BRITISH COMPANIES CROSS THE ATLANTIC

　　Next month a large group of British business people are going to America on a venture which may

　　generate export earnings for their companies' shareholders in years to come. A long list of

　　sponsors will support the initiative, which will involve a ￡3-million media campaign and a

　　fortnight of events and exhibitions. The ultimate goal is to persuade more Americans that British

　　companies have something to interest them.

　　While there have been plenty of trade initiatives in the past, the difference this time round is that

　　considerable thinking and planning have gone into trying to work out just what it is that

　　Americans look for in British products. Instead of exclusively promoting the major corporations,

　　this time there is more emphasis on supporting the smaller, more unusual, niche businesses.

　　Fresh in the memories of all those concerned is the knowledge that America has been the end of

　　many a large and apparently successful business. For Carringtons, a retail group much respected

　　by European customers and investors, America turned out to be a commercial disaster and the

　　belief that they could even show some of the great American stores a retailing trick or two was

　　hopelessly over-optimistic.

　　Polly Brown, another very British brand that rode high for years on good profits and huge city

　　confidence, also found that conquering America, in commercial and retailing terms, was not as

　　easy as it had imagined. When it positioned itself in the US as a niche, luxury brand, selling shirts

　　that were priced at $40 in the UK for $125 in the States, the strategy seemed to work. But once its

　　management decided it should take on the middle market, this success rapidly drained away. It

　　was a disastrous mistake and the high cost of the failed American expansion plans played a large

　　role in its declining fortunes in the mid-nineties.

　　Sarah Scott, managing director of Smythson, the upmarket stationer, has had to think long and

　　hard about what it takes to succeed in America and she takes it very seriously indeed. 'Many

　　British firms are quite patronising about the US,' she says. They think that we're so much more

　　sophisticated than the Americans. They obviously haven't noticed Ralph Lauren, an American who

　　has been much more skilled at tapping into an idealised Englishness than any English company.

　　Also, many companies don't bother to study the market properly and think that because

　　something's successful in the UK, it's bound to be successful over there. You have to look at what

　　you can bring them that they haven't already got. On the whole, American companies are brilliant

　　at the mass, middle market and people who've tried to take them on at this level have found it very

　　difficult.'