Insights
What we learn on both sides.
Practical notes on doing business between France and China — written from the questions we actually get asked, not from a keyword list.
Shenzhen35
- Shenzhen
Shenzhen in a day: what the city actually is when you come to buy
Most first visits are spent in the wrong places. Shenzhen is the commercial and engineering end of a region — the factories are mostly somewhere else.
- Shenzhen
The questions worth asking on a factory visit — and the ones that waste it
A tour is not a visit. The useful questions are rarely about the machines, and the answers matter less than how easily they come.
- Shenzhen
Trading company or factory: how to know who you are really talking to
A trading company is not a problem in itself. Not knowing which one you have is — it changes the price, the lead time, and who fixes a defect.
- Shenzhen
Chinese New Year is the blind spot in every production plan
The holiday is two weeks. Its effect on your delivery date is closer to two months, and it starts earlier than most planning assumes.
- Shenzhen
Why being on the ground changes the negotiation
Distance is read as optionality. A buyer who has travelled, who will come back, and who can be reached the same working day is a different counterparty.
- Shenzhen
Why hardware moves faster in Shenzhen
It is not that people work harder. It is that the distance between a question and its answer is measured in streets rather than in weeks.
- Shenzhen
Tooling: the cost people discover too late
Unit price gets all the attention in a first quote. The mould is what actually locks you to a supplier, and it is rarely discussed until it is paid for.
- Shenzhen
Huaqiangbei: what the world's largest electronics market is actually for
It is not a place to buy. It is a place to find out, in an afternoon, what your product costs to build and who already builds something close to it.
- Shenzhen
From working prototype to first production run
The prototype proves the idea. The series proves the drawings, the tooling, the supply chain and the tolerance for variation — four different problems.
- Shenzhen
Hong Kong or Shenzhen: where the goods should leave from
Two ports an hour apart, with different paperwork, different costs and different reasons to choose them. The decision is rarely about distance.
- Shenzhen
Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou: where your factory actually is
Almost nobody manufactures in Shenzhen any more. The address on the quotation and the building where your product is made are often two different cities.
- Shenzhen
The industrial map of the Pearl River Delta, cluster by cluster
Chinese manufacturing is not spread evenly. Each town specialises, deeply, and knowing which one makes your product is half of a sourcing project.
- Shenzhen
Electronics in Shenzhen: who makes the board, who assembles it, who tests it
Three separate trades that a single quotation often hides. Knowing where the boundaries are tells you who to hold responsible when something fails.
- Shenzhen
Injection moulding in China: what you are really buying
You are buying two things with very different lifespans — a steel tool that lasts years, and parts that come out of it. Confusing them is where the money goes.
- Shenzhen
Getting your product tested and certified while it is still in China
Testing at the factory door costs a fraction of testing after a container has crossed the world — and a failure found there is a correction, not a write-off.
- Shenzhen
What being present in Shenzhen actually costs, and what it replaces
The comparison is never « presence versus nothing ». It is presence versus the flights, the reworked batches and the months that absence quietly costs.
- Shenzhen
Agent, buying office or employee: who represents you on the ground
Three arrangements with three different loyalties. The question to answer first is who your representative is actually paid by.
- Shenzhen
Building a hardware product from Shenzhen when you are three people
The region rewards small teams disproportionately — but only the ones that accept working the way it works, which is not the way a European product development works.
- Shenzhen
Yiwu: the market that exists for everything Shenzhen does not make
Kitchenware, stationery, toys, festive goods, hardware. A different city, a different buying method, and a trap that catches people used to electronics.
- Shenzhen
Sourcing north: Ningbo, Suzhou, Hangzhou and the other manufacturing China
The Pearl River Delta is not the whole country. For textiles, chemicals, machinery and precision engineering, the Yangtze delta is often the better answer — and it works differently.
- Shenzhen
Apparel in China: the fabric decides everything before the factory does
Garment buyers choose a maker and then discover the material controls the price, the lead time and the minimum. Reversing that order is most of the job.
- Shenzhen
When your supplier goes under: what you can still get out, and in what order
Tooling you paid for, a deposit already wired, stock half finished. The outcome depends almost entirely on decisions you took before there was a problem.
- Shenzhen
Machining, sheet metal, die casting: what you actually buy when you order a metal part in China
Plastic gets the attention because its tooling is visible. Metal parts look simpler to buy and are not: the drawing is only half the order, and the other half is a trade that no machine list will show you.
- Shenzhen
Cables, connectors and power supplies: the parts nobody specifies
They are cheap, they are bought last, and they cause a large share of returns and compliance problems. The reason is simple: they are the only parts of the product that arrive with no specification at all.
- Shenzhen
Foshan, Shunde, Lecong: buying furniture, bedding and appliances in one region
An hour from Guangzhou sits a cluster where furniture, mattresses, sanitary ware and household appliances are made and traded in the same few districts. What changes there is not the product — it is that you are buying cubic metres.
- Shenzhen
Shoes: the last decides before the leather does
A shoe is not a leather product with a sole attached. It is a shape, built around a wooden or plastic form, and almost everything that will please or disappoint a customer was decided by that form before any material was chosen.
- Shenzhen
Design for manufacture: the conversation that saves the tooling
Between a design that works and a design that can be made repeatably there is a gap, and a factory can usually see it in an afternoon. The whole problem is getting them to say so before the steel is cut.
- Shenzhen
Catalogue ODM or your own design: what each route costs and what you own
A Chinese factory can sell you a product that already exists with your logo on it, or build the one you have designed. Between the two sits the route most buyers actually take — the modified catalogue product — and it is the one negotiated worst.
- Shenzhen
Business travel to China: the visa, the border, and what a trip really asks of you
Entry rules to China have moved several times in recent years, and they are still moving. What follows is what was verified on the date this article was written — the point is less to give you an answer than to tell you which question to ask, and to whom.
- Shenzhen
Who owns the code inside your product
A hardware contract usually settles the mould, the drawings and the test reports, then says nothing about the firmware. That silence is the reason some products cannot change factory, cannot be updated, and cannot be corrected after sale.
- Shenzhen
Who you actually meet in a Chinese factory
Six people come into the meeting room, business cards are exchanged, and the day is spent talking to the one person whose job is to be agreeable. The organisation chart that decides your order is not the one on the wall.
- Shenzhen
Who owns the mould you paid for
You paid an invoice called tooling and the tool sits on someone else's floor, bolted into someone else's press. Ownership of a thing you cannot lift is decided by two documents and one marking, and the quotation contains none of them.
- Shenzhen
Sorting and rework after a failed inspection
The inspection fails, the factory answers that it will rework the lot, and the shipping date is held. Nothing in that sentence tells you what is about to be done to your product, or who will decide that it worked.
