SAOS Hong Kong

Scamming could happen whenever buyers go to B2B platform and look for new suppliers. One common way of scamming is when the seller asks for deposit and disappears after the buyer pays. As a matter of fact, it is not always avoidable to pay in advance when you are a new customer to the supplier. What you could do is to pay enough attention to avoid it. And how to avoid being scammed? There are many ways to avoid being scammed and is quite easy to find those tips online. Yet it’d better to use a professional agent to help you as in some cases the scamming is really complicated and is very hard for a non-experienced customer to identify. 

Unfortunately, we received a SOS recently from a buyer who seemed trapped. The buyer was urgently looking for plastic materials. He found a Chinese supplier online with B2B platforms like Alibaba, quoted and selected. He paid deposit as requested by the Chinese supplier. As the story goes, the supplier suddenly changed its terms and conditions and he couldn’t contact this supplier again after he transferred the money.

The buyer contacted SAOS via our Linkedin, as a local professional services provider. He emailed us the situation, provided all the contacts and information for our support to clarify the case.

It was too late already, but we tried our best to check. As due diligence services, we normally do:

-  Call the contacts: Ask questions to understand if they are really in that business (e.g. this time we planed to ask advices on various plastic grades and material recommendation). Scammers have low chance to demonstrate real knowledge on subject matter and will avoid answering. 

Also we ask about the client case, what he understands and how he is planning to arrange the delivery. A real supplier will be able to provide more details and genuine information.

-  Check custom data: We use official sources like Panjiva, a custom data provider, to see if the supplier has been doing export business and had real transactions. If records are existed, then we consider low chance of scamming.

-  Observations: We look into their official address, website, domain name, and see if they are wired. It is subjective, I agree, however that is exactly what we call experience. 

For this time, what more than regular procedure is that we work with our alliance, the Wuhan Online Chamber of Commerce. The potential scammer has their address in Wuhan and claims to be a local company there. It makes full sense that we ask if our friends in the Chamber know about them.

The Wuhan Online Chamber of Commerce, having about 100 of members, is one of the most active and organized group of the exporting industry. I was there last week in Wuhan for a speech regarding buyer behavior as a guest speaker. Learning about this case, the Chamber took serious action to check if anyone knew about this company and the person who named in registration. The case also concerned the local office of Alibaba and their head of the Mid-west China business Mr. Zheng Lei, who took immediate action even it was not their responsibility. He checked their local database on the information of the company and found that the same reg. person used to register different business in other province. That information made the case more suspicious. Both Wuhan Chamber of Commerce and Alibaba are involved since they are dedicated for a clean and safe business environment of the local industry. 

As a result, unfortunately, we believe the chance that the buyer is scammed is high:

 -  The scammer website contains only English, which is not common for most Chinese companies based on our long sourcing history dealing with local Chinese companies. This gives a feeling that they are only interest to dealing with (or, scam with) foreign business.

 -  They are existed in Panjiva as well, but with no transaction history.

 -  We called all the phone numbers available and none of them successfully took us to any contact person. However, after several times of calling, we finally reached the project contact to pick up the phone. When we asked about the case, the girl on the phone said she knew nothing and hung up the phone.

From the above observations, we believe the buyer is not just meeting a non-responsive supplier. He has been scammed, losing 30% of its advanced payment.

What can he do? Honestly, not much. He can call the police (in Chinese) and ask them to help handle it. However, in practice, it will be very difficult to deal oversea with this kind of crime. Some lawyers could eventually deal with this case. Still, I really want to stress on the fact that preventive measure should be taken to avoid scamming situations. Obviously, if the buyer had turned to SAOS or other professional agents to help check before the deposit, this suffering would have been prevented. 

If you are not sure about your new Chinese supplier and you need to pay certain deposit to them beforehand, better to check before you do. SAOS offers a simple and small, yet professional and effective service called “Scam-Alert”, and our aim is to prevent you from being scammed. With all the checking via our local channels and even some official ways (e.g. Access the Chinese government database), we will provide you with our risk indicator index and accordingly, reduce your risk of being scammed.

China has the largest online population in the world: 538 million users by the end of 2012, versus 141 million in the USA.

Want to know more about Chinese e-market, click here

The Chinese e-market is huge today, and this evolution was predictable from years. That is why eBay chose to begin the leader of this market in 2002 by investing US$ 30 million in EachNet, a Chinese online auction founded in 1999. But the American giant eBay failed in China.

On the contrary, the local competitor, Taobao that was created in 2003 had and still has a big success in China. Even more, Taobao is the biggest e-tailing platform in the world today.

Taobao is an e-tailing platform created by Alibaba group in 2003, one year after the coming of eBay on the Chinese market. The managers of the American e-tailing platform considered that this Chinese version of eBay was not a danger for the company. But obviously, they were wrong. In March 2002, after doing a joint-venture with EachNet.com, eBay had about 80% of the e-commerce market for $30 Million and 33% of shares. In May 2003, Taobao went online. At the end of 2006, eBay cut its losses and shut its website because of Taobao’s success. Today, Taobao is the global leader of e-commerce with 80% of the Chinese market shares.

Why Taobao has achieved commercial success and not eBay?

This is the "going first going fast" American e-tailing giant's strategy that made it lose its Chinese bet. In fact, the ethnocentric management of eBay has not allowed it to adapt its services and logistic to the new target culture: the Chinese one.

Chinese culture is very different than occidental ones, than American's in this case. Then, consumers' expectations and needs are different too. While eBay didn't want or think to adapt its strategy, Taobao is perfectly adapted to the local culture. You could tell me "of course, it is a Chinese platform!" and you would be right. Let’s have a look on the Taobao’s particularities that allow it to win the war against eBay for the e-commerce in China.

• The platform’s design

To compete with eBay, Jack Ma (Taobao founder) has decided to give a strong local identity to Taobao. Many aspect of the platform’s design are concerned.

First, every member of the administration team had to choose a nickname, and all of them are “from fictional characters from Jin Yong’s famous kung fu novels” (Sun Tongyu, Taobao’s president). The message transmitted through the famous Chinese kung fu writer’s reference is clear: Taobao is a Chinese platform. This message is important because Chinese people are very nationalist. They are proud to be Chinese and as China is a collectivist country, this kind of identification is stronger than identifying themselves as individuals. That is why Taobao’s manager chose to give a strong Chinese culture reference to the platform. Another reason for this is to ensure consumers their understanding of their behaviours and needs. The second thing is choosing nickname is giving an informal attitude, which is the key to allow people to feel welcoming and being a member of a community.

