I suck at blogging.  Dan Harris does it better.  Renaud Anjoran does it better.  Tom Lasseter does it better.  If you have not already done so, subscribe to those blogs.  Today.

I have not done much blogging this year, as the news has been so universally awful that I’ve been unable to summon the enthusiasm to comment.  Short version, it is ugly out there and it will only get worse before it gets better.  Plan accordingly.

However, as someone who works with entrepreneurs and inventors on a daily basis, there is reason for hope.  People keep coming up with cool new ideas they want to bring to market, and they ask for our help.  PassageMaker had a solid growth year in a bad economy, so I guess I should be Chatty Cathy these days, but a combination of so much work and so little global good news as dampened my blogging spirit.

My one comment for the day deals with bringing a new product to market.  Our contributions to the value chain – sourcing, supply chain management, contract assembly, logistics – are really the easy parts.  The hard work is building a brand and getting it recognized in the marketplace.

If you are thinking about launching a new product, PassageMaker can take the headaches out of the production process.  But we don’t (and can’t) help you sell it.

Too often in the last few years, I’ve seen clients invest thousands in engineering, patents, sourcing, tooling, etc., with little thought given to how to get the product in front of buyers.  If you are planning a new product launch, assume that you are the only one who thinks it is the greatest idea since the wheel and focus on how you are going to convince the rest of the world. And budget accordingly.

My advice:

1 – The internet is great, but not everyone knows how to use it.  If your plan is social media and SEO, make sure you are really the expert you think you are.  Or have the money to hire that expert.

2 – If you are going Big Box, understand what that means.  A PO from a major retailer can be a million bucks on paper and negative income in reality when you consider the lead-times, warranty agreements, performance penalties, etc.

3 – Advertise if you can.  Twenty-some years ago, Coca-Cola assumed that their brand was so strong that they could stop advertising.  They ultimately lost market share to Pepsi and had to spend a fortune to get back in the game.  If you are launching a new product, nobody knows who you are, so you have to get the word out.

4 – If you can’t do it yourself, bring in investors who can help.  I’ve seen businesses with ridiculous numbers of investors, none of whom contributed to making the business a success other than providing short-term financing.  If you are going to add an owner to the mix, make sure they have skills to make the company a success long-term.

Since I suck at blogging on a regular basis, you should really read Dan Smith at China Law Blog and Renaud Anjoran at Quality Inspection Tips.  It’s not that I don’t see two dozen things each day I want to blog about – I have hundreds of articles archived that I fully intend to blog on someday, probably after each is three years out of date – but I just run out of time each day.

Well today Dan had something that really struck a chord with me.  In his post, “Moving On Out To China’s West Side. Why Things Go Slowly.“, he writes:

…we were hit with a flurry of companies looking to move out from places like Suzhou and Shenzhen and Dongguan to places like Yantai, Jinxue and Datong. Two of these have already begun the process. Note though that I intentionally used the ambiguous term “move out from” as opposed to “leave” because in none of the cases is the company going to shut down any operations. At least not yet. Their plans are to open ancillary facilities elsewhere, see how those go, and then, based on that, decide what to do with their existing facility or facilities.

This is priceless advice.  In years past it was not uncommon for me to have clients shut down existing domestic supply chains before the Chinese supply chain was properly up-and-running; in some ridiculous cases, before the Chinese suppliers were even really identified.

DO NOT DO THIS.

If you are ever thinking of establishing a new supply chain, regardless of where it is, get it established and running in parallel with your current system.  And then run it in parallel for a couple of years, slowly changing the ratio so that the majority of your product comes from the lower cost source.  Then once all the bugs are worked out and you are absolutely convinced you are ready to shut down the old in favor of the new, run them in parallel for another year just to be safe.

PassageMaker can help you manage your Chinese suppliers, but I will advise you NOT to give me 100% of your demand right away if you have existing suppliers or your own production lines. Keep your existing system as back up and average your costs down.  My goal is that you be successful and making me immediately responsible for your whole world is not a good decision for anyone.