- Shenzhen
Guangzhou and its region for non-electronic consumer goods
Shenzhen is where you go for anything with a circuit board in it. For a bag, a textile, a household item or a piece of small furniture, you are in the wrong city — and the difference is an hour by train, not a different country.
- Shenzhen
Sourcing a toy or a juvenile product
No other consumer category is watched as closely, and the reason is simple: the user cannot read a warning and cannot protect itself. A toy is an object and a file, and the file is the harder half.
China sourcing36
- China sourcing
Writing a specification a Chinese factory can actually quote against
The factory is rarely the problem. The specification given to the factory usually is — and it is the cheapest thing in the whole project to fix.
- China sourcing
Qualifying a Chinese supplier: what to check before the first order
Finding candidates is cheap and fast. Establishing that one of them can actually deliver what you need is the work — and it is mostly unglamorous.
- China sourcing
Alibaba, 1688, trade shows or an agent: where to actually look
Each channel selects for a different kind of supplier. Knowing what each one filters for matters more than knowing which is best.
- China sourcing
MOQ is a negotiation, not a law
A minimum order quantity comes from one of three places. Two of them are physics. The third moves as soon as the relationship does.
- China sourcing
Reading a factory price: material, labour, tooling, margin
A quote is one number hiding four. Knowing the proportions tells you which part is worth negotiating and which is not.
- China sourcing
Samples: how many rounds, and what the last one is for
The sample loop is where the project's time is really spent. Its purpose is not approval — it is producing a physical reference both sides are bound by.
- China sourcing
Quality control has three moments, and only one of them is an inspection
A pre-shipment inspection tells you what is in the container. It cannot tell you the product was well designed to be made — that was settled months earlier.
- China sourcing
Protecting a product you have manufactured in China
Translating a European NDA and sending it over is the most common approach and close to the least effective one.
- China sourcing
Building a supplier relationship that survives the second year
The first order is a transaction. Whether it becomes a relationship is decided by how the first problem is handled, not by how well the first order goes.
- China sourcing
Incoterms for importing from China: EXW, FOB and DDP in practice
Three letters decide who arranges what, who pays when something goes wrong, and how comparable two quotes actually are.
- China sourcing
Paying a Chinese supplier: deposits, transfers and letters of credit
The payment structure is a risk allocation, not an administrative detail. It also tells the supplier a great deal about how you will behave.
- China sourcing
China, Vietnam or India: comparing honestly
The comparison is usually made on unit labour cost, which is the least decisive variable. The supply chain around the factory matters more.
- China sourcing
When you need a second supplier
Dual sourcing costs money and attention. The question is not whether it is safer — it is whether the failure it protects against would actually hurt you.
- China sourcing
Packaging: the line optimised last and damaged first
It is treated as a detail until a container arrives with a tenth of the units unsellable. It is also one of the easiest costs to reduce intelligently.
- China sourcing
Sea, rail or air: choosing a route from China to Europe
Each route buys you a different thing. Sea buys cost, air buys time, rail buys a middle you sometimes need — and the right answer changes with the season.
- China sourcing
Assessing a factory you cannot visit
A remote assessment will never equal standing on the floor. Done properly it still eliminates most of the suppliers that would have wasted your year.
- China sourcing
Why the lead time you were quoted is not the lead time you will get
The quoted figure is production time. Your real lead time contains four other things, and they are where the slippage lives.
- China sourcing
Writing to a Chinese supplier so that you get a useful answer
Most unanswered questions were unanswerable as written. Changing how you ask is faster and cheaper than changing supplier.
- China sourcing
Changing supplier without losing your tooling, your quality or six months
The decision is usually made late and executed fast, which is the wrong way round. A transfer prepared over three months costs a fraction of one improvised in three weeks.
- China sourcing
What a sourcing agent costs, and the three ways they get paid
Commission, retainer or margin — each one points the agent's interest somewhere different. Knowing which model you are in tells you what advice you are getting.
- China sourcing
The four ways importers lose money to fraud, and the check that stops each one
Almost none of it is sophisticated. It works because it arrives at a moment when you are in a hurry, and because the checks that would catch it take ten minutes nobody spends.
- China sourcing
Choosing who inspects your goods, and writing a brief they can fail
The big names and the small independents fail differently. What matters more than the logo is whether your checklist lets an inspector say no.
- China sourcing
Your customs code is a pricing decision, and your supplier should not be making it
The classification on your declaration sets the duty rate, the paperwork and whether a trade measure applies. Most importers inherit it from an invoice and never look again.
- China sourcing
Anti-dumping duty: the invoice wording that decides what you pay
Two importers buying the same goods from the same factory can pay very different duties. The difference is a declaration on the commercial invoice, and getting it wrong is the most expensive clerical error in importing.
- China sourcing
What Trade Assurance actually covers, and the gap people discover at the worst moment
It is a real protection with a narrow perimeter. It covers what the order contract says — which is why almost every dispute turns on what was never written into it.
- China sourcing
Sourcing in China when you have no volume and no leverage
Small orders are not a smaller version of large ones. The strategy that works is to be the easiest customer a factory has, not the biggest.
- China sourcing
The purchase order is the document that decides
Framework contracts are signed once and read rarely. The purchase order is issued for every production run, quoted in every email, and consulted the day something goes wrong. Written properly, it settles arguments; written as a price and a quantity, it creates them.
- China sourcing
FCL, LCL or groupage: how your pallets actually travel
The choice between a full container and a shared one looks like a simple arithmetic problem. It becomes a different problem once you count what happens at destination, and once you see how a shared container is really packed.
- China sourcing
Insuring goods in transit: what the Incoterm gives you, and what it does not
Most importers find out what their cover is worth on the day a container arrives wet. Two questions get confused: who is obliged to insure, and what the policy actually pays.
- China sourcing
The annual price conversation, and what has to exist before you open it
A yearly price review is not a negotiation you prepare in the week before. It is decided by what you recorded during the twelve months that came before it, and by what you can offer that costs the factory nothing.
- China sourcing
When the factory says copper has gone up
Sometimes it has, and the increase is legitimate. Sometimes the material is the acceptable way to reopen a price. The only thing that separates the two is a number you should have asked for on the first quotation.
- China sourcing
What a social audit proves, and what it does not
A supplier sends a report with a grade on it and the subject feels closed. It is not closed: the report describes one factory on one day, against a method, and the most common gaps are the ones the method cannot reach.
- China sourcing
The approval loop that stops the wrong boxes being printed
Printing is the one operation in a production run that cannot be fixed afterwards. A file approved by message, on a screen, with no version number, is how a container of unsellable packaging gets made.
- China sourcing
How a factory decides whose order runs first
A confirmed order is not a place in the queue. A factory allocates a finite capacity between customers who all have confirmed orders, and the ranking is made on criteria nobody writes in a quotation.
