Voices

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Voices

The Business Journal asked a group of local executives, “Are you noticing an uptick in business from Asia?”

Carl Hunt

President

CIM Vision International Corp.

We plan to open our first Asian office in Singapore this summer. We have gained confidence that the recovery is in motion and that large firms and multinationals will have money to spend on manufacturing equipment and software.

David Van Buren

CEO, President

Tecstar Inc.

The technology sector seems to have bottomed out. Most discussions are still in the formative stage, but the Asian accounts of our major clients appear to be making a comeback. We have a long-term agreement with Boeing, and the Singapore Airlines order means that our production rate will be the same or better this year.

John Franklin

Sports Source Inc.

We do a lot of business in Asia. Japan hasn’t changed much for us, and our customers are still not buying. It hasn’t gotten any worse, but not better either. We’re starting to see a lot of activity in Southeast Asia, however, in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Martin Driskell

Director of Sales & Marketing

Hotel Inter-Continental Los Angeles

The Japanese are coming back, but we have not seen a recovery from our Korean and Chinese markets. Through May, we have seen a 7.8 percent increase from last year in visitors from Japan, and I expect that number to go up during the coming months. Almost all of the Japanese visitors are groups of business travelers.

Roger Bloxberg

CEO

Nova Development

We used to have around $500,000 in sales to Japan three years ago, and that has tapered off to almost nothing. We expect that to change. Last week, we signed a new sales representative who will focus on the Japanese market. There is a lot of flux in the software distribution industry in Japan, and in many respects it has opened up more and has become a new market.

Marcel van der Sluys

President

Vandair Freight Systems

We’ve seen a slight turnaround in Asia. Exports are slowly creeping up, and are now 10 to 20 percent up from where they were two years ago. South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore are showing the most improvement for us. Indonesia is dead. We haven’t seen any orders from there in six months.

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