But that’s just my rant for the day.  Your thoughts, please.

The old A/C units that came with the house were not up to the task, so rather than broil while we rip up half the house to install central air, off we go to the appliance store to buy some new window units.  We bought several of the same model, and while I have never thought about an A/C unit needing a remote control, this model had remotes.

After I got them installed, we noticed a tiny little design flaw in the remote.  See if you can spot it.

Were I a dedicated blogger, I would take one of these apart to show you the interior, but now that I have the wonder of a remote control for my A/C, I am not going to risk breaking one of these just for you.  I prefer to luxuriate in my new found comfort like a stereotypical lazy American, thank you very much.

Were I to take the remote apart, you would see that the buttons are molded as one piece.  Molding the buttons as a solid piece is the standard way of doing it, but by creating a part that was symmetrical (likely just a plain rectangle), the designer created a failure mode – the assembler could put the parts together backwards.  What the designer should have done was analyze what could go wrong with the design – could it be assembled backwards? – and keyed one end so the the part was not symmetrical.  Perhaps there is an internal feature that one end of the button strip could have been molded to mate with.  Many companies I’ve worked with use the formal Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) process, and it is a great tool if you have the discipline to use it.  The Japanese refer to this practice as“poka yoke” (mistake proofing), but often still translated as “idiot proofing”.  I’m not a fan of that translation, because who’s the idiot – the guy would made the momentary mistake of putting it in backwards or the designer who created a flawed product?

PassageMaker often gets classified as a China sourcing company.  While we do source products in China, that is only the smallest part of what we do.  We are primarily a contract assembly company (with that label encompassing vendor coordination, inspection, the actual assembly, packaging, logistics, VAT rebates, etc.).  And I can tell you that we see MANY severely flawed design databases, drawings that appear to have been made by someone who gave no thought to how to put the thing together.

If you are going to spend the money to have something made in China, a dollar’s worth of poke yoke is worth hundred times that in money saved doing inspections, warranty claims and just the general embarrassment of sending a functional part out into the world that is nonetheless defective.

In our Endorsed Service Provider network, we recommend two design engineering firms.  Contract Engineering Services is based in Virginia, USA, and VentureTech is Dutch-owned, based in Shenzhen.  Both do a fine job for our clients and even if you do your own engineering, I strongly urge you to learn from the lesson above and try an mistake proof your design.  It might feel good to blame the Chinese assembly line worker, but who really made the mistake?

Your thoughts?

I agree with Renaud’s advice in general, though I am a bit more negative of the Type 1, the trading company. Too often we see trading companies that are really glorified Type 3′s.  They are making money on both sides of the deal and vanish in a flash the minute the going gets rough.

Avoid Type 3′s like the plague.  Mike Bellamy tells a great story of going to a trade show years ago and playing the big dumb American (something he does surprisingly well).  He stood in the lobby of the trade show and held a complex automotive casting over his head (Mike is 6′ 4″, so he towers over a crowd of Chinese people) and shouted, “who can help me source this part?”.  Suffice it to say he was mobbed.

He took the time after the show to go through all the business cards he was given (50+) and perform due diligence on all of them.  Two (2) were manufacturers of automotive castings.  Three (3) were taxi cab drivers who claimed to be manufacturers.  Thus I have referred to Type 3′s as “Cab Drivers” ever since.

Obviously I think Type 2′s are the way to go.  PassageMaker used to be a trading company and we developed our model because we saw there had to be a better way.

If you really, really insist that you want a Type 1, there is only one I’ve ever encountered that I would recommend to anyone, Silk Road International.  David Dayton knows his stuff and writes a great blog to boot.

But you really, really, REALLY need to work with PassageMaker!

