Marco shares his experiences of how getting connected with people makes life in China procurement much easier
The plane circles in from the seaside approaching Xiamen, a charming and rapidly developing city in Fujian Province on China's east coast. Brand new skyscrapers shoot up from the historic town center, named Amoy by early Portugese traders. One of ancient China's most important ports, Xiamen is busily working to regain that distinction today.
As the plane descends, spider-like shadows penetrate the haze; closer inspection reveals them to be rows of cargo cranes piling containers along the loading docks. Container ships ply the coastal lanes, moving thousands of tons of goods in and out of China every day. Among the containers leaving Xiamen's port at the moment may also Chief Engineer, Mr. Wang, carefully studies the plans for a new project. be one of my orders, having come right out of the factory I'm about to visit.
As I jostle my way out of the airport, I realize I'm excited. No matter how many factories I've seen, I'm fascinated by the variety of production environments and the people I meet along the way.
Vivian, a slender, bespectacled Chinese girl in her mid-twenties welcomes me and leads us to the parking lot where the factory's driver is waiting in a black Buick.
We've been doing business together for over two years now. I met Vivian at a trade fair and immediately liked her attitude. She was sincere and listened carefully. She answered questions honestly and didn't try to oversell her products. After placing several orders with her, she proved to be a jewel. Vivian knew her products and her factory workers' capabilities, calculated bu‑ er days when giving us delivery dates, spoke English well and seemed to work non-stop.
Vivian is a great example of China's development. As an only child of factory workers, she grew up in a small provincial town in Hunan Province. A good student, her parents scraped together their savings to give her a good education and send her to university. After graduating, she got her rst job in sales at a small factory. From a university dorm with seven roommates, she moved to a factory dorm she shared with three other girls. A year later she found a job at the factory I'm about to visit. Three years later, she now manages a team of eight sales people.
Real Life Challenges
Crammed in a small office with battered cubicles and cluttered with merchandise, she works tento- fourteen hours a day, six days a week. She answers emails at all times. She now lives in a small room of her own in the factory's dorm. Last time we met, Vivian had just bought a new LCD TV. Today I notice she's carrying a new handbag. When I ask if her next bag will be a Louis Vuitton, she laughs, "No no, I don't need that. It's not useful."
"What is useful?" I ask.
"A boyfriend," she answers half-jokingly.
"You'll buy a boyfriend next?"
"I wish it was so easy," she sighs.
Her parents push her to start a family. "They're afraid I'm getting old. But I don't have time for a boyfriend now." Many young Chinese women like her share this dilemma of pursuing their career and improving their own, and their family's lives, while their parents urge them to get married and have kids.
"Do you like your work?" I ask.
"Yes, it's OK".
"What are you working for?"
"I want a good life, for me and my parents. I want it to be less hard then when they were young. And I want to buy an apartment next year." The driver steers the black Buick through a harmonica-like gate, past a blue uniformed guard, and pulls up in front of a white-tiled, three story building. I follow Vivian down a dimly lit hallway.
As we pass the sales office I hear loud chattering and catch a glimpse of the team, huddled in their cubicles, making phone calls and hammering away at their brand new desk top computers. I see a lot of laughter and smiles.
The Boss
Entering a large office with neon lighting, Mr. Chen, the factory owner, jumps up from his desk and gestures for me to sit. I hand him the Swiss chocolates I brought from back home. "I know you don't like them but your son and wife do!" I say jokingly. Mr. Chen laughs and starts the ritual of preparing tea on a beautiful mahogany board. The smiling jade Buddha on the tea board gets showered with the first cup for good luck's sake.
Mr. Chen pours a round, hands me a cup, and we savor the rich fiavor of the local green tea. For a moment everything seems to fall into slow motion. Despite ongoing market tension, Mr. Chen keeps increasing his turnover. He first opened his factory six years ago with only five other employees.
He soon specialized in making high-quality products for Japanese and European markets; smaller quantities but steady orders and higher margins. Today he is up to almost 100 employees and growing. I ask about finding and retaining workers. "I'm lucky, most of our workers have been with us for three or four years. Wages are rising, yes, that's a challenge. But I treat my people well,
which is just as important as high salaries." On my last visit he introduced me to an impressive set-up of screens which enable him to monitor all his employees movements from behind his desk; it's all on camera. Even the sales team is being monitored to ensure they don't spend too much time online instead of doing their job. Special software enables him to hook on to each computer to eavesdrop.