- China sourcing
Changing a product that is already in series production
A modification that takes an afternoon on a drawing takes a season on a production line. The cost is almost never in the change itself: it is in the tooling, the components already bought, the certificate and the documents nobody thought to open.
- China sourcing
End of life: the obsolescence notice, the last buy and the replacement
A line arrives in an order confirmation saying a reference will not be produced after a certain point. What happens next is decided in the following fortnight, and most of it is arithmetic nobody has done.
China market32
- China market
Distributor, agent or your own team: choosing how to sell in China
The real question is not which is cheapest. It is who ends up owning the customer relationship — and that is very hard to reverse.
- China market
Register your trademark in China before you start showing it around
Rights generally go to the first party to file, not the first to use. That single difference from European practice causes most of the trouble.
- China market
What entering the Chinese market actually costs in the first year
Not a price list — nobody can give you one honestly. A map of where the money goes, so you can build your own number and spot the lines people forget.
- China market
WFOE, joint venture, rep office or distributor: which structure to start with
Most companies set up a structure too early, then pay to maintain it while nothing is happening. The right first structure is usually the smallest one that lets you learn.
- China market
Three light ways to test the Chinese market before committing
The choice is not between a full market entry and doing nothing. There is a middle, and it is where most of the useful learning happens.
- China market
Hong Kong or mainland China: where to bring your business in
They are not competing options. They do different jobs, and a lot of European companies end up using both — for reasons worth understanding before choosing.
- China market
Why your Chinese prospect has stopped replying
Silence after a good meeting is the most common and most misread signal in France–China business. It usually means something specific.
- China market
Pricing for China: the cost stack European companies forget
A price that works in Europe rarely survives the journey unchanged. Not because of margin pressure, but because several layers sit between your invoice and the shelf.
- China market
Six mistakes French companies make on arrival in China
None of them are about the product. All of them are about sequence — doing the right thing at the wrong moment.
- China market
Tier 1, tier 2, tier 3: a useful shorthand, a bad strategy
The ranking describes size and wealth. It says almost nothing about where your particular product will sell, which is the question you actually have.
- China market
Importing into China: customs, certification and what actually blocks
Customs is rarely the problem. Product certification is, and it has to be started long before the first container exists.
- China market
The clauses that matter in a contract with a Chinese partner
A contract that cannot be enforced where the other party's assets are is a statement of intent. Four clauses decide whether yours is more than that.
- China market
Territorial exclusivity in China: when to grant it and when to refuse
Exclusivity is the thing distributors ask for first. It is also the thing that most often freezes a market for three years.
- China market
The company chop: what actually binds a Chinese company
A signature is not what makes a Chinese contract binding. The red seal is — and there is more than one of them.
- China market
Your first hire in China: what the role should actually be
Companies hire a salesperson and get a translator, or hire a translator and expect a salesperson. Naming the job correctly is most of the decision.
- China market
Canton Fair and the Chinese trade shows: what they are good for
They are excellent for discovering what exists and terrible for choosing a supplier. Using them for the second thing is how buyers come home with the wrong partner.
- China market
How a Chinese B2B buyer finds you, checks you and decides
The path runs through platforms, a search engine and a group chat you cannot see. Knowing its shape tells you where your effort is worth spending.
- China market
After-sales in China: the expectation foreign suppliers underestimate
Response speed is the product. A European service standard that is perfectly respectable at home reads as neglect in a market used to answers within the hour.
- China market
Registering a cosmetic in China: the two routes, and the person you cannot do without
Whether your product is filed in months or approved in about a year depends on one classification decision. And in both cases, a foreign brand cannot file anything by itself.
- China market
Wine and spirits into China: three layers, and a trade measure still in force
Registration, labelling and taxation stack on top of each other, and none of them excuses the others. Plus a dispute over European brandy that has not ended, whatever you may have read.
- China market
Registering a food business with Chinese customs: what changed in 2026
The framework was replaced this year, and the registration number now has to appear on the customs declaration. Most refusals are clerical, not technical.
- China market
Medical devices in China: the class decides everything, and it is not your class
A device that is class II in Europe can be class III in China. That single reclassification is the most common reason a China project is replanned — and it is knowable on day one.
- China market
Chinese personal data law reaches you even without a Chinese entity
If you sell to people in China or analyse their behaviour, the law applies. What it actually requires is narrower than the panic suggests — and wider than most European companies assume.
- China market
The joint venture as a way in: what it solves, and what it only shares
A joint venture is chosen more often out of caution than out of strategy. It is the right form when the partner holds something you cannot build, and the wrong one when it is a way of halving a risk neither side has yet named.
- China market
Running a small sales team in China from a distance
A sales team of a few people in China is not a smaller version of a sales team in Europe: it is an organisation you cannot see, reporting on a market you cannot read unaided. Most of what goes wrong comes from delegating the wrong things rather than from delegating too much.
- China market
China's compulsory certification: what it covers, and who actually applies
Compulsory certification is not a quality label and not a formality. A product that falls inside a listed category cannot lawfully be sold, imported or advertised in China without it, and the certificate is granted to a product configuration made in a named factory rather than to a company.
- China market
The fapiao: why your Chinese customer cannot pay you without one
A Chinese invoice is not a document the seller writes; it is a document the tax system issues. Which is why a buyer who has agreed your price, signed your contract and received your goods can still sit on the payment, and why the request that eventually arrives is not an administrative nicety.
- China market
Getting paid from China: the money is not late, it is in a queue
A payment leaving China is an administrative act before it is a banking one. Your customer can have paid, in the sense that the instruction is signed and the amount is committed in its own ledger, while nothing has yet left the country.
- China market
The grey market: where the cheaper version of your own product comes from
Your product appears on a Chinese platform at a price you never set, sold by someone you have never met. Your official distributor complains to you about it, as though you had done it. Both facts have the same explanation.
- China market
Franchising and brand licensing in China: what you are actually selling
A candidate writes to say they admire the brand and want to open in their city. What they are buying is not your name — and if it turns out to be only your name, the problem surfaces two years later, in a shop you have never seen.
- China market
Holding a premium position on the Chinese market
Premium does not mean expensive. For a Chinese buyer it means a story that holds up when it is checked, a seller who knows it, and a price that does not apologise for itself. The permanent discount is where all three end.
- China market
Selling a service rather than a product in China
There is no sample to send. The proof is a person in a room, and the buyer wants to know which person. Everything downstream — the pricing, the proposal, the protection of the method, the question of a local entity — changes because of that one fact.
China digital32
- China digital
Localise, don't translate: what that actually means
A translated page answers questions a Chinese buyer is not asking, in an order that does not match how they decide.
- China digital
Is your site actually reachable from mainland China?
