers.

Geraldine Waterbury of Gridley, Calif., turned to farming after raising a family and has just produced the largest crop yield of kiwi fruit in the state's history--15 tons per acre. She markets them at $2 per lb. to the Japanese, who consider the fuzzy fruit a rare delicacy. Tom O'Toole, a Detroit tinkerer, has invented a single-cup coffee brewer that he has begun to market to the Japanese. Next he will send them his production molds, which are priced at $90,000 and produce up to 15,000 brewers a day. Tolona Pizza Products of Chicago sells more than 500 tons of pizza ingredients a year to the Japanese and the Europeans. In Skokie, Ill., Anixter Bros. Inc. is supplying the Saudis with $15 million worth of indestructible shelters that double as shipping containers.

These relatively small exports will not balance the U.S.'s $30 billion trade deficit. But they add up, and they help. Most important, the sales show that Yankee traders can indeed crack the foreign market--if they show a little ingenuity.

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