Home Front: Opportunity Knocks at the Border

Editor's note: This is the seventh installment in TheStreet.com's Home Front series, a collection of twice-weekly features examining how American business, society and investing have changed in the post-Sept. 11 landscape.

While the attacks of Sept. 11 have left the stock market in a state of uncertainty, there's one area where visibility has actually become clearer. It's the so-called cross-border trade management sector, which streamlines how companies send and receive international product and supply shipments.

Amid stepped-up security at U.S. borders, companies are starting to pay more attention to an area that was once seen as little more than a trivial, unpleasant checkpoint. By one estimate, the market for managing this trade is expected to be seven times higher in 2005 than it was in 2000. ...