She’s Proof Positive That International Business Is Within Reach For Everyone

Like so many small and medium-sized business owners today, Kimberley Vuitel loved the idea of international business, but didn’t think she had the special skills or experience to make it a reality. Until she did.

This trade services manager for World Trade Center Northern California watched her father work internationally while growing up. He was a worldwide manufacturing manager for a subsidiary of Shell Oil, overseeing facilities in Asia, Canada and Europe.

“I saw what he did and how he enjoyed the exposure to different people, cultures and foods,” Kimberley remembers. “It made it more real because my father was involved in it.”

After earning her bachelor’s in Business Marketing and Management from Towson University in Maryland, Kimberley went on to earn an MBA from Northeastern University in Massachusetts. Her concentration was in Finance and Marketing.

At Northeastern, one benefit for students like Kimberley was the program offered real-world experience through a 6-month-long co-op job. “I tried out finance and didn’t like it, which cemented my focus on marketing and management,” she says.

During the decade that followed, Kimberley worked as a buyer and merchandise planner and then as a medical product sales representative. For the latter, she was based in Hawaii, which was very diverse and gave her a taste of what it would be like working internationally.

Then came her opportunity. Kimberley was hired as a St. Louis, Missouri-based sales operations manager for the international sales department of TRG Group, a licensee for Victorinox (also known as the Swiss Army Knife company). She managed inventory, orders, shipments and communications with factories and distributors outside the U.S.

“My first learning was that if you’re communicating in email with a non-native-English speaker, you use as few words as possible and no catchy American. phrases,” she shares.

After a year in this role, Kimberley was promoted to director of international sales. She oversaw the sales operations team plus supported the vice president in communicating with distribution partners around the world. That’s when the fun really began.

Kimberley began traveling internationally, where she enjoyed meeting people, talking business and perhaps her favorite part—eating the local food. “That was the great unitor,” she laughs. “All of our distribution partners would enjoy the food part of my visits. It’s how you really get to know the people and the culture.”

She’s since visited major cities in more than 30 countries. Some of her favorites have included Denmark, especially Copenhagen, Switzerland (where Victorinox is based) as well as the Latin American countries.

After a decade as director, Kimberley became vice president of international sales, responsible for the team selling travel gear outside of the U.S. Then in 2014, TRG Group was sold to Victorinox Travel Gear. She spent the next seven years working directly for Victorinox in Switzerland as director of product management.

All this gave Kimberley some incredible experiences and insights. For one, she now had first-hand experience in international operations, sales, strategy and management. She also saw how quickly businesses can grow overseas, and the difference it can make in their resiliency.

In 2004, for example, TRG Group’s international division was only 15 percent of the company’s revenue. In the 10-year period in which she worked as director and then vice president, it grew to 35 percent of company revenue and close to half of its profitability.

“We were really an afterthought,” Kimberley recalls. “But we became so important and then hugely important during the Great Recession where the U.S. business suffered, but the international business was diversified in so many countries and growing.”

“Organizations that do business outside the U.S. are more resilient and profitable during downturns they pay their employees more, and grow faster,” adds Kimberley. “This cemented why I’m excited to be part of the World Trade Center Northern California and their program that is helping business to go global.”

In mid-2021, when Victorinox moved Kimberley’s role and the team she worked with to Switzerland, she stayed in St. Louis. She was familiar with her local World Trade Center since she had turned to them for help over the years, and as luck would have it, they had received a federal grant for outreach to woman-, minority- and immigrant-owned businesses. Kimberley was awarded the contract and worked with the program for the next year and a half.

After wrapping it up, Kimberley was keeping up her skills and network by participating in webinars. The World Trade Center Northern California had an interesting one, and Kimberley joined. That’s where she connected with President and CEO Kevin Mather and the two began to talk about Kimberley coming on board to oversee an exciting program for Northern California’s small and mid-sized business owners.

“It’s a five-year grant from the NorCal SBDC and a wonderful opportunity to really stand up a brand-new program,” she shares. “There are the program contract and guidelines, but how we execute and deliver it to small and mid-size businesses and community college students is up to us. I’ve had fun strategizing with Kevin and now executing.”

Read more about this program that includes an online learning module, one-on-one counseling to work on specific issues and co-working sessions here.

One thing that makes this program really unique is that it connects participating businesses with interns who are from local community colleges—60 percent of which are from disadvantaged backgrounds—and are employed by the World Trade Center Northern California.

“That’s the secret sauce,” Kimberley says. “So many programs like this offer some sort of education to businesses, but don’t offer the next step of how to get it done. They teach and make recommendations and then leave it to the business to execute. Through interns and co-working sessions, we help the businesses make the changes.”

“I am so excited about it,” she adds. “For myself, this is exactly the type of work I like doing—helping businesses go global and using my experience to do that.”

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Interested in Participating or Recommending Interns?

For small to mid-sized businesses interested in learning more about the program or community colleges interested in getting their students involved, please reach out to Kimberley and Kevin at kvuitel@norcalwtc.org and kmather@norcalwtc.org.