Ivania de Gallardo beamed as she handed her business card to a representative from a Colorado company that promotes herbal products and explained her little Salvadoran company's desire to begin exporting to the United States.
"We have a line that is completely natural," she said yesterday, beginning her spiel in booth No. 303 of the Natural Products Expo East, an international trade show at the Washington Convention Center this week.
Teresa de Rodriquez of San Salvador shows Phuoc Lam of Port Townsend, Wash., an indigo-dyed shirt at a trade show yesterday in the District.
(Hans Ericsson For The Washington Post)
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Two years ago Gallardo and her father started Botanikal and began marketing their cough syrups, colon cleanser and a tonic that Gallardo told customers stimulates the immune system.
Gallardo and her father were flown to the D.C. trade show as part of a contingent of 15 Salvadoran companies sponsored by Expro, a $6 million project by the U.S. Agency for International Development that is teaching small-business owners in El Salvador to export their products. The small-business owners said the United States is an attractive market for two reasons: The Salvadoran community in the United States is about 1.5 million strong and growing; also growing is the market for organic and natural foods.
Expro, which started in July 2003, has already helped about 55 Salvadoran businesses export $4.8 million worth of products to the United States, Japan, Germany and other countries. That's a tiny sliver of El Salvador's total exports of $3.2 billion last year, but the program has helped small businesses reach markets overseas. A few USAID trade specialists live in El Salvador and help guide small-business owners through the maze of regulations so they can begin exporting.
"The companies come to [trade shows] to get to know a new market, to see what the trends are and to see who the competition is," said Lisa K. Alley, an Expro trade specialist.
The three-day Natural Products Expo is expected to attract more than 20,000 people, including vendors, wholesale buyers and consumers.
USAID is working with about 400 companies in El Salvador. All were required to have fewer than 100 full-time employees, to provide their sales figures and other financial information, and to be producing products that trade specialists thought had a market outside of El Salvador.
The Salvadoran entrepreneurs here this week are selling organic coffee, fruit teas, cashews, soaps, lotions, wooden brooms, nutritional supplements, herbal medicines, honey, handmade hats, indigo dye and a traditional Central American drink called horchata, which is made of cinnamon, chocolate and spices.
Increasing Salvadoran exports is an important part of improving the country's economy, said El Salvador's ambassador to the United States, René León. The country imported $5.4 billion in goods last year, according to government figures, dwarfing its total exports.