Secondly, Taobao’scolors are red and orange, which symbolize festivity and prosperity in Chinese culture, a very positive message for online customers. Symbolic is very important to doing business in China unlike in the occidental world.

Moreover, Taobao’s website is well charged with a lot of information everywhere. Life in China is like that: a lot of people, information and signs everywhere, no empty space mostly of the time. It’s a noisy, collective, moving and colourful environment. That is why Taobao’s design is reflecting this environment: it is what Chinese people are accustomed to. Zhang Yu, vice president in charge of C2C marketplace operations at Taobao, explains: “Chinese consumers like busy web designs with strong colours. Westerners prefer sparse sites like Google’s, but Chinese customers want their website to be noisy, with lots of links”.

Taobao homepage with red and orangecolors and filled info

Overall, the design is adapted to the Chinese spirit. As Porter Erisman (the vice president of International Corporate Affairs) said,Taobao’s “design was much more usable for Chinese eyes [than eBay’s]. It reflected how Chinese shoppers think. Even some small details, such as including a men’s navigation tab and a women’s navigation tab, made the navigation more suitable to Chinese online shoppers. It was like being in a Chinese department store”. It is not in the occidental culture to create one separated navigation tab for men and women at all, even if differences of men and women thinks have been proved.

• The trust

One eBay’s error was to ignore the importance of the trust in the Chinese culture. For American and occidental people in general the main motivation to buy a good it’s the price. Of course they need trusting the seller, as each people from any culture in the world, but the trust in China is much more than that. Paul Ingram, professor at the Columbia Business school specialized in social network explains:

In the West, we tend to reserve trust from the hurt (affect-based trust) for family and friends and trust from the head (cognition-based trust) for business partners. We see emotional concerns in business as unprofessional. But in China, affect- and cognition-based trusts are highly intertwined, even in business. It is important that business partners have an affective bond. Few Chinese business relationships develop without socio-emotional exchanges such as sharing meals, gifts and socializing with each other’s family.

That is why Taobao provides many aspects to facilitate confidence among sellers and buyers. - The main one is AliWangWang, the Alibaba’s chat. Its function is to allow sellers and buyers to communicate. This tool has 2 main advantages. The first one is that Taobao proposes mostly fixed prices and only few auctions (on the contrary of eBay). It means that people can negotiate prices with sellers. It is interesting financially, but more than that, the bargaining is a part of the trust building between seller and buyer in Chinese culture. The second advantage is that people can directly ask their questions about the product to the seller or asking for assistance.

  AliWangWang interface

-Taobao sellers have to use their national identity card and their bank account to do their registration on the site. - A rating system of both sellers and buyers allows people to know who is trustable or not without taking the time to speak with the person. eBay offers a rating system for sellers only, but it is not enough in China. Moreover, in a collectivist society people like sharing and it is human trusting a person who has a good reputation. Thus, both buyers and sellers have to build and maintain a good reputation being honest if they want keep selling or buying on Taobao.

Rating info of a registered user

- Alipay, lauched in 2004 is an escrow service of Taobao. The buyer put the money on Alipay which inform the seller the money was given. Then, the seller send the item to the buyer, and only when the buyer tells the good is received, Alipay allows the seller taking the money. This service can be used for free.

- Another trusting idea is people can pay as they receive their item, mainly by cash on delivery. Indeed, the most usual way of payment in China is cash, and cash on delivery is like checking goods before buying, in retail shops. One more time, we can see that Taobao is perfectly adapted to the Chinese culture.

• Fees

Listing and transactions are free of charge on Taobao. It is not the case on eBay.

In conclusion, we can say Taobao bested eBay for 3 reasons:

o It is perfectly adapted to the Chinese culture. It is a Chinese eBay especially made for Chinese consumers and consumers like to be considered.

o It provides very good services with low risks for online shopping.

o It is free. By Leila Hatoum, SAOS Marketing ManagerChina has the largest online population in the world: 538 million users by the end of 2012, versus 141 million in the USA.  

Fix cost sourcing is a type of sourcing service that performs purely as a service provider to buyer and is on 100% benefit to the buyer who is paying for the service. Unlike the most common commission-based sourcing service, fix cost sourcing service is a suitable outsourcing strategy for mission critical projects that expect to result in a list of fair, non-biased comparison on supplier competitiveness in a new supply market.

It is fairly easy to find a sourcing company in China – try it yourself by asking for this in a LinkedIn group and you will have quite some people raise their hand for the work. Most common charging structure from them is to take a % from your purchase amount in a fixed period of time, say, the first year or so. Most of them could give you a list of suppliers easily, even for free in some cases. Assuming you pick one who asked for a reasonable % that you agree with, the agent will do their sourcing work by their process (assuming you pick one who has a clearly presented process), and eventually lead to a supplier that you can work with. Some of them could follow up the negotiation process or even new product industrialization process. Eventually he or she will either get payment from you or your supplier, or both. Case closed.

Sound good? True, but only in some cases. Let's see more scenarios. Let’s say, you have a half millions sourcing project that critically requires having a shortlist of capable suppliers within 1 month or even few weeks. You know China is a good source for the product but you do not have any experience nor network locally to perform the task. As a new project you do not have all the necessary product and technical knowledge and you would like to work with a supplier that knows your product and industry well enough. Your business unit and product marketing folks need to launch the project on target quality, price and most importantly, on schedule, so as to compete in the market. Strong pressure that you just could not afford to waste time nor rely on an agency who is not committed.

You go to internet, list your request, someone raise their hand for the job. You discuss with them for your requirement and tell them how important it is to meet the target. You get a firm "YES" confirmation from one of your agent. The agent start to source and discuss with potential suppliers. Unfortunately your target is tough and not all suppliers interested to your RFQ due to the difficulty and complexity of your questions. Your agent come back to you, with the bad news of the progress, and an even worse news that he/she want to quit the project due to the complexity and uncertainty to meet the target result and earn his commission. Of course you are upset. You disagree, you yell, but it doesn’t help anything. The agent just disappeared. In most cases, I am not sure the agent will even consider there was something wrong. He didn't get paid nor contracted. It is just a casual relationship without any official commitment.

Yet with a professional sourcing service provider like SAOS, this shall not happen. We will have project analysis before they make a commitment and will charge only when the project is completed as you expected. An official contract will also be signed for the insurance of your interest.

