Be an Exclusive Distributor Becoming the exclusive U.S. distributor of a foreign product can be a great way to secure startup success.

After studying Japanese in college and living in Japan for part of the '90s, James Allard always wanted to do something in business that was Japan-related. When he and Steve Rosen decided to start a business in 2004, they went to Japan to search for a product they could import to the U.S. In a Tokyo department store bathroom, they spotted an electric hand dryer made by Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi.

"Neither of us had ever thought about hand dryers," says Allard, 40. "But we were both kind of enamored with it and thought maybe this was it." Following a year of correspondence with Mitsubishi, Allard and Rosen, 39, became exclusive U.S. distributors of the Jet Towel hand dryer, an item long popular in Japan because of its quick-drying features but never sold in the U.S. The Jet Towel license formed the foundation for Seattle-based Pacarc LLC, a five-person company for which CEO Allard expects to post yearly sales of $1.1 million by the first quarter of 2007.

Having an exclusive license for the giant U.S. market is one of the more solid foundations a company can start with, even if it's not a sure thing, according to Kenneth D. Weiss, a Gaithersburg, Maryland, import-export consultant and author of Building an Import/Export Business. "If you can get exclusive distribution, you're not likely to have competition directed at that same product, although you're very likely to have competition directed at similar products," Weiss says.