As part of USTR.gov’s APEC 2011 outreach, USTR.gov spoke to American business leaders about their companies, the importance of international trade, and how trade within the Asia-Pacific region can help their organizations grow. Today’s CEO discussion is with CEO of TicketRiver, Lance Trebesch.
TicketRiver.com Benefits from Increased International Trade
“Our competitive advantage is in the very quality of our software that runs the entire e-commerce website and order e-management system. This software is the heart of our company’s intellectual property and offering – in this case, our website. The value of this offering is what the customer sees, which includes our huge inventory of online templates. Our website is popular due to the e-commerce market demand for simple, easy-to-use web interfaces.
“Increased international trade provides more market access and opportunities for our company to engage in market expansion, which diversifies our revenue streams and contribute to company growth right here in Montana.
“When we launched Ticket River Australia 18 months ago, we were excited to see just how successful our business can be in international markets. Essentially, we just leveraged our existing U.S. digital assets – e-commerce code, online template, e-commerce management system – and planted that in Australia. Expanding into Australia has allowed us to create a brand new revenue stream and business, and now we have well over 1,000 customer in the Australian market.
“Our experience expanding our business into Australia and our proven success with an international customer base is driving our expansion plans into the Asia-Pacific region.”
“In markets like Australia, we’ve effectively addressed this market of consumers largely unfamiliar with e-commerce as a medium for transactions usually obtained through brick-and-mortar service providers. When we enter a new market like Australia, our success is attributed to a very competitive offering, because of the e-ecommerce experience the customer enjoys and the quality of product they receive.
“Our intellectual property is the basis for our high quality products that we offer in our markets in the U.S. and Australia. That is why we are strong advocates of intellectually property protection and enforcement to protect our assets and keep our company competitive, especially when we enter new international markets where U.S. laws no longer have jurisdiction to protect American companies. These protections are important to us are and protect how we can deliver our competitive e-commerce experience. Business and trade friendly regulatory structures also enable TicketRiver.com to set up business in new markets faster and thus generate faster returns on our investments.”
TicketRiver is Looking for Increased Market Access Abroad
“Before we launched the Ticket River Australia site, overseas customers had to order in the U.S. and have it shipped to them. Once we launched our business in Australia, we had many customers write to us to express their joy that we’ve made their lives easier.
“One customer wrote, ‘We are so happy you expanded to Australia! We have nothing like this in our country. Your site and the ease of use of the template and your product quality are just so excellent.’
“We are proud to have delivered ticket printing and ordering in a different way for Australians and introduced them to the a new e-commerce experience in printing. We are an example of a U.S. company that has really benefited from access to markets in the Asia-Pacific region because it has allowed us to capture the opportunity to introduce a new kind of product and build a sustainable market demand for our innovation.”
The Asia-Pacific Region is a Potential Growth Market for TicketRiver.com
“Our goal is to expand to all Asia-Pacific markets one day. More market access and intellectual property protection, greater ease of market entry, and stronger regulatory business environments makes our company more agile and able to expand our operations here at home.”
“By expanding into new markets, we create new jobs here in the U.S. When we build new revenue streams from new markets like the United Kingdom and Australia, we need more manpower to support the flood of new customers and first-time transactions. This adds jobs to our customer support team in the U.S. which helps our U.K. and Australian fulfillment providers and customers in those markets.
“Expanding into new markets also requires us to constantly improve and customize our software, which creates software development jobs here in the U.S.
USTR is working hard this week to create new opportunities for U.S. exporters like TicketRiverin the Asia-Pacific Region. Be sure to follow our progress on USTR.gov.