And What about cost of the sourcing service? From my understanding most agent charge between 3 to 8% (I understand a famous HK based sourcing company run by American charge as much as 7 to 11%!). Let’s assume you go for price and take an agency charge for 2% only. In your half million project you will pay 10K USD to your agent. In our fix cost based sourcing service, we charge by man hour in most cases and for a single product family sourcing we seldom go higher than this figure - not even close. Price is purely based on the complexity of the project and doesn’t matter how big or small of your business and project.

When I started to think about how my China sourcing company SAOS should charge on a sourcing service I was quite surprise to see that people in this industry is actually charging to a % of the total purchase amount. As a matter of fact, the sourcing effort required to do a good job for a smaller project should not be too different from a high volume project. The difference, if any, should be in the term of product development and industrialization process, which is naturally a post-sourcing process after you identify and contract with your supplier.

Think deeper, if my paid is related to the total amount of spending, will I make more profit if a supplier with higher cost is selected? Will this pay system discourage me from recommending low cost suppliers?? System Error!

I believe that sourcing service should be a non-risk taking, consulting+ operation based business process. Unlike trading, which aims to take advantage of an unbalance point of a market and take risk for higher profit, sourcing should be purely professional service. Charging by consulting fee and/or man-hour effort makes more sense to us. That is what we are doing today and our customer is comfortable to our relationship as we do.

WeChat (Chinese: 微信, Pinyin : Weixin, literally means Micro Message) is a newly fashionable mobile app in China owned by Tencent Holdings, the Chinese company has the largest worldwide community through QQ and is the third largest internet company in the world. Launched in January 2011, WeChat has already gained over 300 million users in 2 years (the last 100 million users were added in less than 4 months!), making it already a significant platform for e-marketing and SNS marketing in China.

Who are using WeChat?

The dramatic increase of WeChat users is enhanced by the rapid growth of smartphone users in China—330 million in the end of February 2013 according to CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), close to the number of WeChat users.

From a research by Search Engine Journal, China’s young, affluent and urban young contribute to the majority of WeChat users. 76.1% of the users are aged from 22-35, mainly in big cities. As for their occupations, white collars rank the first at 24.2% with a trend more and more middle and low class young people joining in.

Main Functions of Wechat:

WeChat provides social media networking via photo/video/article/message sharing, which forms shared streaming content feeds for convenient viewing, and location-based social networking plug-ins to chat with and be friend with other WeChat users.

- Live chat

Chat with friends in a Live Chat session like Viber in Europe or USA, both text chat and voice chat are available. Moreover, video chat feature has been added recently. You can also select contacts to form a group and initiate group chat easily.

- Add friends & QR codes

Friends can be added via searching or scanning a QR code. WeChat allows users to simply create a QR Code so as to let others to do a quick scan and become a follower.

Adding public account with QR codes is one of the most popular ways for users to get information outside their friends circle, which is also a very interesting tool for marketers. Nowadays, many companies like Starbucks, Microsoft and AirAsia have registered their public account and use it for marketing campaigns. Thus, WeChat QR codes are very common in many marketing materials to encourage people to follow them on WeChat.

Starbucks WeChat QR code, scan it with your WeChat to find out more.

- Location-based plug-ins

Shake: Shake your phone to find people shaking their phones as well, then you can choose from the list of “people found" and "Send Greeting" to make friends.

Look Around: Use "Look Around" to find people using WeChat nearby, and select to "Send Greeting" to make friends. Only user with the “Look Around” function enabled can be found.

Drift Bottle: Throw & pick Drift Bottle. Select "Throw" to send out your voice or text message, and then wait to see who will pick up your bottle and reply. Select "Pick" to pick a drift bottle from the sea. You can reply to it or throw it back to the sea.

- Moments

See all the updates from your friends in the Moments, for it photo/video/article/message. Like or Comment on the moments, a simplified, easy to use Facebook sharing tool.

With all these convenient and interesting functions for social networking, WeChat had soon become very popular in China, and keen marketers started to study marketing on Wechat. Yet, the real marketing practice on WeChat didn’t start until August 2012 when the WeChat Public Account platform was launched. On this platform, verified public accounts have more choices for marketing:

- User management: You can manage the followers of your account and categorize them by different types.

- Posting messages: You can edit the message that you’d like to share with your followers and select to post to all or to specific groups. There are the five types of messages: text, voice, picture, video and text+picture. Links are allowed to be added for further actions.

- QR code: You can download the QR code of your public account and can put it on your website, other social media or marketing materials for increasing followers. (See also in the Add friends & QR codes section.)

AirAsia Wechat QRcode on its official site(left), Text+picture message of promotion info from AirAsia(right)

Everyone can register a public account, however you need 1000 followers to verify the account, not too difficult considering the huge potential number of users. Up to now, WeChat has over 30,000 verified accounts, in which the corporate account accounted for 70%

Though WeChat isn’t the passkey for all marketing, no one can deny that it is an effective SNS marketing tool to build your brand community and increase sales in China, the world’s most large and competitive markets. What’s more, WeChat isn't stopping in China. The app is now available in English, Russian, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, and Vietnamese. And popularity is soaring in other parts of Asia with WeChat top on Apple’s social network app in several Asian countries. It’s a good idea to tap into this for your business in China and Asia now.

From June 7th to June 10th, as a SAOS voice, I was invited by the Chinese European and American Chamber of Commerce (EAcham) in Xining (Qinghai province) for the annual Qinghai Green development & trade fair. This fair began on June the 10th and ended the 13th. The local government spent $60 billion to organize it. This fair is an important national event and is becoming an international one with about 20 foreign companies doing this business trip with the European and American Chamber of Commerce, plus the Delegation of Mexico and Paris (including the President of the French chamber of commerce of “Val D’Oise”.

From June 7th to June 9th, we were attending many official meetings with the provincial government. It was such an honour to meet the Vice Governor of Qinghai and other important political representatives of the province.

Gao Ying (Left), chief Representative of the China Office of EAcham; Luo Yulin (Middle), Executive Vice Governor of the Qingha Province; Leila Hatoum (Right), Business Development in SAOS

The Qinghai province is a very rich area thanks to its mineral resources and aims at boosting foreign investments and economic cooperation. That is the reason why some foreign companies’ agents were invited to meet the provincial government.

An impressive number of economic cooperation agreements were signed between the provincial government and companies of the EAcham delegation during that event. The goal of those meetings was very clear: trade agreement for the numerous natural resources of Qinghai province.

