Lakota business goes offshore and back Lakota Express brings jobs home to Pine Ridge via China

KYLE, S.D. – A successful business needs to expand, but when the cards are stacked against that possibility, a look outside the box – or rather, outside the country – may be necessary.

Lakota Express, based in Kyle on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is a successful call center business that started from scratch by Karlene Hunter, Oglala, CEO and founder. Hunter hocked her personal assets and scraped and clawed her way into the business world, overcoming federal and tribal government bureaucracy and regulation to do it.

Now, to find new business, Lakota Express bypassed U.S. red tape and went to China. This move was not to find cheap labor specifically, but to find new markets.

Lakota Express, in partnership with Native American Management Systems of McLean, Va., and USE Ltd. of Dallas, Texas, has made the move to add value to an already quality product and possibly leverage one of the largest markets in the world.

Lakota Express began in 1996 as a full service management/direct marketing company that provided an avenue for local residents to earn a living.

“The call center business got really competitive when India and China got aggressive,” Hunter said. “We had to find a way to add value to this business.”

USE Ltd. was looking for a firm to do call center work and Lakota Express became part of the team. That began the relationship between the two companies.

Linda Crider, vice president at USE Ltd., said that a few people were trained at Lakota Express to do quality control and they have been doing that for two years now.

“There are two teams on opposite sides of the world working on the same project,” she said.

Here’s how it works. A card is filled out by a customer; the card is scanned, sent to China for data entry and then digitally sent to Kyle for quality control review. The Chinese speak little English and are unfamiliar with some words and geographic locations.

This connection has led to opportunities that will open markets for Lakota Express and help provide employment on the beleaguered Pine Ridge Reservation.

Hunter, Crider and Mark Tilsen, an executive with Lakota Express, along with Patricia Parker, CEO of NAMS, traveled to China to explore potential markets to leverage with the goal of creating jobs on the reservation.

Tilsen said Pine Ridge wasn’t included in the industrial revolution in this country, but can get involved in the emerging industrial revolution in China.

“This has been an eye-opening experience,” Hunter said. “We knew it [a business on the reservation] would be tough.”

In 1999, President Bill Clinton brought Fortune 500 companies to Pine Ridge to expose them to the possibility of creating economic development there. Hunter said she contacted all the businesses, but “didn’t get one bite.”

She said the government creates programs that will help businesses, but in order to benefit, a business has to walk the halls of Congress; and for a rural business with few resources that is impossible.

A new direction for Lakota Express started two years ago when the firm started to do quality control work.

“I didn’t have quality control in our plans,” Hunter said. “There is a lot of potential in China. We can deliver high-end services at quality prices.

“We will retrain our people to do higher-end work. We will revamp what we do right now to do it the best way. We can’t rely on the government to create economic development on the reservation,” she said.

What could be more important to Lakota Express is the market China brings to the table. Tilsen said that Native American Natural Foods, a company that is part of Lakota Express, will package buffalo snacks and sell them in many markets.

At their recent trip to China, the buffalo snacks were introduced. Asians are the largest consumers of snack meats and fish in the world.

“We are looking at ways to access China, not so much for the labor – more on the lines of how can we benefit to access this huge market,” Crider said.

“We are looking for ways to reinvent the value here through innovation and leveraging,” she said.

If a company wants to outsource for labor costs, India is the location; but for a multinational presence, China is the hot spot.

“We went to China to see what could be a possibility and came back with different view of where we can go from here,” Hunter said.

She said there were a lot of people on Pine Ridge that wanted to work, but the only jobs are from the federal and tribal governments and a few small businesses.

“We want to offer a career, that’s what we want to do,” she said. “If we want an economic synergy we need substantial salaries.”

Tilsen said the values held by the people they met in China were similar to those of the Lakota or other American Indian tribes in this country. The way the China group goes about business is culturally based, as with the Lakota.

“They don’t do business with people they haven’t met,” Tilsen said.

The USE China group traveled the United States visiting various tribes to learn about their capabilities.

Now the conversation has turned to leveraging resources for the three companies.

“The fascinating part is that China is wide open. It’s the frontier for markets, plenty of opportunities for pioneers,” Crider said. “There is no preconceived notion, no racial barriers – most barriers are in our heads.”