

Ask YC: Are any of you interested in China / international business? - h34t

Are any of you interested or involved in international business-related startups?<p>This week I am in Guangzhou, China for the Canton Fair, a huge exhibition for Chinese manufacturers. These are the folks who actually <i>make</i> the stuff we all see in Walmart (think: obscenely low prices, and just-as-obscene minimum order quantities). Walking through these isles is kind of like walking through your grandmother's garden and seeing where everything you eat (/consume) actually comes from. It's the biggest show of its kind in China.<p>Have any of you thought about anything along the lines of Alibaba.com (which Yahoo paid $1 billion for 40% of)? Connecting international buyers/sellers? Related services? Importing/branding/product-design? <p>I've been living in China for 10 months. Just interested in whether any of the community here has dabbled in stuff like this (or wants to).
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buss
I'm in my third year of Mandarin study, and I spent last summer in China. I'm
not very good at speaking the language (but I do try). I've thought about
business in China, but I have so many problems with their government that I'm
not sure if I could actually do any business which resulted in a benefit to it
(taxes). It is certainly an interesting place, and I'm going to keep learning
the language, though.

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jsmcgd
If you did do business in China you would be supporting the government with
taxes but on the other hand you would be providing a portal through to the
west through which new thinking and opportunities could flow. This 'western
portal' isn't as squeaky clean as it might once have been but on the whole its
still probably a good thing.

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alaskamiller
That's pretty naive thinking. Almost as useful as thinking a war in Iraq can
stabilize the Middle East.

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swhnorton
Absolutely. China is a fantastic place to learn about how value is created,
copied, and consumed. Especially in the internet space: look at TaoBao,
China's response to Ebay, where buyers haggle down rather than bid up.

I met with an engineer from a Tsinghua spin-off company about creating a
social network based around QR codes, technology big in Japan which has not
taken off in the US. Webapps, or any product for that matter, will evolve to
meet the cultural nuances specific to China. That's an interesting problem to
solve.

h34t: In Guangzhou, be sure to visit the African trading community near Yuexiu
park at Xiaobei lu and Huanshi lu. That will teach you a ton about commerce in
China.

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runner29
swhnorton, how big is the use of QR in China?

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staunch
I had such a surprising response to my recent project outside the US. It
definitely opened my eyes. I've decided every one of my new projects will have
an internationalized interface from the beginning. It's so easy to do if you
start early and such a pain if you don't. I can't recommend it highly enough.
It's a huge competitive advantage for a such small investment.

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tocomment
How do you make an internationalized interface?

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staunch
All _I_ mean by this is that the user interface is available in multiple
languages. In my case this consists of creating a different lexicon file for
each language and allowing users to switch between them (based on their
Accept-Language header or manual overriding).

I use Catalyst for Perl, so I do this with Catalyst::Plugin::I18N
[http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/Catalyst-
Plugin-I18N-0.06/lib...](http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/Catalyst-
Plugin-I18N-0.06/lib/Catalyst/Plugin/I18N.pm)

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rms
I went to China (Beijing) on a two week program with Pitt's School of
Engineering after my freshman year and it was really eye opening. If I didn't
have startup things going on here, I would love to take a year to go to China
and learn Mandarin.

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ALee
My family is originally fron Guangzhou, my uncle is a VC in Hong Kong/China
(middle-growth, not early stage, sorry guys), while my father is a struggling
entrepreneur in Beijing (we follow in each other's footsteps...)

For those interested in China, I think the holy grail will probably be getting
the internet to be a more accurate reflection of the robust Chinese economy.
Moreover, how the Chinese tap into mobile in China to the ring of traffic like
QQ and Alibaba will be huge (although the strong Korean and Japanese firms
will be strong competition).

Another is thinking about maybe setting up a Chinese presence for your company
(on the web and an actual office). One of our friends just sold their company
(mezzimedia- specializing in Chinese comparison shopping) and they have an
office in Pasadena and in China (the one in China is 3x larger). Their model
is working really well.

