Published in May 4th, 2008
Walmart has announced that any supplier failing to tag their shipments with RFID tags will be fined 2$ a pallet. Walmart has been experimenting with the use of RFID in stores and warehouses since 2004. The original announcement led to a huge amount of buzz in both the technology and supply chain industries.
However, it seems [...]
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Published in May 4th, 2008
According to the latest trade statistics from the WTO (released on April 17) global trade is expeccted to slow from 8.5% in 2007 to only 4.5% in 2008. Meanwhile, according to the IMF, last year, global GDP rose by 4.9% and the projection for 2008 is 3.7% growth, followed by 3.8% in 2009. They further [...]
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Published in March 7th, 2008
The United States is sending a strong message to importers through recent legislation as well as criminal charges against importers responsible for tainted products.
This past Thursday the U.S. Senate passed legislation that will:
1. Create a database that will aggregate customer complaints related to specific products and their respective manufacturers. This database will be made free [...]
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Published in March 6th, 2008
Trade media companies are pushing steadily into India but with varying degrees of commitment.
In December 2007, Alibaba.com claimed India to be a priority and mentioned an aggressive expansion plan; however, no follow on announcements have been made since.
This past February, Global Sources, who has been on the ground in India since 1989, put forward aggressive [...]
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Published in March 4th, 2008
Our good friend and B2B media guru, Paul Woodward, recently shared his thoughts on B2B media trends.
A summary of this interview can be found on Thomas Crampton’s blog.
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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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