Before any strategy, a practical test. Most sites fail it for reasons that take an afternoon to fix.
- China digital
Search in China: what changes when Google is not the answer
Baidu is the obvious difference, and the least important one. The bigger change is that a large share of discovery never touches the open web at all.
- China digital
The WeChat official account: what it is actually for in B2B
Most European companies open one, publish three articles, and abandon it. The mistake is treating it as a publishing channel — in B2B its value is identity and contact.
- China digital
Xiaohongshu: why this platform matters for foreign brands
It behaves less like advertising and more like recommendation — which changes what works on it, and what backfires.
- China digital
Cross-border e-commerce: selling in China without a local entity
The lightest real way into the Chinese market. It has genuine limits, and knowing them before starting is what makes it useful rather than disappointing.
- China digital
Your Chinese name is a decision, not a translation
Phonetics, meaning and availability all have to work at once. If you do not choose, the market will choose for you — and you will be negotiating to get it back.
- China digital
The trust signals a Chinese buyer looks for
They are not the same signals a European buyer looks for, and they appear earlier in the decision. Most European sites put them last, or nowhere.
- China digital
Measuring a China-facing site without Google Analytics
If your analytics is blocked, you are not measuring a smaller audience — you are measuring a biased one, and the bias points away from the visitors you care about.
- China digital
Marketplace or your own channel: how brands actually sell online in China
The platforms give you traffic and take your customer relationship. Your own channel gives you the relationship and no traffic. Most brands need both, in an order.
- China digital
Getting paid in China: what a foreign company can and cannot accept
Chinese buyers pay the way they pay. A company that cannot receive money the local way loses deals it never hears about.
- China digital
The tools your Chinese counterparts actually work in
Insisting on email and a Western calendar invitation is not neutral. It quietly makes you the slowest supplier your counterpart deals with.
- China digital
Short video in China: what a foreign brand is really signing up for
The format rewards volume and consistency, not production value. Brands that treat it as a place to post their existing advertising get nothing.
- China digital
Hosting a website for China: what an ICP filing changes
You can be reachable from China without hosting there. You cannot host there without a filing — and the filing requires a Chinese entity.
- China digital
The WeChat mini-programme: when a B2B company actually needs one
It is not a website inside WeChat. It is a tool for people who are already talking to you — which is why it fails for companies who build it to be found.
- China digital
KOL and KOC: what you are actually paying for in China
One buys reach, the other buys credibility, and the second is usually the one a foreign brand needs first.
- China digital
Live commerce: what it demands before it returns anything
The stories are about the revenue in one evening. The part that decides the outcome is the three weeks of preparation and the inventory sitting behind it.
- China digital
Why email marketing does not work in China, and what replaces it
The channel European companies rely on most is the one with the least traction there. Porting a newsletter to China is a year of effort producing nothing measurable.
- China digital
Translating your technical documentation for China
The least glamorous asset you own, and frequently the one that decides whether a distributor can actually sell your product.
- China digital
Being found in China: search, content, and the platform that is not a search engine
Ranking on Chinese search is a technical problem with a hosting answer. Being found at all is a content problem, and most of the answer happens inside WeChat where no search engine can see it.
- China digital
Making a website genuinely fast from mainland China
Most of the delay is not distance. It is a handful of third-party resources your page loads that never answer, and each one holds the page hostage until it times out.
- China digital
Paying for attention in China when you sell to businesses
The platforms are built for consumer volume and you need forty qualified people. What that changes about targeting, creative and what you should be buying at all.
- China digital
Where Chinese B2B enquiries actually come from
Not from a contact form. The sequence is almost always the same, it runs through a person rather than a company, and the website's job is smaller and more specific than you think.
- China digital
Zhihu and Bilibili: where Chinese technical opinion is actually formed
Foreign companies build a WeChat account, sometimes a Xiaohongshu account, and stop there. The two places where a Chinese engineer or a technical buyer goes to find out whether something is any good are almost never on the list.
- China digital
Short video inside WeChat: what it adds to an account you already have
A company that has published on its official account for a while is told it should now be doing video. The useful question is not whether to, but what the video is for when the account, the shop and the mini-program are already there.
- China digital
What images that work in China show, and European visuals leave out
A European brand arrives in China with a visual identity it has spent years refining: white space, one object, almost no text. Chinese readers find it beautiful and empty, and go to a competitor whose images answered their questions.
- China digital
Distributing an application in China without Google Play
An Android application that reaches its users through one store in Europe reaches them through several in China, each with its own filing, its own review and its own update queue. The question to settle first is whether you need a native application at all.
- China digital
Being findable on a Chinese map
A European company opens an office or a showroom in China, puts the address on its website, and waits. Visitors who type that address into the map on their phone find nothing, or find a marker on the wrong side of the road.
- China digital
Keeping a customer record in China: why a Western CRM empties itself
The tool is installed, the Chinese team uses it for a fortnight, and then the records stop arriving. It is not a discipline problem. The conversation that matters is happening somewhere the tool cannot see.
- China digital
Running an online event for a Chinese audience
A European company books a conference platform, sends a registration form and picks a time that suits Paris. Each of those three decisions is a reason the room will be empty.
- China digital
The QR code as the seam between the physical and the digital in China
In China the printed code is not a gimmick, it is the ordinary way of crossing from an object to a screen. The mistake is almost never printing one. It is what sits behind it.
- China digital
What AI tools do well, and badly, on Chinese content
The translation comes back in a minute and nothing in it is wrong. That is exactly the difficulty: a Chinese reader does not find a mistake, they find a company that does not know them.
France / Europe30
- France / Europe
How European buyers evaluate a Chinese supplier
The first surprise is not the language or the regulation. It is the pace — slow at the start, fast at the end — and what gets checked in between.
- France / Europe
What GDPR means for a Chinese company selling into Europe
It applies the moment you handle the personal data of people in the EU — whether or not you have a European entity, and whether or not your servers are in Europe.
- France / Europe
Setting up in France: SAS, SARL or a branch
Most Chinese companies create a structure heavier than they need, or none when a light one would have unlocked the first contracts.
- France / Europe
Distributor, agent or your own team in France
The same three options as in China, mirrored — but the costs of being wrong are distributed differently, because European employment is harder to undo.
- France / Europe
Why a Chinese brand has to tell a different story in Europe
The positioning that works at home rarely transfers unchanged — not because Europe is hostile, but because the reference points are different.
- France / Europe
How French companies actually decide, for a supplier arriving from China
The meeting is not the decision. Understanding where the decision really happens changes what you send, to whom, and when.
- France / Europe
Setting a European price when you come from China
A price that is too low does not win the deal. It changes what the buyer thinks the product is, and that judgement is hard to reverse.
