Business

Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has elections.
At the El Trovador restaurant the Chamber had elections for General Directors, Regional Directors and Affiliate Directors. Elected were Carmen Ortiz-Larsen, Veronica Cool, Ingrid Herrera, David Charon, Luis Diaz-Colorado and Bill Villanueva. At the meeting were also present chamber board members Luis Borunda, Javier Bustamante, Enrique Ribadeneira and Carlos Peters. Jorge Ribas and Henry Millan were also present. More than thirty people came to the meeting to hear Ben Mason, Executive Director of the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce and an excellent speaker.

	Latin American Trade Week at the Engineers Club. With the attendance of Aris Melissaratos, Secretary of Business and Economic Development, Maryland's Office of International Business celebrated a get together with the representatives of Chie, Brazil and Mexico. The purpose was to network and present the possibilities of export to those countries by Maryland busineses. This is all part of the new dynamic favorable business atmosphere being developed by the Ehrlich administration the point man of wich is Secretary Milissaratos. The Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was invited to the affair and a good contingent showed up. Luis Borunda, Bill Villanueva, Gilberto de Jesus, Sylvia Zumarraga, Ingrid Herrera, Roberto Allen and Javier Bustamante represented the Chamber and exchanged cards and email addresses with those present among which we saw Sheila Dixon, Baltimore City Council President, and Deborah Kielty, President and Executive Director of the World Trade Center Institute. The evening was a great success and more than one hundred business leaders had a chance to hear about export chances to Chile, Brazil and Mexico.

Governor Ehrlich takes on minority biz contracting

Challenging a bureaucracy that he claims has long defrauded Maryland’s minority-owned businesses, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich yesterday issued an executive order creating a commission to study how the state awards contracts — and how much is actually paid.

The commission, an amalgam of black, Asian and Hispanic representatives across a variety of industries, is expected to issue reform recommendations to the governor’s office within six months. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele identified audits, accountability, enforcement and contract bundling, which locks out smaller businesses by joining many jobs into one contract, as reform areas of emphasis.

The goal, Ehrlich and Steele said, is to create “legacy wealth” that could sustain minority businesses for more than a generation, and to move “dollars out the door and into the pocket.”

Among those named to the commission are former Prince George’s County Executive Wayne Curry, Comcast executive Rosetta Kerr Wilson, Allied Technologies President Matthew Lee, Luis Borunda, president of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Comerce, and who owns a sign company, and Brian Holmes, executive director of the Maryland Highway Contractors Association. The commission consists of 17 members and will include two legislative members from the House of Delegates and two from the Senate.

“It hurts my head that this is 2003 and we’re still having a conversation about underutilized businesses,” said Sharon R. Pinder, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Minority Affairs. Pinder noted James A. Belasco’s 1991 book “Teaching the Elephant to Dance” as an example how the state had refused to change because of inertia. Leadership from the top, she said, was needed to move the mountain of bureaucracy and provide more equal opportunities.

Sparking the reform was a 2001 audit by the state Department of Legislative Services that found only one state department had met the state’s 25 percent minority business enterprise requirement. Even worse, the report noted, some departments were overstating what was paid to MBEs by as much as 40 percent.

The report underscored years of complaints by state legislators and business owners that the system isn’t working. Ehrlich and Steele, who is black, are both business lawyers and pledged during their campaign to reform the system.

“It’s way overdue,” said Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, D-Baltimore, who studied the issue and wrote recommendations for Ehrlich this year as a member of the Budget and Taxation Committee. “When we analyzed the report and looked at it, I was, quite frankly, embarrassed.”

The commission’s focus, McFadden said, picks up on many of the recommendations of the Senate. While not a guarantee for reform, he said, the climate was “a lot better than it has been.”

“[Ehrlich] got real people on there who understand large and small businesses,” McFadden said. “You’re talking expertise.”

Committee members hoped that expertise could open the door for businesses and communities in the city or Prince George’s County that have never experienced long-term success.

“Basically it’s an issue of fairness,” said Garland Williamson, a commission member and head of the President’s Roundtable. “It’s really about building capacity and legacy. Minority businesses are the last to be considered and the first to be gotten rid of” during the bid process.

Franklin Lee is the only attorney among the group, and brings his experience crafting MBE legislation in other states. Maryland, he said, should follow the federal government’s lead and create electronic records of all contracts to better audit just how much is actually paid to MBEs.

“Many states have been slow technology-wise. The technology is here,” Lee said. “It’s going to be a whole new yardstick.”

BDC GRANTS ENP FOR SALE OF THE RALEIGH BUILDING

The Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) today announced it has granted
a 60-day Exclusive Negotiating Privilege to an entity headed by GFI Properties, LLC of Boston, Massachusetts, for the acquisition and redevelopment of the Raleigh Building.

Located at 1100 Wicomico Street in the Carroll Camden Industrial Park, the Raleigh Building is an eight-story, 348,000 square foot office/warehouse/manufacturing facility owned by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore since 1976. BDC, which manages the building on behalf of the city, issued a Request for Proposal for the property.

GFI Properties, LLC, a subsidiary of GFI Partners, a well-known redeveloper of older commercial buildings, is joined in this venture by Plexus Communications Group (Anthony Mosby and Cristina Vena), a minority-owned software engineering/network integration firm in Woodlawn, Maryland, and by the Kawasaki Group (Tzu and Amy Yang), a minority-owned enterprise involved in a number of businesses including ownership of the Kawasaki Restaurant in Baltimore as well as a multi-city catering business. (Mr. Yang is also Baltimore City’s liaison for international affairs to its sister city, Shanghai, China.)

“For sometime we have been seeking to identify new private ownership for the Raleigh Building. The team of GFI Properties, Plexus Communications and the Kawasaki Group has the right combination of management expertise coupled with potential new uses for the facility,” said BDC President M. J. “Jay” Brodie. “I am confident that the redevelopment of the Raleigh Building will become yet another exciting project for the Carroll-Camden area.”

If negotiations with the city are successful, GFI Properties plans to modernize and upgrade the Raleigh Building, with Plexus Communications relocating its corporate offices and 80 employees from Baltimore County to the city. Additionally, the two
minority principals has proposed the creation of a business telecommunications incubator as well as a trade center focused on locating in Baltimore the U.S. headquarters of businesses from China.

Sale of the Raleigh Building is contingent upon approval by the Board of Estimates. The transaction is expected to go before the board by the end of the summer.

Focus on Your Customer
(Courtesy of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce)

Could your business benefit from you making the effort to call on one prospective customer per day? Obviously, the more the better but, like all marketing, start small and work your way up. The following points are worth remembering when making sales calls:

1. Find out a bit about the person or company that you are targeting.

2. Make sure that you are talking to the person who makes the buying decision.

3. Make an appointment.

4. Arrive on time, be neatly dressed and make sure you are organized.

5. Look around the office or building for anything of interest that could help you start a conversation.

6. Have a few minutes of small talk and thank the person for seeing you.

7. Explain why you are there.

8. Ask them about their business and requirements.

9. Outline your product or service (in a few minutes) based on their needs.

10. Ask for the person's thoughts or questions.

11. Don't be afraid to ask for the business.

12. If they ask you for more information, get it to them quickly and call to make sure they received it.

Equifax 1-800-685-1111

Experian 1-866-200-6020 (this is still toll free)
Transunion 1-800-888-4213

This is an important piece of information. Check your credit often to prevent false reports and identity theft.