Qinghai is a Chinese area located above Tibet, and its capital is Xining. This city owns an economic and technological development zone since July 2000, whose size reaches 4.4 km². Xining Economical and Technological Development Zone (XETDZ) is located in the east of Xining, 5 kilometers away from downtown.

This development zone is focused on several industries:

• Chemicals based on salt lake resources, • Nonferrous metals, • Petroleum and natural gas processing, • Special medicine, • Foods and bio-chemicals using local plateau animals and plants, • New products involving ecological and environmental protection, • New materials as information technology, • Services such as logistics, banking, real estate, tourism, hotel, catering, agency and international trade.

Obviously, Qinghai’s resources are vast and foreign companies are very interested in working with this province. Those resources are highly in demand for many kinds of industry and natural resources are rare and obviously more and more precious.

The fair was traditional craft oriented too, but the main goal was clearly to attract foreign investment and economic cooperation with them. However, there is a thing we could notice: even if this fair was international and important foreign guests were invited, all the stalls and explanations were in Chinese. Maybe next year we could see more English language.

Even so Chinese businessmen are more aware of international rules and etiquette, in recent years, the cultural differences will still remain as a major barrier to successful business with Chinese during the next century at least. Many managers believe no specific attention is needed for doing business, and actually the capability to understand and manage cultural relationship is defined by the Cultural Intelligence (CQ - which is a fairly new concept defined by C. Earley in Harvard Business Review Oct.2004 (http://hbr.org/2004/10/cultural-intelligence). The lack of cultural awareness has been the root cause of many failures in China and is often attributed to unfair business but rarely to behavioral differences. We expect below to give some basic principle of negotiations with Chinese that would greatly help getting successful deals oversea.

Preparation: - Date: Avoid main Chinese holidays like national day, autumn festival and Chinese New Year. - Language: Learn some basic Chinese, always very appreciated, few examples: Nihao (means hello, pronounced “nee haow”), Xiexie (means thanks, pronounced "she-yeh she-yeh"),... Google Translate gives good pronunciations for learning purpose. - Topic: Read recent positive news from China (achievements, sports, industrial development): this is very valuable during dinner to show that you know about China, and gives your Chinese partners a sense of proud and happy. It is better to avoid controversy topics, don’t speak about national politics with Chinese, and especially China’s own problems like pollution or corruption. - Energy: Be prepared for long meeting, especially for difficult and complex subjects, better to start the meeting well rested without too much jetlag.

Meeting: - Schedule: Be punctual to meeting, if late, inform your contact as soon as possible. - Agenda: As always, it is better to prepare and propose the meeting agenda well in advance, avoiding surprises and increasing meeting efficiency. - Gift: Always positive to prepare gifts. At minimal, one for the host, alcohol or chocolate is a good pick. Gift values should be similar in price than they are offering (reciprocity concept). The gifts shall be wrapped in red or gold paper preferably and black, white shall be avoided. - Naming: When calling your Chinese contacts: Mr./Ms. + last name or Last name + first name, if they have an English name, it is normally enough by itself, no need for the last name. - Business card exchange: During the first contact, hold with 2 hands, take time to read the title while holding it, importance is a bit over exaggerated, but still better to do. Try to give more attention on the highest ranked host, title is very important in China. Last, it is not recommended to write, even the date, on the business card, better to do it after the meeting. - Meeting room: Sit preferably in front of the door when you are the visitor. Historically reason was coming from old tradition with assassin coming from the door to kill visitors. Being in front, you see them coming. The host normally sit at the middle of the table. - Giving face: Ensuring that you are never personal on negative matters, consider yourself and your Chinese counterpart as part of a corporation/team with shared responsibility for any decisions and actions. Bringing a problem personal will never improve the negotiation in China. If you come in team, it is preferred the meeting is leaded by your highest executive. It shows respect to your counterpart. - Eye fixing: Looking straight in the eyes might be regarding as impolite and lack of respect. Eye contact is still important thus, but not fixing. - Yes or No: Asian are famous for never saying no. This is actually not that straight. A “No” can be seen as a failure and a face issue. As such they tend to express their refusal in a different way, try to observe the body language and the words used. A “it’s ok” for example is meaning a partial acceptance and it is better to discuss further the case. In many situations, reformulating your questions with different words is a great way to confirm the answer. - Conversation: Unlike Latin habits, do not interrupt Chinese until they stop talking. Be patient and never show anger - Negotiation: Chinese are tough negotiators varying the style to get results. Be prepare to some concessions, it will give face to the negotiator and help getting the deal.

Dinner: - Dining and drinking is a very important part of the process of negotiation. Accepting lunch or dinner proposal is a must and part of the business process, a refusal can be misinterpreted. There is a saying in China that “business is done on dining tables”. It is better to plan in advance and to accept the invitation. If needed, initiate dining invitation by yourself. - Always accept the proposed food (should happen even more for things you don’t want to eat). There is a trick that you can still leave what you don’t like inside the plate. - Don’t eat on the provided plate (like westerners do), put food in the bowl and use the chopsticks in the bowl. The plate is used for rubbish. - Don’t stick the chopsticks in the rice, or fruits, even to put it in the mouth, this is equivalent to death symbol. If you cannot use chopsticks, most restaurants can provide knife and fork. - Ganbei: Somehow equivalent to cheer, it means drinking alcohol bottom-up for toast. Nowadays, the liquor is often replaced by wine or beer, still bottom-up, be prepared. Chinese believe that “friendship is built by drinking together”, and will find many reasons to Ganbei with you, from cooperation to friendship and partnership. The main purpose is to emphasis positive aspects of the business and your active participation find topics to cheer will be highly appreciated. - Don’t be surprised by Chinese managers asking for your salary or cheering for money. Money is a popular subject like health in Europe. - Don’t discuss about business at dinner unless your Chinese counter-part is asking for. Dinner is a place to build relationship; any other topics can be addressed, especially about the Chinese boss’ achievements and success. Again politic shall be avoided unless you get close relationship.

Of course, there are many more specific manners, please check here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customs_and_etiquette_in_Chinese_dining Overall, the dinner place is beneficial to build business relationship and this is a very important concept. It will increase the trust level as well as the deal success rate from the meeting. Those tips has for purpose to prepare you to go to China and doesn’t include all, the key is awareness, modesty and respects: - Awareness of the differences, reading signs like body languages, change of tone… - Modesty, no need to try to impress your counterpart, inferiority feeling will not have positive effect. - Respect: consider your counterpart as your equivalent and adapt to their traditions.

