Fresh out of college and living in a converted closet in Manhattan, Amanda Knauer knew she wouldn’t land her dream job — combining fashion design with the adventure of international business — at her age. So she decided to fashion something for herself.
Buenos Aires, the so-called Paris of South America, beckoned. Ms. Knauer, now 25 years old, arrived in 2004 with one suitcase, $45,000 in the bank, and a conversational knowledge of Spanish. She explored the city streets for inspiration, and it didn’t take long to find her muse: Argentine leather.
Within months, she launched Qara Argentina, a luxury leather-accessories company that makes hand-crafted calfskin wallets, messenger bags and other leather trimmings, targeting what she deems an underserved market: 25- to 40-year-old urban men.
While starting a business on familiar terrain would have been easier, Ms. Knauer knew that with the devaluation of the Argentine peso in 2002, her budget could be stretched much further there. But she also knew there would be challenges.For an entrepreneur establishing a business in a foreign country — or even setting up an overseas unit — it’s easy to make a mistake if you assume what would work well at home would work in another country. “Everything reverts back to the cultural divide,” Ms. Knauer says, “which is also what makes it interesting.” In Argentina, “you can’t come here as an American and expect to do business as an American,” she says. “You have to observe and immerse yourself and study the Argentine way of doing business and more or less mimic it.”
Thousands of miles from family and friends, Ms. Knauer has had to quickly master an unfamiliar business tango without a partner, as well as craft an authentic Argentine persona for her company so that she’d receive the same treatment from suppliers as an indigenous operation would.
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