Businesses link clients
with homes overseas

Guerrero Multiservices, a small yellow Miramar storefront, serves as one of dozens of Broward's gateways joining families separated by the sea and the chase for a better life in America.

Broward immigrants take a break from their pursuit of the American dream to visit Guerrero and similar businesses that dot the county's landscape to wire money to families in the Caribbean or Central and South America.

Jose and Altagracia Guerrero opened the store about a year ago at 6314 Pembroke Rd. in part because of a demand to meet the needs of the area's growing population of Hispanics and West Indians who have relatives remaining in the old countries.

"There are a lot of Hispanics in the area," Altagracia Guerrero said.

Besides wiring money overseas, customers can call home from four private phone closets behind glass doors.

On this day, Erville Cunningham of Hollywood stepped out of a phone booth after calling his native Jamaica to let a daughter know that he had just wired money to her.

"Most immigrants have family back home, wife and children, mother, father," said Cunningham, who grew up in Kingston. "They try to help the ones back home."

The approximately 200,000 foreign-born Broward residents appear to be the most important market for the approximately 75 "niche" businesses in the county that offer services ranging from money wiring to filing income taxes. c

"If you do not diversify, that will create a big hole in your business," said Casimir, who owns another store at 2543 N. State Road 7. "In order to keep up, a small business must really do more than one thing."

About 1,000 of the stores, called transmitting services, exist throughout the state. Dade boasts the most of any county -- about 300, said Doug Johnson, assistant director of the state Division of Banking, the agency that regulates the businesses.

They compete with traditional companies, like Western Union, which is now aggressively expanding throughout South America, a market the money-transfer giant entered only in 1992.

In addition to wiring money to Colombia, Alberto Quinones sends packages overseas and offers financial consultant services from his Pronto Envios (fast shipment) business at the Baby Superstore plaza in Pembroke Pines. Quinones is an agent of Gloria Envia, a popular Colombian money-wiring company.

Luis Carlos Castillo of Cooper City likes the personal service he gets whenever he stops in.

"Don Alberto knows who I am," Castillo said. "If I go to the post office, who do I complain to if something goes wrong? And Gloria Envia is well-known in Colombia."

Gloria Envia has opened five outlets in Broward in the past year, said company treasurer Mauricio Puche, based in Miami.

Castillo is shipping down a package of catalogs to his business partners in Bogota. The charge is $13. As Quinones does the paperwork, the two discuss the state of their native country. They also talk about business opportunities in the United States and Latin America.

That familiarity with Colombia is one of the reasons Castillo said he continues to do business with Pronto Envios.

Regulators have had no problems with the businesses, Johnson said. It could be because customers may not know what state agency to complain to. Or it could be that operators realize the quickest way for their business to fail is if they fail to deliver. Customer satisfaction -- or dissatisfaction -- in such businesses travels quickly by word of mouth, Johnson said.

"It's a niche business," he said. "If the transmitter doesn't get the money to the destination, then word travels fast in the community."

Broward County also has received no complaints about the businesses, said Larry Kaplan, acting director of Broward's Consumer Affairs Division. The places are popular with immigrants because of a shared cultural background, Kaplan said.

"They have the contacts in the various places they are shipping to, whether it's the islands or South America," Kaplan said.

"They speak the language of the people who need their services."

TIPS FOR CONSUMERS

Dozens of small "niche" businesses dot the landscape to give Broward's growing immigrant population a link to the homeland. Services range from money transfers to shipments to filing income taxes.

Business owners and a state regulatory agency offer the following tips to consumers who use such companies: