Find Out Which Business Models Work Overseas

One of the best ways to learn about different business models and pick up new ideas is to travel abroad. In the spring, I wrote about new product ideas I picked up when I was visiting Florence, Italy. This column is about some successful business models I have observed outside the U.S.

Many Americans think we invented business, or at least that we have the market cornered in successful models and ideas. If you travel outside the U.S., however, you will realize there are lots of business models that are successful, and some of them are more clever than what we find in the U.S.

A quiz: In what foreign country have Sears (SHLD), J.C. Penney (JCP) and other major household U.S. names failed -- and failed miserably? The answer is Chile. Chile has become the impregnable fortress that many U.S. retailers have laid siege to, only to find that regardless of their brand names or deep pockets, they just can't dethrone the kings.

There is a company that crushes all outside competitors as if they were gnats. This company isn't doing it with lower prices or hometown protectionism. Politicians aren't being bought off. The locals aren't picketing outsiders and yelling, "Yankee Go Home."

The name of this unstoppable force that is changing the way companies are doing business in Chile -- and which will be a model for the rest of the world -- is Falabella. It sounds like a sexy Italian model, but it is the Darth Vader of financing in Chile and is spreading out into other Latin American countries.

Falabella uses a variety of retail concepts to be the most prosperous financial institution in the country. You are probably confused by that statement, but that is exactly how one of the leading banking executives in Chile described this company. In fact, I had meetings with major banks in Chile, and they were in awe of what Falabella has accomplished. Here is Falabella's process for owning the hearts and pocketbooks of its countrymen.