 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
Salesman for the States
Netty C. Gross
 ESTEBAN ALTERMAN |
SHERWIN POMERANTZ IS A burly Zionist and Orthodox American Jew who wears a yarmulke and lives in Jerusalem. And yet, improbably, he�s been instrumental in the building of a Pennsylvania-made ice rink in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and has helped a wholesale butcher in Bahrain purchase hallal beef slaughtered according to Islamic ritual in Atlanta, Georgia. The 61-year-old New York native, who immigrated to Israel in 1984, has also acted as matchmaker to deals between U.S. state businessmen and their counterparts in places like Dubai and Oman.
All this happens because Pomerantz is president of Atid EDI Ltd., an Israeli company which has been contracted by the states of Georgia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Missouri, to represent their trade interests in the Middle East. The firm is also the Israel trade rep for Cali-fornia, New Mexico, Delaware, Missouri and Oklahoma. In eight years, Pomerantz says his company has helped some 1,000 U.S. firms to establish a Mideast foothold.
Nineteen U.S. states have trade reps in Israel, including the nine Pomerantz represents. The other 10 are represented by individual American-born Israeli citizens. Only Ohio maintains its own office in Israel (in Tel Aviv), manned by three full-time Ohio state employees.
Pomerantz�s Jerusalem office is lined with state flags, seals, and grip-and-grin photographs of various U.S. governors. The building, in the Har Hahotzvim high-tech park, once housed Luz Industries, the solar-panel producer which went bankrupt in 1990. In an interview, he insists that despite all the troubles with the Palestinians, "nothing has changed, we�re very busy." Still, on a July trip to Amman, Pomerantz, traveling as usual on a U.S. passport, kept his yarmulke in his pocket. He also took several small additional precautions: He traveled with a colleague and opted to return home the same day, rather than spend the night in Amman.
Pomerantz admits that he�s been rattled by the early-August murder in Amman of Israeli jeweler Yitzhak Snir, 51. But he also thinks that Snir, whom he did not know personally, was reckless. "I would not advise an Israeli citizen to keep an apartment in Amman these days," he says, adding that after hostilities broke out, Snir should have changed flats or moved into a hotel.
And yet Pomerantz, like the mythic fender-banging car salesman, firmly sticks to his mantra: "Business is business. Americans still want to sell their products in the region and locals want to buy them. Life goes on despite the politics." Indeed, he points out that in 2000, U.S. manufacturers exported some $7.75 billion worth of merchandise to Israel, an increase of 11 percent over 1998. As for violence-scarred 2001, Pomerantz says "the numbers are holding. We did very well in the first quarter, if that�s any indication."
In fact, several American companies have asked if they should lower their profiles because of the violence, and state officials wonder if it is a good time to be represented in Israel. Pomerantz tells them: Why is what�s happening important, as long as people are buying your products?
Pomerantz says he�s never had a problem being an Orthodox Israeli Jew representing U.S. companies in the Arab world -- except for two or three isolated incidents, like anti-Semitic after-dinner remarks made by inebriated Jordanian businessmen. At a recent world trade event in Chicago, the Egyptian consul-general invited him to lunch. And hundreds of Arab businessmen from the region attended a promotional trade event Pomerantz organ-ized last May in Antalya, Turkey. "Everyone knows, I�m Jewish and Israeli," he explains. "It�s just ignored."
Yet there are obvious handicaps. Aside from Jordan and Egypt, Pomerantz has not ventured into Arab countries (although his Arabic-speaking colleague, associate director Seth Vogelman, has visited Dubai and Oman at least three times. "Everyone knows he�s Jewish too.").
So how does he serve his clients� regional trade interests? "We can phone every Middle Eastern country except for Saudi Arabia and Syria," he says. And those countries we can email as long as we avoid using an �.il� address," indicating the message originated in Israel.
"Look, we are aware of the potential for trouble, but we don�t obsess about this all day," he goes on. "We are paid to help the Georgia manufacturer of, say, precision steel balls find a distributor, or the chicken restaurant chain to find a franchisee. We have a job to do. Politics is left at the door."
U.S. states hit by unemployment are increasingly interested in courting Israeli and Middle Eastern businesses to American shores with an eye toward creating local jobs. States are offering "really attractive deals -- rent-free buildings, 10-year tax abatements," he says. And he�s been receiving a new inquiry each week from Israeli firms checking out the opportunities in the U.S. So far 50 Israeli companies have opened their U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, including Veritas Venture Partners and Tadiran Microwave. "The funniest part of the business is explaining to Israelis that there is no charge to them for this service," he chuckles. "They can�t believe it."
POMERANTZ, AN ELECTRICAL, industrial and mechanical engineer, moved to Israel from Chicago with his first wife, who died of cancer in 1989, and their daughter. His first job was as a vice president at Luz; it lasted eight years. "There I was, sitting around with three of my colleagues, 50 years old and unemployed. We started kicking around ideas." The one that took hold: To create a company via which the four U.S. immigrants with local experience would "sell" Israeli industry to U.S businessmen.