"I ask a lot from my workers. We do a lot of overtime and quality reworking, but that's how it is. We all want to have a better life. It's not only money, it's also a good working environment." Once a factory worker himself, he got to know production from the bottom up. When he had enough knowledge and a fist-full of RMB, he set out to do his own thing. "Being a worker is still in his heart," Vivian once told me, "He hasn't forgotten."
Building Trust
Mr. Chen and I have built a relationship of respect and trust. I make an e‑ ort to speak Chinese and I'm apparently his only foreign customer who does. It makes him feel comfortable and gives him face in front of his English-speaking employees. We haven't only had friendly encounters, especially in the beginning. Our company has high standards and we're very strict. We don't order huge quantities either. But in return, we're willing to help suppliers improve, we don't hammer at the lowest possible price, we accept supplier suggestions, faithfully come back with new orders and we keep our promises. Mr. Chen got this. Losing money on the first round of orders didn't discourage him, because he wanted to improve himself and the factory. He has an eye for the future. He leads us to the brightly lit production floor. Despite sweltering weather outside, inside is airconditioned and ventilated by huge electric fans.
Chinese pop music echoes from the speakers.
We stand amidst long rows of whirring sewing machines. "I just had half the machines replaced," Mr. Chen points out as I notice a large number of brand new Japanese models.
Improving Step-by-Step On my first visit, Vivian had guided me through a sauna of a production hall with cables hanging all over the place, workers sitting behind ancient machines, and cutting and packing sites right in the middle of it all. Now, two years later, it's still a bit chaotic but there's a clearly organized production line and vastly improved infrastructure. What hasn't changed is the high-efficiency and sincerity that the workers put in to their tasks.
Wu Meiling smiles as she looks up from the colorful fabric she's pushing through her sewing machine. She comes from a small farming town in Sichuan Province and was the rst in her family to leave home in pursuit of a job. Today, she earns the most in her family.
"Even more than my older brother," she says proudly. "I can support my parents."
"How do you like it here?" I ask her when Mr. Chen is out of earshot.
"It's OK. Everything is getting better. We have airconditioning and safety has improved."
"Do you work a lot of overtime?"
"Yes. But it's paid at least. That's good."
Upon our company's incentive, Mr. Chen has improved safety, workers registration and workinghour documentation to get a BSCI certicate. The factory had passed inspection and I wanted to see. "We want to get better, we want to keep on improving." Mr. Chen says earnestly. "We want to keep you as a customer and we hope a BSCI certicate helps us to get new ones, especially from Europe."
It had cost him and his team quite some time and money to get there, but he felt it was worth it. "We all want a better life, " he adds. "You and us, right? I'm hungry. Let's go eat!" He smiles and points the way out the door, where a brand new emergency exit sign and a pair of bright red re extinguishers have been installed.
A Better Life
After a delicious seafood dinner during which we discuss business, family and the future of China, I'm now in a taxi on my way to the hotel. In the distance, I once again see the spider-like shadows of the cargo cranes at the harbor moving goods. My mind drifts around an insight that keeps returning to me: "It's all about the people." A factory's appearance doesn't give you true insight into how the service or the products will turn out. But talking to the people, from the boss down to the workers, does. I've come across suppliers with well-equipped, modern production plants who've left us with lousy products and lousy service. I've worked with small family businesses, located in former farm houses in the rice fields, who had committed workers, great attitudes and way outdid our expectations.
China always surprises me, but connecting with people means less unwanted surprises. When handling an order, we frequently run into problems that don't seem to make sense. Knowing the people helps us get honest communication and, if necessary, have the boss get things done. That way we have made products and met deadlines that would have been unimaginable in the West.
Chinese people work hard to get things done, a determination and commitment I sometimes miss in the West. In the end, we all want a better life. I'd heard this several times today and it brought me back to my original conclusion; it's all about the people.
Marco Jaggi is a Swiss-American citizen who has been working in China for 4 years. He worked for the Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and as the general manager of a Swiss buying office in Shanghai. He gathered wide experience in supplier management, quality assurance and social compliance. Today Marco Jaggi is a business consultant for Western companies in China. He writes on procurement topics and social responsibility and holds lectures about customer service.
He speaks Chinese and loves to travel to Chinas culturally rich and remote areas.
