CPG Blog
Welcome to the China Performance Group Blog! Read about current events related to China business, international trade, China sourcing, and Chinese culture. With contributions from both Chinese and Western staff, we offer multicultural insights to the world of China sourcing. Subscribe now to the CPG blog to keep up-to-date with the newest entries!
Most Recent CPG Blog Articles:
Managing Frequent Price Increases From Your Supplier
This entry was posted in Sourcing Tips and tagged china manufacturing, commodity prices, price increases. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: May 17, 2012 |When looking for factories to work with in China, particularly in the south around cities like Guangzhou or Shenzhen, you’ll often run into large numbers of smaller factories. These may not sound ideal, however for many foreign buyers they present optimal business opportunities. With lower prices, acceptable quality, and greater attention to service, they can often be good organizations to work with, especially if your order volume is not attractive to larger factories. Unfortunately, when working in this type of situation over a longer period of time, you will run into high price volatility as smaller factories are either a) more subject to input price changes or b) they are testing just how much they can get away with adjusting the price with you. Here are some tips that I’ve learned for dealing with sudden price changes and how you can verify them. The Answer Is In The Details China … Continue Reading
How to Prepare Before a Quality Control Inspection
This entry was posted in Quality Control and tagged china manufacturers, quality control, sourcing. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: May 11, 2012 |Performing diligent quality control is one of the most important steps of running a strong a China sourcing program. It is through a wide variety of different inspections (see our full list of available inspections) that you can ensure all three of the key performance requirements of a China purchase: price, quality, and delivery. For example, in our previous post we discussed the third requirement and how a Pre-shipment inspection (PSI) can help secure a complete and on-time delivery. Furthermore, how well you prepare for your inspections can play a large part in how much utility you actually get from the inspection and how successful it ultimately is. Below are some tips I recommend that can help make sure that you or your contracted inspector are fully prepared before heading to your factory. Follow Up With Your Supplier Contact your supplier and their on-site quality department if they have one. … Continue Reading
Shipping from China- Importance of the Pre-Shipment Inspection
This entry was posted in Sourcing Tips and tagged china manufacturing, inspections, quality control, sourcing. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: May 2, 2012 |Far too often there seem to be China buying stories where buyers fail to follow up on orders with the appropriate inspections, whether it’s the factory audit, pre-production, pre-shipment, or any other. We’ve discussed quite a bit on this blog about the importance of not taking a good relationship with a factory for granted (for more on this see our posts on Captive Buyer’s Syndrome and how to carry out factory audits in China). Believing that your order is immune from mistakes because of a good history with a supplier, will simply leave you vulnerable for when that unexpected issue does crop up. A client of ours once had an experience that highlighted this kind of vulnerability. This client had placed a rather large order with a factory, many containers worth of product, but since they had been working with this factory for a long enough stretch of time, they … Continue Reading
First Impressions: Oreo in Chinese
This entry was posted in Expat Living. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: April 26, 2012 |
Walking into a Chinese supermarket is a little bit of a culture shock in and of itself: crammed frames, crowded narrow corridors and no apparent organization at all! Just as an example, you can find the loaves of bread above the freezer filled with fish or the laundry detergent which is sitting next to the shampoo bottles (something that can be very dangerous when you can’t read the Chinese characters!). The most unnerving thing I found however as a young, European traveller on my first trip to Asia was that there were hardly any products I recognized. In contrast, when you travel around Europe for example, almost all countries have essentially the same products. In China, however, this is far from the reality. Upon my arrival in China, a new and unfamiliar country, I was of course eager to test as much as I could, but nonetheless it was still … Continue Reading
How To Deal With Your Contact At A Factory Disappearing
This entry was posted in Sourcing Tips and tagged china manufacturing, China sourcing, communications, factories. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: April 20, 2012 |As China’s economy has grown and wages increased, so have workers’ job expectations throughout the country. This has led to a much higher rate of job mobility, as Chinese are finding it easier to leave their jobs for better opportunities, either with more pay or closer to home. These days it is not unusual to have been working with a supplier for a long time only to find that one day your contact at the company never came back from a holiday. This can leave you in a situation where you are now working with a factory at which no one is familiar with your company or your current project. Even worse is when this happens after you have made payments for your order. Unfortunately, beyond making multiple contacts at a factory, which in-and-of-itself is not foolproof, there is not much you can do to avoid this situation from happening. … Continue Reading
China Arrives For The London Book Fair
This entry was posted in Current Events. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: April 16, 2012 |Over the past decade, China has begun making its mark in the global economy and, increasingly, beyond the world of manufacturing the world’s consumer goods. As of April 2012, this now includes publishing as China is a major sponsor of this year’s London Book Fair, one of the world’s largest international publishing events. Among one of the participants in the fair this year is one of CPG’s sister companies, ACA Publishing Limited, which will be showcasing much of its work including its popular “Thirty Years in China”, in which Old China Hands, such as CPG President Michael De Clercq, relate the changes they have experienced over their time in China. In addition, ACA will be announcing the arrival of over 20 translations of new, unpublished Chinese books, which will be launched at a special event in London, and then made available to the British reading public in the period 12 … Continue Reading
How Big Is The Canton Fair- An Infographic
This entry was posted in China Business, Sourcing Tips. Bookmark the permalink. | Date posted: April 13, 2012 |Check out CPG’s first ever infographic- A look at just how big IS the Canton Fair. Find out how many soccer fields you can fit in the Pazhou complex where the fair is held (hint: you’re going to want to bring comfortable walking shoes with you) as well as how much marketing material gets sent out for the fair. Don’t forget to check out our white paper on the subject as well: The Canton Fair, “An Overview; The History, The Strategy, and The How-Tos”, as well as the companion “Buyer’s Checklist”. Continue Reading
