Hah, yeh I figured I’d annoy someone with this post… I’ve read a thousand posts and just couldn’t find an answer. Much like, heaps of people saying you can’t package and ship with an RO and then heaps of people saying you can. So hard to get the right info.
Out of ALL my research you are the first person to mention a Class A building. Never even heard of that… off I go to research that now.
These things are sooooo labour intensive. We do make these in Australia but have to sell them at much higher prices to cover the massive labour cost. We set up a website selling them at half the price (and manufactured in China) and make $500 a month instantly. Then quality issues kicked in. Paying Chinese staff (even through a FESCO) still works out cheaper.
EVERYONE has been telling me… set up an RO and employ someone for quality checking… but like I said, the expense of doing that means we may as well continue to do it in Australia, but it means we have to stop selling the “low cost” ones. So we either spend money and push ahead with China or lose all those sales.
I’m looking for a way to get this done in China where we can manage quality without injecting massive amount of capital just to meet WFOE requirements. It seems it may not be possible because of China’s capital requirements.
But then again, I’ve heard from people that you start a manufacturing WOFE with only 100,000 RMB…
I paid $450 an hour to an Australia lawyer who apparently was an expert on this and stopped after 1 hour because they couldn’t answer these basic questions.
If you can point me to somewhere on this forum with the answers to my specific questions, great. I tend to think like most things in China, there are no real answers.
Mei ban fa.
You have certainly entertained me. I couldn’t help but laugh at your cynical (and justifiably so!) attitude
I dunno… All I know is, I googled everything from Class A RO China to Representative Office Class A, etc… and the only two links I found on the first two pages of google were one to this forum where this guy called leidelaohu was ranting about how hard it is to set up an RO (hehe), and a PDF from some random website.
I’m sure an RO is NOT the way to go. A WFOE might be the way to go, if I can have $50k or less capital paid over 1 year.
I do know 100% (well 99% because I’m not god), that the labour cost in Australia is way too high. I also know that at half the price it’s a winner product, proven by our instant success and growth when offering the “low cost” option.
Damn China for being so… China-ish !
I’m lucky in that I can leave the business here in Australia and hang out in China for a month and see what happens. I just wish I could some answers before I go. And yes, I’ll be looking in SZ, DG, GZ areas in the south ultimately.
I’m thinking maybe just to strike up an arrangement with one of our suppliers who has 50 SQM they can sub-rent to us. They employ a couple of extra staff under my control, I pay them some agreeable amount to make it happen. That way, I just pay my supplier money for everything, no new RO / WFOE needs to be set up, no export licences for me to deal with, and we all live happily ever after.
I’ve seen heaps of smaller companies go to places like Singapore for production and I often think they go there because it’s just easier than going to China. Maybe I’ll join them in Singapore but I’d like to fully explore the options in China first.