This first two weeks has been marked by pollution, stifling heat and humidity, absolutely wretched internet access, a feeling of profound nakedness at being Blackberry-less for the first time in 10+ years and multiple cases of Mao’s Revenge.

In reverse order, to those tens of you actually reading this, my gastrointestinal distress seems to stem from three likely sources, so if you are thinking of traveling, they are:

1. Uncooked green vegetables – I don’t know what I was thinking when I partook of that salad bar, but it just looked so enticing…
2. Under-cooked meat – late night shao kao is among the greatest pleasures in life, just make sure you trust your cook and tell them to leave it on the flames a bit longer…
3. China – you’ve been warned.  Plan accordingly.

I am a Verizon customer in the USA, which is mostly a great thing.  Never had a dropped call or lacked for coverage.  They beat AT&T hands down.  But painful experience and $1400 phone bills has taught me to ALWAYS check on your voice and data plans before traveling out of the country.  Good thing I did, as Verizon cancelled all it’s China data plans since my last trip.  $20 per MB for roaming data is ridiculous, so no Blackberry for me.  Using it as a phone was always out of the question, as they charge $2 per minute to send or receive a call.  So when my neighbor down the street who missed the memo that I’d be out of town for a while calls at 3:00 AM to borrow the tractor, that’s a $2 call even if you just hang up on him.  So data roaming turned off, Blackberry powered down and in the bottom of the bag for the duration.

The added downside is that’s also my camera.  So maybe this weekend I’ll head down to the electronics market and buy a camera.  I’ve already missed too many opportunities for classic “China experience” photos.  The chicken vendor was a classic.  It would take me an hour to describe it, so I won’t waste your time trying.

Being without the Blackberry has been even more irritating as internet access in Shenzhen has just plain sucked.  Dyson-vacuum-cleaner levels of sucking.  I left one hotel that I’ve stayed at for weeks at a time over the years because they could not get their internet working at all after five (5) days of trying (or as this is China, probably not trying at all).  That and the new nightclub downstairs that has the bass turned up so loud that it shakes the bed until 3 AM every night.

Now that I write that, I am quite depressed that I am old enough that I even noticed the internet was down with a dance club available every night until 3 AM.

*sigh*

As to the heat, humidity and intermittent days of bright blue skies and nightmarish smog – well it is south China.  I don’t know why it even rates a mention, but it always gets me.

I’m over here working on a number of new and interesting projects, which of course are all covered by strict NDAs, as intellectual property protection is what we do, so I can’t tell you about any of them.  But they are really, really interesting.  And cool.  Very cool stuff.  Trust me.

Since you can’t read about the cool stuff, that leaves my microbial driven bowel movements, which frankly is a pretty good summary of this blog in general.

I’m sure you’ll stay tuned for further updates.

Rowe’s point delivered to Congress, is worth quoting:

Rowe explained that “dirty” jobs, like those in manufacturing and farming, used to mean success, but now look like settling. He wants that to change.

“I don’t think the country is going to fall back in love with manufacturing and I don’t think these policies are going to change, until or unless we reignite a fundamental relationship with dirt, work, and the business of making things, as opposed to the business of buying them,” he said.

He said one of reasons this is occurring is because community colleges and vocational education have taken the backseat to four-year college degrees.

“It’s not happening because people hate community colleges, it’s not happening because people hate the trades, it’s happening because we’re promoting a very specific kind of education at the expense of the others,” he said.

I’ve written before about the higher education bubble (here and here) and thoughts on American competitiveness and the attitudes towards work, but Mr. Rowe does a better job of laying out where we’ve lost our way a bit.  Convincing people that the only path to wealth is $120,000+ in debt for a degree in liberal arts or the soft sciences seems further from the mark than ever.

China has built serious capabilities in the last 30 years, skills and knowledge that many parts of the developed world have allowed to atrophy.  Part of the attraction to doing business in China is price, but increasingly it is because the domestic industries have shrunken to the point that China is the only place you can get it made, whatever “it” is.  That is why PassageMaker is there, so that if you are forced to do business with Chinese suppliers, you have an advocate that understands your concerns and requirements, and has your success as our primary objective.

