The Fedtrade® podcast recently interviewed Artur Czerniejewski, Head of Swiss Business Hub USA of Switzerland Global Enterprise, as part of our SelectUSA Investment Summit Spotlight series. Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) is the official Swiss organization for export and investment promotion. With a unique global network, S-GE supports more than 5,500 Swiss companies every year in their international business and helps innovative foreign companies on their way to settling in Switzerland. S-GE has its own teams (Swiss Business Hubs, SBHs) in approximately 45 countries.  Members of Swiss Business Hub USA will be attending the 2025 SelectUSA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, from May 11-14, 2025.

Learn more about Swiss Business Hub USA on their website or follow them on LinkedIn. Connect with Artur on LinkedIn.

Key Takeaways

  • Swiss Business Hub USA supports SMEs – mostly focused in five different industry verticals – in U.S. market entry.
  • Underestimation of the market is a key challenge that is common to Swiss companies entering into the United States.
  • The magic triangle summarizes the three elements that make Switzerland a very attractive place for investment, especially for U.S. companies.
  • The U.S. is now the number one export market for Switzerland.

[a copy of the written transcript is here]:

Hello, welcome to Fedtrade®. I’m James Hastings of Rothwell Figg. Joining us on the podcast today is Artur Czerniejewski, head of Swiss Business Hub USA, the U.S.-based representative of the official international trade and investment promotion agency, Switzerland Global Enterprise. Artur will be sharing Swiss Business Hub USA’s mission and how it provides localized support, market information, investor advice, consulting, and networking services to Swiss companies venturing into the U.S. market and U.S. companies seeking to do business in Switzerland. Artur, welcome to Fedtrade®.

Thank you, James. Hello. It’s my pleasure to be here and to give you some insight into Swiss Business Hub USA and our organization and how we do business in the United States, what we do, with whom we do, and what is our mission.

Artur, first, what is Switzerland Global Enterprise?

Switzerland Global Enterprise is an official Swiss agency for export and investment promotion. The organization was founded in 1927, so we will shortly have our 100th anniversary, and the primary goal is to support Swiss companies in developing their international business in foreign countries.  However, in time, we also got a second mandate from the Swiss Confederation to support innovative foreign companies in settling down in Switzerland. So this is the investment promotion part of our work. We are a foundation of roughly 200 people. There are 100 people in Switzerland, at the headquarters in Zurich and also in two other linguistic parts of Switzerland, in the French speaking part and the Italian speaking part. And the other 100 people are working abroad as the Swiss diplomatic representatives in 40 different countries.

What is the mission of Swiss Business Hub USA?

Swiss Business Hub USA in particular, supports Swiss and Liechtenstein small and medium-sized enterprises in their expansion to the U.S. market. And we are going to attract U.S. companies from specific areas to invest in Switzerland, to settle down in Switzerland as their headquarters, as R&D activities, or anything else.

With regard to your U.S. market entry services, what types of companies does Swiss Business Hub USA serve?

Well, first of all, we focus on small and medium sized enterprises. From time to time, we also have requests from bigger companies, but usually they don’t need our services. And we focus on five different so-called verticals. So the biggest portion of our customers come from what we call MEM, which is Machinery, Electrical, Engineering, and Metal Industries. The second biggest group is medical technology and biotech pharma companies. ICT would be the next one, and then infrastructure, clean tech, and food. So all these companies are very strong in Switzerland and because Switzerland is a very export-oriented country, they’re looking for business outside of Switzerland.

Do you typically approach these companies or do they approach you for your services?

It’s both ways. We are well known in Switzerland, so the Swiss companies know that we exist. Of course, not all of them. Let’s say yearly we consult 500 plus Swiss companies. But there are different kinds of services that we offer them. We start with the general information about the market, about the conditions of doing business in the U.S. Then we try to organize some webinars and some seminars that are more addressing the specific group of companies. But as soon as it gets to the individual consulting, we have tailored offering for specific companies.

With individual consulting, do you work with a network of professional service providers in the United States?