- France / Europe
European trade shows: what they are worth and how to prepare one
The show is not where you sell. It is where you compress a year of first meetings into three days — and that only works if the meetings are arranged before you arrive.
- France / Europe
After-sales: the objection European buyers rarely say out loud
The buyer is not worried about your product. They are worried about what happens in month fourteen when something fails and you are eight thousand kilometres away.
- France / Europe
The website a European buyer checks before replying to you
They will look you up before they answer. What they find in ninety seconds decides whether there is a second email.
- France / Europe
Employing someone in France: what surprises a Chinese employer
The cost is not the salary, the contract is not easily undone, and the employee has rights that exist whether or not they are written down.
- France / Europe
Who actually sells your product in France
Between you and the end customer there are usually two or three companies, each taking a margin and each solving a different problem. Knowing which one you need saves a year.
- France / Europe
LinkedIn for a Chinese company selling into Europe
It is where European professionals verify that you exist. Treating it as an advertising channel wastes it; treating it as a credibility record makes it work.
- France / Europe
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain: choosing where to land in Europe
Europe is one market for goods and four very different markets for business. The country you enter first shapes your distribution for years, and the logistics answer is rarely the commercial one.
- France / Europe
Checking that a European buyer is real, before you ship
A first order from an unfamiliar European company is the moment to spend twenty minutes on public registers. Almost everything you need is free, official, and in a language you can translate.
- France / Europe
Marketplace or distributor: two ways into Europe, and what each one keeps
One gives you customers next month and no relationship with them. The other takes a year and leaves you a market position. Most companies need both, in an order that depends on the product.
- France / Europe
Selling to a European chain, and the private label question
A buyer at a European retail chain does not behave like an importer. The order is larger, the questions start long before the price, and part of what is being bought is your ability to answer them at all.
- France / Europe
Answering a European public tender from China
Public buyers in Europe publish what they intend to purchase, state in advance how they will choose, and owe you the reasons when you lose. That transparency is real. It comes with an administrative file, a rigid calendar and a habit of losing that most exporters abandon too early.
- France / Europe
The first person you hire in Europe
The first European hire is usually decided backwards: a good candidate appears, in the country that happened to produce the first customers, and the job is written around the person. It works more often than it should, and when it fails it fails in a way you could have seen coming.
- France / Europe
Legal notice, consumer information and cookies: the page every country asks for differently
Separate obligations end up stacked on the same page, and most distant sellers treat them as one. Identification, pre-contractual consumer information and tracker consent come from different texts, are enforced by different people, and change from one member state to the next.
- France / Europe
European domain names, and the local presence condition nobody reads
Some extensions are only open to holders with a link to the territory, and a registry can take the name back when the link is not there. The more common accident is simpler: the name is registered to someone who is not your company.
- France / Europe
The translation that loses a sale, and the one the law requires
Different problems share one budget line. One is an obligation attached to the member state where the product is made available; the other is credibility, and it costs you the sale before anyone has looked at the product.
- France / Europe
Can you ban your European distributor from selling online?
The clause looks reasonable from China: the distributor takes the territory, the online channel stays with the brand. In European competition law that sentence can strip the protection from the whole agreement, not just from the clause.
- France / Europe
Setting resale prices in Europe, and why it is the costliest mistake
A supplier that fixes the resale price of its goods in Europe is not negotiating hard. It is committing the restriction competition authorities sanction most readily, and the distributor that accepted it is exposed as well.
- France / Europe
Selective distribution: the lawful way to choose who sells your product
Refusing to supply a reseller is allowed in Europe, but only when the refusal comes out of a network built on written criteria and applied to everybody. A network invented the week you need to exclude someone does not hold.
- France / Europe
Ending an established business relationship in France: the notice you owe without having signed it
French law attaches a notice obligation to the relationship itself rather than to the contract. A distributor you never signed anything with, and one whose contract allows a short notice, can each claim the notice a court decides was due.
- France / Europe
Winning in Europe and collecting nothing in China: the choice made at signature
A dispute has a winning phase and a collecting phase, and they happen in different places under different rules. The dispute clause decides what your decision will actually be worth in the place where the money is.
- France / Europe
Opening a bank account in Europe as a Chinese company
Before the product and before the distributor, this is where a European expansion usually stalls: a European bank will not open an account for a foreign company it cannot verify. Almost nobody writes that down.
- France / Europe
Employing someone in Europe without a company there
A contractor, an employer of record, or a subsidiary. Each one is a real option for a first person on the ground, and each one fails in a way that is already well known to the authorities of the country concerned.
- France / Europe
The first year selling into Europe, in the order things start to bite
Everything a Chinese exporter has to do to enter the European market, put back in sequence. The order is not arbitrary: each step produces a document the next one needs, and inverting any pair costs a restart rather than a delay.
EU compliance28
- EU compliance
CE marking: what it actually requires beyond the logo
The mark is a declaration you make about your own product. The value is in the file behind it — and that file is what a serious buyer asks to see.
- EU compliance
Who is legally responsible for your product in the European Union
Selling into Europe means someone established in Europe carries obligations for the product. Deciding who, early, avoids discovering it at customs.
- EU compliance
Packaging and labelling for Europe: what has to be on the box
The box is a legal document as much as a piece of marketing. Getting it wrong stops a shipment at a border or forces a relabelling campaign at your expense.
- EU compliance
What European buyers now ask about sustainability
It has moved from a values question to a procurement question. The buyer asking is often doing so because they have to report the answer.
- EU compliance
REACH and RoHS are not the same rule, and only one of them is yours
Two European acronyms that get confused constantly. The difference decides who carries the obligation — and there is a legal mechanism that moves it from your European customer back to you.
- EU compliance
Extended producer responsibility: the European bill nobody quotes you
You pay for the end of your product's life in every country where you sell it. Registration is national, per stream, and marketplaces now enforce it for the regulator.
- EU compliance
The EU carbon border levy: what your European customer now has to ask you
It is not a tax on you. It is a declaration and a cost on your European buyer — which means the data has to come from your plant, and the supplier who provides it cleanly wins.
- EU compliance
Anything with a cell in it: the European battery rules, in the order they bite
A rechargeable lamp is a battery product. So is a toy, a tool and a speaker. What applies today, what was postponed, and the registration people discover too late.
- EU compliance
When the manufacturer is outside Europe, who pays for a defective product?
European law answers this with a chain of substitutes, and the first link is your importer. Understanding the order explains why European buyers negotiate indemnities so hard.
- EU compliance
Test reports, declarations and notified bodies: who issues what
A factory sends a thick file and the subject feels closed. A European buyer reads three different objects in that file, and the one it most often does not contain is the one the legislation actually required.
- EU compliance
The four European representatives, and why it is never the same person
A Chinese company selling in Europe usually needs several distinct mandated parties, and almost always buys one. The word representative covers jobs that rest on different legal bases, and a provider who says it does representation generally covers only one of them.
