After twelve years at the head of the Association of Importers and Exporters of Albacete (ADIEX), Miguel Tapiador left the presidency of the Association at the beginning of May. The founder of ADIEX in 2005, in this 2017 the time has come to make way for another board of directors. And he does it knowing that ADIEX continues in good hands with Iván Torres as the new president.
As a farewell, we chatted with Miguel Tapiador to review his career, the situation of ADIEX and future prospects.
QUESTION: Your stage in ADIEX is over.
ANSWER: “I am retired, and although I am delighted to be here, I believe that it is no longer my place to be. Of course I'll always be there when they call me, but my cycle has ended".
Q: What is your balance of your years at the helm of ADIEX?
R: “In these years we have gone from not knowing us, to gradually getting to know us. We have been carrying out activities such as conferences, courses and other actions always focused on foreigners. As president I have done a very 'normal' journey, taking advantage of the infrastructure and services of FEDA. And I simply leave with an activity that I think is clean, correct, and without great pretensions but with some encouragement made, having created an environment of information and documentation, and above all the concern that export is possible”.
Q: You leave a consolidated Association...
R: “The Association as such already works alone. Each year has its more or less regulated activities. In recent years, it has already begun to be possible to do customer visit work, which at first was unthinkable because we had no money. Now we are taking advantage of the resources we have to see which countries are of general interest to visit. What ADIEX does is encourage companies that are qualified to work. Exporting requires a series of conditions, growth capacity, investment and response. You have to continually adapt to the markets, since the markets do not adapt to you. That is the culture that must be created and given to companies”.
Q: Do you have any 'thorns' stuck in you?
R: “The individualistic work of businessmen leads them to not have confidence and faith in making work teams, because there is always the small great distrust of what will happen. But it is not just an ADIEX problem. An idea that I always had, and I repeatedly expressed it to ICEX and IPEX, was to develop a work study team that would advise small companies, with growth potential, to group them and move them towards groups that had gone abroad. This is what the Catalans, the Valencians do… Both to ICEX and IPEX I have explained a thousand times how Catalans work and how we should copy their export infrastructure. But they have not understood it or they have not wanted to understand it, because the regional governments work for four years, not for the medium and long term. More than thorns, it is the sadness of seeing how your people, understanding your people as your region, do not have a greater open-mindedness or a higher reaction and response capacity to have taken advantage of all existing resources ".
Q: You have had to work in a period characterized by the economic crisis. Has it been hard to get ahead in those circumstances?
R: “The economic crisis has made us return a bit to a reality that we were ignoring. And it was that we believed that everything we did, as it worked more or less for us, we did it well. The crisis has served to reshape all the internal structures of the companies, to go back a bit to rebuild the principles and to open up more abroad, since the national market was not giving more of itself. The one who has had the greatest ability to adapt is the one who has taken advantage of it”.
Q: Have you missed a greater involvement of the institutions?
R: “For the institutions, the institutional brand was more important than the Spain brand, with which there was someone who went to look for you at fairs and could not find you, because they were looking for the Spanish flag and did not see it, they saw the regional flag. And of course, if already knowing where Spain is is complicated, for example for the Chinese, imagine a region of Spain. I think they have already learned and first they put the flag of Spain. The institutions seem to be finding out that when they travel abroad, the Spain brand is a brand that foreigners look for and know".
Q: Any message for companies in the province that export and that do not belong to ADIEX?
R: “I would ask everyone to collaborate and sign up for ADIEX to make a stronger association and to start having a greater presence in both ICEX and IPEX, presenting projects with a demanding capacity due to the volume of people behind them. Demanding them does not mean going out or anything, it is simply proposing the idea and generating budgets to be able to achieve it, call it fairs, missions... and influence a little on all the infrastructure that they have to channel it towards our needs ".
Q: The San Juan 2017 Business Awards are already known. 'Fruits and Turrones – Turrones San Andrés' has won the Family Business Award. The 'Diclesa Group' has won the Export Company Award. Both are part of ADIEX. What do you think of this award?
R: “The San Juan Prize is a very interesting thing for the winner, he likes to be recognized. Frutas y Turrones is a company that has been fighting for many years, which is a well-known company abroad. And Diclesa is a company that little by little is fighting, it is a young company with concerns. It is an award that everyone likes to have at the local internal level, that is the reality. It is a way of acknowledging that they are there”.
Q: And it is an award that you have twice, with ADIEX and with Polgri...
R: “At ADIEX we had one and I, like Polgri, had another, many years ago. It is exciting, it is a day to recognize the oldest member of the group, of the company, because after all, he is the one who has created all this ”.
Q: According to ICEX data, exports grew by 14% and marked the best quarter in history between January and March. Is it a sign of economic recovery?
R: “On the one hand, the one who buys is the other, then the one who has to recover is the other to be able to buy from us. It is also possible that if the dollar has risen a bit, we have become cheap without doing anything. And we may be reaching more places because more of us are beginning to have an interest in reaching more people. So I think it may be a mix of all three. The national recovery is not what makes exports recover, it is the other way around. Exports are what makes the national economy recover, because more jobs can be created”.
Q: At the last ADIEX Assembly, Brexit was discussed as an option to attract investment. How do you think we should take advantage of the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union?
R: “You have to be expectant, prepared and go for what you can. But it is not clear what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. You have to be open to receive what is coming. And of course adapt quickly to the UK as things change. The one that best adapts to the moment, like all changes, will benefit the most”.
Q: The last question is a must. What do you say to the new president Iván Torres and his Board of Directors?
R: “Iván has been with us for a long time participating in different positions and he is going to do it perfectly, both he and those who are with him. And what I can wish them is continuity, that they continue doing it as they have up to now, because they are going to do it, because they will not lack capacity and will".
