So how do you find the resource or product you are looking for in China? If you have tried using the internet with little or no success, you are definitely not alone.
Alternatively, you may have found something on the internet, but you never could make contact with the company. Nobody replies to e-mail and calling would require a Chinese speaker. Again, you are not alone. Just finding the product is not enough, the end goal is buying it, of course.
Recently, I was incredibly frustrated trying to find a specific product. Searching online required some pretty sophisticated search techniques just to find very basic, beginning information. The vast majority of Chinese businesses are definitely not "search engine friendly."
Sites like Made–in–China and Alibaba are usually high on the list, but you will need to become a member to find any contact information. Ok, let us become members. Then we can collect contact information on a wide assortment of businesses. But will they actually reply to e-mail or answer the phone?
Surely, many of the companies found do answer calls and e-mail, but in my case, that was definitely not true. As it turned out, the most prominent company I kept finding was out of business. That in itself took me days to confirm. Half of the companies did not answer their phones. Some numbers were wrong. And I never had one company actually answer the e-mail address provided.
Does this all mean that they are not serious about selling their product? Not necessarily. The primary reason is that the majority of Chinese businessmen do not have any idea of how online business should function and how to maintain an online presence. They have never seen sales from their online advertising and thus never put much importance on developing and maintaining their website, e-mail, or advertising. (I know, they could see great sales from a solid online presence, but that is a blog entry for later.)
In addition to to a lack of response to the contact information provided, most of these companies do not have the resources to maintain an English language website, and when they do it may be too cryptic to figure out.
The deceptive part of this whole process is this: in the midst of frustration with not finding much, we are easily excited when we do find one or two companies with the right product. As many other consultants in China would say, you would be wise to simultaneously approach several companies. Do not approach only the one or two you could find.
If you only have one option, it is very easy to pay too much. Find several producers of the same product, work them against one another, find the real price, and then make the decision. With the difficulty of finding producers, we are tempted to take the short cut, which is only a short cut to the "China special"...the "special" price for that special customer (who did not do their homework).