Till then, the Ministry of Industry and Trade had purchased the services of Hill-Knowlton, a prestigious Washington, D.C.-based PR firm. "But we had an advantage," Pomerantz says, recalling his own sales pitch. "We were English-speakers who understood both U.S. and Israeli business culture." He initially offered his services for free, and launched the ministry�s bi-weekly economic update "Israel Investment News," which his firm still edits.
But with hi-tech starting to sizzle, Israeli executives did not need Pomerantz to trumpet their wares. And in 1994, Pomerantz learned that the State of California�s Trade and Commerce Agency, a cabinet-level body attached to the governor�s office, wanted to enter the Israeli market and sell California products. The agency was, for example, spending $2.5 million annually in Germany promoting California wares including food, hardware, electronics, cosmetics and clothing.
In fact, the genesis of California�s sudden interest in Israel had to do with the efforts of a local Californian pol and Jewish activist named Rosalie Zalis, who was in the kitchen cabinet of then-California governor Pete Wilson. In 1993 Zalis, armed with private funds raised from Jewish Californian industrialists, had proposed a matching-funds scheme where industry would share the costs in hiring a trade representative in Israel. Wilson agreed; Pomerantz won the bid. His first client was a San Diego-based software developer who was trying to develop a million-dollar project in Israel; a partner, says Pomerantz, was found in 48 hours. "Until we came along, Californian exports to Israel amounted to $300 million. Today that figure is nearing $1.2 billion." He adds that, for example, Israel is the world�s third-largest consumer of California walnuts.
"At the end of the day, California�s return on its investment in us is phenomenal," says Pomerantz, "though I�m not taking credit for all of it." He gets only a retainer -- the size of which he declines to disclose. Indeed in 2000, only New York State�s exports to Israel ($1.86 billion) surpassed California�s $1.07 billion.
After California, Pomerantz began lobbying for more clients, pitching states where local Jewish activists had been lobbying state agencies to get representation in Israel.
Why doesn�t every state have an Israeli office? For starters, the American market is so big that fewer than 8 percent of U.S. companies even bother to export. Then there are the American multinationals, who handle their own overseas interests. And then, he charges, many state leaders "still have no vision" -- and that includes big states like Texas and Michigan, which have declined to open up local trade offices. "They are wrong," says Pomerantz, "because exports help create jobs and increases company revenues. Obviously Microsoft doesn�t need me. But small to medium-size U.S. companies which want to sell their products in Israel or, say, Saudia Arabia, can�t afford the expenses of flying someone over here indefinitely to line up the right business contacts. That�s where we step in."
As a positive example, he cites Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge whom, he says, "took a really backward state and got it wired to the 21st century."
In 1998, Ridge came to Israel with business, political and academic leaders. Now about 100 Pennsylvania companies are doing $123 million worth of Israeli business annually.
Still, the logic in hiring a company which represents competing states also proved a stumbling block. "We were repeatedly asked," says Pomerantz, "�How will you steer the business if two companies from different states manufacturing the same items both want to sell their products in Israel?� My answer: give me a chance. In fact, it�s worked to everyone�s advantage."
Which is how, a few years ago, he brokered the Bahrain-Georgia hallal meat deal. "One day the Chamber of Congress of Vernon, California, a town of 50,000 people, received an inquiry from a meat wholesaler in Bahrain wanting to know if there was a slaughterhouse in the state which prepared hallal meat," recalls Pomerantz. "The inquiry was passed to me. We diligently searched all of California and found not a single one. But then I discovered a butcher in Georgia, who did slaughter beef according to Islamic ritual. I put them together." Today the Atlantan exports $2 million worth of beef to Bahrain. "Positive synergy," Pomerantz remarks jovially.
COOL, RELAXED AND friendly, Pomerantz is marked by the worldiness of someone who spends his life moving goods across borders, from manufacturers in, say, Peoria to buyers in Dimonah or Amman. Perhaps expectably, he throws his hands up helplessly when he�s asked about the unfolding tragedy engulfing the region. Instead, he talks about the meaning, if any, of his own shifting religious affiliations in the grand scheme of things.
Initially he was active in the Conservative movement both in the U.S and in Israel, where he helped establish a Conservative shul in Ramot, his Jerusalem suburb. But he drifted to more traditional observance -- some of this having to do with his remarriage 11 years ago to an Orthodox woman. And while Pomerantz prays in an Orthodox shul these days, all the religious hair-splitting, even his own (he has "no problem" with a female cantor or rabbi but won�t pray in a mixed minyan), makes him chuckle. "When I was Conservative," he sighs, "people suspected me of being a closet Orthodox. Now there are Orthodox who think I�m a closet Conservative. Truthfully? I�m not sure God cares. Lots of people are going to be in for a big surprise when, one day, they get up to Heaven."
(10 September, 2001)
Business
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2004 |  |