NEWS CHRONICLE

09 october 1992 

BUSINESS PEOPLE COME TO COUNTRY, LEARN U. S. WAYS

Polish contingent meets with area business to observe and maybe set up a few deals

By Jim Ponder

Thousand Oaks - If you want to do some business in poland, then Leszek Szumelda is ready to meak a deal.
Szumelda is director of Unitrade a Warsaw firm that represents foreign business people who want to export products to Poland
For example, Unitrade represents U.S. - based Hobart, a manufactured of kitchen equipment and another products.
Szumelda and 17 other Polish businessmen and women have been in Ventura County since Satyrday to learn about western management techniques. The program is scheduled for the next two weeks.
The Polish team is the Conejo Valley at the invitation of the International Association for Managerial and Organization Psychosynthesis, a Thousand Oaks management organisation headed by CLU faculty member John Cullen.
Also participating in putting the delegation together were the World Trade Center, the Polish American Chamber of Commerce, the Polish Embassy and the Polish - Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Cullen said.
Daily business luncheons are held as part of program. Guest speakers from various disciplines talk shop with the participants, most of whom communicate through an interpreter.
The Poles are free to make business contacts with whomever they want, Cullem said.
Members of the Polish team were at Janss Mall Thursday evening to attend the farmers Market and get a look at retailing California - style.
Several members spent time in Marshall`s department store looking over the merchandise and making some purchases.
"Now is good time to buy U.S. products becayse the dollar is low against other currencies", Szumelda said.
Unitrade did $7 million business last year and expects growth to continue to be strong, he said.
The team`s background range from casino operation to medical equipment, Cullen said.
Each member hopes to make business contacts and pick up management techniques that will be useful in running their business back home, Cullen said.
"I learn as much as I can about their culture. It helps me to develop better training programs for them", Cullen said
Some of business people are entrepreneurs who founded their own firms and others direct state-owned concerns on their way to eventual privatization.
"I`m here to make business contacts" said Włodzimierz Jankowski, director of Zakłady Techniki Medycznej, a Poznań firm that distributes medical equipment.
The company`s 270 employees also make electrodes for EKGs which are exported to Czechoslovakia.
Jankowski said he hopes to eventually export products to the United States.
Two things have impressed Szumelda about the Conejo Valley so far - the climate and the prices.
"It`s below zero Celcius back there now. Here, we`re able to go swimming" he said.
Prices for consumer goods are surprisingly low in America, Szumelda said.
"I didn`t know things in America were so cheap".