International business support firm expands

A Boise company that provides language and cultural support for firms doing business abroad is expanding to incorporate a host of services – from document translation and formatting to cultural business coaching and public relations. Originally focused on serving the communication and P.R. needs of U.S. and Japanese firms, President and CEO Rika Torres said a growing customer base and need for more services prompted a company-wide reorganization, changing the name from J-BEAK (Japanese Business Environment Answers and Knowledge) to i-BEAK (International Business Environment Answers and Knowledge).

“Our communication support division is booming,” Torres said in a company release earlier this month. “It’s important that we expand our business model to support a variety of languages and cultures.”

Torres, who was born in Japan, told the Idaho Business Review that she used to work for Micron as a translator. When she left the company she decided there was a need for her services among the greater business community.

“So I though, ‘Maybe I can help other companies with translations,’” she said. “My focus was only for the Japanese market, but business goes on and I find out that there a lot of needs for international matters.”

Currently i-BEAK offers services in eight languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and Torres said she’s working on finding qualified translators for several others.

Incorporating four divisions – communication, education, business support and public relations – i-BEAK has only two employees, but relies on nearly 30 independent contractors working with six firms around the world.  

In its first year of operation (founded in February 2007) revenues totaled $22,000, but this year i-BEAK is already close to achieving 100 percent revenue growth, hoping to achieve $75,000 by year-end.

i-BEAK counts a number of firms in Tokyo, the Special Olympics and several of the area’s largest tech companies among its clients, and Torres said there are plans in the works to launch a series of business writing courses for Japanese this fall.

“The business culture is so different and the writing culture is so different,” she said. “Hopefully, going forward, we can do that for other cultures as well.”