I have found five good articles of interest to importers recently. Here they are, in no particular order.
5 Key Indicators of a Good Chinese Supplier
Andrew Reich, a friend a real expert in China manufacturing & QC, gives us a short list of what to look for in a potential supplier:
- Attitude
- Transparency and honesty
- Focus on quality
- Communication
- Experience
Excellent advice, and well worth a read.
New Bank For Your China Payment? Make Damn Sure!
It seems like a lot of people contact Dan Harris after getting scammed in China. One red flag that buyers should watch out for is a change in bank account.
Here is his advice on this subject:
Chinese companies are very loyal to their bank and so you should view with extreme suspicion any request to make a change in the payment bank. You should not even consider such a request unless the request is made in writing on a revised purchase order stamped with the company seal. Even in that case, it is important to contact someone you know in the company with supervisory authority to ensure that the request is valid.
Reshoring: What really drives the trend?
After several journalists wrote about the “re-shoring” or “in-sourcing” trend that consists in bringing production back from China to the US, Etienne Charlier gives us his view on that phenomenon.
He points out the reasons behind the well-publicized cases (anecdotes?) about re-shoring. It is a nascent trend that will probably take place only in certain product categories.
New hubs to cushion exodus from Pearl River Delta
This article shows forecasts from several experts who don’t always agree on the long-term trend that pushes factories away from expensive coastal areas. (Let’s call this the “in-landing” phenomenon?)
This paragraph seems like a good summary of the whole article:
The low value-added labour-intensive stuff like toys, textiles and shoes are leaving China. But most of the rest of China’s manufacturing is staying and moving inland where they get tax breaks, cheap land and labour. That is the dominant trend.
How to Partner in China in 2013
A journalist from Inc. Magazine gathered good advice from my friends Andrew Hupert and Dan Harris, as well as from a Duke University professor.
It is perfectly applicable to relationships between importers and local suppliers!
2 Responses
Great collection of articles Renaud, thanks for gathering them in one place. The reshoring article was particularly interesting to me. I like that it noted how some products just aren’t cost-effective to produce in China because of their size and weight, increasing the costs of shipping them to their markets of sale. That struck me as a pretty obvious limiting factor that is often over looked by the lure of cheap labor.
Thank James. Yes, Etienne’s blog also does a good job of curating good articles.