In 2013, Chinese luxury market is evolving in 3 main ways: • First, more and more Chinese travel and buy luxury goods overseas • Secondly, internet use has a big impact on the luxury consumption in China • Thirdly, national luxury brands are emerging and will change play rules of the luxury market in China which was leaded by foreign brands, especially European brands.

In this article I would like to give you a basic understanding of the current keys of this market.

1. Luxury goods are more and more purchased overseas a. Traveling increasing The first key of luxury goods consuming evolution is the increasing of Chinese travellers. They were 53% in 2008, they are 71% today. Most of them travel overseas for leisure, but business trips represents 56% of the total trips in a year.

Two conclusions: - Chinese people improved their standard of living these last few years, despite the international economy crisis. As a consequence Chinese travel more than before. - According to Global Blue (a tax free statistics company), Chinese tax free shopping rose by 58% in the third quarter of 2012 (July-September) in comparison to the same period in 2011 and the total Chinese tax free shopping accounted for 26% of total free shopping in 2012.

b. Where do Chinese buy luxury goods?

- Hong Kong is a very important place for the Chinese luxury market. Indeed, Cosmetics represent 22% of total Chinese consumption of luxury goods overseas whereas Watches represent 23, 3% of this market.

2. The impact of internet use on the Chinese luxury market a. More and more people are looking for information about luxury brand products on internet.

Internet is a real asset for brands that know how to use it. Indeed, 30% of Chinese consumers say information found on internet play a significant role in their choice of brands and 45% think internet allows to understand brands key features. Finally almost 40% of respondents think internet provides trust about brands.

b. People are more and more interested on buying luxury goods on internet. According to the KPMG Luxury study 2013, 40% people say they are somewhat or very much interested in purchasing luxury goods on internet in 2012, increase by 22% in 2011.

Why? Because: - Chinese people use internet more and more often - They are connected with their phone and computer all day long - E-commerce in China is very popular and is evolving very quickly

E-commerce is the most exciting field in China nowadays. E tailing offers a lot of big opportunities in China especially though Taobao, the first e-selling platform in the world, which has a specific shopping channel named “Global Shopping” to buy goods overseas on behalf of Chinese customers. If you want to know more about e-commerce in China, click here.

3. The emergence of Chinese luxury brands A new rich social category of has recently emerged in China. Those Party members and captains of industry are more and more looking for local luxury brand to differ from new rich stereotypes. The First Lady Peng Liyuan has a real promotion influence of local luxury brands: “Big luxury brands in Europe or America are often the first choice for many rich Chinese consumers when they dress up (…) But I believe top local fashion brands will draw much more attention among buyers at home in the future after Peng showed her elegance and confidence in wearing home-grown labels" said Hong Dongni, an adviser with Golden Wisdom Fashion Brands Management Consulting Centre in Beijing.

Today, local luxury brands represent 5% of market shares in China. Moreover, Chinese luxury brands export their creations. Actually, 70% of NE Tiger’s creations (Chinese haute couture brand) have been sold in Europe and in America, parts of the world’s internationally famous for their haute couture creations.

Many European brands are adapting to this market change already. For example, Hermes has created the brand Shang Xia, dedicated to the Chinese market. This brand’s clientele is composed by 60% Chinese and 40% of foreigners.

The emergence of Chinese luxury brands in China and in the world is reflecting the economy maturity of the country. China is getting back its previous aura as a super power, and people are proud to be Chinese. Even if European brands are not threatend, Chinese brands will have more and more importance on the Chinese and international market.

China will count for a third of the worldwide luxury market (China’s luxury good consumption will be about $175 billions) in 2015. In 2012, China’s luxury consumption was very high (about $145 billions), despite the international economy’s decreasing. Indeed, Chinese salaries are rising and China owns nowadays an incredible concentration of millionaires.

Who consumes luxury goods in china and how? • Millionaires In 2012, China had: - 1,020 000 millionaires - 7500 billionaires (+3500 from 2011) Who are they? Initially, main luxury goods consumers were men, because the only people who could afford these expensive goods were members of the Party. Today, women buy more and more luxury goods, which could be explained by the rise of working women. According to a KPMG study, in 2013, 60% of Chinese millionaires are men with an average age of 39 years old. Concerning their job occupation, four major subcategories of Chinese millionaires are emerging: • Stock market investors • High salaried executives • Privates business owners • Real estate investors Why do they consume luxury goods?  - To sustain their guanxi (professional relationship) - To keep the face (Chinese concept of personal image, which is very important for Chinese people, showing their achievement and position in the society) • High middle class It represents 150 million people, but only 15 to 25 millions are frequently consuming luxury goods. This rising class is highly interested in that kind of brands and their images. • The enai (the mistresses) Every respectable businessman in China has to keep one or more enai up, and these young and beautiful ladies are greedy of luxury goods. • Little emperors/princesses China’s “little emperors” phenomenon is very specific to that country. Actually these young consumers are the consequence of the one child policy in the end of the 70’s. The ones that are born from this period and without any cousins and siblings are the centre of attention of six adults, parents and grand-parents buying them everything they want. That is why we can see a lot of college students, even the underprivileged ones owning an Iphone or an Ipad, which clearly exceeds their consuming capacity though. So, very pampered, this group represents a good target for many industries and especially the luxury one. The oldest have 30-35 years old, are working and so get a salary. As they always were pampered, they are naturally researching the best for themselves, and luxury goods are a very strong social symbol in China. According to the international association for luxury goods, 25-30 years old Chinese are the primary consumers of luxury products.

Why Chinese people consume luxury goods? Luxury goods consumption motivations are not the same for men and women as shown in the graph below.

The first reason for buying a branded luxury product is self-reward, no matter of the sex. The most significant increasing is the social dimension for men, and enjoying the ownership for women.

Buying luxury goods is a guarantee of high quality and durability for Chinese buyers. The country of Origin is not very important but CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is the fourth reason people buy those items at such an expensive price. Surprisingly, the fashion criteria are less important than CSR.

How do they consume luxury goods?  Psychological effects are a very important part of luxury consumption. What are the psychological criteria Chinese customers are submitting on when buying luxury goods? - Chinese stereotypes countries for providing specific products.

France ends up being the most recognized country for its luxury goods. For example French company Ricard is the first whisky importer in China, but China is not so far away. This fact highlights the evolving of Chinese luxury brands on the luxury Chinese market, which will be developed in another article. - Chinese consumers have different perceptions of luxury brand and luxury goods depending on which country they are from. Accordingly, the country of origin can strongly impact the sales and product acceptance.

