The city's trade office and the Exporters of the Year

2003 — 2011

A city hall desk for the outward trade: Around the turn of the century Fort Wayne gave its exports an office. The Indiana Global Trade Directory of the period lists the Fort Wayne Foreign Trade Zone #182 at One Main Street, Room 840, with a named director of international trade, offering "import and export counseling, [a] local directory of international trade service providers, seminars and workshops" — a city Office of International Trade, in other words, whose desk was the zone. Around it stood a small private layer of the same machinery: Thompson International, on Dawson's Creek Boulevard, worked as an export-management company, serving either as an export-trading company taking title to goods and reselling them abroad or as the international sales office for client manufacturers. The office's public ritual was the city's annual International Trade Conference, and its sixth, in 2008, shows the outward trade at working scale. Mayor Tom Henry named two Fort Wayne-based companies the Indiana Exporters of the Year: Caliente LLC, founded 2001 to design thermal systems for electronics, took the small-business award — exporting since its inception, it sent 25 percent of its sales overseas, to the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, Israel, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, China and Singapore — and Tippmann Sports, the paintball-marker maker, took the large-business award, having in 2007 increased its exports to more than 80 countries by more than 50 percent over 2006, with almost all markers still made in Indiana. Thompson International received the year's International Trade Appreciation Award. The same office took the lead, the following years, on the foreign-trade zone's eight-county expansion recorded above.

Sources:

1. Indiana Global Trade Directory (Indiana Department of Commerce) — the FTZ #182 listing at One Main Street with the director of international trade and the counseling service, and the Thompson International export-management listing.
2. "Mayor names two Fort Wayne-based companies as Exporters of the Year," The Post & Mail (2008) — the sixth annual International Trade Conference; Caliente's 25 percent of sales to nine named markets; Tippmann's exports to more than 80 countries, up more than 50 percent in 2007; the Thompson International appreciation award.
3. City of Fort Wayne announcement (29 Aug 2011) — the city's Office of International Trade taking the lead on the FTZ expansion application.