- EU compliance
What general product safety rules now require on an online product listing
The product page is no longer just marketing. European general product safety law made the listing itself a regulated object, with information that has to be visible before anyone clicks buy.
- EU compliance
The technical file: who can ask for it, what goes in it, and how long you keep it
A test report and a technical file are not the same document, and a factory that holds the first usually believes it holds the second. The difference becomes expensive the day an authority asks.
- EU compliance
What happens when a European authority buys your product and tests it
A market surveillance authority does not announce itself. It buys the product like any customer, tests it in a laboratory, and writes to whoever is named as responsible in the Union — and from that letter, two very different stories are possible.
- EU compliance
Organising a recall from China: what has to exist before you need it
A recall is won or lost before the incident. Everything that makes it survivable — traceability, a customer list, a contact channel, insurance, someone who can decide — has to be in place while nothing is wrong.
- EU compliance
The European legal guarantee: who carries it, and for how long
In Europe a consumer who finds a defect has a claim against the seller, not against the factory. A manufacturer selling directly to European consumers is that seller, for a period the law fixes and a contract cannot shorten.
- EU compliance
The right of withdrawal, and what happens to the goods that come back
A European consumer buying at distance may change his mind without giving a reason, within a period the law sets. The right is simple to state and expensive to organise when the stock ships from China.
- EU compliance
Showing a price, a promotion and a discount in Europe without getting fined
The rule that caught out more online sellers than any other: a discount must be announced against the lowest price you actually charged during a reference period before the offer. Not against a price you chose.
- EU compliance
Saying a product is green in Europe: what is no longer allowed
Generic, unverifiable environmental claims are now prohibited in Europe. Vague green vocabulary stopped being a marketing argument and became an infringement, on the pack as much as on the listing.
- EU compliance
The EU data representative the regulation requires, and that nobody appoints
A company established outside the Union that sells to people located in Europe has to designate a representative inside the Union, in writing, and publish the name. It is the obligation that is easiest to check from outside and the one most often missing.
- EU compliance
Digital accessibility is now an obligation for online shops selling in Europe
Selling online to European consumers brings your site, your app, your checkout and your after-sales inside an accessibility obligation. It is a requirement attached to what you sell, not a design preference, and a theme bought off the shelf does not satisfy it.
- EU compliance
Germany: the registrations to complete before your first sale
Germany does not look at your product at the border and then decide. It requires entries in national registers before goods are placed on the market, and a marketplace checks the number before it lets you sell.
- EU compliance
France: the sorting label, the unique identifier, and what is missing from your box
France applies the European rules and then adds its own, which is why experienced exporters get caught here. Scheme membership per stream, an identifier attributed to your company, and a sorting instruction printed in French.
- EU compliance
The UK is not the EU any more: separate marking, separate file, separate representative
Many Chinese exporters still treat Great Britain as a European market with an odd currency. The marking, the assessment bodies, the responsible person, the customs and the waste streams have all separated — and Northern Ireland follows its own arrangement.
- EU compliance
Ecodesign and the digital product passport: what happens to your spec sheet
The spec sheet you send to a European buyer is becoming a regulated record, with a defined content and an identifier printed on the product. Publishing it means knowing what is inside, and that is a question for your suppliers before it is a question for your documentation team.
- EU compliance
Spare parts in Europe are becoming an obligation, not a service
Repairability has moved from sales argument to rule: parts kept available, sold at a reasonable price, documentation handed to independent repairers, and assemblies that come apart with ordinary tools. For an exporting manufacturer, the consequences land in the design office and in the warehouse, not in the service department.
- EU compliance
The manual, the language, and the country where it has to be read
Safety information and instructions must reach the user in a language easily understood in the country where the product is made available, and each member state decides which language that is. The manual is part of the product, which is why a bad translation is a conformity problem rather than a presentation problem.
- EU compliance
Declaring what is in the product: the information chain nobody built
Beyond the substances Europe restricts, there is a duty to pass information about them along the chain — to the professional customer, to the consumer who asks, and to a European database. Answering it is a sourcing job, and it is decided in your contracts with Chinese suppliers.
Customs & VAT20
- Customs & VAT
Getting goods from China to a European customer
Sea, rail and air are not simply three prices. They are three different promises to your customer, and the promise is often what is being bought.
- Customs & VAT
VAT and customs on imports into the EU: who pays what, and when
Duty is a cost. Import VAT usually is not — it is cash flow. Confusing the two produces prices that are either uncompetitive or unprofitable.
- Customs & VAT
Getting paid in Europe: terms, delays and what the law gives you
European buyers expect to pay after delivery, not before it. That is normal here, it is bounded by law, and the protections only work if they are written into the contract before the first shipment.
- Customs & VAT
The documents a European import actually needs from you
Most shipments that sit in a European port are not stopped by a rule. They are stopped by a document that says something slightly different from another document.
- Customs & VAT
Holding stock in Europe before you have imported it
European buyers want goods that are already on the continent, and you do not want to pay duty and import VAT on the ones nobody has ordered yet. The arrangement that reconciles those two wishes is a customs regime, not a warehouse contract.
- Customs & VAT
Becoming the importer in Europe: the number, the status, and what it commits you to
Every consignment entering the European Union has an importer, and that importer is a named party carrying obligations, not a step in the logistics chain. Which of you it is was usually decided by a commercial term written by someone thinking about freight, not about liability.
- Customs & VAT
One-stop VAT and distance selling: the regime online sellers discover too late
Selling online into Europe triggers more than one VAT event, and they are routinely mistaken for each other. Separating the tax on goods crossing the border from the tax on the sale to the consumer — and knowing when the platform collects in your place — is the whole subject.
- Customs & VAT
The fiscal representative: when a non-EU company cannot do without one
Some Member States let a company established outside the Union register for VAT on its own. Others require it to appoint a representative who is jointly liable for the tax. That difference decides who you can work with, what it costs, and how early you have to start.
- Customs & VAT
Paying import VAT or deferring it: the difference that changes your cash position
In some countries import VAT is paid at the border and recovered later; in others it is self-assessed on the return and never leaves your account. For a seller importing stock continuously, that mechanism weighs more on the business than the freight rate does.
- Customs & VAT
What value does European customs actually use to calculate your duty?
The customs value is not the amount on your invoice. Things are added to it that never appeared on any invoice, other things can be taken out if you can prove them, and a sale between a Chinese parent and its European subsidiary is examined on its own terms.
- Customs & VAT
When customs disagrees with your commodity code
The code written on the declaration decides the duty, the trade measures and the controls that apply to your goods. It is chosen by the declarant, not by the factory, and it can be settled in advance instead of being argued about after an assessment.
