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Cornish links the boom years for South Florida’s export sector to changes that began in the late 1980s when reforms known as ‘’neoliberalism’’ began to take hold in Latin America .

Governments began opening controlled markets to investment, lending and imports. But many economies ran into trouble in the late 1990s, suffering reversals, devaluations and, in the case of Argentina , a massive default on its foreign debt. Hundreds of small mom-and-pop companies involved in exporting were unable to survive. Unlike the Midwest, where exports are primarily the domain of large multinationals, Cornish said South Florida ‘s exporting sector is characterized by many small distributors. ‘’Our export demographics were much more driven by companies that had seven or eight employees and doing $7 million of business in one country,’’ Cornish said. ``If that country dipped, they were very, very negatively affected.’’ Cornish said since the exporting rage was opportunistic, driven by entrepreneurial energy often combined with the ability to speak Spanish, many of the exporters simply turned to another aspect of international business or jumped on the real estate bandwagon, investing foreign money in buildings.

‘’A lot of the people that were in [trade] were entrepreneurs who perhaps had several contacts in a given market -- they had family in Bolivia and because of that they were able to garner some export-related contracts,’’ Cornish said. ‘’As the market dropped, they were interested in investing in the U.S. market.’’ They might, for example, go out and buy an apartment building, he said. While a number of the small exporting firms appear to have moved into other areas of international business, the transition wasn’t being measured as it occurred. ‘’There is no market intelligence being collected in this town,’’ said Charlotte Gallogly, president of World Trade Center Miami.

``If we had the staff and time, we’d do that.’’ Some exporters who could no longer sell or even collect their debts from foreign buyers exchanged exporting for importing; others were acquired by bigger firms as consolidation rolled through the industry. The computer and electronics export business in particular underwent consolidation as many of the big firms of the 1990s closed shop, some because they bet wrong and self-financed exports to Brazil before the big devaluation of 1999.

EARLY TROUBLES Other companies ran into trouble earlier. BakeryCorp, a Miami firm that sold more than $100,000 in pastry to Cancún , Mexico , before the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, saw its business evaporate when Mexico devalued its currency and decided to focus on the Florida market. Some of the little exporting enterprises simply suffered the fate of many other mom-and-pop operations. Statistically, 80 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years. But even larger companies have run into problems.

One of Miami ‘s oldest medical equipment export firms, Calmaquip, closed its doors last year after experiencing financial difficulties and then facing a federal grand jury indictment on charges of rigging the bidding for the Piarco International Airport in Trinidad . Arca Knitting, which made knitted fabric at its Hialeah plant, closed last October. Unlike many South Florida firms, which are just distributors, Arca actually exported its own textiles to Central America after apparel firms moved offshore in the 1980s and 1990s. MOVE TO ASIA But with the end of quotas for Chinese apparel in January 2005, big apparel makers switched their orders from Central America and the Caribbean to Asia . Arca’s orders plummeted, said Jorge Canals , the owner. He waited through three agonizing quarters hoping the orders would pick up again before finally closing last fall. His former employees scattered in many directions but, some of them have gone into real estate, construction or real estate-related businesses. ‘’Everyone is doing a little bit of everything,’’

Canals said. Possibly, he, too, might end up in real estate, which is what he is engaged in as he tries to sell the knitting mill property. Among the area’s seasoned exporters is Neal Asbury , who moved to South Florida and in 1999 founded Greenfield World Trade, a Davie distributor of kitchen equipment in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia . Much of his work is devoted to putting together commercial kitchens for U.S. restaurant franchises and hotels around the world.

For 20 years he ran a similar business from Hong Kong and Shanghai , and his firm barely survived what he called the ‘’devastating’’ Asian financial crisis in 1997. But he came to South Florida because no matter what has happened to small firms, it is a great location for an export business. ‘’ Miami is the Hong Kong of Latin America. What city has a better infrastructure?’’ Asbury said. Asbury, who got into the exporting business by getting a mailroom job in a New York export firm 25 years ago, said that today it is much harder for small companies to make a go of it.

MORE SOPHISTICATED Back in the 1970s and 1980s, he said, large U.S. manufactures used to give away their export business to any distributor, but today they are much more sophisticated. ‘’Before it was easy to get good lines; today it’s not easy. You have to have something to offer,’’ said Asbury, who exports a number of U.S-made goods such as KitchenAid products. Competing against experienced and better-capitalized medium-sized exporters such as himself is also difficult for small exporters, he said. ‘’It’s hard to compete against us unless you really know what you are doing,’’ said Asbury, whose company sells about $30 million annually.

``There are going to be people who can weather the storm; others, there’s a bump in the road and [they’re] out.’’ Merritt, whose company sells everything from equipment for entire hospitals to surgical instruments, said that back in 2001-2002, his firm had a near-death experience. Now he said that rough patch can provide lessons on what it takes to keep an exporting business going.

‘’I was the poster child of companies that were never going to make it,’’ Merritt said. The problem was that he expanded and diversified at an inopportune time, opening offices in Argentina just as the economy headed for its 2001-2002 collapse and in Brazil as the real devalued by one-third in 2002. Even the Mexican government cut back on purchases, while most of the economies in the rest of the region were shrinking. ‘’It was kind of like the perfect storm,’’ Merritt said.

‘’In retrospect, it was not good planning on our side,’’ Merritt said. He accepted the blame and turned to a management coach to find ways to cut costs.

SLASH AND BURN It was slash and burn. Merritt cut his staff from 105 to 60 people, something he called ‘’the hardest thing I have ever done.’’ His salary was reduced by 50 percent for several years; other members of the management team took 20 percent salary cuts. The Argentina office was closed, and Brazil was downsized. ‘’We survived just by tightening our belt,’’ Merritt said. He rescheduled his company’s debt and eventually many of his clients paid what they owed as times got better. Now Merritt sticks to his medical line, although he did recently open centers in Miami and Mexico City where technicians rebuild used endoscopic equipment, which is used for visually examining internal organs, for the Latin American market. Business is going well again and Merritt expects to sell more than $50 million this year. He credits his own employees with the company’s survival and he tries to take every employee on a company retreat each year -- backpacking in the West or to a dude ranch in Lake Wales . Merritt said Cornish, who was his banker, also helped him face reality and get back on track by refusing to lend more money. Cornish remembers that he told Merritt to get back to his core business to face the tough times. ‘’It’s been my impression as a banker and an insurance professional that when most medium-size companies diversify, they diversify their way into bankruptcy,’’ Cornish said.