What are the main targets of luxury products in China? 

Favourite luxury goods in China are: • Watch. Luxury watch is a very appreciated business gift in China that is why this product is the most consumed by Chinese people. They don’t buy it for themselves, but to offer. • Cosmetics • Bags and shoes • Jewellery • Clothes

The evolution about luxury brands logo. Still, Chinese behaviour is evolving like in western countries, the interest in brand and logo tends to be replaced by more discretion and elegancy. Another reason of this evolution is the China’s strengthening effort in anti-corruption.

As the number of people connected by Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, the Internet has changed forever the way we communicate, and thus, the way we do business. In just a few years, Internet has consolidated being an essential marketing and advertising channel for businesses. In parallel, online shopping has become more and more popular, no matter in developed regions or the emerging markets.

In China, one of the biggest markets in the world with over 1.3 billion people, online business has been growing dramatically since the Internet set up in China in 1994. According to CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), China’s total Internet users have exceeded 564 million by the end of 2012:

- 420 million of them are using mobile surfing online - 309 million of them are checking micro-blogging - 242 million of them go shopping online

Undoubtedly, online business is vital to any company wanting to venture on Chinese market.

Under this backdrop, now both local Chinese companies and foreign companies are putting more efforts on developing online marketing strategy in China. The question is which strategy is the best?

To put it simply, strategy is a combination of different tools that suits your business well. And there is no fixed mode of marketing. Because it changes so quickly! All strategies that can promote your business efficiently are best ones. Before worrying about the mess of strategies, let’s first take a look at the 3 most important online marketing tools you can use for your venture on Chinese market.

1. A Chinese website

Certainly, a Chinese website is a must for any businesses plan to set their foot on the Chinese market. People make decisions upon the information they get. A Chinese website gives a company a home for its visitors to get necessary information about the products and services.

Don’t expect a Chinese visitor to understand an English site well no matter how good the English is. Yet making a Chinese website is far more than just translating your current website into Chinese. Localization is the key! Not only contents is important, but also the display of the contents and the layout of the whole site, taking care of the local culture and internet habits.

2. E-commerce platform

With decades of development, China has fostered a group of mature B2C e-commerce platforms: Taobao, Tmall, JD, Paipai, and Dangdang etc. Among them, Taobao and Tmall operated by Alibaba Group are the most prominent ones with combined sales of $157 billion in 2012. And they created an amazing record to reach $3 billion —Yes, Billion— sales in a single day (November 11th 24-hour online shopfest). It’s a big market for all companies!

3. SNS

Another significant trend for Chinese e-commerce market is the burgeoning of SNS (Social Networks). Networking has played an important role in the life of Chinese people ever since the nation was created. And SNS shapes it in a modern way. CNNIC reported that nearly 80% of Chinese netizens pay close attention to commercial information on social networking sites, and almost 40% of netizens will regard friends’ comments as references to help with their own shopping decisions. In addition, 37.2% of netizens will share their favorite items, brands and stores on SNS, and more than 25% of them would complain on SNS if they had bad shopping experience.

Partly due to the Internet restriction in China, the most popular social networking sites in China are local ones with concepts similar to western sites:

Weibo, like Twitter, over 500 million users

Renren, like Facebook, around 200 million users

Wechat, like Viber, over 300 million users

The data only is enough to make it clear that SNS is the area no B2C company could afford to ignore!

As an electronic lover and a guy who works in China sourcing for many years, I am a regular visitor to these major electronics show in my fellow city. There is a major one in WanChai exhibition center “HongKong Electronic Show” and another one “China Sourcing Fair” in the airport. Both feature electronics and by intention they show in the same period of time.

As always tons of visitors and always smart to register in advance to simplify the entry process.

Some product I found interesting and would like to share some of them here.

- PC controlled gun

A gun that controlled by PC and shot annoying customer passed-by. Said the Android and IOS version is coming.

- Glass display technology:

Showing movie and touch screen interface on glass! Innovative idea for outdoor advertising and vending machine.

- Wifi SD card

Share pictures directly from your SLR camera. No card reader needed anymore…

- Flash drive that takes data directly from Iphone

Physical way of sharing! Work well especially when network is not available.

- Phone projector

Killer to those mobile projector products. Good solution when meeting customer.

Some trends I can see for Spring show 2013:

- Less tablet, eventually!

- Still tons of iphone accessories and power bank, from low end with just a colored injection plastic to high end branded fashion style iphone case. Seems still a big business.

- Less 3D TV. However no 4K TV shown..well, I don’t normally expect to see anything cut edge from Hong Kong show.

- Good balance between product and service industry. On the 3rd floor there is a big area for service industry to promote.

Every year SAOS visits different trade fairs in the region on behalf of our clients and will report on interesting items. If you are interested to 1st hand fair report, interesting items, product trends..etc, don’t forget to follow us on our social media.

1)      Why CSR is important?

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is closely related to ethic in doing business with dedicated involvement by taking action for integrating economic, social and environmental imperatives into the activities. Typical examples are donations, CO2 reduction, but also innovations like medicine when promoting global health improvement. Refer to Canadian government information example as CSR guidance.

2)      Does your company need to be Social Responsible?

More than a trend, during the last 10 years, it has become a mandatory part of the business for big corporations. Small and Medium size Enterprises should consider integrating CSR in their global strategy for the following reasons:

1. CSR brings personal satisfaction of contributing to a better world.

2. CSR is a way to differentiate from your competitors to your customers, no matter they are corporations (B2B) or consumers (B2C). Its marketing value has been strongly used by many Multi-National Companies (MNC) during the last decade. The direct effect is branding and enhanced company image, the side effect is significant sales increase.

3. CSR encourages money saving and manufacturing performance improvement. Typically, a production yield increase leads to higher efficiency, less power consumption and eco-friendly direction.

4. Because everyone wants to work for the good guys, dedicated CSR policy is a customer and employee engagement. A high reputation company can not only attract talents but also have them involved in the actions and company branding promotion.

In a nutshell, CSR allows your company to be more innovative, productive, competitive in a sustainable industry.

3)      The ways to CSR implementation in China

Many companies have difficulties to perceive a clear positive strategy while outsourcing in China, often seen from western countries as job killer. However, within a global economy, low cost manufacturing is necessary and socially important. There are many actions that can be put into practice while getting benefit for your business.

Some of the CSR contributions companies can implement with support of a local service provider are:

1. Being ethical: Build the business on fair trade, through supplier relationship for long term development. Processes must be defined to avoid bribery and to promote impartial results for decision making and performance improvements. Only an independent service provider can provide high value analysis and transparency on all actions, when they are paid on service based and not on a percentage of good costs.

