Broad Street Capital Group selects Lipman Law to provide due diligence support and General Counsel services.

(December 2, 2019, New York City, NY) In an effort to streamline its legal operations and to manage international due diligence and compliance processes for the $1.2 billion of financing transactions in its pipeline, Broad Street Capital Group announced today that it has retained Alex Lipman of Lipman law PLLC, to provide general counsel services. Alex Lipman has also joined Broad Street as an Advisory Board Member.

Most recently a partner at a major international law firm, Mr. Lipman has almost 30 years of experience both in private practice and government with focus on SEC enforcement matters, anti-corruption investigations, securities litigation, other regulatory and government matters, as well as corporate governance.

Alex’s government experience includes serving as a Special Assistant United States Attorney on the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In that position he prosecuted and tried cases involving accounting fraud, mail and wire fraud, and insider trading. Alex also served as a Branch Chief in the SEC’s Enforcement Division, where he conducted numerous high-profile investigations into securities law violations, including cases stemming from the collapse of Enron.

In private practice,  Alex has successfully represented numerous individuals and entities in high-profile white collar securities cases, including cross-border investigations and international prosecutions.

Mr. Lipman also has been a key driving force in developing a proprietary Grey2White® Due Diligence Program designed to identify and solve complex legacy due diligence issues, as well as to optimize multiparty compliance inquiries, which arise during international financing transactions.

“We are very excited to have Mr. Lipman and his Firm advise our team. As the Broad Street Capital Group is poised to enter its next phase of growth, having a seasoned, internationally renowned legal expert in our corner, will help the firm’s clients not only to successfully navigate through complexities of international financing and M&A transactions, but will also allow them to unlock the value of their companies by putting in place best practices in the areas of financial reporting, anti corruption and corporate governance.” said Alexander Gordin, Managing Director of the Broad Street Capital Group.

“I look forward to working with Mr. Gordin and the Broad Street team on ways to improve and streamline the way due diligence and compliance are managed during international financing and merger transactions involving companies in emerging markets. Rather than engaging in a reactive, expensive and cumbersome process, the Grey2White® program aims to provide deeper due diligence investigations than conventional KYC screenings in advance of potential transaction. This would provide greater transparency from the start, reduce costs and benefit all parties involved in the transaction.” said Alex Lipman

About the Broad Street Capital Group.

Based in the heart of New York City’s Financial District, Broad Street Capital Group (www.broadstreetcap.com) is an international private merchant bank, which since 1988 has served several foreign governments, multiple state-owned companies, as well as SMEs in emerging markets. Through its member companies, the Group focuses on developing project financing in the $100 million to $1 billion range, providing political risk mitigation, export management services and cross-border market development advisory. The Firm has done business in over 35 countries, spanning the emerging markets landscape from Bangladesh to Ukraine.

Currently, the Firm maintains presences in eight countries and works closely with all trade and development agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as with Credit Agencies of several European and North American countries. Since its inception, Broad Street Capital Group has been involved in multiple high-profile cross-border transactions in agriculture IT/telecom, aerospace, healthcare, oil and gas,energy generation, food security, nuclear safety, hospitality and franchising sectors. The firm’s current advisory and financing portfolio is expected to exceed $1.25 billion by January 1st, 2020.

 

Broad Street expands its risk mitigation services

(New York City, NY, May 2, 2018)   For Immediate Release

Broad Street Capital Group (BSCG) proudly announces the formation of the Broad Street Risk Mitigation LTD., which will serve as the Group’s risk mitigation and insurance specialist.

Broad Street Risk Mitigation will focus on originating and placing complex Political Risk Insurance (PRI) Transactions, as well as on trade finance, export credit, freight and travel medical insurance for project teams.

In cooperation with several major law firms and government agencies, the company will also focus on development and implementation of FCPA and OFAC compliance policies for its clients.

Heading the new entity will be Mr. Paul Gregory, who has joined the Firm as its Principal and Head of Insurance Operations.  Mr. Gregory brings with him over 40 years of distinguished service in the insurance and risk management fields.  He has held multiple management and directorship positions at the internationally known companies and has been involved in complex insurance transactions in over 20 countries.  Mr. Gregory’s relationship with the Broad Street Capital Group goes back over a decade. He advised the BSCG on several export-related transactions and provided invaluable guidance on the company’s dealings in Kazakhstan and Hungary.