- Customs & VAT
Assembling in Vietnam does not make it Vietnamese
Origin is not the address of the last workshop. It is the result of a rule that varies by product, and a certificate signed somewhere is not the same thing as a position you can defend when the file is opened.
- Customs & VAT
Taking part in an anti-dumping investigation instead of absorbing it
When an investigation opens on your product category, producers who come forward and answer the questionnaire can obtain an individual duty. Those who stay silent get the residual rate, which is the least favourable one on the list.
- Customs & VAT
Getting counterfeits stopped at the border — and what happens when you are the one stopped
European customs can detain goods suspected of infringing an intellectual property right, on the application of the right holder. The same mechanism protects your brand and can immobilise your container on someone else's application.
- Customs & VAT
Support received in China, and the European review that examines it
The European Union now examines financial support received from non-EU states when a company acquires a European business or bids for a public contract above a certain size. What counts as support is wider than the word subsidy suggests.
- Customs & VAT
The Netherlands as a logistics and tax entry point into Europe
A large share of Chinese goods enters the Union through the Netherlands, and not by accident. The infrastructure explains part of it; an import VAT mechanism explains the rest — along with the confusion that follows it.
- Customs & VAT
Poland and Central Europe: the warehouse your customers never see
European fulfilment has moved east. Storing in Central Europe to serve Germany, France and Italy is now ordinary — and holding stock in a country generally registers you there, which is where the savings start to leak.
- Customs & VAT
Selling in euros, counting in yuan: the seller's currency risk
The price is quoted in one currency and the costs sit in another. The time between the offer and the money being usable at home is a risk nobody priced when the offer went out.
- Customs & VAT
Electronic invoicing is becoming mandatory in Europe: what your customer will expect
Member states are progressively requiring invoices between businesses to be structured data transmitted through a platform or a network. An invoice outside that form does not arrive late — it does not arrive.
- Customs & VAT
Sending someone to sell in Europe, and creating a permanent establishment without knowing it
A durable presence — a person or a place — can make your company taxable in a country where you thought you only had a salesperson. The question is decided on facts, and best decided before the trip.
Brand in Europe7
- Brand in Europe
Choosing a brand name that works in Europe
Pronounceable in several languages, free to register, and not accidentally meaning something in one of them. Three constraints that eliminate most candidates.
- Brand in Europe
Filing your trade mark in Europe before you exhibit, not after
A European filing covers the whole internal market in a single application, and the right belongs to whoever filed first. A trade show is precisely where an unprotected name becomes visible to the people in a position to file it.
- Brand in Europe
Protecting the shape of a product in Europe: the registered design and the one that is not
Europe protects the appearance of a product in two different ways: a right you apply for and keep, and an automatic, much shorter one that is born when the product is disclosed on the European market. Showing the product first can destroy the registration you were planning to apply for.
- Brand in Europe
When somebody files your trade mark in Europe before you do
Finding your own name already registered in Europe is common enough to have a name and a set of remedies. The remedies are slow, the evidence has to exist before you need it, and the preventive filing costs a fraction of the recovery.
- Brand in Europe
Patents in Europe, and the question to answer before you think about one
Three different things get called protecting an invention: a patent, a design right and a manufacturing secret. Which one you need depends on what you actually have, and whether a patent is worth filing depends on whether you would ever sue.
- Brand in Europe
Getting a copy of your product removed from a European marketplace
Removing a listing is a procedure, and it starts with a registered right — without a title, most reporting channels do not open at all. Taking the page down also does not remove the seller, which is why the useful target is the flow rather than the listing.
- Brand in Europe
Why a European marketplace is asking for your company documents
Platforms now have to identify and verify their professional sellers before letting them sell, and to display some of that information publicly. The request is not a platform whim, and it is not negotiable.
Digital in Europe15
- Digital in Europe
Search in Europe when you grew up on Baidu: what actually changes
A site that ranks well in Chinese does not carry that position into Europe. The engine is different, but the larger difference is the market: many languages, one search market per country, and buyers who type a need rather than a name.
- Digital in Europe
Hreflang: the markup mistake that makes your German pages vanish from German results
Hreflang tells the search engine which page is the German version of which English page. When the annotation is wrong, the engine ignores it and treats the German page as a copy of the English one. The German page then drops out of the German results without any error message.
- Digital in Europe
Your website as seen from Europe: latency, CDN and hosting
A site that opens instantly in Shenzhen can take noticeably longer in Lyon or Hamburg. The distance, the route and the scripts the page calls all change when the visitor moves. It is the mirror of the problem European sites meet in China.
- Digital in Europe
The European product page: what it must contain that the Chinese one does not
A European buyer reads a product page as a technical and legal document before reading it as an advertisement. Units, standards, materials, country of origin and the name of someone responsible in Europe are expected on the page. Most Chinese product pages leave them out.
- Digital in Europe
Technical content that brings buyers: datasheets, standards, drawings
A European technical buyer rarely reads a promotional article. They look for a document they can check, file and forward: a datasheet, a drawing, a reference to a standard. A downloadable PDF written for that purpose usually does more for you than a blog post praising the product.
- Digital in Europe
Selling on Amazon in Europe from China: accounts, VAT country by country, and what really gets an account suspended
An Amazon seller account is quick to open and slow to make safe. What decides whether it survives is the legal entity behind it, the VAT position in every country where stock sits, and a few habits that look like fraud to a system that cannot ask questions.
- Digital in Europe
European marketplaces that are not Amazon: by country, by sector, and what each asks of a seller outside the Union
In several European countries the first marketplace a buyer opens is not Amazon. Each local platform has its own category strength, its own admission rule and its own idea of what a foreign seller must be able to do. Here is how to sort them before applying to any.
- Digital in Europe
Running search ads to Europe from China: what blocks the account, how billing works, and how to target by country and language
Search advertising reaches people who are already looking for what you make. A Chinese company can run it, but most of the difficulty sits in the first weeks: opening an account that stays open, paying for it, and pointing it at the right country in the right language.
- Digital in Europe
Professional social advertising for a Chinese industrial seller in Europe: what it is actually for when the sale takes months
An advertisement on a professional social network will not sell a machined part to a purchasing department. It can do something more modest and more useful: put your name, and one document worth reading, in front of the right people while they are not yet looking.
- Digital in Europe
B2B directories and platforms in Europe: which still matter, what a listing must carry, and how a buyer ends up on it
Many business directories are dead, and the ones that remain are not where most sellers think. A European buyer uses them less to discover than to check. A listing that is complete, consistent and current helps at that moment; a neglected one does harm.
- Digital in Europe
Cold email to European businesses: what the data rules allow, and where countries differ
Writing to a buyer at a company is not the same as writing to a consumer, and the rules know it. But « it is B2B » is not a permission. The legal basis, the opt-out and the country you write to decide whether the email is lawful.
