Exercise Caution When Doing Business In China

If you shop in the US or the UK you will find that many if not most products are made in China. This might start you to consider whether it is possible to do business in China and get the goods at a far cheaper rate. It is possible to do business in China but you need to be aware of the problems with doing business in China.

People visit China on holiday and find that prices for brand label items are far cheaper than they pay in the West. Traders will try and persuade you to buy in bulk for them and it is easy to imagine the profit that could be made from buying directly from the source.

That might be the case but there are many other issues that need to be considered before you start to make the decision of doing business in China. This doesn't even start to consider the ethics or other concerns you might have.

When a factory is commissioned to produce a product you will find that they produce far more than the original commission. They might have flaws in them, and then they are sold but they are not perfect. In the West it could be seen as copying the product but this isn't the way the Chinese would see it. Recently a car manufacturer found that the excess vehicles produced were so similar that the only way they could tell the difference was to use the security test to see if it passed that test. Finding copies are extremely difficult even for the professionals, and if you are not a professional then it is almost impossible.

But there is an even more basic problem. Let's take a pair of trainers as an example. When these are made, they will make two different types of products. One set of trainers would be for the export market, normally for the manufacturers of the product, and one set of trainers for the local market. To the untrained eye, there is no difference, except when you use them you will find anything produced for the local market is sub-standard. If you buy from a local person and not a factory then you will find that the product is sub-standard and the complaints and returns would be very high.

This doesn't even start to consider the ethics and the culture which you will need to understand before considering doing any type of business in China.