Published in February 29th, 2008
Chinese manufacturing has long enjoyed a relative freedom from IP enforcement. Entire cities manufacture fake Gucci, LV, and Prada bags, and the latest DVDs and CDs are all available on the streets for US$1. International buyers and inventors have long lived in fear of their designs being copied in China.
Some have argued that China’s poor [...]
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Published in February 26th, 2008
I read an excellent article in the Feb 16-08 edition of The Economist detailing some of China’s infrastructure projects and they are impressive to say the least. Some extracts below:
…Beijing’s new airport terminal…The world’s largest, designed in the gently sinuous form of a Chinese dragon, it was planned and built in four years by [...]
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Published in February 25th, 2008
In addition to Trust & Safety issues, most trade media companies struggle to understand who their users are beyond simply tagging them as ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers.’
This oversimplification fails to represent the massive range of businesses participating in global trade which in turn limits their ability to best use the media offered. As an example, [...]
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Published in February 22nd, 2008
Reed Elsevier, the largest business-to-business publisher in the United States, announced that it is selling its business and trade magazine division, Reed Business Information.
According to Sir Crispin Davis, CEO of Reed Elsevier, “RBI is a well-managed high quality business as evidenced by the success of its online growth and the control of costs. Its advertising [...]
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Published in February 22nd, 2008
Further to my February 19th posting on the toy industry, it appears that they have more to worry about than only managing product quality. According to Eric Johnson, Professor of Operations Management at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, toy prices will increase anywhere from 5 to 10 percent later this year.
You are going to see [...]
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Published in February 20th, 2008
There’s no question that the US congress is a bit upset about the increasing role of China in world trade and the every-growing trade surplus. With the exception of the toy industry, we’ve yet to see much direction action from congress although the topic has been heavily discussed.
Both US democratic presidential candidates have also [...]
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Published in February 19th, 2008
The news this past year was filled with stories of deadly dog food and lead covered toys which caused staggering product recalls and increasing concern for the quality of the products imported from overseas. Blame was placed up and down the supply chain but it remains unclear as to who ultimately is responsible for the [...]
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Published in February 19th, 2008
I am a member of LinkedIn, a social networking site, which has recently added more networking functionality such as the Answers section, where industry experts can respond to questions posed by the LinkedIn community.
I recently responded to the following question from Massimiliano Bevilacqua, Senior Consultant at IBM Global Business Services:
Importing goods from China … [...]
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Published in February 19th, 2008
Given all the recent hype around the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! and Google’s immediate defense (or offense), I wanted to provide a few search statistics to give you a different perspective on this pending deal.
Hitwise, a U.S.-based internet monitor which collects data directly from ISP networks, reported that for the week ending January 26, a [...]
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Published in February 19th, 2008
It’s finally happened. Canada is no longer the top supplier to the USA. The US imported US$321.5 billion of merchandise from China in 2007 and only US$313.1 billion from Canada. The following quote encapsulates the issue:
‘No one thought China’s re-emergence would be as robust, rapid or consistent as it has been,’ former U.S. Trade Representative [...]
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