Beijing Day Five
Aug 1 2010
Today was the first of our business meetings – with a potential supplier to us of Horse Floats.
They came to the hotel in the morning and we ended up having a meeting in the hotel, rather than going to their facilities. It seems that they are in a restructuring mode – with new facilities (and investors) supposedly up and running in a couple of weeks. They gave us a rundown of what had happened to them (not a happy story).
It seems that our current supplier is an off shoot of this manufacturer – some of the employees left this manufacturer and started up a new business. This sort of fits our understanding, and gives us an understanding of why our quality has improved so much from the first shipment (which basically came from this manufacturer).
We had to pay for the coffee (which is not the way it is done). The bill was about $100NZ – which was unbelievable – but I guess you have to put it down as an investment in knowledge, which is, ultimately, IP.
What surprised me was just how incestuous the industry is. This manufacturer showed me drawings from an Australian manufacturer – and many of the horse floats are very similar looking, as the manufacturer “steals” the designs and IP from each other.
The afternoon was free – so it was off to the silk market again – and a meal of Teppenyaki on Wangfujing Street, followed up by a very expensive buy very nice Haggen Daaz icecream.