WILKES-BARRE -- A candle manufacturing business in Wilkes-Barre is taking its product international, and dozens of other businesses hope to make the same kind of deal, all thanks to a meeting set up by world trade advisors and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance.
About once a year trade reps from 20 countries meet with business owners from Northeastern Pennsylvania to help them get their products into the world-wide market.
The Mia Bella candle company in Wilkes-Barre ships to all over the United States and Canada. The owners now plan to take their well-known stateside product to Korea and hopefully South America.
Bob Scocozzo pitched his candle product to a representative from Brazil and reps from 19 other countries at the annual international trade advisers meeting at the Woodlands near Wilkes-Barre.
It's a chance for business owners to show what they can export to a world-wide market. And if a deal is reached, that could mean more jobs for folks here at home.
"Our goal is if we make five cents on a jar and we create jobs and if we sell a million dollars worth of candles we wouldn`t have those sales. We`ll take that five cents and create more jobs and put more people to work. It`s a win win for us," said Scocozzo.
As part of the sales pitch, the 20 trade reps toured the plant, which specializes in hand crafted, hand painted specialty candles. At least one country's rep has already put in an order for Mia Bella Candles.
"It`s a huge growing market in Korea right now tremendous growing industry so we have been importing a lot of candles right now," said Ara Cho, a trade rep from Korea.
"By exporting their product they are going to increase the number of production they have and many of times when they have overseas orders they need to add on a few more people," said Supriya Kanedker, a trade rep from India.
The Northeastern Pennsylvania International Trade Program reports that after this meeting was held last year, a large number of participating businesses said the meeting generated sales directly from the meeting.
"We got to meet with 20 more countries today and to share our product and story and our goal is to have our product in every household in the world," added Scocozzo.