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I finished reading Mr. China by Tim Clissold and I found it quite interesting. It is the story of an investment fund that lost hundreds of millions of dollars in China in the 1990s. The author describes in great details the traps his … [Read more...]

I just came across an interesting post ("6 conversations and a couple of cultural lessons") on the SRI blog. In the last paragraphs, David Dayton evokes the sub-contracting habits of Chinese manufacturers: Chinese factories ALWAYS sub work … [Read more...]

The general shareholders meeting at Carrefour (2nd largest retailer in the world) recently took place. Many newspapers wrote about the complaint from a small shareholder, speaking in public to the CEO (see this article from Le Monde, 10th … [Read more...]

A few weeks ago, I was asked what a small importer can do to "keep his pipeline full". Many importers of general consumer goods need to renew their products regularly, for many reasons. But how to get new product ideas and develop them on … [Read more...]

In a recent post, I was wondering whether many importers calculated the fully-burdened cost of imports. Today, I came upon an interesting article on Knowledge@Wharton (Can China Meet the Quality Challenge?) where Mr. Pinney, from BCG … [Read more...]

I am reading Poorly Made In China, and it is a real treat. Paul Midler, the author, does a great job at analyzing the psychology of oversea buyers. He gives examples where the importer got himself locked into a relationship with a given … [Read more...]

In my last post I explained why inspecting quality earlier is better. The idea was: you should have your production checked before/during production if possible, and you should definitely not let your supplier ship some goods that were … [Read more...]