Crying Wolf

Name and age: Craig Vaughn, 44

Company name and description: Craig's Carpets Inc. is a $6 million flooring broker.

Based: Dalton, Georgia

Founded: 1980

1997 sales: $5.5 million

1998 projections: $6.5 million

Going global: As an experiment, Vaughn placed an ad for his flooring products in a trade magazine in 1996. To his surprise, a company in the United Kingdom called to place an order. Figuring there were more customers where that one came from, Vaughn attended a U.S. Department of Commerce course called "Passport to Export." After learning the basics, Vaughn targeted markets in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Philippines. Those efforts increased his sales by 1 percent the first year and are on track to a 4 percent increase this year.

Paper chase: The biggest challenge Vaughn faced was learning how to shuffle the massive amounts of paperwork involved in international sales. "That's the biggest part of the deal," he says, "and if you get it wrong, you're in trouble."

Let me tell you: "Your company can make money doing business internationally. You've just got to get in there and figure out how to do it."

Contact Source

Craig's Carpets Inc., (800) 535-8789, http://www.kdco.com/craigscarpet

This article was originally published in the December 1998 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Crying Wolf.