Mark Shaw, brandishing a small American flag, mugs for his colleague’s camera at the stand displaying their spill-containment and other hazardous-waste-treatment products. “Hey, it gives a new meaning to “showing the flag,” right?” he quips, before turning his attention back to showing a prospective distributor or customer just how a bright-red polyurethane seal he has on display will stop any contaminant from slipping down a drain in a factory floor, or mixing with rainwater that flows into a street sewer.

Shaw, co-president of UltraTech International Inc. of Jacksonville, Florida, is one of a cluster of small businesses that have made the trek to the French city of Lyon with their business models and products, in hopes of landing new sales or distribution contracts at the city’s annual exhibition of “green” technologies, services, and equipment. Dubbed “Pollutec,” the gathering features companies from across Europe and around the world that are involved in such endeavors as recycling, containing carbon emissions, and treating contaminated soil. Exhibitors have flocked to this city on the Rhone River, named as France’s first “Eco City” this year by consultant Mercer, from nearly every country in Europe to Japan, South Korea, Chile—and the United States—to strut their stuff.

And while some of those players are well-known household names—Volvo and Renault boast massive displays of their latest and fanciest electronic vehicles—the names on the stands in the American section of the vast exhibition hall aren’t those of General Motors, General Electric, or even some of the giant solar-power firms that have sprung up in recent years. Rather, they are small but ambitious, hoping to use the trade fair as a way to establish or consolidate a toehold in the potentially lucrative European market for green products and technologies.

“It’s a tougher market for us to break into because there is a lot of competition, and we have to learn how to do it right, but the potential is tremendous” because of government programs across Europe that press local authorities and businesses to be as environmentally benign as possible, Shaw explains. (This can have its downside: A snowstorm dumped 8 inches of white stuff on Lyon during the conference, turning a 10-minute drive from the city center to the conference location on the outskirts into a harrowing 75-minute ordeal, but Lyon’s city officials explain that putting salt on the roads can create toxic environmental runoff.)

UltraTech got a much higher profile, both at home and abroad, when BP picked its containment-fencing products from hundreds of other ideas put forward in the effort to filter crude oil from the water that was washing ashore near protected marshland. Now it’s time to translate that profile into higher sales for the 20-person company. (Shaw declined to discuss sales figures for the private company, beyond noting that overseas markets provided a 248 percent boost in revenues last year.)

Historically, small U.S. companies like UltraTech haven’t been in the lead when it comes to boosting American exports, admits John Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of Commerce of Economic Development. Speaking to StreetWise as he tours the U.S. exhibits alongside the country’s ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, Fernandez says that is something that he and the Obama administration hope to change, arguing that just as small companies can create jobs, they can drive export earnings—and generate higher profits for themselves, to boot.

“Exports are potentially a big driver of growth for American small businesses, “ explains Fernandez. Historically, he adds, smaller U.S. companies have perceived barriers to entry abroad or simply haven’t expanded their horizons beyond their local or regional markets. “That means that for any one of them that does make the leap, the opportunity is much larger.”

That, he adds, is particularly true for environmental-technology businesses like those of Shaw and his fellow Pollutec exhibitors. “In the United States, the demand for some of these products and services is still being proven,” Fernandez says. In contrast, many European countries and regions are pushing the adoption of everything from special kinds of tilling machines to next-generation hybrid automotive engines. There’s even a quirky-looking transportation device on display that looks like it’s part bicycle, part mini-truck, and part car available for someone who simply wants to commute using biofuels and without emissions or for delivering FedEx packages (as witnessed by StreetWise in the streets of Paris.)

Most of the American entrepreneurs who have shown up in Lyon and who are forking out a sum that one estimated to be six times the cost of a “regular” trade-fair booth in order to try to bring in more orders, have always assumed they would seek out business worldwide. Shaw, for instance, studied Mandarin in college. “I just thought global from the start, even in the early '80s.” A serial entrepreneur, UltraTech is his fourth company, and in 2005, a dozen years after launching it, he began to expand by pitching products like storm rainwater-runoff containment devices to countries like Australia and New Zealand.

At another stand, Tom Joseph, founder of Epiphany Solar Water Systems, is still seeking out investors as well as potential customers for his new company, which offers a way to use solar power to provide clean water via desalination or just by removing bacteria and other contaminants. “It was always clear to me that our biggest markets were going to be overseas, in places where there was little water but a lot of sunshine,” including many developing nations, Joseph explains.

He has already attended another global trade fair, in the Middle East, and has signed a memorandum of understanding with a group of partners in Abu Dhabi. The engineer and former NASA subcontractor on rocket design says he hopes to begin booking sales income in the New Year. “This trip is to prove the business model and demand to investors,” he says, breaking off the conversation to talk to a potential distributor.

There can be a steep learning curve for entrepreneurs and small-business owners seeking to tap the potential of export markets. Some lessons come from experience. Shaw, for instance, has revamped his plan for getting into the European model and ditched the idea of having a single distributor for all EU nations in favor of several national or regional partnerships. He had underestimated, he now says, the degree to which a French customer might be reluctant to order from a German distributor or that an Italian distributor may not understand not only the technicalities but the social rules of doing business in the Netherlands.

Other lessons are easy for American companies abroad to learn. “The best thing I’ve done is to learn several phrases in some key languages to greet people; it really disarms them and makes them lose any preconceptions that they have about insular Americans,” says Shaw. Even if he only speaks a few words of Portuguese, they were enough to have a small group of Brazilian Pollutec attendees laughing and chatting within a minute or two—and making them happy to walk away clutching copies of UltraTech’s 82-page catalog.

“Doing this has been about getting rid of preconceived ideas—in fact, most people want to deal with American companies and individuals, even if they don’t like government policies,” Shaw explains. “And you don’t need to be a big international company to take advantage of that.”