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btw0
I am a long time reader of hacker news and reddit, Chinese is my mother
tongue, I think there are so many opportunities here, like "Go West" days in
USA.

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cstejerean
i've been considering international business for a while, particularly with
China. It doesn't fit well with what I am currently working on but I'm keeping
an eye on developments in China for future ventures.

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SwellJoe
We're doing some business with Chinese companies. We recently added Chinese
translations to a pretty big chunk of our product, but it's still a long way
from being a comprehensive answer for Chinese customers--so it's only a few
technically savvy hosting providers that are using our stuff.

But, after the US and Europe (French being the most popular non-English
language, so far), it's where we spend most of our internationalization
efforts.

I'd be curious how folks reach the Chinese market in a reasonable way and on a
small scale. Our current Chinese customers found us, but since we don't speak
Mandarin, we have no capacity to reach out and find new ones.

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davidw
I'd be interested in importing/exporting things to Italy, because I speak the
language fluently, but it's not something I've really pursued, because I don't
think simply speaking the language is enough to really get into that kind of
business. I do have some ideas for Italian things I'd like to import to the
US, but that will have to wait for when/if we return there.

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nickb
I will be in China in January. I've been there twice before and was always
amazed by the progress since the last time I went there. I'm definitely
interested in bizdev in China. If anyone wants to contact me & tag along or
meet there, email's in the profile!

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gibsonf1
I speak German (as well as a bit of Japanese) and plan to have our app
available in German soon after we publicly launch. Since I also am doing an
architectural project in Romania with help on the project from Poland, those
languages also may be possibilities.

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Harj
We're building e-commerce tools and would be very interested in talking with
these chinese manufacturers - please get in touch, harj AT auctomatic DOT com

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OSM
Hi, we are also building international manufacturing tools. How long will you
be in china? I would like to discuss. best, matt thenewbrooklyn@yahoo.com

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altafr
we are based in hongkong and recently launched an online marketplace to buy
and sell(<http://www.ushops.com>). right now we have opened it up for any type
of products to see what would work here. payment systems to facilitate P2P
payments and raising funding are two of our initial challenges. any pointers
in these areas appreciated. contact: altafr@ushops.com

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toisanji
My partner and I are planning to do a Chinese version of our product sometime
next year.

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runner29
h43t, are those goods identified uniquely - do they have barcodes already or
they are generics that are shipped and repackaged later on? (I presume latter)

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h34t
Some of both.

A lot of this trade is on a large enough scale (Minimum orders are often 1
container) that the buyer wants to define the packaging to match his brand,
but it's usually a lot cheaper to have them to custom packaging here in China
before shipment, rather than repackage later on.

The sellers are often flexible. They offer some packaging options based on
what they've done before and the vendors they know, but if you want custom
packaging they'll be happy to 'do it your way'.

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runner29
What I am curious about is how many of them have already distribution channels
and established brands so that there is a possibility to trace them through
the supply chain based on the barcode (pure FMCG/CPG market). My believe is
that 90% of them are "white label goods" or are re-branded as the reception
point. My hope is however that 10% are becoming more and more integrated into
"integrated" supply chain with no repackaging taking place, so that
China/India goods are produced and immediately sold worldwide (through a
wholesaler step). I would love to have a system like alibaba but more
enforcing from barcoding perspective: each barcode has manufacturer prefix,
based on the barcode you should be able to trace back to the manufacturer -
also there might be a need to list all the resellers, wholesalers etc that are
importing particular goods from the particular manufacturer in the particular
target market, etc ...

Anyone who is willing to exchange thoughts on the subject feel free to contact
me through email in my profile.

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pageman
if anyone here is interested in C2C, B2C, C2B or B2B secure online payment
solutions - we actually power AliPay (<http://www.asiapay.com/press_e.html>)
via our PayDollar system.