Concurrently, with his joining the Broad Street Risk Mitigation LTD., Mr. Gregory has also accepted an Advisory Board position at the Broad Street Capital Group

About the Broad Street Capital Group

Based in the heart of New York City’s Financial District, Broad Street Capital Group (www.broadstreetcap.com) is an international private merchant bank, which since 1988 has served several foreign governments, multiple state-owned companies, as well as SMEs in emerging markets. Through its member companies, the Group focuses on developing project financing in the $100 million to $1 billion range, providing political risk mitigation, export management services and cross-border market development advisory. The Firm has done business in over 35 countries, spanning the emerging markets landscape from Bangladesh to Ukraine.

The Firm works closely with all trade and development agencies of the U.S. Government and Export Credit Agencies of several European and North American countries. Since its inception, Broad Street Capital Group has been involved in multiple high-profile cross-border transactions in IT/telecom, aerospace, healthcare, energy generation, food security, nuclear safety, hospitality and franchising sectors. The firm’s current advisory and export management portfolio exceeds $917 million and expected to exceed $1.5 billion by November 15th, 2018.

For more information contact Alexander Gordin, Managing Director +1 212 705 8765 ext. 701 or via email agordin@broadstreetcap.com

 

AMEX Export Import, the original Broad Street Capital Group member, announces a $20 million contract with SR Group of Bangladesh

(October 31st, 2017, New York City, NY)  AMEX Export Import, the original member of the Broad Street Capital Group, announced today that it has signed a $20 million contract to provide Supply and Export Management Services to the SR Chemical Group of Bangladesh for delivery of a 30,000 ton per year, caustic soda production facility, as well as of two more facilities for derivative product manufacturing.

Over the next eight to ten months, AMEX will work with suppliers from the US and China to oversee and manage design, production, deliveries, as well as provide trade finance services for a state-state-of-the-art chemical production facility to be constructed in Bangladesh.  International Process Plants and Equipment Corp. of Princeton Junction, NJ (www.ippe.com) has been selected as the primary equipment supplier.

“SR Chemical Group is proud to bring the latest technology in caustic soda production to Bangladesh. The new facility will create over 500 jobs and will provide significant economic impact to the area surrounding plant’s location.” stated Mr. Asif Rabbani the Group’s Chairman.  ” We are very pleased to work with AMEX and its international suppliers who were chosen based on their proven international track record, experience with plant construction, proprietary technology and competitive pricing” added Mr. Rabbani

IPPE is delighted to serve as main supply contractors for the proposed main production facility.  SR Group and AMEX will benefit from IPPE’s forty plus years of global experience supplying chemical process plants. Our company’s presence and relationships in China will allow for cost effective and timely delivery of the equipment to the end-user” said Ross Gale, Vice President of Business Development of  IPPE

“We are honored to be part of this important multi-national project” stated Alexander M. Gordin, managing director of Broad Street Capital Group and Chairman of AMEX Export Import. “While the Project is highly complex from the trade finance, project management and logistic’s perspectives, this assignment fits squarely into the Develop, Finance, Supply and Insure framework, which serves as the foundation of the Broad Street Capital Group’s mission” added Mr. Gordin

About SR Group

SR Group (www.srgroup-bd.com) is one of the biggest & leading conglomerates of Bangladesh since 1978. SR Group’s ambitious business expansion is designed and driven by a visionary yet very humble person Mr, GM Siraj. He is not only a far-sighted entrepreneur, but also known for his patriotism. His philanthropy, honesty, sincerity and dedication fetched the group to today’s lofty achievements.The history of SR Group dates back to 38 years ago when it was founded. Now, the group is running 17 units of Telecom, Transport, Logistic, Restaurant, Garment Accessories, Food Processing, FMCG, CNG Processing, Chemical, Information Technology, Mobile Finance successfully.The company’s employee strength has been steadily increasing from the start. Current employee strength is 5000+.

About AMEX Export Import  Inc

Since 1988 AMEX (www.amexexim.com) has been a reliable partner in countless export-import and export management transactions in over 40 countries. Part of the Broad Street Capital Group, AMEX, as exporter of record, provides complete export finance, shipping and A/R insurance solutions.  AMEX professionals are renowned for structuring complex multi-party, multinational export management transactions.

About IPPE

International Process Plants and Equipment Corp. engages in buying and selling new, used and surplus process plants and equipment, as well as industrial real estate properties. The company focuses on buying and selling assets in the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, refining, paper, plastic, and power generation industries worldwide. It sells process plants/power plants; industrial real estate; and process equipment, including surplus, new/unused, rebuilt, re-glassed, and used/second hand equipment. The company was founded in 1976 and is based in Princeton Junction, New Jersey with operations in the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and India.

