When Mexican company Kidzania was looking for the first U.S. franchise for its upscale children’s entertainment center, North Texas was an easy winner.
“It has great economic development and the demographics that we need – families with children interested in their education and in good socio-economic position to pay for the tickets,” said Enrique Mena, chief of staff and business liaison officer at Kidzania USA .
The original location, Frisco’s Stonebriar Center, is in one of the region’s busiest malls, surrounded by many other retail stores, large employers, and affluent suburbs – the exact customer base and pedestrian frequency required to support an 80,000 square foot entertainment offering Complex.
Desirable demographics aren’t the only reason 35% of all Mexican businesses in the US are headquartered in the Dallas area, according to statistics from the Consulate General of Mexico in Dallas.
Mexican companies also find Dallas-Fort Worth attractive because it is an important hub for air travel. In July, seven airlines flew an average of 61 flights per day to 24 destinations in Mexico from DFW International Airport, according to the flight planning company Diio by Cirium.
With a population of approximately 7.7 million, D-FW is the fourth largest metropolitan market in the country, with a growing and dynamic workforce supporting nearly two dozen Fortune 500 companies, as well as a thriving arts scene and professional sports franchises where the The crown jewel is the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, a globally recognized brand.
All of these factors act as a magnet for companies – from home and abroad – looking for a healthy local economy, highly qualified workforce, tax breaks and quality of life for their employees.
Kidzania USA, a clever little kid-sized town where they role-play role-play to learn a variety of professions including shops, a bank, a television station, an aviation academy, restaurants, an optician, a hospital, a university, a theater, and a fire station.
Part of an American Airlines jet greets visitors to KidZania Dallas. The jet is home to several child-sized flight simulators. The two-story location has 100 activities in 40 kid-sized stores. (Tom Fox / Dallas Morning News)(Tom Fox / Employee Photographer)
When the Mexican company ventured into the international market in 2006, it was already successful in Mexico City. Mena, who has been with Kidzania since 2005, was part of a team that traveled to Japan to open the first international center. It now has 27 locations worldwide that attract nine million visitors annually. According to Mena, the company has annual sales of around $ 15 million in the United States.
Kidzania does not recognize D-FW as the Land of Opportunity to start a business in the States.
Luisa del Rosal, executive director of Mission Foods Texas-México Center and Tower Center at Southern Methodist University, said Mexican companies see the northern Texas business environment as one that enables them to maximize profits.
“There is a very important business and job migration dynamic in Texas and the D-FW region because of the good business environment and family membership that they find,” said del Rosal. “And it just adds to the growth and stickiness of Texas.”
Mena has been part of many international expansions, including openings in Dubai and Indonesia. But for Mena, the goal of bringing the company to the US was a dream and a challenge for 14 years.
“The opening in the USA was very difficult,” said Mena when looking for the right business partner, the Luxembourg company Innova Partners, to implement his strategy.
But Frisco made it easier by incentivizing the company up to $ 1 million over a five-year period when it hit investment and job creation. KidZania USA has already received payments totaling $ 560,000. Leigh Lyons, director of marketing and communications for Frisco Economic Development Corp., said the company “exceeded key performance criteria.”
As the company’s first US location, Frisco is helping the company “identify areas of opportunity,” Mena said. “What we learn here, we will avoid or improve in the next cities we visit in the USA.”
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Children tackle a fire at the KidZania’s Stonebriar Center in Frsico, TX on November 22, 2019.(Jason Janik / special article)
Mexico is Texas’s largest trading partner, followed by Canada, with both accounting for nearly 42% of Texas’s exports in 2019. Texas is also a major recipient of Mexican business investment.
Over the past several decades, companies like Gruma Corp. (the largest tortilla manufacturer in the world), Cinépolis USA, Interceramic, Lala US and Bimbo Bakeries USA successfully set up branches in the Dallas region.
“It’s really amazing just because there is such a low business failure rate,” said del Rosal.
Softek, a software and IT services company founded in 1982 in Monterrey, México, took advantage of the business-friendly climate in North Texas and moved its US headquarters from Atlanta to Addison in 2017.
Of the 15,000 employees worldwide, 99 work in the Dallas area. The company provides IT applications, infrastructure, cybersecurity and software for large employers such as Southwest Airlines, based in Dallas. The company generates less than $ 1 billion annually.
“I believe [the North Texas area] It’s an amazing market considering how many companies are moving their headquarters here, ”said Beni López, CEO of US operations. “We are therefore very much looking forward to expanding our customer base in Texas. There are good talents in IT. “
Development of a successful D-FW business
Doing business in Mexico doesn’t guarantee success at D-FW, said Alicia Molina, president and CEO of RegiaTax, a tax and accounting firm in Carrollton. Your business is helping companies from around the world obtain the necessary documentation and permits to operate in the United States
Most of the companies that seek help from their company are from Mexico, but North Texas is also a popular choice for companies from Chile, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Spain. In the first six months of this year alone, 15 foreign companies have already started migrating to the USA via RegiaTax.
Paperwork is one of the hurdles entrepreneurs face when moving to the United States
“[Mexican companies] So I can speak Spanish, ”said Molina. “We have bilingual staff and try to serve the Latin community so that barriers are not a problem for them.”
Sometimes the business also has to change in order to adapt to a sudden demographic change in the customer base.
“Even if you’re from Mexico and want to target the Mexican or Latin American market in Dallas, you have to change your strategies, especially your marketing, because it’s not the same audience,” said Molina.
Most of the companies Molina advises have successfully mastered these changes. To date, her company has helped more than 100 companies establish themselves in Dallas.
Among the obstacles Mexican entrepreneurs face, the Texas-Mexico Center found migration policies, certification procedures, and social and institutional discrimination high on the list.
Jennifer Apperti, manager of the SMU Texas-Mexico Center, said she also sees changes in business trends from Mexico to Dallas.
“Two important findings were that [Mexican entrepreneurs] are sometimes underemployed because of the language and the lack of social networks, ”said Apperti. “Was [now] to see another, better educated migrant from Mexico. “
Mena said Kidzania hopes to add up to 18 more cities in the United States by 2022, including Chicago and New York. The US is the most important country in which it can do business, he said.
“We had to close for about four months last year,” said Mena. “But we’re very happy this summer because even though we don’t get the same number of people, people are spending more.”
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Children stand in front of the green screen while they provide the weather forecast at a kid-sized WFAA television studio in KidZania Dallas, the company’s only U.S. location at Stonebriar Mall At The Bridges in Plano, Texas, July 16, 2021. (Tom Fox / The.) Dallas Morning News)(Tom Fox / Employee Photographer)
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