By David Dayton

Opportunities in China

Like I said in the introduction, it’s not all bad news here. Factories want orders!! Of course, everyone wants them, but factories that are still in business have employees and need to pay for them so they are aggressively looking for new orders. This means that buyers with cash are in a great position. Indeed, if your own financial house is in order, this recession can be a gold mine.

First, factories are willing to do projects with much more creative terms than they would have even considered before. The key is to remember that they don’t necessarily trust you. But as long as they have some guarantees they can be surprisingly flexible. Security for your supplier in China is key to getting what you want at the best possible prices.

Second, lower MOQ’s are available for just about any order. Factories that wouldn’t talk with us last year are calling back and asking to meet and talk about projects (long since completed elsewhere) and future opportunities. We’re hearing from scores of former suppliers interested in projects they rejected outright before. We’re doing projects for a couple of clients now with qtty’s that are almost ½ what we were originally told were the MOQ’s. Read the rest of “China: Sourcing in Bad Economic Times – Part 2″ or post a comment

By David Dayton

This is the body of a presentation that I give for Global Sources at the China Sourcing fairs. Global Sources asked for a presentation that was aimed at helping new buyers to China understand what some of their options for financing are now that the world economy is so bad. There are, to be honest, no new options (TT’s and LC’s are still the standard), but there are some unique situations that may offer some new opportunities for buyers coming to China.

Know your market

Just because we keep seeing bad news in China and the all the other world markets, for example, exports form China have dropped up to 60% in many industries, that doesn’t mean that we have the whole picture. There are pieces missing, both good and bad, from a broader view that are important to understanding the economic situation in China today. Read the rest of “China: Sourcing in Bad Economic Times – Part 1″ or post a comment

By Diana Wang

• Exhibitor analysis

Based on market research, you may already be able to get a list of remarkable Chinese suppliers. Then you cross-reference with the exhibitor list to see which remarkable Chinese suppliers will attend the show in China and which will not. It is likely that there will be some exhibitors which are not covered in your market research. You need to do some web research on each of them to see if they are remarkable as well. For all the exhibitors you are interested in, you may conduct some research and get some basic understanding on what product they supply, where and how many they export, what position they occupy in the industry and whether they can supply you.

By browsing the exhibitors’ websites and from conducting the research, you may find more information and get a better understanding of how you can cooperate with these suppliers. Read the rest of “Achieve Good Results From Sourcing Exhibitions in China – Part 4″ or post a comment

Do sufficient preparation

After you identify the right exhibition you want to attend in China, you will start with some preparation work. As far as I know, most companies will only prepare in terms of logistics, such as visa and accommodation arrangements. However, if you do a little bit more work on analyzing the targets of the trip, you will find it far more productive.

Read the rest of “Achieve Good Results From Sourcing Exhibitions in China – Part 3” or post a comment >>

By Diana Wang

Exhibitions are normally considered as a one-stop approach for buyers to meet suppliers. However, many people experience limited outcomes from attending an exhibition in China because of insufficient communications with suppliers (if the exhibition is too crowded, for example); absence of senior management at the booths; language barriers; limited product displays, etc. Yet to achieve good results from an exhibition is not difficult as long as you: 1) choose the right exhibition; 2) do sufficient preparation; and 3) follow up well afterwards.

In the next several postings, we will discuss this in more details, according to my experience in assisting clients with exhibitions in China.

Choose the right exhibition

After you have done your needs analysis and figured out the product list that you would like to source from China, you may find that attending exhibitions is one way to meet a group of Chinese suppliers within 3-4 days. Then you can start to collect the exhibition information and list them together for comparison later. Read the rest of “Achieve Good Results From Sourcing Exhibitions in China – Part 1″ or post a comment