2. No middle man: Removing the middle man is clearly one aspect to be promoted by a local services provider. Without the middle man, more margins are allocated to both customer and supplier, moving to an obvious win-win trade. With supplier having a higher margin, it has the ability to adjust the quality level and social capability according to your requirements. The service provider’s responsibility is to shape direct relationship with your suppliers by acting as a facilitator.

3. Take actions: Many companies don’t necessarily know what is possible to do and the potential ways they can develop their social responsibility in China. Of course, basic activities like SA8000 social audit are a first step to ensure, no children are employed and working conditions are acceptable. Likewise, many other ways exist when you have a sturdy visibility on your suppliers and their specific cultural behaviors.

4. Chinese oriented CSR: When selling in China, western companies should be concerned by how CSR is understood in a country for which collectivism is prevalent. Again, a local service provider is competent in advising the right applicable strategy in relation to the marketing and branding activity.

5. Donations: There are almost limitless options in China for charity. Best practices are to align your investment with your core values by building a seamless and sustainable integration. A typical example is supporting social and intellectual development of your suppliers’ workers, enhancing both suppliers and workers values.

6. Import Safe: How to ensure all imported goods are compliant with the destination regulation without investing in a team of specialists to control all documents and data? Assuming the expanding demand of such services, thanks to ever growing regulations complexity, it is now possible to optimize your compliance costs with offshore resources.

The first step? You must define what CSR means to your company and how you want it to be recognized from stakeholders.

4)      Not convinced?

There are famous examples where you don’t want to see your company name, like Nike (http://tinyurl.com/cqbre2u). CSR is not a way to clean the company’s bad behaviors, the benefit lies on doing the right thing for a sustainable business and for the planet. This is why it is very important to define your CSR strategy based on your corporate values.

One famous positive example is GE Ecomagination: http://www.ecomagination.com/

5)      SAOS, your local partner on CSR

At SAOS, we believe in CSR core values and the associated long term benefit. Not only we built our business to be socially responsible, but we believe that it can help our customers to develop their brand image worldwide by sharing those values. Because SAOS is based on Western and Chinese integrated management, we have this unique positioning on the market to deeply understand our customers’ requirements and transpose them to a Chinese environment to get the most of it.

Shape your CSR awareness in China with SAOS, now!

Managing samples is a pervasive need for every sourcing and trade company. Due to a less variety and quantity with product types than those shipping to warehouses, small companies are unlikely to have an electronic system to manage all the messy samples, instead, manual labor is required in these cases. Reliably tracking these samples as they make their way throughout the buying process is difficult yet absolutely necessary.

Nevertheless, many mistakes may occur and can lead to delayed product rollouts--or may even result in a product never making it to market. So how to improve efficiency as well as lower the chance of errors is worth discussing.

Based on experiences, I would suggest taking the following 7 steps to make your sample management easy:

Firstly, 4 steps for preparation work before suppliers actually send out samples, including:

1. Confirm with suppliers about the final samples, photo them if necessary.

Make sure if it's ok for you. (If the sample is not a final customized one, for the sake of comparison, kindly ask suppliers to attach a note with differences between the current one and requested one.) Have you ever encountered a situation like this: You receive a package without knowing who sent it, just a factory address maybe, not even a company name, samples are not marked either. It's more common to receive packages with faded name & address on it, and you'll need to track it according to the pictures in your emails for example, which would be very bothersome and time-consuming.

However, we can develop a habit which is to inform suppliers to attach a piece of paper or product category with notes: product name, label number, company names etc. to avoid this situation and for future tracking.

2. Confirm courier and payer

3. To be more organized, make a sample tracker sheet, including supplier name, label number (make it simple and easy to remember), delivery date, courier/waybill number/charges, sample qty, notes,etc.

Secondly, when you receive sample packages, first thing is to LABEL THEM.

1. As more and more samples are coming, your office might soon become nothing but chaos, filled with packaging papers, boxes... So to avoid this, try to get one done at a time. You can label a sample with its label number using a post-it. Then quickly fill out the sample tracker each time you receive a new package before you moving to the next one.

2. Don’t forget to keep all the invoices.

3. In some cases, you will have to photo those samples, and put them in a sample pics folder, file name can be correspondingly to sample label number.

4. Storage: try to wrap up your samples the way they are packed. And stick a label outside the package so you can track down easily in the future.

A simple and easy practice will make your customer’s life much easier!  

I am glad that somebody do this – hot result from a direct research of global buyer concerns when sourcing from China manufacturers.

Result is expected, but again and again seller tends to ignore the voice of customer.  I wish I was wrong but I would believe the result will be similar 5 more years later.  Why don’t we take a look – what’s wrong?

First thing I am quite surprise to see is that facility does not draw attention to big buyers.  It is not much in line with my own experience.  In a famous US household hardware Fortune 500 we used to suffer from insufficient production capacity.  It sounds uncommon for most Chinese supplier as it is not too difficult for factory to increase number of labor or to work overtime.  However, don't forget a serious buyer is looking for stable, trained & qualified capacity, not by heavily stressed workforce nor new fresh workers.  Also professional buyer looks for plant with automation and efficiency facility.

It is always nice to see a big and highly automated facility.  However if you are not a large scale manufacturer, don’t be frustrated.  A small but well layout factory with engineered workflow and clean, 5S based workshop could also impress a professional buyer.

Then I don’t see “commitment”.  Think about this – A supplier quote a nice price and win the contract, but after 2 deliveries supplier find that he make a lost by his wrong costing calculation. He then tells his customer he cannot continues with this price and have to increase.  Buyers hate this.  This is one of the worst mistake to make and seller will really risk himself never see this customer again. 

I strongly agree that “understanding buyer needs” should be on the top of the list.  Sales tend to speak than listen.  In my sourcing career most of the sales post aggressive character in term of communication.  They speak up for their product, their facility, their business model, mostly presentable and talented.  They just failed to listen.  In SAOS (the sourcing company I am running), every project we write a very detail RFQ package including all the background of the end user, application, business outlook and forecast..etc.  However, we believe that most of the potential suppliers do not read even though we present it in Chinese.   Communication is two way and the problem could come from another direction.  Amateur buyer make assumption based on his/her background, culture, impression..etc.  Most common mistake is to assume supplier merely interest to know about the project/order, but not the business.  In fact, the more you help your supplier understand you, the better opportunity to match a right partner.

