Geoff Reyes, a Filipino-American electrical contractor with only 17 employees, is a little guy in a big industry.
But the other day, he was hobnobbing with Ken McNeely, President of AT&T California, a company with 37,000 employees. “I pulled him aside, and we started talking about opportunities,” Reyes said.
“He talked about how AT&T is installing infrastructure. They need electrical contractors. I gave him my card. He gave me his email address. I plan to follow up.”
For Reyes, whose firm, Servitek Solutions, is based in the City of Industry, and for some 600 other Asian-American executives, the fourth annual California Asian Business Summit last month was a networking hustle-fest.
For AT&T, which paid $50,000 to be the Costa Mesa event’s “diamond” sponsor, it was a chance to shore up diversity cred with the fastest growing consumer market in the United States. Likewise for Southern California Edison, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, US Bank, Comcast and Pacific Gas & Electric, each of which paid $25,000 to be “gold” sponsors. And the same for a slew of smaller corporate contributors.
The event, organized by the Sacramento-based California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce, attested to a growing pan-Asian sensibility. Businesses that once viewed themselves uniquely as Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese now see strength in a broader label.
Orange County’s population of more than 680,000 Asian Americans, boosted by a huge influx of Vietnamese over the past 40 years, is the third highest in the nation, after Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties.
In the 2010 census, Asian-Americans formed 5.6 percent of the population in the U.S., 14.9 percent in California and 19.9 percent in Orange County. The county also has the third largest percentage of Asian American-owned businesses in the U.S.
“The economic impact of the nation’s API population cannot be overstated,” said Andy Wong, a top Wells Fargo executive, using a common abbreviation for Asian-American and Pacific Islander. “We are the fastest growing immigrant population. We have the highest disposable income.”
Yet for many Asian-American businesses, getting ahead remains a struggle.
“As an entrepreneur in the construction industry, it is a hurdle to be Asian,” Reyes said. “Asians more typically go into retail or restaurants. A very small percentage works in industrial infrastructure, as we do, and we have to prove we can do it.”
Tom Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who co-founded WinCorp Solutions, an Irvine financial consulting firm with 58 employees, said, “The challenge for Asians is that we offer great quality of services, but sometimes we are less aggressive in promoting ourselves. Competition is fierce. We need to build marketing and sales skills.”
Nguyen is president of the Asian Business Association of Orange County, with more than 2,000 members. It holds monthly mixers, invites speakers, and tutors executives on how to become certified as a “disadvantaged business enterprise.”
The “DBE” category eases access to subcontracting opportunities with corporations and government agencies eager to procure equipment and services from minority-owned firms.
In 2010, the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce and the Korean American Chamber of Commerce of Orange County, both based in Garden Grove, joined to organize an “Asian Business Expo,” which became an annual event.
This year’s version, held in Garden Grove last month, was sponsored by 18 groups, representing not just Vietnamese and Koreans, but also Chinese, Taiwanese, Cambodians, Filipinos, Thais and South Asians.
“We may speak multiple languages and have hyphenated identities, but we have a shared culture,” said Ernest K. Lee, a Fullerton tech entrepreneur who chaired the event. “And not just a common love for rice,” he added with a chuckle.
More than 1,200 people attended the Garden Grove expo, thronging the aisles of a hotel ballroom where 105 businesses– banks, cosmetic firms, cemeteries, realtors, food importers and software startups – exhibited their wares and touted their services.
Yang Sun Kim, a senior vice president of Commonwealth Business Bank, whose eight Irvine branch employees are all Korean-Americans, said the firm exhibited at the expo “to broaden our customer prospects. We don’t want to limit ourselves to Koreans.”
Across the aisle, Grace Scott, a Filipino-American, sampled vegetable dumplings and a pomegranate drink displayed by the Korean company CJ Foods, pronouncing them “delicious!”
The expo’s centerpiece was a panel of corporate executives who urged the assembled small business owners to take advantage of minority procurement programs.
Eric Fisher, manager of supplier diversity at Southern California Edison, said the utility spent $1.7 billion on minority-owned firms last year, “including $235 million in the API community. We want our supply base to look like our customer base.”
Michelle Ballard, an executive with the Anaheim office of Turner Construction, said her multinational firm offers classes to minority-owned companies on how to do business with Turner. “We love you and we want to meet you,” she said.
Small companies, she advised, should partner with each other or with a larger subcontractor, “because when it comes to submitting a bid, you must meet a size standard.”
Albert BW Louis, director of supplier diversity for Johnson Controls, the giant automotive manufacturer, said his company spent $1.7 billion on minority-owned suppliers last year.
“But don’t come to us with an elevator speech,” he warned. “Come with questions to find out what problems we are trying to solve. If you are making pink doughnuts when someone wants blue doughnuts, then figure out how to make blue doughnuts.”
In an interview afterwards, Louis estimated that only one to two percent of his company’s minority suppliers are API. “They do business really well with each other in their close-knit communities,” he said. “Now they have to learn to navigate a bigger, more dynamic marketplace.”
Most of the Asian-American firms pitching to Johnson Controls are IT staffing companies, Louis added. “But there’s a glut. I need another IT staffing firm like a hole in the head.”
Procurement was also a focus of the statewide Asian business summit in Costa Mesa, which featured one-on-one “matchmaking” sessions for small companies to consult with potential partners.
Among the matchmakers were Comcast, which was hiring firms for landscaping, data centers and underground cable construction; MUFG Union Bank, looking for janitors, architects and cyber-security consultants; and AT&T, seeking asbestos mitigation, fiber layout design and electrical installation.
But, as is the case with Johnson Controls, Asian-Americans have a long way to go to capture business with AT&T, even if President McNeely did give his email address to Reyes, the Filipino contractor from the City of Industry.
According to a company report filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, AT&T California spent $2.6 billion on diverse suppliers last year, of which only $142 million went to API businesses.
Still, Reyes is optimistic that pan-Asian events such as the ones in Costa Mesa and Garden Grove last month will expand opportunities. Recently, thanks to a contact at the Sacramento-based Asian chamber, he obtained a $250,000 line of credit from a major bank to buy equipment and hire workers, he said.
“We’re all different, whether we’re from Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam,” Reyes said. “But collectively as the Asian community, our voice is bigger.”
Contact the writer: mroosevelt@ocregister.com; on Twitter @MargotRoosevelt
