Program

Trade Accelerator Program (TAP)

International growth and new market opportunities await. Learn best practices and network with experts to level up your business.

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National Founding Partners

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The World Trade Center Toronto's Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) helps your business maximize revenue growth and unlocks new market opportunities.

No other program offers a comprehensive program like the Trade Accelerator Program. TAP is a one-stop-shop that will get businesses ready to go global in just a few sessions, culminating with a customized strategic export business plan carefully vetted by top industry experts!

Our newly developed learning platform, specifically built around practical tips and practices for international selling, further confirms TAP as the benchmark program for entrepreneurs interested in exporting.

Graduates of the Trade Accelerator Program also have the opportunity to enroll in our one-day Executive Certificates program, also known as TAP Advanced Trade Certificates. These sessions offer specialized training for companies that have experienced significant growth following their participation in TAP and are now facing challenges in further expansion. The goal is to enhance their expertise and acquire new skills tailored to well-established SMEs, through expert-led practical workshops and peer interactions.

The program has been funded in part by Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

Speaker 1: What is the Trade Accelerator Program?

Ben Ames: An excellent mentor list.

James Hashimi: Contacts.

Andrew Brett: A new network.

Joanne Torrance: A targeted plan.

David Dickson: Different kinds of government resources.

Speaker 1: TAP sessions are designed to help get businesses to the next level to prepare them for international expansion. We help set businesses up on the right foot. Coral

Ben Ames: CORL is a FinTech company that provides funding to early stage technology companies. Prior to the TAP [00:00:30] program, we were a lean team doing things mostly on an ad hoc basis. The very

Robert Harbauer: The very beginning, the first four, four and a half years were really tough, marketing something nobody knows about on the planet.

Shamira Jaffer: Signifi is a technology company. The early years were really tough. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy thing to do.

Speaker 1: We offer expert coaching and planning.

Robert Harbauer: TAP has been amazing. Every day there was experts talking to you, giving you guidance of who to talk to, where to go and create relationships that were impossible before.

David Dickson: The trade accelerator program put pen to paper on [00:01:00] our expert plan. I came out of there with a more enriched understanding of different kinds of government resources. I made great contacts as well.

Joanne Torrance: We didn't really realize until after we took TAP that this is a process that has provided a targeted plan to give yourself trajectory into five years down the road. It changed everything.

Andrew Brett: We graduated from TAP with a much more holistic understanding of the resources available to us as a Canadian small business exporting. There's a rapidly [00:01:30] growing interest in curling so it was perfect timing to think about our export plan. The TAP program forced us to really look at resources within our network and especially a new network that TAP brought us, services that we weren't aware of.

James Hashimi: We had the opportunity to modernize vinyl records. TAP sessions weren't just lectures; there's contacts, notes that I use even today. TAP really helped us focus on scaling and predicting the future so that we could grow [00:02:00] accordingly.

Speaker 1: We help businesses grow and expand internationally.

Peter Townshend: We saw 20% year over year growth right out of the TAP program.

James Hashimi: Within the next 18 months thereafter, we had grown into 10 different countries across four different continents.

Ben Ames: Since graduating from TAP, our sales in the US markets have increased to account for roughly 80% of CORL's current annual revenue.

Robert Harbauer: We grew our export from 50% of our sales to 95% of our sales in 18 months.

Abdul Naushad: We've grown [00:02:30] about 1,500% and we continue to grow at 40% month to month.

Shamira Jaffer: As a company, we grew up a lot and we're everywhere from Europe to Middle East to the far East.

Speaker 1: In five years, the Trade Accelerator Program has grown from one location to over 25 Canadian cities, and we are now diversifying to niche sectors and are looking at the global stage.

Joanne Torrance: Having TAP in our corner now has opened up what the world has to offer.

Grow with the Right Tools

TAP connects your business with top industry experts, provides you with coaching to build a personalized export strategy and equips you with the tools and resources to find success.

Participate in TAP to access:

Highly interactive and hands-on sessions featuring case studies, workshops and mock negotiations.
Direct mentorship and highly personalized coaching by industry experts on a one-to-one-basis.
Expertly curated content on a virtual learning platform.
Valuable peer-to-peer interaction, collaboration and learning.
Connections with key contacts locally and abroad.

Program Structure

TAP hosts sessions around “cohorts” – groups of businesses that share an industry, interest or location. Cohorts ensure that you'll be learning and engaging with like-minded businesses and professionals. Unsure about the cohort for you? Use the Inquiry Form to contact us, and a representative can help you decide.

The program duration is 4 or 6 weeks (depending on delivery method) and learning is broken into four phases:

Phase 1: Discover

Phase 2: Develop

Phase 3: Build

Phase 4: Accelerate

“TAP opened our eyes to finance strategies we had not considered. Within two months, we acquired the necessary financing to take our company to the next level. This program will enhance your view of business, regardless of what stage of business you are at.”
– Premise LED, 2016 TAP Graduate

Program Delivery

TAP can be delivered in two formats: hybrid and virtual. Both formats include the same topics and the use of an e-learning platform.

Hybrid Sessions

Virtual Sessions

The TAP Advantage

TAP offers a range of skills, experience and individual mentoring and coaching across a broad spectrum of fields including legal, finance, global sales & marketing, taxation, logistics and more.

TAP graduates have realized their global potential, reporting an average of 18% growth since attending, and 69% of participants are now exporting in markets like China, India, Mexico, Japan, U.K., Italy, Sweden and the U.S.

96% of participants felt better prepared for international business

Speaker 1, Erin Flowers: I have this luxury of working with some of the best part of humanity, which I think are curlers.

Speaker 2, Andrew Brett: We graduated from TAP with a much more holistic understanding of the resources available to us as a Canadian small business.

Erin Flowers: We manufacture product specific to the sport of curling. My dad's run the company since I was young. My grandfather actually started the company in 1967 and two years ago, the opportunity came up for myself and Andrew and Pete to purchase the business.

Speaker 3, Peter Townshend: We've got so much passion for what we're doing.

Andrew Brett: We had a lot of faith in ourselves and in each other.

Erin Flowers: We all really felt that we would take the company to the next level.

Andrew Brett: There's a rapidly growing interest in curling.

Peter Townshend: There's curling starting in Brazil right now.

Andrew Brett: So it was perfect timing to think about our export plan.

Peter Townshend: TAP was just a no-brainer.

Andrew Brett: The TAP Program forced us to really look at resources within our network and especially a new network that TAP brought us, services that we weren't aware of.

Peter Townshend: We saw 20% year over year growth, like right out of the TAP Program.

Erin Flowers: We have grown substantially in terms of personnel, retail stores, more business in countries like Norway, Scotland, Japan. Not only would my father be proud of how we're going to take this company, but my grandfather would be extra proud to see where this has grown.

Partners

The Trade Accelerator Program is supported by several partners, including Innovation, Science and Economic Development, in delivering Canada’s Export Diversification Strategy.