- Digital in Europe
What a European buyer looks for on a Chinese supplier's website, and what makes them leave
A buyer who has never heard of you checks the site for evidence that you exist, that you can be reached and that you will be held to what you say. Most of that evidence is plain, and most sites leave it out.
- Digital in Europe
Measuring your audience in Europe: consent, cookie-free options, and what you lose by not measuring
The default analytics tag on a site usually breaks European rules from the first visit. The answer is neither to stop measuring nor to hide the banner. It is to decide what you need to know, then choose a method that can collect it lawfully.
- Digital in Europe
How a European buyer wants to be reached, and why the app that works in China does not work here
In China, a business relationship often lives inside one messaging app. In Europe there is no such app, and the buyer's company may forbid using a personal one for work. The channel that works is the one that leaves a written trace.
- Digital in Europe
Customer reviews in Europe: what is allowed, what is sanctioned, and how to collect them honestly
Practices that are routine on some marketplaces, such as paid ratings, reviews in exchange for a refund and deleting the bad ones, are treated in Europe as unfair commercial practices. The rules concern how reviews are gathered and shown, not whether to have them.
France–China30
- France–China
Consultant, agent or representative: who does what
The three words are used interchangeably and mean quite different things — including who carries the risk when something does not work.
- France–China
What France–China business development actually involves
The term covers several different jobs. Knowing which one you need is the difference between buying a useful service and buying a document.
- France–China
Choosing who helps you with China: the questions worth asking
Most of this market sells confidence. These questions are designed to find out what is behind it — and they work on us too.
- France–China
Do you still need to go to China, or can it be done remotely?
More can be done remotely than five years ago. The parts that cannot are precisely the parts where money is at risk.
- France–China
A short glossary of France–China business terms
The vocabulary that comes up constantly in a first China project, defined plainly — including the ones people use without agreeing on what they mean.
- France–China
Four misunderstandings that repeat in every France–China negotiation
Both sides are behaving reasonably by their own rules. The damage comes from each reading the other's behaviour through their own.
- France–China
Bilingual contracts: which version wins when the two disagree
A bilingual contract has two texts and one meaning. Deciding in advance which text carries the meaning is a five-word clause that prevents a two-year dispute.
- France–China
Six hours apart: running a France–China project without losing a week per decision
The time difference does not cost you hours. It costs you round trips — and a project is measured in round trips, not in hours.
- France–China
Your first business trip to China: what to settle before you board
The trip is short and the flight is long. Almost everything that determines whether it was worth it is decided in the three weeks before.
- France–China
Why France–China projects fail, in the order they fail
Very few fail because the market was wrong or the product was bad. They fail in a sequence, and each stage has a warning that was visible months earlier.
- France–China
How long it actually takes: a realistic calendar for a China project
Not a promise — a shape. Knowing which phase you are in prevents the two classic errors: giving up during a normal plateau, and celebrating a signature that is not one.
- France–China
Guanxi, without the folklore
It is not corruption, it is not magic, and it is not something you acquire over a dinner. It is the accumulated record of whether you are someone worth being responsible for.
- France–China
Face: what it changes in a meeting, concretely
Not politeness. A working constraint on where information can be said out loud — which determines what you will and will not be told.
- France–China
An interpreter and a bilingual manager are not the same job
One converts sentences. The other decides which sentence should be said. Hiring the first and expecting the second is a common and expensive confusion.
- France–China
Checking a Chinese company before you commit
Most of it is public, most of it is free, and it takes an afternoon. Almost nobody does it, and it is the cheapest insurance in the whole relationship.
- France–China
Building trust with a partner you have never met
Presence is better. When it is not possible, trust is still built — by a small number of deliberate behaviours repeated until they become evidence.
- France–China
What a France–China partner does, and what they cannot do for you
Worth reading before you hire anyone, including us. The honest version of this answer disqualifies a lot of offers, and it should.
- France–China
China plus one, without leaving China
The strategy is usually explained as relocation. For most European companies it should be read as insurance — and the cheapest version of it never moves a single order.
- France–China
When it goes wrong with a Chinese partner: what your contract decided years earlier
The dispute clause nobody reads at signature determines whether you have a practical remedy or a theoretical one. Most European companies choose the theoretical one.
- France–China
From a Chinese factory to Amazon Europe: the four things that are not the product
Sourcing is the part people prepare for. What stops accounts is tax registration, producer responsibility, the compliance identity on the listing, and who is named as the responsible person.
- France–China
The European compliance stack, in the order you should deal with it
Six obligations, and doing them in the wrong order wastes months. A map for a Chinese company that has decided to sell in Europe and wants to know what it is walking into.
- France–China
The working year, seen from both ends
A France–China project runs on two calendars that ignore each other. Neither of them is a list of public holidays: each has weeks before and after where people are at work but nothing gets decided.
- France–China
Reading a Chinese name, and calling someone by it
A name is the first thing you get wrong and the last thing anyone tells you about. The order, the title and the English first name each follow a rule, and all three are easy once you know what you are looking at.
- France–China
The business meal, the gift, and what is actually being settled
A dinner in China is not a social appendix to the meeting; it is part of the meeting, with its own grammar. The same is true of a gift, which is why both can go wrong in ways that are never explained to you.
- France–China
Why you write it down, and how to write it so it is not read as distrust
An agreement reached in a meeting room, or in a messaging thread, is not an agreement anyone can use next month. The written record that makes it usable takes a quarter of an hour, and almost nobody writes it.
- France–China
Writing English, or French, that crosses
Your counterpart reads your language well enough to work in it, and not well enough to survive your style. Most of what goes wrong in written exchanges is not vocabulary; it is sentence construction and the number of questions per message.
- France–China
When a Chinese lawyer stops being a luxury
Most France–China projects run a long way on an adapted template, and that is a reasonable choice. The question is not whether you need counsel in general; it is which decisions stop being survivable without one.
- France–China
Building a budget for a France–China project
The first budget for a China project is almost always wrong in the same direction, and for the same reason: it contains the purchase and leaves out everything that makes the purchase usable. Getting it right is less about better figures than about a complete list.
- France–China
Measuring the first year, before revenue says anything
For the first twelve months of a China project, revenue is not a measure of anything: too small to be a trend, too easily produced by a single order to be a signal. Something still has to be watched, and it has to be chosen before anyone needs reassuring.
- France–China
Ending a partnership without losing what it built
A distributor, an agent, a supplier or a local representative holds things that belong to you, and the day you want to stop is the day you discover which ones. Most of the damage from a separation is decided at the beginning, in a contract nobody expected to use.
Nothing here yet in this topic.
You have the notes. The next step is your own situation: eight questions, no email, and the answer appears on the page.