Globalization, a definition

"Nemak, an automotive unit of Mexican industrial conglomerate Alfa, won a contract to produce 330,000 aluminum motor heads a year for Hyundai Kia, a Korean automaker. The automobiles will be built in Slovakia and sold in Europe. Terms were not disclosed."

Whatch wanna bet they used parts machined in Turkey, interior fabrics from Honduras and Malaysia, glue and bolts made in USA, that the boss is Brazilian, the financing was Spanish (with the Dutch) and that the cars sold in Europe will be re-exported to northern Africa.

A slice

The better stories of late have focused less on the macro (exports are up/down, companies are hot/cold) and more on how markets work. Consider, for instance, the whole idea of test marketing: A company wants to launch a really new product, be it a flavored coffee, a sandwich, a compact car, whatever. So, they often sell it on a limited basis in a large, metro area -- or several -- to see if anyone bites.

This saves the money of doing a national launch and tells the company if people are likely to cotton to whatever the new thing is, or not. Marisol Rueda found a great example of this going on in DF in her story about Microsoft's launch of digital TV software.

The great thing about this story, besides explaining how a giant like MSFT thinks, is that they chose a supposedly developing market for a cutting-edge, and expensive, new product. There are all kinds of reasons: Too much competition in USA, perhaps, or maybe the Mexican cable companies were willing to deal. No matter. Gates & Co. were in Mexico to try their hand, and we got a great slice of business strategy as a result. Good work, Marisol!

August is out!

The 5,000-foot view on August:

C.J. Schexnayder's debut in our pages is a hoot. Peruvian snail herders (wranglers? ranchers?) are out to dethrone the French. A good read, and a good example of the short stories right there under your nose.

A classic, well done here, is the big domestic company looking to get bigger. Read up on Ecuador's Pronaca, which seems like a sleepy food company till you find out they nailed the Wal-Mart deal. They are hungry for more, writes Spanish Editor Andrés F. Velázquez.

Sometimes a story is so big it's hard to even approach. No such problems for Bill Hinchberger and Mexico Correspondent Marisol Rueda, who teamed up to conquer the burgeoning deals between private investors and government to fix infrastructure -- roads, bridges, rail, even production facilities -- across Latin America. This will be a big story for us for a decade or more, and we're out ahead on it now. Good work.

Telecom can be a brain-bender of acronyms and meaningless promises. Paul Harris cuts through the rubbish and gets companies talking on the record about their plans to use the Internet to slash the cost of business. Lower overhead = bigger profits. (Paul is also right on top of the growing Chilean business of wine tours, even scuba diving wine tours.)

Is there a future in tech? Yeah, but probably not the one your university advisor told you about. News Editor Forrest Jones is on the trail of the incredible shrinking tech department.

Finally, Mexico Correspondent Marisol Rueda caught on to what is a fantastic, if kind of incredible, trend: Big U.S. companies test marketing Latin America first. That's what Microsoft is doing in Mexico City with its digital TV platform. Fascinating stuff.