Doing business in China

I've had the opportunity to visit several areas in China, including Shanghai, Guangxi, and Hong Kong.

The stories you hear about doing business in China are often true. Each transaction, even with long-term partners/suppliers, can be a hassle. When testing out potential new suppliers, their translation of your brief often leaves room for improvement. People are cautious but friendly. I guess we are cautious but friendly as well.

What I have learned is that what initially appeared as ‘poker’ faces are now much easier to read. One long-term partner once mentioned that Chinese faces are like open books, and Japanese faces are impossible to read. That opened my eyes.

I have been fortunate enough to have had some very good experiences with business partners and really great people to work with. The lesser experiences, often coming from unsatisfactory testing, were never catastrophic. We often came back later to the same address to see if we were shown a ghost factory. Fortunately, that was never the case.

Funny moments were there as well, like arriving in a smaller town without good preparation and finding that nobody understands English at the taxi stand or in the train station. What do you do in the proverbial middle of nowhere if you can’t communicate with the world around you? Or what do you do when you are recognised as some famous British or American actor? You smile and laugh and accept the attention. All Westerns look alike, just like all Chinese look alike, right?

Sustainability comes at a price

When I was a partner at a startup/scale-up that sold supplies made of recycled ocean plastics to retail businesses, we were keen to show the world how compliant we were.

Years ago, we secured FSC certification when we focused on wooden products. However, as we recognised the significant market for plastic products, we made a strategic shift. We researched the incumbent suppliers, identified better plastics (yes, some plastics are less harmful than others), established a reliable supply chain, and propelled ourselves into the Big League.

We also believed that it would be crucial to become B-Corp certified. We could only become the trusted supplier we wanted to be with that certification. For a small organisation like ours, it took a lot of hours and energy to have all the boxes ticked, all the documents in place, and all people singing from the same hymn sheet. But it took a toll on the organisation: it took away focus from the everyday operations review process had significant delays, and looking back, it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry is B-Corp certified.

The alternative route might have been to forget about this at that stage of the organisation, providing supply chain transparency to the retail multinationals that were serious about procuring from us and documenting everything, including regular test reports from reputable industry experts to ensure there would be no snafus, or that if something went wrong, we would be aware early in the process.

Focus on what is important, not on what is claimed to be important.

Elevator on the steppe

My company’s name, Dalacy, is a contraction of two Kazakhstani words: dala and cy, which mean steppe and water. The picture reminds me of the steppe a few hours north of Almaty.

I created an elevator pitch because I am open to new business and work opportunities, and I hope you like it. If you do, tell anyone you know about this great guy they should hire.