New Year - New Trade Leads

Well, Yanjie and I met at the airport and retrieved my luggage. It was such a relief to have my belonging's again, I could now start to relax and focus on my stay in Shenzhen.
We spent some time together that evening getting to know each other.

We had met online, Yanjie worked for a trading company that sold mobile phones.
A month or so prior to my visit to Shenzhen, she resigned from the company because she was not happy in international sales. Because of her excellent english skills, she quickly found a job with a large home decorating store. It was because of her english that we had been able to communicate so well by Skype and telephone. So, we remained friends, though we did not do any business together.

Once situated, I started to place calls to my trade contacts to schedule times for my company visits. I should also add that not everything went according to plans. One of my contacts informed me that their company no longer had branded mobile phones, only Chinese mobile phones. This was a disappointment to me because they had advertised brands such as Nokia at wholesale prices. I was not interested in the Chinese phones, so I did not visit that company.
Another company I contacted, I had very little interaction with before coming to Shenzhen.
I included them on my list because they seemed to offer a large inventory of mobile phones.
I contacted them via Skype on my laptop computer in my hotel room.
When I told my contact that I was in Shenzhen and wanted to visit her company, I did not receive a warm welcoming. She told me to wait while she consulted her manager and I was left waiting for over an hour without a single word or explanation being sent to me.
When I questioned her as to what had happened, she offered no explanation.

What I eventually came to realize is that many of these Chinese companies are trading companies not manufacturer's; meaning that the trading companies sell products that are manufactured by factories in China. There are many trading companies that are selling the same products of the same factory.
Many of these trading companies work from small offices and have only a few items on hand as samples. They are not often prepared to have certain products available at short notice.

I did not consider this at the time, I was so turned off by how I was treated, that I never contacted this company again.


Next blog; my visits