About the Broad Street Capital Group

Based in the heart of New York City’s financial district, Broad Street Capital Group (www.broadstreetcap.com) is an international private merchant bank, which since 1988 has served several foreign governments, multiple state-owned companies, as well as SMEs in emerging markets. Through its member companies, the Group focuses on arranging project financing in the $50-500 million range, providing political risk mitigation, export management services and cross-border market development advisory. The Group has done business  in over 35 countries spanning the emerging markets landscape from Bangladesh to Ukraine.

The  firm works closely with all trade and development agencies of the U.S. Government and Export Credit Agencies of several European and North American countries. Since its inception, Broad Street Capital Group has been involved in multiple high-profile cross-border transactions in IT/telecom, aerospace, healthcare,  energy generation, food security, nuclear safety, hospitality and franchising sectors. The firm’s current advisory and export management portfolio exceeds $630 million.  For more information, please visit contact Rustem Tursynov at info@broadstreetcap.com,

or call + 1 929 290 0040

Maintaining Export Advantage in the Face of a Rising Dollar: Part 2

In my previous post, I outlined the first two steps of the five-step framework that would enable U.S. exporters to maintain their competitive edge in the face of rising U.S. dollar, which makes all U.S. goods and services more expensive abroad. Those first steps were to recommit to exports and expand markets served.

Below, I describe the remaining three steps: READ MORE

Three Myths about the Ex-Im Bank

by Caroline Freund, Petersen Institute

Congress has begun holding hearings on the reauthorization of the US Export-Import Bank, which provides financing assistance to help US exports. TheEx-Im Bank’s charter expires in September. Three myths are being perpetuated by the new House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and other conservatives who would like to see the Ex-Im Bank closed. Below these myths are considered in turn.

Myth #1 — The Ex-Im Bank is a drain on taxpayers.

No, it sends money to the US Treasury from the interest and fees it receives on loans, amounting to $2 billion over the last 5 years. The reality for taxpayers is that the Ex-Im Bank pays interest on the funds it borrows and returns a profit at the end of the day. The default rate is very low, generating very little risk for taxpayer money.

The Ex-Im Bank’s foes argue that private banks would charge exporters higher interest rates, and therefore exporters are getting subsidized loans, which is costly to taxpayers. However, as my colleague Gary Hufbauer shows, this so-called “fair value” measure uses private rates that are arguably far from comparable.

Myth #2 — The Ex-Im Bank is a form of crony capitalism.

Crony capitalism prevails when ties between government and business determine success. The Ex-Im Bank’s detractors argue that too much money goes to big exporters like Boeing and General Electric (GE). In reality, the Ex-Im Bank’s clients reflect the broader distribution of US exports, where large exporters account for the bulk of trade. Specifically, 90 percent of borrowers are small businesses, similar to the rate of small businesses in trade (85 percent of exporters have fewer than 100 workers, and 95 percent of exporters have fewer than 500 workers). While small businesses accounted for only 19 percent of the total amount authorized by the Ex-Im Bank last year, this is also similar to their share in trade. Firms with 100 or fewer employees account for just 15 percent of export values, on average, and firms with fewer than 500 employees account for 25 percent of exports. The skewed distribution of export financing simply reflects the skewed distribution of exporting.

True, four employees at the Bank are being investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly accepting gifts in exchange for loans or contracts (not with the big companies). The investigation shows that corruption is not tolerated in the institution, but it still smells bad and comes at an unfortunate time. And, of course, corrupt individuals, with a much greater cost to society, are also found in private sector banks (and Congress, for that matter). In response, the Bank must be transparent in its anti-graft rules and their implementation in order to ensure we don’t toss out America’s top exporters with four bad apples.

Myth #3 — The private sector will do better.

The government intervenes when there are positive effects to lending in a sector. Take student loans. There are positive results derived by a more educated public, so governments offer students lower rates than they would receive on the private market.

The same argument can be made for trade (and exporters have a much lower default rate than students). There are public benefits from having more exporters, which create better jobs—exporting firms tend to pay more and offer more benefits than other firms—and are less vulnerable to fluctuations in local demand. In addition, there are a lot of hurdles to export participation, such as paperwork and logistics. Cheaper loans help to offset these costs, especially for small businesses that may otherwise be unable to enter the export market.