Yes, in the United States we are not allowed to offer specific services like tax advisory, financial advisory, and legal advisory. So for these areas we are forced to use our excellent network of partners. Some other services like business partner search and location search, these services we can provide locally by our team. We also work with our partner network here in the States and in Switzerland.

You had mentioned some of the professional service partners that you work with and the types of sectors they engage their services for. Are there specific types of challenges that are common to Swiss companies entering into the United States?

Yes, there are some specific patterns. Usually what we see is underestimation of the market. So, you know, if we talk about the U.S., let’s take the example of Texas, which is 16 times bigger than Switzerland. So companies usually underestimate what it means to enter the U.S. market, which is huge. They also underestimate business partners – having one business partner for entire USA is not the best idea. They also sometimes do not really do their homework, so they are not informed about the specificity of U.S. They think sometimes that it is very similar to Switzerland when it is not. They also think that their strategy of doing business in Switzerland or even in Europe would also work one-to-one in the U.S., which is very often not the case. And also the marketing activities. They underestimate the effort for the marketing activities in this country, which might be very costly and which requires much more effort as compared to Switzerland and in Europe.

It’s interesting that you mentioned all these challenges that Swiss companies entering into the U.S. market experience. Do you help them as well with alleviating some of these challenges either directly through Swiss Business Hub USA or through network partners?

Well, let’s put it this way. The initial information starts already in Switzerland. So when the company comes to us and approaches Switzerland Global Enterprise, we very carefully discuss with them and try to estimate the readiness for doing business in the U.S. If the company has never done international business, we’d rather advise them to start with a neighboring country, maybe in Europe, which are more similar to Switzerland than the U.S. And then from this point, we try to show them which parts of their knowledge they should increase, what they should do, what they should learn, and how they should proceed with the international journey. We work with our experts here in the U.S. to provide them information in terms of webinars, in terms of different reports, in terms of different analysis of the market, competitive analysis, and so on. But as soon as the company has this background information, then we start usually with the business partner search. So as the first step we create for them the list of potential partners. Then we and the companies select a shortlist and approach the companies in the U.S. to see what would be the best fit. The ultimate step in this process would be that the Swiss companies come to the U.S. and actually physically meet the potential business partner.

The sectors that you had previously mentioned that Swiss companies are known for and for which you provide assistance, many of them are high tech sectors. How important is regulatory and legal compliance issues in the United States?

It’s very important. I mean, the U.S. is known as probably the most litigious country in the world. So we also emphasize the importance of having, you know, different types of certification. I mean, you can start with the FDA, which has certification areas where the company must have the certificate otherwise it cannot enter the market. And this is going on with other agencies. So usually the Swiss companies are aware about this fact but sometimes they do not pay too much importance to this aspect because sometimes the certification can take years. So we educate the Swiss companies in these areas to make sure that they can sell the product in the U.S. market without having any issues with the responsibility, with the legal system, and so on.

Do you find that intellectual property protection and clearance is another important legal component that must be addressed by Swiss companies entering the U.S. marketplace?

Yes, Switzerland is known for its innovation potential. We rank as one of the most innovative countries in the world. And usually this aspect of intellectual property is covered in Switzerland. But this is the point where the companies sometimes do not know or are not aware that they have to have the protection in the U.S. too. The Swiss protection will not necessarily cover the U.S. And we advise them, prior to entering the market, to make sure that intellectual property rights are covered in the United States.

What types of events and training does Swiss Business Hub USA offer Swiss companies that are seeking to go to market in the United States?

As I mentioned before, we have the general events like webinars, like specific events in Switzerland where we address a lot of companies. So we call it one to many. Then for the specific companies, we organize, say, for specific areas, we organize some trainings, some webinars mainly, but also physical seminars. And then we also organize so-called fact-finding missions. So the group of companies is coming here to the U.S. and visiting specific companies, specific areas. It depends on the composition of the group. It might be a group of companies from a specific business industry. So there it’s more focused on the specific business areas. Or it might be that the companies are interested in a specific geographic area. So for example, last year we had a business mission to Texas. So several companies were interested in the area but the companies were from different businesses. So this was more focused on the geographic areas. Then of course we have support in the trade shows.  We organize several so-called Swiss pavilions when several Swiss companies can be under the umbrella of Switzerland. CES in Las Vegas would be the best example when we had two Swiss pavilions with several Swiss startups. So we are talking about 40 plus companies being in those two pavilions and showing the innovation of Switzerland at this trade show.

