Sometimes in business, it's important to have the right partners and the right allies. It is particularly true when you're doing business in another country, where things aren't exactly like they are back home.

        The language is different, the customs are different. Things are just unfamiliar and uneasy. A case in point: Selling products in Mexico had always been a challenge for Wild Berry Incense Inc. So when an e-mail came from a guy in Mexico City named Luis asking about distribution opportunities for Wild Berry, company founder Marc Biales figured there was no way it would work.

        For one thing, getting products onto a truck and headed south through the Mexican mountains and back country posed certain problems. “Just say that the stuff tended to get waylaid,” said Wild Berry vice president Roger Atkin.

        Translation: Guys in masks had a tendency to stop trucks at gunpoint, shoo the unlucky driver away — maybe or maybe not with some cash in his pocket — and then head off into the night with the truck and the load.

        As a result, Wild Berry officials were skeptical about the inquiry from Luis.
       

Worth a shot
               But in September, Wild Berry entertained a visitor — Luis Cuervo. Yes, that Cuervo — as in one of four brothers in the family that controlled Jose Cuervo, the world's largest manufacturer of tequila. He came to Oxford to inspect the Wild Berry factory and tour Cincinnati. He left with rights to distribute Wild Berry products to all of Mexico.

        Mr. Cuervo had a plan to solve two pressing business problems: one with Mexican roots and the other with roots in Oxford.

        This Cuervo challenge had to do with liquor trucks coming to Los Angeles, depositing loads of tequila and then returning south empty as the Mexican desert. It's called running dead-head.

        Because empty trucks are expensive, Mr. Cuervo's plan was to fill trailers with incense bought at wholesale for the return run. The liquor company's dead-head problem would be solved.
       

One for the road
               The Wild Berry problem of how to get incense south inexpensively, so it could be sold to tourists in Mexican resort cities, was also about to be resolved.

        Nobody, apparently, messes with a Cuervo truck in Mexico because of the family's clout. And if they did, it wasn't Wild Berry's problem.

        The first truck arrived in Mexico City last week — on Tuesday — and reports from Oxford suggest that all went according to plan. The stuff got there.

        Look for Wild Berry incense the next time you are in Cancun or Oaxaca or Monterrey — the latest of about 3,000 outlets worldwide.

        Wild Berry officials think the Mexico distributorship is going to open the door to other Latin or South American outlets and that revenues may one day rival sales in another foreign land where Wild Berry incense rules: Turkey.

        There remain some difficulties to work out with the Mexican initiative, however. Translating names of the Wild Berry incense into Spanish for instance, said Mr. Atkin.

        “I don't know how you say Carmen Miranda's Hat in Spanish,” he said.
       E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8386.

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