Our Approach
We believe that true value in all relationships is built on a trust developed through repeat contact. Spreadsheets, phone calls and quick visits help identify and initiate opportunities, but they grow for all parties only through sustained and intentional support. SC Connect and BeneluxConnect provide personal and customized support in the Benelux area of Europe (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg).
The Benelux’s location and infrastructure provide an important entry to the political and economic centers of Europe.
Our Services
Economic Development
We find qualified companies ready to invest in your community by talking in-country to the sector experts, business groups, journalists and government agencies with the personal and professional relationships to know. On-the-ground intelligence is the most difficult to get, but the most reliable, and we provide it through diligent research and work. For a recent case study, click here.
Community Development
In an increasingly connected world, communities and their schools, universities and local governments often find growth through international collaborations. SC Connect works in-country to create, develop and maintain important relationships for your region. For a recent case study, click here.
Business Development
Growing a business is tough work, and international growth is time-consuming and expensive. SC Connect operates from Europe, lowering the risks and costs of developing new business. We can make the personal visits, follow up calls and trade show appearances that grow your international success. For a list of the recent events SC Connect attended — and where we would have been happy to represent you — click here.
Our Story
SC Connect is created to increase the return on the high cost of connecting across the Atlantic. Each year, hundreds of people leave their office to travel between the US and Europe hoping to increase business through new contacts. Some contacts are based on impersonal internet searches or databases, and few if any have any structured follow up afterward.
SC Connect provides native knowledge with effective follow-up to nurture and maintain tenuous connections, helping them grow to be productive and profitable relationships for all.
We make repeat site visits, go to major trade shows and attend Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, industry sector and other meetings. We arrange our own private meetings to learn more. For a look at some of the places we’ve been developing contacts, click here.
Meet SC Connect
Trip DuBard
Founder and Director
View Trip’s LinkedIn profile here
A native South Carolinian, Trip spent decades in South Carolina, as an Associated Press reporter covering state government, an Anheuser-Busch distributor running a $30 million operation across seven counties, and as director of a statewide non-profit which ran the SC Teacher of the Year Celebration (where the picture above was taken.) Publicly minded, he has served on numerous government and non-profit boards, including the SC Workforce Development Board.
In the fall of 2016, Trip moved to Brussels to be with his wife, a woman he met his first day at Duke University in 1978. Now, he works to connect his his adopted region to his home country.
Now that you know…
Let SC Connect and BeneluxConnect introduce you to new business, improve the productivity of your expensive trans-Atlantic visits and increase long-term profits.