International Flavor

International Flavor

ENTREPRENEURS

A Mexican businesswoman happily discovers that American challenges, such as a stifling economy, beat the worries she faced back home.

As the president of a family-run signs and graphic design firm in Bradenton, Ana Maria Pedroza is doubtlessly facing challenges from the slumping economy. The store has been open less than a year, making things even more difficult.

But at least with this store, Pedroza isn't worried about being robbed at gunpoint or watching in horror as thugs attempt to kidnap her son.

That has historically been Pedroza's biggest challenge while running a chain of four sign stores in her native Mexico. There was even the time a few years ago when she and her two sons were carjacked while sitting in their Cadillac outside a grocery store in Mexico City, a few blocks from her shop. The robbers made off with her Cartier watch, but were thwarted in their attempts to kidnap her son Roberto Pedroza, who outran the attackers.

"It's a way of life there," Ana Maria Pedroza says about her homeland, specifically Mexico City, which is notorious for its brazen broad-daylight kidnapping attempts. "It's crazy."

That's why Pedroza decided to move her family to Florida last year. She had been to the U.S. several times before, mostly to the Orlando area. And on one visit to Disney World she met Jorge Jesus, who owns Diplomat Transportation, a Bradenton-based cab company; the couple married a few years ago.

Pedroza might have moved her family to the U.S., but she didn't give up her Mexico-based signs business, consisting of four stores spread throughout the country, including one in Mexico City; one in Monterrey, near the Texas-Mexico border; one in Cuernavaca, a manufacturing town in Southern Mexico; and one in Puebla, in West-Central Mexico.

She added Bradenton-based Signs Marketing & Advertising to the fold last year. The store has five employees, including Pedroza and her two sons, Roberto and Victor Pedroza. The Pedrozas are trying to establish a niche in creating and selling exhibits and display banners, while also focusing on marketing and sign industry standards, such as graphic design, business cards and car and boat wraps.

Says Pedroza: "We are trying to grow and grow and the only way to do that is work very hard."

The banner side of the business is the one with the most potential, says Victor Pedroza. Products include easy fold up banners that reach more than six feet high but quickly collapse into a tidy package. The Pedrozas traveled to China earlier this year to meet with manufacturers about producing the banners on a larger scale.

Meanwhile, the family runs the four Mexico stores mostly in Bradenton by using Internet video hook-ups and talking to employees there through Nextel phones. Ana Maria Pedroza takes trips back to her homeland to check on the stores every few months, but her sons don't go with her. And she sticks to the rules when in Mexico City: Move fast, don't sit idle in a car and never flash wealth around publicly.

Although she's only been in the U.S. a short time, Pedroza has already picked up some key American business concepts. For one, she only buys materials and supplies with cash, to eliminate debt. She also preaches to her sons and employees to treat every customer like gold, because word-of-mouth will be the best way to grow the business in the U.S. Pedroza hopes to expand the business in the U.S. to a franchise one day.

And finally, Pedroza is trying to capitalize on her newfound American entrepreneurial spirit. She remembers a phrase her uncle taught her many years ago, when he ran a diner in Mexico City and she first talked to him about running her own business someday. "There is no bad business," her uncle said. "Only bad business people."

- Mark Gordon