Swiss Business Hub USA also provides investment promotion services for U.S. companies seeking to do business in Switzerland. Can you please tell us a little about those services?

In this promotion part, we are talking about the ecosystems. So we advertise which ecosystems are very strong in Switzerland. And here the biggest one is the so-called future of health. We have also future of food, future of finance, and future of digital worlds. Now, talking to the U.S. companies and trying to get the attention for Switzerland, we very often have to start from the very basic, because the awareness of Switzerland as a place to do business, as a place for making investments, is not that high in the U.S. Switzerland is a small country and is one of the hundreds of countries that people visit. So, if someone was already in Switzerland, they usually associate Switzerland with a beautiful landscape, chocolate, watches maybe, but they are not really aware of opportunities, investment opportunities in Switzerland. So that’s why we start from scratch and explain what Switzerland is built of. What are the ecosystems there? What is the most important advantage of Switzerland? And you can basically make like a magic triangle. So this magic triangle composes from talents on one side, the business environments on the second side, and the ecosystems on the third side. So these three elements make Switzerland a very attractive place for investment, especially for U.S. companies. And U.S. companies are very aware of this, a lot of which are already in Switzerland and a lot of them use us as an intermediary to come to Switzerland. The difference between the export and invest is that on the invest promotion side we work very closely with the Swiss cantons and Swiss regions. So basically we make the first contact usually and then double check the company, verify that this is an interesting prospect for the cantons and give them to the cantons which then arranges with the company the details of the settlement.

Will Swiss Business Hub USA be attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit taking place this May at National Harbor, Maryland?

Yes, we usually attend Select USA because it’s a very important event for us.

What are the benefits of attending SelectUSA Investment Summit?

Well, the most important thing is from the export promotion side, to meet the various economic development agencies of the different states and the regions. This allows us to better understand what are the regions and the business locations that are specific for the Swiss companies from the specific business areas.  This allows us also to see the different advantages and say the comparison between different regions, because sometimes some smaller regions might offer better conditions than the big and well-known regions. And sometimes for the niche products that are made by Swiss companies, there is also a niche market and niche place in the U.S. where they should settle down.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your organization or the opportunities that are available working with you and your team?

First of all, we cooperate with all different Swiss agencies. We call ourselves Team Switzerland and this informal organization includes our partner organizations like Swissnex, like Switzerland Innovation, like Innosuisse, Switzerland Tourism, and also the diplomatic representation of our country.  By doing this, we can make the synergies between different players and use our resources more effectively. Compared to other countries, our budget is much lower. And with 14 people in the U.S., we are a rather small organization if you compare with the other countries. But by working together with the representative of the cantons, with the representative of the Swiss regions, with our partners here, we can still achieve quite important results. I don’t know if it’s known to you but the U.S. is actually the number one export market for Switzerland, which is amazing because it used to be Germany, but now the U.S. is much more important. And also from the investment side, the number of investments that Switzerland is doing in the U.S. is very important. We are the sixth bigger investor in the U.S. And from this side, taking into account that Switzerland is such a small country with only 9 million inhabitants, we are doing quite well. On the investment side, we also yearly attract like between 15 and 20 companies that settle down in Switzerland. We are not the monopolist. We know that a lot of companies will settle down without our help. And also we know that there are Swiss companies coming to the U.S. that we even don’t know that they are here. But we offer them a reliable service backed up by the diplomatic representation of Switzerland in the U.S. and also offer very attractive financial conditions.

Artur Czerniejewski, head of Swiss Business Hub USA. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, James. It was my pleasure. Thank you.

Like our podcast? Follow the Fedtrade® Podcast by Rothwell Figg on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and don’t forget to leave us a review!