A first order can be flattery. A second order requires arithmetic. Somewhere between the product owner who wants to sell abroad and the distributor who has to sell locally, Joe Urbay has made a career out of checking whether the numbers leave room for another conversation. A shipment can cross an ocean in perfectly good condition and still leave a relationship stranded. The buyer has to be able to make money.
That concern gives his business a particular shape. Urbay is based in Miami and founded VCV International to represent consumer products overseas. Its stated network covers 56 countries. The merchandise is cheerfully concrete: a hair styling tool, interactive plush birds, a pet-food multi-cooker. These are things somebody must demonstrate, price, stock, and sell. An impressive map will do none of those jobs.
For Urbay, the space between a supplier and a foreign buyer is where the work happens. He talks about deals that allow each party to earn, and relationships that survive long enough to become friendships. The question running through his career is wonderfully unglamorous. After everyone has done their part, will anyone want to do it again?
Eight years before the passport came out
Urbay describes spending more than eight years in domestic sales at Tristar Products, especially catalogs, before taking responsibility for international sales. It is an instructive beginning for a business now concerned with crossing borders. A catalog has limited room to persuade. The item, its use, and its price must make sense to a customer who cannot ask the page a follow-up question.
When Tristar needed someone to take over international, he stepped in. He reports growing that division from $2 million to $50 million in annual sales. The figures describe a division at his previous employer, rather than VCV International’s revenue. They also give his story a change of scale: the domestic salesperson became responsible for finding buyers beyond the home market.
Trade directories place him in that world. A 2013 listing names him as Tristar’s contact outside the United States. By the 2019 Multi-Channel Home Shopping Conference, he appears as president of VCV International. Between those entries sits the move from representing an employer’s products to building a business of his own.
He puts reputation at the center of that decision. In his telling, he wanted a company where keeping one’s word remained fundamental to the deal. The independent business gave that preference an operating form: stand between the product owner and the international buyer, and make the arrangement work for both.
The other person’s spreadsheet
A shipment is only one stage in the arrangement Urbay describes. The product owner wants payment. The international buyer takes on local selling, marketing, retail relationships, and returns. Each party is looking at the same product through a different set of obligations. Urbay’s position in the middle requires enough attention to each side to keep the transaction workable.
“When the buyer makes money, the product owner makes money.”Joe Urbay
VCV describes using export arrangements with payment before shipment. In that model, the supplier trades some margin for earlier cash and avoids carrying the buyer’s retail payment cycle. The local distributor takes responsibility for selling in its territory. Urbay’s job is to negotiate a price and an arrangement that give that buyer a reason to participate.
The appeal is easy to understand. A generous margin on an order that pays much later can feel rather less generous while the bills arrive on schedule. For the distributor, an attractive product still needs enough room between acquisition cost and the eventual sale to support the local work. Both sides need a transaction they can live with.
His negotiation writing extends this thinking beyond price. In an August 2023 article, he encourages negotiators to consider delivery, service, financing, and future business. These are separate issues with different values to different people. Treating the conversation as a contest over one number can leave useful possibilities untouched.
He also recommends knowing the alternative to an agreement and deciding on acceptable terms before negotiating. The counterpart’s interests matter, but so does the ability to walk away. His advice leaves room for silence, questions, and asking the other party for suggestions. A pause is inexpensive. A poorly understood commitment can be much more costly.
A factory enters the conversation
Brazil supplies a memorable example from Urbay’s career account. Faced with import tariffs, he describes negotiating and opening a manufacturing facility in Manaus to make products locally. The move addressed the barrier by changing the production arrangement. It is a more substantial response than rewriting a pitch.
The episode makes his view of representation tangible. A buyer can want a product while the route into the market makes it difficult to sell. In that situation, persuasion has a limited job. The costs still have to work. Urbay’s account places him in the discussion about how to get the product into a viable commercial position in the first place.
That helps explain why his business includes market matching and ongoing problem-solving alongside introductions. The opening conversation can establish interest. The practical arrangement determines what happens next. A catalog salesperson’s eye for the proposition has acquired a second question: what must change before the proposition works here?
Talking birds, curling irons, and dinner for the dog
VCV’s current portfolio puts that question into several different settings. TreStyler combines several hair styling functions in one tool. Happy Yappers are interactive plush birds that sing, mimic voices, and flap their wings. Total Pet Kitchen is a multi-cooker for preparing pet food. The assortment has the pleasantly unruly character of consumer commerce.
For these products, a demonstration is part of the proposition. VCV lists a 7.5-minute television commercial for TreStyler and says samples have gone to Japan, Germany, Australia, and Mexico. Happy Yappers’ entry lists availability in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore. The portfolio distinguishes samples and availability, a useful distinction when international ambition meets actual placement.
Urbay’s work spans direct-response television, live shopping, retail, and online commerce. Those channels give a product different ways to meet a customer. A television demonstration has time to explain a function. A retail placement brings its own demands. His role requires choosing buyers and channels appropriate to the particular item.
In his writing about product knowledge, he asks salespeople to understand pricing, features, how an item works, and what support follows the sale. He recommends hands-on experience and checking whether training improves actual results. For a representative carrying several unrelated products, the requirement is exacting: familiarity must extend beyond remembering the product name.
A sales lesson with room to listen
Urbay’s 2023 sales articles offer another view of his working interests. He writes about communication, negotiation, cultural differences, and recovering from setbacks. Taken together, they show how much of selling he locates in the conduct of a conversation. The product matters. So does the way two people arrive at an understanding about it.
His communication advice includes listening closely and asking questions that invite more than a yes or no. He emphasizes following through on commitments. In a separate article about empathy, he asks salespeople to consider the customer’s circumstances and recognize concerns. Understanding those concerns can make a proposal more useful to the person receiving it.
There is a small, everyday example of his own supplier relationships in his testimonial for KVLmedia. He describes using its photographer for two years and appreciating both the completed work and the photographer’s manner. It is a modest detail beside an international sales figure. It also suggests what a continuing business relationship looks like from the customer’s chair.
His cross-cultural sales article takes that attention overseas. He recommends researching local buying habits, working with local partners, and adapting materials and sales methods to the market. The same presentation cannot be expected to carry the same meaning everywhere. A representative has to leave room for what the person across the table knows.
The next conversation
For all its geographic reach, VCV describes a fairly legible sequence: evaluate the product, identify suitable buyers, negotiate the arrangement, and manage the relationship as it grows. Reorders and problems remain part of the service. The business keeps going after the introduction, which is precisely when a product owner may need someone who knows the buyer.
Urbay’s article on sales setbacks adds a final practical ingredient. He urges people to examine what went wrong, seek feedback, and make changes before trying again. He recommends concrete goals and a network of peers and mentors. There is room in that account for an unsuccessful pitch without pretending the experience was automatically useful.
His ambition remains tied to placement: help product owners reach international markets and help buyers find products they can sell. The task keeps returning to specific people, costs, and commitments. An order is an occasion for optimism. A reorder suggests the optimism has survived a little contact with reality. That is a result worth answering the phone for.