There is also a legal distortion in the private market. Trade is highly collateralized, but foreign accounts receivable are ineligible to count as collateral in bank borrowing. This means that private sector interest rates on trade finance tend to be well above what their real risk warrants.

Finally, there is the important issue of the level playing field. Our large trading partners have trade financing banks that are many times larger than the US Ex-Im bank. Without this tool, we put US firms that create good jobs for Americans at a disadvantage with respect to foreign competition.

Given the Bank’s extremely specialized role, with no obvious cost, it is difficult to understand why the Bank has even become a target. Unlike healthcare or unemployment insurance, where support follows traditional party lines, the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank pits the right against the far right. Does this new territory suggest that the Republican Party is fragmenting? Or is this part of a broader strategy, where bank closure brings the discussion on spending and redistribution one step closer to the bigger fish that conservatives in the party really want to fry?

Bribery Happens

By Jonathan Weil, BloombergView
Today the American people learned an important lesson about bribery. It can happen all by itself. There’s even a name for this: immaculate corruption. And it works just like the old saw about guns. People don’t bribe, corporations do.

This explains why Hewlett-Packard Co. is paying $108 million to resolve some overseas-bribery investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, while no individuals are being accused of anything. Because no living, breathing people did anything wrong (or at least none whose names we know of). Only Hewlett-Packard did.

Another important lesson our government taught us today is that Russia is corrupt. Who knew? So is Mexico. Poland, too.

The U.S. has laws to prohibit companies from paying off government officials in other countries to win business. We can presume Hewlett-Packard reasoned that the bribes were necessary because its printers, computers and tech services were so inferior in quality that this was the only way it could sell them. And I sympathize completely.

You could even make a semi-coherent argument that Hewlett-Packard had a duty to try to get away with breaking these laws for the sake of maximizing shareholder value. Back in 2000, when the first of the bribes was immaculately conceived, the Justice Department and SEC hardly ever enforced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But then they started enforcing it again. So, practically speaking, it became illegal again to bribe corrupt government officials in Russia, Poland and Mexico. Hewlett-Packard found itself on the wrong side of the thin blue line.

Truth be told, the company’s biggest mistake was not being a bank. Neither the Justice Department nor the SEC has ever used the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against a bank.

How bad was the conduct in this case? The bribes to the government officials in Poland helped Hewlett-Packard win a contract with the Polish national police agency. In Russia, they helped Hewlett-Packard retain a contract with the federal prosecutor’s office. That’s so bad it’s good. Like I always say, if you’re going to bribe anyone to get a government contract, you might as well get it with the cops.

So now Hewlett-Packard is going through the usual drill of non-remorse. The company’s Russian subsidiary agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges in a federal court in California. Its Polish unit got a deferred-prosecution agreement. And its Mexican subsidiary got a non-prosecution agreement. So the Mexican subsidiary had better watch out, because if it gets caught breaking the law again then it might have to suffer the slightly more severe punishment of a deferred-prosecution deal, like its Polish cousin got.

As for the people who did the bribing? Well, again, that’s the best part: There weren’t any. Because if there were, then the SEC and Justice Department surely would have filed some sort of claims against them. And this way, everyone is much happier. Hewlett-Packard pays its toll without anyone there getting in trouble with the law. The government lawyers get help with their case quotas. And Hewlett-Packard’s tall-building lawyers can claim to be heroes.

Justice has been served.

To contact the writer of this article: Jonathan Weil at jweil6@bloomberg.net.

They WILL be asking you to pay bribes, WHAT WILL You do? – A Chapter from the Fluent In foreign Business book

READ MORE ON THE H-P bribery case

Develop, Finance, Supply & Insure – a winning merchant banking model for cross-border expansion

After 25 years in business we have developed a winning business model to help companies establish, or expand their business internationally . We then put our business model into a poem and that helped us distill and internalize it better. Can you express your business as a poem? If yes, submit your entry to agordin@fluentinforeign.com before 5pm April 4th, 2014 and the poem we judge to be the best, will be published in our upcoming Trade Week Special Edition in May.

 

WWW.BROADSTREETCAP.COM

 

 

 

 

 

Tiffany Sees Sparkle in Overseas Markets

CEO Michael Kowalski on Building the Jewelry Giant’s Brand in Asia

By LAURIE BURKITT, WSJ.com 

A fixture on New York’s Fifth Avenue, jewelry giant Tiffany TIF 0.00% & Co. is aiming to improve its luster overseas and particularly in Asia, where demand for gold and gems appears to be insatiable.

‘We’re renovating stores and upgrading the quality in sales professionals,’ says Tiffany CEO Michael Kowalski. Bloomberg News

U.S. shoppers have largely driven sales for the New York-based high-end jeweler, but that picture is changing. For the quarter ended Oct. 31, comparable sales in the U.S.—at stores open at least a year—rose by a modest 1%, with the bulk of sales logged at the New York flagship store, which sells mostly to tourists.

Michael Kowalski, Tiffany’s chief executive, is looking for ways to turn those tourists into regular customers when they return home. Adding to Tiffany’s Japan-based stores, which the company first opened in 1993, the jeweler plans to open in markets such as Russia and in France.

The other target is China, where the company operates 24 stores and plans to open three a year for the foreseeable future, attempting to take on rivals in a competitive market and convince Chinese consumers that Tiffany has the best cuts, designs and service.

Mr. Kowalski recently traveled to China to show off Tiffany’s yellow diamond collection and spoke to The Wall Street Journal in Beijing about plans to build its brand in Asia.

Résumé

• Education: Bachelor’s in Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1974; M.B.A., Harvard University, 1977.
• Career: Began career at Avon Products in 1978, a year before it acquired Tiffany. Avon later sold Tiffany, but Mr. Kowalski remained at the jewelry maker, helping to take it public in 1987. He was appointed president in 1996 and CEO in 1999.
• Extracurricular: Loves nature, enjoys Chinese food and hates having his picture taken.

WSJ: What are your goals for moving beyond the U.S. in the next three years?

Mr. Kowalski: We do believe there are wonderful geographic expansion opportunities for us. We’ve tried to build a diversified geographic portfolio so that we aren’t dependent on any one region or any one country. We’ve only recently become a stronger presence in the Middle East and we’ll open our first-owned-and-operated store in Russia this spring.

We’re also optimistic about potential in China. Our companywide plan is for Tiffany sales to grow between 10% and 12% for the foreseeable future.

Right now, we have 24 stores and will probably open three to four stores here per year for the future. We certainly want to be flexible and watch how the market develops. That’s our strategic objective. Clearly if we regard China as the fastest-growing market going forward, that implies a growth rate meaningfully in excess of that 10% to 12%. We’re reasonably confident about that.

WSJ: Some luxury companies are wary of China, where an austerity campaign has hit luxury sales. What makes you confident?

Mr. Kowalski: We think the growth curve in China will be something we’ll love in terms of slope. But it’ll also be volatile. In 2011, it was a fantastic year here and 2012 wasn’t so wonderful. [But] 2013 is stronger and we just had a great quarter here.

WSJ: What is behind the volatility?

Mr. Kowalski: It’s driven largely by consumer sentiment and reaction to economic conditions perceived—real or of the moment. Consumer confidence is less volatile in Europe. China is at the higher end, [while] the U.S. is in the middle. I don’t know what drives that, but it’s a continuing challenge here.

WSJ: Consumers are becoming increasingly global, particularly the Chinese consumer. How is tourism changing your approach?

Mr. Kowalski: [The] rise of the Asian consumers and tourism has caused us to change some of our store practices. We accommodate customers who are speaking other languages. It’s a struggle to find Mandarin-speaking sales professionals. We have to work hard to find them.

WSJ: What are you doing beyond language?

Mr. Kowalski: It has caused us to increase our store presence in markets that are heavily visited by Chinese customers. We’re building a flagship store in Paris on the Champs-Élysées.

We are enhancing the store experience in the U.S. and all over the world. We’re renovating stores and upgrading the quality in sales professionals and everything you see in the store.

We’re changing the ratio of selling space to provide more seating space. More casual sit-down environment, more private areas.

WSJ: What are some of the lessons you have learned by doing business in Asia?

Mr. Kowalski: One thing we’ve learned is the need for high standards of service and store experience. We learned that several years ago in Japan and it was critical to our success. Here, we operate in a more intense environment than back in the U.S. and we need even higher standards of service.

WSJ: What specifically have you learned in China?

Mr. Kowalski: We learned we need to be more overt about how we present our brand. A great example would be the store signage. If you were to look closely at the New York Fifth Avenue store, Tiffany & Co. is written in steel letters on both sides of the doors, perhaps two [feet] in length, six inches in height and it’s carved into the granite of the facade. And that’s the only signage there is.