The article spends a good deal of time talking about the recent suicides at Foxconn, which were tragic and not to be dismissed.  I did not blog about the suicides at the time, but it occurred to me when I read this article that at roughly 900,000 employees, Foxconn has a larger “population” than the following US states:

• Alaska (149 / 681,111)
• South Dakota (102 / 795,689)
• Wyoming (101 / 523,252)
• Delaware (95 / 861,953)
• North Dakota (95 / 637,904)
• Vermont (89 / 620,748)

You’ve probably figured out that the first number is the number of suicides, the second the state’s population (2007 data from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention).  Frankly, we should be surprised there were not more than 12 suicides, just given the sheer density of the living and working conditions.  Or maybe that helped prevent them?  Lack of privacy denies you the opportunity or provides something of a support structure whether you like it or not?

Anyway, money ‘graph:

Gou has plans to capitalize on the changes he has wrought. Perhaps most intriguing is his plan to move additional production to the U.S. The company currently employs about 1,000 workers in a Houston plant that makes specialized high-end servers for corporate clients the company declined to disclose, and Gou envisions a fully automated plant to produce components within five years. “If I can automate in the U.S.A. and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive,” he says. “But I worry America has too many lawyers. I don’t want to spend time having people sue me every day.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – bean counters, lawyers and @$$hat corporate buyers took all the fun out of US manufacturing and along with unions have done their damnedest to destroy what was left.

Anyway, enjoy the article about the “new Henry Ford”, and say a prayer for the departed.

It got me think about our services.  Despite the copious amounts of verbiage on our website, I spend a good chunk of each day explaining what we do and how we do it – which is one of the drivers behind developing the upcoming video tours, which we hope to post soon.

Some time ago, casting about for a good analogy for our company, my obscene fatness landed upon the concept of an a la carte menu.  You can use our services in the typical order – Sourcing Feasibility Study (sample report here), Vendor Coordination, Assembly-Inspection-Packaging (sample Product Quality Manual here), etc. – or you can start anywhere in the process you like.  Skip the salad and go straight to the main course.  Or eat dessert first.  We are nothing if not flexible, and our only goal is to help the client be successful in China.

And now I want ice cream.  Damn.

If you’ve noticed that blogging has been slow these past weeks, it’s been because a number of trips, client visits, etc., but the main reason has been an ongoing grind of computer trouble.  I have a high-end Windows machine from one of the big American brands.  It was bought a year ago because my prior machine, a super-crappy XP laptop from one of the other big American brands had finally given up.  The new machine purchase was ill-timed as I had to get a Vista machine.

Short version, it sucks.  Vista is, was and will be terrible.  But the machine itself was not much either.  Fit and finish were poor (screen was scratched and scuffed out of the box) and like all Windows machines, the thing was crammed with bloatware.  Despite its specs, it was slow from the start.

Three weeks ago, Windows download a bunch of updates and all hell broke loose.  The Blackberry also updated its software at the same time, which caused another slew of problems.  Worst of all, Outlook, which is the only Microsoft product I prefer to use, stopped working reliably.  I tried Thunderbird but found it a poor substitute (I love Firefox though).  After four (4) different IT folks took a look, after upgrading to Windows 7, after reinstalling Outlook twice, I gave up.  My Macbook Pro arrives today.  After 20+ years as a Windows user, I am switching (back) to Mac.

Note to Steve Ballmer – when your “productivity software” is this unreliable, it is no longer productive for me to use it.

