Interview Paper

Dan Matera: Hello, my name is Dan Matera, and I represent The Most International Grup Ever.  Today, our group has the pleasure of interviewing Nasim Sadr, a fellow MBA student at the University of Delaware, who simultaneously works for Dimo Corp. as Director of Sales.  We’ll be asking Nasim questions regarding her work functions as they pertain to the global economy.  The goal of this interview is to gain a better understanding of numerous factors that can impact International Marketing planning, policy, and execution.  Nasim’s experience navigating many nuances and complexities of the global environment will prove fundamental in attaining this understanding.  Thanks for meeting with us today, Nasim.

Nasim Sadr: Thank you.

DM: So, you work for Dimo Corp.  What do they do, and what is their mission?

NS: Sure.  Where an after market military sales firm – primarily aviation products and ground support.  So anywhere from C130s, F16s, F5s…depending on the region that we’re selling to.  So different international countries have different platforms that they need to maintain and keep up, and primarily most of the parts are from the United States.  It’s our job to get it to them.

DM: That’s really interesting.  So your target audience is not an individual consumer.  It’s a country?

NS: Correct.  It’s governmental entities abroad.  We deal with the United States government also, but our international markets are anywhere from the Middle East, to Taiwan, to Turkey, some European regions such as Germany and the Netherlands, and then primarily in the Middle East it’s the UAE,  Saudi Arabia, and Turkey (depending on whether you consider that Europe or the Middle East).

DM: You’re providing them with military parts.  They build their own weapons, and you’re providing the raw materials, am I understanding that correctly?

NS: No.  So the United States has already made the aircrafts.  The U.S. already makes the C130s, F16s, F5s, and on and on.  What we have done is we have given these aircrafts away through different contracts, through different ways, and also a lot of these governmental entities have purchased from the United States.  C130s are purchased from Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.  Our job is when those parts get old, and they need to repair it, we will provide the aftermarket parts to repair their units.

DM: Got it.  Okay.  You obviously deal with a lot of different cultures and different governments on a daily basis.  It’s not just the governments that you’re dealing with, you’re dealing with people in those countries.  What are some of the different cultural complexities that you deal with?

NS: One of the primary challenges that we have is within each region of the world, there are different cultures that we have to meet to succeed in.  For example, the way that we access a contract or a customer in Saudi [Arabia] is very different from how we would assess them and do business with them in Taiwan.  So what we have is we have people within our corporation that are just to specialize within those regions.  So we have someone who is Taiwanese; who speaks the language and who speaks directly with the end user and the consumers.  That is one of the biggest things that have allowed us to be successful.  Another part that allowed us to be successful is a lot of people are trying to get into the Middle East now, because…you know…UAE started spending money and things like that.  I don’t mean now, but within the past 10 years.  What we did is we went into the market 20 years ago.  So now those American companies that are trying to become strong there – they don’t have the accessibility and they don’t have the trust with the regions.  We’ve been building the trust for over 20 years, so it’s easier for us to go into the market with all of these products even though we’re a small company.

DM: Do you recall a story where you had difficulty closing a deal or sending a shipment?

NS: That is a daily event for us.  The United States exports compliance is very strict.  We abide 1000% with that.  We have created an expert compliance program, which I manage, and it’s for the Department of State and the Department of Commerce.  What I do is…every item that has to leave this country gets scanned, and has to go through a whole process whether they need an export license or they can [simply] be released.  That is a five step system to verify the release of the item.  What happens a lot of times is the United States government says, “I don’t want you to ship this product to this country.  If you do want to ship it, you have to figure out why are you allowed to ship it.”  So it’s my job to figure out why I am and why I’m not.

DM: For security concerns?

NS: For security concerns, because we’re dealing with military goods.  We don’t want anybody to have accessibility to something that we as the United States do not have.  [For example,] [a]nything that comes to UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles)…things like that, the whole world is trying to get on top of.  Well as the United States, we want to be on top of [it].  So we want to make sure that we know what items and products we are allowing these other countries are utilize.

DM: So they won’t build something that we didn’t think of?

NS: Correct.

DM: Got it.  What is the most difficult country to do business with?

NS: Well, there are certain countries that we in our market can’t do business with.  I don’t want to get very specific on it, but [it’s] due to different sanctions, embargoes, and also uses of technology.  As we know, there are some countries that are more applicable to utilize those technologies than others.  That’s where we have stricter guidelines.  But there’s also the very specific embargo countries, which are Iraq, Syria, Iran….  Iraq is getting a little bit less [strict] as we gain more control.

DM: I would assume Cuba [as well]?

NS: Cuba is getting more relaxed, Iran is getting more relaxed.  So that number is shrinking, but those strict guidelines are still going to be in place probably as long as I’m going to be alive.

DM: Have you faced any issues that presented a legal and/or ethical risk?

NS: There was a very specific item that was going to Turkey for an unmanned aerial vehicle.  One of the challenges was that Turkey was creating a UAV that we weren’t sure what it could carry.  What load could it carry?  And that’s very important, because you want to make sure…are they carrying missiles?  Are they carrying anything like that?  So what happened is there’s this one part of it that we are the primary resource for that country.  The United States government said, “No, you can’t send this.”  We had it in our warehouse…it was over $2 million…for a good 7-8 months.  That’s money that we had already paid out to our vendor.  What happened is Turkey and the United States senate got together; they came to an agreement, and then they allowed us to release it.  One of the [areas were] we were beneficial [was] we kept going back and providing more and more information.  We worked with our contacts in Turkey and said, “Look, this is the people you need to go to.  This is whom you need to speak to.  This is what you need to do.”  One – because we would like to get that $2 million off our shelves.  Two – because it’s an item that, if they didn’t get from us, they would most likely reverse engineer it themselves.   Our job with the United States government was to say, “Which way do you want this to go?  Do you still want to make the financial monetary value of it here in the U.S.?  Or do you want Turkey to reverse engineer it?”  It did get cleared, and they are now in the production with the line.