Chamber Business Expo Prompts Local Shopping, Global Selling

May 02--Businesses that don't sell their products online may be missing out on what Casey Millspaugh of UPS calls an "ecommerce boom."

As part of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce 2014 Business Expo on Friday the Fort Smith Convention Center, at least 300 chamber members also heard from UPS business director Quinn Frazier of St. Louis and First National Bank of Fort Smith president and CEO Sam T. Sicard during a breakfast presentation on the future of ecommerce.

"There are so many opportunities online to sell to a growing middle class overseas," said Millspaugh, a Fort Smith native and local UPS account executive. "I love Fort Smith, but we concentrate too heavily on our local market. We're in an ecommerce boom right now, and if you're not online you may get left behind."

According to UPS's comScore data, which has been collected since 2003, online sales in the first quarter of 2013 equaled that of the entire year for 2005.

"You're going to see that just continue to go up. We haven't hit the top yet," Millspaugh said.

UPS, which was started in 1907, does business in 220 countries.

Millspaugh pointed to A to Z as a good example a local chain taking advantage of online sales. Coffee.org, another local company that sells its products online, has been at the forefront of online marketing.

"It's important to shop local, but if you're not selling globally you're not going to survive," said Tim Allen, CEO and president of the chamber. "You look at the younger generations and the numbers of their online sales say that's where it's going. Their mall is the world."

Sandy Dixon, president of Turn Key Construction Management in Fort Smith, noted her teenage son "buys everything on the Internet."

Thermold Magazines, which is in the process of moving its high-capacity gun magazine manufacturing operation from Georgia to Fort Smith, is also a well-known online marketer. A company representative said Thermold would have its move to River Bend Industries on Wheeler Avenue complete by the end of May.

If people aren't buying things online, they are at least looking up information about services online. The expo is as much an educational opportunity as it is a virtual walking tour of Fort Smith's diverse collection of chamber members, from Preffered Office Products and business insurance gurus Brown-Hiller-Clark & Associates, to behavioral health experts The Guidance Center, which has offices in six local counties and a 40-year history of mental health care.

Joni Padilla, coordinator of community relations for The Guidance Center, said the Affordable Care Act's affect on their business has been both good and bad. It offers more people the opportunity for care, such as anger management and "co-occuring" care for those with both mental health and substance abuse needs. But, with only 55 mental health professionals there is now a need for more therapists.

Two University of Arkansas at Fort Smith professional development groups also took part in the expo. Pat Eller, director of the UAFS Center for Business & Professional Development, said the Expo provided the business-to-business networking opportunity to provide a leadership and management course to Littlefield Oil Company. They start next week.

Dave Robertson, director of the Family Enterprise Center in the UAFS College of Business, said the "responsiveness and agility" of UAFS to ramp-up educational programs quickly is additionally benefited by a faculty made up of "subject matter experts" who learned the ropes in the field.

"It's not what you would call a traditional faculty," Eller said.

___

(c)2014 Times Record (Fort Smith, Ark.)

Visit Times Record (Fort Smith, Ark.) at www.swtimes.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services