When we first came to China, we were equally discreet and subtle in how we presented the brand and that created a problem. People simply didn’t see or couldn’t see the brand. They couldn’t understand what the store was about. We’ve had to be more direct and less subtle in how we communicate the brand. We need to do a better job of telling brand stories to give a deeper, richer more robust sense of brand. We’ve recognized that while there’s a broad awareness of consumers, we need to work very hard to increase the depth of that knowledge. There is limited understanding of our heritage and that diamonds are central to our business, that we cut our own diamonds. We need to work much harder to communicate that in China than in America or even in Japan.

WSJ: How are you changing your strategy based on what you’ve learned?

Mr. Kowalski: One thing we’ve started to do is use Tiffany blue far more aggressively in the stores and in the facade.

The other thing we’ve done in China is focus on diamonds. We are the world’s authority on diamonds and we’ve emphasized that more dramatically than anywhere else in the world. We’re also speaking more about the Tiffany heritage. We are 176 years old and more longer-lived than many of the luxury brands.

WSJ: You’ve had success in China recently, but what are some of the challenges?

Mr. Kowalski: Diamonds are seen as value items here, which is at the core of their attraction. But one of the challenges with them in China is the bridal tradition, the engagement ring tradition. It has developed some in the last 10 years. But that’s a core part of our business. We’d like to think our presence here is encouraging that development of the tradition.

Write to Laurie Burkitt at laurie.burkitt@wsj.com

Is It a Bribe…or Not?

 Do you know what violates the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? Take our quiz and find out.

                   

By  JOE PALAZZOLO WSJ.com

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is among the statutes most feared by companies with global operations. It can also be one of the most confusing.

Since 2008, the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have extracted billions of dollars in criminal and civil penalties over alleged violations of the 1977 law, which bars U.S.-based or U.S.-listed companies from bribing foreign officials in exchange for business and requires them to keep accurate books and records. 

But the line between legitimate business expense and bribe is sometimes hard to apprehend, and the U.S. government takes an expansive view of the statute’s reach.

How well do you know the FCPA? Take this quiz, adapted from guidance published by the Justice Department and the SEC last year, to find out.

Daniel Hertzberg

1. Gas Corp. is a large energy firm based in New York and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It enters into a joint venture with a private European company, Euro Gas Ltd., to bid on a contract to develop an oil field in Nigeria.

Senior vice presidents at Gas Corp. and Euro Gas meet in New York and decide to hire a consultant, Middleman Inc., to funnel payments on the joint venture’s behalf to a deputy oil minister with influence over the bidding process. The payments are invoiced as consulting fees, but Middleman Inc. passes most of the money to the deputy minister. The joint venture wins the contract.

Which entities are liable under the FCPA?

A) Gas Corp.

B) Gas Corp. and Euro Gas

C) Middleman Inc.

D) All of the above

READ MORE

APPLE SEEDS, AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S PLAYSPACE, EXPANDING ITS FRANCHISE GLOBALLY

apple seeds expanding its franchise globally, yet carefully

(click to watch the MSNBC video on how apple seeds have done it)

apple seeds is highly popular with kids and their parents

APPLE SEEDS, AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S PLAYSPACE, TAPS  FLUENT IN FOREIGN TO MANAGE INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING  

Fluent in Foreign LLC, a New York City based advisory firm that helps companies grow, finance and protect their business internationally, has been retained by Apple Seeds International LLC (http://www.appleseedsplay.com) to help them develop and manage children’s activity centers, through franchising arrangements, in international markets.

apple seeds, which opened its first activity center in Manhattan in 2007, has won numerous awards for innovation in the design of its 15,000 sq. ft. facility as well as for its wide variety of extracurricular classes for children, and their parents or caregivers, from newborn to five years of age. Last year the company opened its first international facility, in Mumbai, India, with locations in Dubai and Mexico City slated to open this year along with a second Manhattan location.

“Our concept has won recognition and praise from prestigious media like New York Magazine, Time Out New York Kids and Nickelodeon, and we feel the time is right to take our concept — via franchising agreements — to other major cities around the world,” said Bobby Berna, who, with his wife Alison and another couple, Allison and Craig Schlanger, co-founded apple seeds.  “Busy parents in other big cities have the same desire for quality playtime and an innovative learning experience for their young children.  It’s something that is common to all parents no matter the border.”   ( Please visit  http://wp.me/P1iIhX-7K for more…)