Responsiveness rank number 2 for reason.  “Slow boat to China” the old American say and seem valid still.  Few months ago in a LCD sourcing project we launched for our client, RFQ was sent to 80 suppliers, and only 20 suppliers could come back their answer within 2 weeks.  About 10 mores suppliers reply to us after 3 weeks, claiming they were busy and didn’t read our email until recently…bababa. No supplier acknowledge when receive our RFQ. Responsiveness was unsatisfied.  To maintain a good response rate for our client, we have to call the shortlisted one by one to make sure they understand the requirement and will take part in the RFQ bidding process.  While most sellers complaining they don’t get customer response and has difficulty to look for serious customer, my experience shows the same challenge, but on the buyer side. What would be good practice for seller is to always acknowledge a request immediate.  It doesn't matter you have an answer for your customer already or not.  It does matter to show you care your customer’s business.

Communication skill ranks the last.  This is an encouraging finding coz it seems true that China supplier has been focusing on their English training and put as a career priority.  Also, big customer tends to have a Chinese office with local sourcing professional to support and ease the communication.  As a result you see they are least concern on this area compare to middle or small players.

Last thing.  Price, although it ranked second when buyer considering supplier, it is much less important than understanding buyer correctly.  Also, the bigger the buyer the less sensitive to price.  Very often I see factory sales promote themselves the “cheapest price of all”.  I hope this research result could have chance their mind. 

So I try to summarize points to be concerned:

Facility does matter to big customer.  If you are small, try to be organized and look efficient.

Understanding customer needs generate trust.  It won’t happen overnight but is a continuous process.  Read again and again customer’s email and make a serious response.

However, before you could come up with a serious response, make sure you acknowledge your customer immediate when you see their emails. A simple reply could be good enough J

Although your customer keeps saying they want cheapest price, there is something more important than price.  It is even less sensitive for big buyer as long as you could provide right product/service at the right time.  

Ben Chu, from SAOS HK

You don't need to be a china expert to know the biggest sourcing event happened twice a year in south china - the Canton Fair. They are the biggest and longest in history of this kind - not necessary meaning they are the best.  Messy transportation, poor pick up arrangement, lack of meeting facilities....there is a lot to be improved. Some claim that Canton Fair is full of trader that just making profit by speaking English, while some said products displayed are just copying one and another. Yet, uncountable numbers of business are dealed and the fair is still the best chance for smaller size business to meet local Chinese suppliers.  While betting change of this bureaucratic organization is not practical, let’s try to be opened and focus on the best way to benefit from this giant fair.

My career focus have been on China sourcing/supplier management and based on my uncountable numbers of visit to Canton and other fairs within the region, and now I would like to share my experience here to better prepare you to get the best from this event, comfortably and confidentially achieving your sourcing target.

Timing:

Canton Fair is divided into 3 sections normally, and each has its own industrial focus. I am not saying which section is better than the other but to remind you that suppliers could response differently depends on which day you visit them. Think about this:

- 1st and 2nd day:  The first 2 days they are well prepared, energetic, aggressive…..you could be more likely to meet higher level managers or the boss who can make quicker decision on your price and terms.  However this is usually the days with the most of visitors, and you may not always get their attention.

- 3rd to 5th day: Less people, and the supplier are more physically and psychologically tried. However they are normally more available for you to introduce their product and manage to have a deeper discussion with you.

- Visiting at the last 2 days the biggest benefit is that you are likely able to buy some cheap sample from them J. I do not recommend going the last day coz it normally only opens for half day and in the afternoon it is already closing.

I normally visit on the 2nd day so that in case I meet someone or product interesting I could still come back to meet again. 

Language:

Forget about the translator as long as you can speak some English. Most, if not all, of the supplier show up in Canton Fair can already communicate with you in English. Nothing fancy and not fluent most of the time, their English is good enough for basic communication. After all, you are not going to talk about Joint Venture or strategic partnership with a Chinese supplier you just met in Canton Fair!

Accommodation:

Finding a place to stay in the Guangzhou city is not as much a problem as the old time. Still, you might need to book a month or two in advance especially for 5 stars hotel like Garden. In case you just make up your mind to visit right before the Canton Fair, check the hotel in Dongguan as well just in case. Those hotels know about their opportunity from Canton Fair and have good supporting service like shuttle bus or Limo directly to the Canton Fair location.   You may likely get cheaper price than staying in Guangzhou.

Transportation:

Many ways to visit Guangzhou city and the exhibition center. You could either landed on the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, or take train/high speed train from Shenzhen or other major cities. I am from HK and for me the best, cheapest and comfortable way is to take the regular train from Shenzhen Louhu train station and in 1.5 hours you will arrive Guangzhou downtown. Just make sure you buy the first class ticket (~99RMB only) or you risk yourself standing on the train the whole trip. Be also reminded that the ticket box is very busy the first day morning of the Canton Fair. 

Taxi in the city is also in good availability but the queue outside the train station is an exception. 

Meanwhile, pay attention if your hotel is providing shuttle bus that you can make use to leave from the fair center. By the time the show finish, hundreds of people will rush to the same small location where supposed to be the pickup point of the shuttle bus. Let’s just hope it is not a rainy day.

Weather:

A small tips on weather – dress less. Canton is situated in the subtropical and from March to almost December you have hot and humid weather. 28℃ with 90% humidity is quite common here. Of course you won't look fun with your full gear business dressing and people will surely feel the respect behind, but you are also prefect fine to dress in business casual and jeans. 

Food

For me, it is the weakest link. Fast food is ok, but that almost all you could have. There is no better business meeting/discuss facilitate as in the HK exhibition center. Still, the exhibitors could grab a pizza and coke when meeting their visitor in front of their booth.

Sample

If you are visiting in the last day you would have good chance load yourself with a lot of sample. Unless you get ready with a big luggage otherwise I suggest you make good use of the courier express provider inside Canton Fair exhibition center. There are plenty of them locally. Some service provider like SAOS provide sample management service to their customers so you will only receive all different samples in one shot with full tracking, product information, picture, source…etc.  Making use of these services will make your trip easier. 

I hope you enjoy the long trip to China. Guangzhou herself is an interesting visiting spot and renowned for its historical contents and modern development.  Don’t miss the chance to visit Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macau as well. They are all in about 1.5 hours distance by train.

Welcome to China.

By Ben Chu, from SAOS

Canton Fair buyer entry card - need to pay few hundreds RMB for rework if you lost it!!!!