Words of Wisdom on Working With Manufacturers in China

A couple years back, I interviewed David Alexander , CEO at Baysource Global on best practices for working with manufacturers in China. You can listen to the podcast here - https://www.asiabusinesspod.com/episodes/best-practices-for-working-with-a-manufacturer-in-china

A couple of points that David raised in that podcast were spot on, and for this edition of the China Tech Newsletter I wanted to re-share those nuggets of wisdom here, as they still hold today just as much as ever. And they also hold for working in any emerging market, for that matter.

On the importance of communication in project management:

For any of us, whether it's, somebody in Chicago with somebody in Florida or somebody in Shanghai with somebody in Southern China, or somebody in Shanghai and somebody in Chicago, communications where we all want to feel like we've been heard - that's so critical I think with project management and contract manufacturing.

When a project manager, a buyer, a CEO, a business owner, is entrusting us to not just see that the quality parameters are hit, but the timelines are being hit, that problems are being addressed and fixed. We all want to be heard, and that's sometimes difficult between the English speaking only person and even a thoroughly bilingual Chinese person.

There are lots of reasons for that. The intonations of voices and fluctuations and sense of urgency doesn't always come through. We know that amongst ourselves in texts and emails, right? We even spend time coaching our team to overcommunicate, to proactively communicate. Hey, just wanted to let you know that we're doing this or that the factory fits this.

One of the ways around that is good technology. We create dashboards for our clients in a Smartsheets basic tool for them to go in and see daily status of products and purchase orders and shipments and all those things. It's custom to their business.

That when we proactively fill in the blanks and it doesn't require a Zoom call or a bunch of emails, they're like, ah, they're on it. They're fixing this, they're fixing that. And regular, weekly or biweekly calls, conference calls, zoom meetings to update clients on the status of their projects.

These are things that can't be done just based on an internet relationship with a guy I met on Alibaba, right? So this is thorough contact.? This is how it ought to be done. Again, whether it's Chicago to California or Chicago to Chengdu, it needs to be done.

On the importance of being humble:

You know, China, especially back in the day, 10, 15 years ago was really exciting. People would go there, business people would go there, they'd be overwhelmed by everything that was happening to them. I mean, the graciousness of their Chinese hosts, the big impressive cities, this, that, and the other, and the what was perceived as a huge business potential.

And so they would get all excited and not really think it through. But think this is it. We need to be here. We can do this. We've got a good product. And then they would go back, sell it to Corporate, and then the company would jump into China thinking they had it under control. Thinking they understood the situation, not realizing there was a lot that they actually did not know.

Only after they started spending a lot of money did they end up running into problems. Instead, you need to go into China very humbly. You need to go in realizing there's so much you don't know.