Business or Pleasure? The Combination Found in Asia

Traveling to Asia has definitely not been my run of the mill journey to say, a European country. Rather than more vacationers or students, the Americans I've run into are here for business like myself.

Take the gentlemen I met yesterday upon returning from a day trip to Macau (pleasure). They're here to find sources to manufacture a “tape gun” in China (business) and will be visiting factories over the next few days which have been found by their agent, Patrick.

I had the opportunity to pick Patrick's brain about buying agents and sourcing, as he took me on the Hong Kong subway back to the vicinity of my hotel (I sort of got lost). His company sources a range of products from hangers to machine components to well, tape gun parts. Whatever the client is seeking, he attempts to connect them with a supplier.

As an aside, having told them what I did for a living, one of the guys asked me about the use of the word "gun" in the name with respect to border issues. I suggested he consider using a different word and talk it over with his marketing department to determine other salesworthy names for the product. I explained that US Customs has been hiring new people (translation: inexperienced) and that anything that can be done to avoid having their shipment flagged would make their importations enter more smoothly.

Coming back to my discussion with Patrick, though short, I found it to be a pretty interesting conversation. Connecting foreign vendors of goods with manufacturing sources in China is a much bigger business than I'd imagined. It's huge! I also was under the impression that sourcing companies focused on a particular industry, such as apparel, so it was interesting to hear from someone in the business that it isn't necessarily limited to a narrow scope.

So how do we got the point where a company that creates a product is actually looking for suppliers to build it? Check out my next post that discusses production planning.

Questions/comments? Post below or email me at clark.deanna@gmail.com