EXPERIENCED international business people outlined what they wish they’d known when they started exporting including a York architect and an Easingwold plastics specialist.

An audience of novice exporters heard the speakers at the eighth We Are International Export Network event in Leeds last month

Managing director of Easingwold-based Industrial Textiles & Plastics, Marc Van Der Vort, whose business makes protective engineered textiles and chemical resistant membranes, discussed his experiences internationally, including in The Middle East and Europe.

As well as outlining the importance of researching behaviour such as customs on how to greet and where gifts are appropriate, he stressed how crucial it is for UK exporters to ensure that they meet the right people.

He said: "In China we once made the error of meeting a sales director rather than the company principal.

"He kept passing notes on our talks into another room but never came back with an answer because he did not want to say no to us in front of his colleagues. Eventually we went somewhere else, met the decision maker and did the deal in an hour."

Director of international projects at York-based DWA Architects, Mel Fairbourn-Varley, who is experienced in the design of care facilities in the Far East and is involved in a major scheme in Guangzhou, China, also stressed the importance of understanding local culture.

He said: "We beat competition from Denmark and Hong Kong but, under Feng Shui, our design brief had the development the wrong way round.

"We had designed it as in Europe, maximise daylight by facing East-West but under Feng Shui it had to be North-South."

Also speaking at the event was export adviser, Paul Walters, managing director of Halifax-based Lime Tree Europe, who said that, when planning overseas trips it was crucial to consider basic elements which could easily be overlooked with disastrous consequences.

He said: "Consider the logistics of getting yourself to overseas sales trips and to meetings and make your own arrangements.

"Think about who you are meeting and what they expect from you and do enough research to write down addresses in the local language and show them to taxi drivers as very often there are no street names and they will not understand your accent."