It will be an adjustment, I am sure and there will be plenty of cussing no doubt.  But I had the opportunity to play around with one the IT professional’s Macbook and his iPhone 4G, and both blew me away.  I have bitched before about how little I like my Blackberry Storm 2, how unimpressed I am with my current carrier and now I am plotting my move (back) to AT&T so I can get a phone that was designed from the ground up to interface with my computer.  When the only office you have is two devices you can hold in your hands, you just can’t afford this kind of garbage.

Why do I include this in a blog about doing business in China?  Because both my current laptop and the new Macbook were made by the same company – Foxconn – and yet the fit and finish are night and day.

I have the feeling the company who’s name is on the current Windows laptop just goes to Foxconn and asks what’s new that they can slap their name on and market.  I know that Apple does not do that.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again now – you get the quality in China you are willing to pay for.

The last two weeks have been full to the brim with visitors from central China, Hong Kong and Germany (yes really, here in Salem, VA), sales calls, and computer crashes (my God, does Microsoft suck – Apple, I’m comin’ baby).

I have some great food and travel blogging drafted, but it is 3:15 AM, and I’ve been going since 7:00 AM yesterday, so you get some random dreck, DJ-style, like the great Instapundit (and yes that’s me hoping for some linky love).  I’ve been saving these up for a while, but they are still current and topical.

• Reuters – Google phases out Microsoft Windows use: report – GOOD; Vista is a war crime and the entire Office 2007 suite should have resulted in public hangings in Redmond.  How do you screw up Excel with stoopid menus?  I swear they could mess up a calculator.
• Financial Times – Rival tablets ready to bite into iPad lead – and they’re not even talking about the knock-offs you can buy on the streets of Shenzhen.
• The Anchoress – Witnessing the heart as it cracks – UPDATED – this is now quite dated by all the other bad things that happened in the Gulf of Mexico.  I only post it here to make the point whether you like Obama or not, having a President in the White House who the entire world (especially our Chinese creditors) see as an incompetent fool is not a good thing.
• New York Times – Virus Ravages Cassava Plants in Africa – This is quite sad, as Africa has enough problems.  I will be interested to see if the new colonial masters, the Chinese, come to the rescue with either aid or a scientific solution.  Somehow I doubt either scenario, but I sure hope I am wrong.
• AutoblogGreen – Study: Mass adoption of EVs in China will lead to tremendously higher emissions – It took me several minutes to stop laughing after I read this.  That Law of Unintended Consequences really is a bitch.  I love it when the local tree-huggers tell me about all the green technologies in use in China.  I wish I had a clear photo of the street lamps on a showpiece stretch of highway from Liantang to Buji.  The bulbs are fluorescent and the lamps have solar collectors and windmills!  They should be totally awesomely green, right?!  Except there is no consistent wind, the smog blocks out the sun and the bulbs are all broken.  Other than that, they are on the right track.
• The Telegraph (UK) – Chinese hiding three million babies a year – I know far more young people in China with siblings than the One Child Policy would suggest.  Anyway, as Mike is famous for saying, “there are 1.3 billion people in China – people be ****ing.”  Speaking of which…
• The Sun (UK) – Saying Sorry to China with Sex – Well, I for one applaud the young lady for trying to heal such old and deep wounds.  I mean, what have YOU done today to atone for the atrocities in Nanjing?  On a similar note…
• Good**** – China’s looming woman shortage: 5 possible consequences – this blog post is safe, but please note the site itself is NOT SAFE FOR WORK as the blog title suggests.  Despite the location of this post, the point is very valid – such an imbalance (India is said to have a similar problem) is a  huge flash-point as Beijing tries to control China’s rapid ascent.
• Walter Russell Mead – Marx Awakes as China Rises – an erudite end to this post.  If you don’t read Mr. Mead regularly, you should.

Actually, I have to end with some key words to boost our SEO, since that’s the original reason for this blog in the first place.  So here goes:

Contract Manufacturing, Contract Packaging, Contract Assembly – rah, rah, rah, sis boom bah!  Please feel free to contact me about our contract capabilities!

4:00 AM – good night, Irene.