The World Is Flat - Bell Performance Goes International

In case you haven’t noticed, the world is “flat”.  This was the term coined by Thomas Friedman in his best selling book of a few years back. He was talking about how things on many levels had changed in the world – new economies had emerged, new technology had been developed – all of which meant that things of yesteryear that used to take a long time and effort now took little time and little effort.

We see it today with kids hopping on to the Internet and talking to someone on another continent.  Who could have imagined doing that just 10 or 20 years ago? The world is flat, times are changing, and we’re all along for the ride.

Business Is Changing, Too

All of this “change” has impacted the way business is done, for both households and businesses, large and small.  Bell Performance has been around for over 100 years and has seen the full spectrum of change in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  Bell Performance has been exporting products to other countries for over half that time. 

Today, Bell Performance partners with Alibaba.com, the world’s largest business-to-business trading platform.  Alibaba.com was started in China by Jack Ma, and today has over 65 million registered users in more than 240 countries. 

The game has changed for everyone.  Web resources like Facebook allow you and I to stay connected with friends and families and re-connect with old friends in ways never before possible.  Business platforms like Alibaba.com bring together suppliers and customers from opposite ends of the world faster than you can click a mouse.

I’m sure when Robert Bell started the company way back in 1909, he had no idea that one day cars might run on electricity and the business that bears his name would be touching lives across the other side of the globe.  Life has a way of being unexpected sometimes.  And I guess that’s the lesson for all of us.  Like Friedman said, the world is flat and the more we embrace the change, the more we will get out of it.