Alliance International was founded in June 1997. Our first client was JABRA Corporation, which hired us to assist it market and sell its unique hands-free Earset for mobile phones in Japan. We incorporated the business in 1998. Ten years later, we're still here. What a journey!
The goals of the company have been simple:
* To assist US companies market and export their products abroad
* To find unique products to bring to North America
Our focus has been on industry sectors we know best: professional audio visual equipment, mobile phone accessories, computer peripherals & computer software.
Ten years in business. We must be doing something right. Looking back, there are a few things to be proud of (and many more to be embarrassed by that are saved for future posts):
* Helping to build the market for JABRA's Earset for mobile phones in Asia-Pacific when it was an unknown fledgling
* Introduction to the US of a series of document cameras made by Yokogawa with unique features such as rotating camera head, open stage (platen), integrated writing tablet, integrated LCD monitor (which are now common).
* Introduction to to the US of the Digital Class LCD touch-screen writing monitor made by Media Go Technologies, which forced market leaders such as SmartBoard and Crestron to re-think the way they did touchscreens and interactive monitors.
* Distribution of Nippon Avionics AVIO projectors in North America, which are unique because they include a high resolution camera for viewing documents and 3-D solid objects.
* Assisting InFocus Corporation market its projectors in Japan and Korea.
* Assisting PolyVision sell its interactive, electronic whiteboards in Japan and China.
Through the school of hard-knocks, I've learned some valuable lessons about the difficulty of competing against established market leaders. (It's not easy!) On the other hand, if we've been a "thorn in the side" of market leaders, our efforts have been a catalyst to industry innovation and improvement, resulting in better products for consumers. And it's certainly been a lot of fun.
To all of our customers, we express our most sincere thanks. Here's to another 10 years!