China Eastern Airlines MU566 from Sydney to Shanghai was delayed again. This time by only three hours. A “newly fitted part”, an Australian engineer had told me, had failed the test after being installed on the aging 737. A new part had to be found.

This was the second delay in less than a week that I had endured on a China Eastern Airlines flight. Six days earlier my flight from China to Australia required a…

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PR – Public Relations – is the special forces of marketing. We drop down behind enemy lines, insert our message into the media, and by the break of dawn have safely retreated back to our comfortable agency environs to sip lattes and play foosball. Meanwhile, the lumbering tanks and artillery of advertisement – TV commercials or full-page types of visuals — rumble on by. The magic of PR is even more obvious in China, where reporters trawl across town, day-in and day…

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Jan’s standing orders were not to talk price under any circumstances, but to make sure that the visit in Europe would be light on formal meetings and heavy on visits to exotic locales. It was best that he not join the group, but give Smile one week’s travel money and let them enjoy the experience in their own way.

It was better this way because although Jan insisted on meeting the group, he quickly realized that they were…

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The starting point of each manufacturing project is to find the right factory. This part of the project is the most important one because it will affect the following stage of the process. The choice of the manufacturer highly depends on the type of product and the size of your business.

For instance, if your orders, in terms of quantity, do not fits the production capacity of the factory you would…

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Two weeks later the Hong Kong company had flown back to Chongqing together with the representative of an American glass manufacturer. Apparently this was their long-term partner, and the favored supplier for the job. The American sales team had already visited Chongqing several times for this project over the past year, and wanted this contract badly.

Any interference with their plans had to be stopped at…

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