“Doing Business With Us” North Country Chamber of Commerce event
More than once in recent years, fDi Magazine has ranked Plattsburgh among the top Cities of the Future in North America for foreign direct investment. It reflects the steady commitment over the last 30 years to place us in the “Quebec business” – positioning our area as a highly attractive location for U.S. subsidiary operations of Quebec companies. And while Quebec is and will remain our key source of prospective investment, our international success with our neighbors has increasingly attracted manufacturers and companies from around the world including Norway, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Sweden and France, among others. (And it’s notable that every prospect we have dealt with for the Nova Bus site has been based in another country).
Besides a preference to be in a diverse manufacturing hub, they find that the expertise we have developed in support of Canadian business is helpful to all international business. And proximity to such a global city as Montreal adds to the draw.
Our approach remains reputation-centric – consistently acting year in and year out to build connections and awareness next door, reaching the point where businesses interested in the U.S. come to us, either directly or to one of the many Red Carpet workshops we conduct annually with our team of experts.
Interestingly, these Red Carpet sessions with individual prospects – in addition to group workshops we do in collaboration with the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Quebec and with the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal — have been quite active recently. As I write this column in early September, we have just hosted the third in two weeks. Two of these were from Quebec and one was from Israel. Two were manufacturers and one was a distributor. And confirming that this process is a long game, one of the Quebec companies had done a Red Carpet with us fifteen years ago. They ended up not proceeding with a U.S. location back then but now are ready to freshly consider the possibility so they came back to us.
No one else works FDI like we do, with most areas focused on showing real estate first while we show a comprehensive team approach that addresses all that an international venture needs to consider from legal and financial matters to visas, customs clearance, insurance, workforce recruitment and training. They are universally blown away with the team and the expertise, often providing the defining difference.
To learn more about our attraction of FDI, visit our special website at www.NYMTL.com — “Where New York Meets Montreal.”
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