- How to crack the Chinese market.
The top five challenges of doing business in China.
Now there are many, many challenges
of doing business in China.
A lot of people want to get into the Chinese market.
But what are some of things that you have to watch out for?
That is what we're going to talk about today.
So Vic, why don't you share with us?
Let's do the first challenge of going into China
or entering the Chinese market.
- Well definitely language is the most obvious barrier.
When you go into a country where you don't understand
the language, translation becomes an issue.
Whether or not you translated things properly
and double-check your product and services,
it can become a joke.
- Sometimes we even see that on Facebook,
some of the funny translations.
They take the English name and
they just Google Translate it.
Even when we go to the night market here, right?
- Oh yeah.
- Some funny, funny things, right?
In China, there are many, many different types of language.
A lot of local languages, even Mandarin itself
has many different accents, right?
If you're good, oh this person's from the North
or this person's from the South.
There are a lot of different sets, right?
What's your take?
- Language is actually very, very different kind
of variations in China.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And then different kind of area people they speak
different kind of language in a way.
- Because it's so big.
- Like say North and South is like you can't even understand
what they're saying when they're having conversation
and North won't understand, right?
- [Dan] Even North itself has many, many provinces.
- [Jeannie] So many.
So I think language is probably very big,
and then I think also linked to culture or even the way
of Chinese thinking, so that's everything is related.
- I think for the culture, language,
they're kind of related, right?
So they think, "Oh I'm gonna sell to China,"
but it's so big.
Even they just wanna sell to a certain city in China,
that makes, the strategy would be different.
- Definitely, because culture is tied to language.
- Yes.
- Every time there's this thing in China, every time
you cross a mountain, there's gonna be a new dialect.
- Yeah.
- And a new variation of the Chinese language.
- Yes.
- So you cross a mountain, new language, that means
there's some variation in the culture as well.
So when you look at China, there are so many subcultures
within China, so that's one thing to really
be cautious about.
- And I think in US, America, the culture of America
is everyone, you immigrate to America,
you become an American.
It's like a melting pot.
But China itself is, I think if you take back to even
thousands of years, people don't go to go travel as much.
They stay in the same town or know everybody
for the rest of their life, right?
So the language, the culture that gets formed
and then that, and then a city gets formed
so they don't communicate as much until of course
transportation and people travel.
A lot of that I think stays the same.
I found that even the food that they eat...
- Oh yeah.
- ...could differ a lot
- Northern and Southern parts
- Totally, they're totally different.
- Even the Tofu is seen in Southern part as a dessert.
- [Dan] It's a dessert, yes.
- By Northern part, it's like a salty kind of dish.
- Salty, yeah.
- [Jennie] It's totally different.
- [Dan] When we first got married, Tofu, it's like
yeah, I like it, like yeah.
I've always had it sweet.
- [Jennie] Yeah, I never tried Tofu pudding.
Like what is that?
(Jennie laughing)
Never tried it.
- [Dan] So it's different, very, very different.
So languages, for someone wanting to crack a Chinese Market
first of all, they have to understand exactly what city
they're going after,
and also we talked about the more developed city, right?
At first, the first.
- [Jennie] Major cities like Beijing, Shanghai
- [Dan] Major city, yeah, and then the less developed.
They're all, a lot of differences.
The language, understanding who they're talking to,
culture, understanding culture, not just a big picture-wise
but a lot of intricate details and things that they
have to understand.
What's the third?
- Localization
- Yeah, so go understanding their culture,
but localization itself is, Vic, I think you
have some good examples.
- Localization is really understanding 'em.
Let's zoom into an even more micro part of the market.
What do they like to eat?
What do they like to do?
Their habits are, there's a lot of variance between
different cities.
- What to they like?
Exactly, what do they do?
It's very different, so again, going back to
what city are you targeting?
What's their taste?
- Yes.
- I mean even if you look at McDonald's, for example, right?
McDonald's around China, there actually, there's
a lot of variations between them.
They serve different foods and you know, example,
but some McDonald's in China, they offer this
chicken Congee, corn slate.
- [Dan] Yeah, Kanji!
Congee at McDonald's.
- At McDonald's, right.
- And even the KFC, right?
They have breakfast in China.
- [Victoria] Yes, absolutely.
And then there is an afternoon tea in Hong Kong where
it's very famous, some dim sum.
- And the egg tart.
- [Victoria] Right, egg tart.
There's corn and chicken wings, and none of the stuff
that we have, right?
So look at McDonald's and it's not an easy feat because
you look at businesses as big as McDonald's.
They've had a lot of failed projects as well.
- So when someone going into the market, they need to take
what they have here, improvement system, improvement product
maybe modify slightly to kind of more custom tailored to
the Chinese needs, right?
How they buy and what they eat, how they shop,
and also they'll need to take into consideration even,
maybe even city to city, that they need to
take into consideration.
- Yes, yes.
Beijing and Shaohai are totally different.
- Very, very different.
- Yes.
- Very, very different.
And what about, so we are at localization, we're
going to that.
We have taken that into consideration.
How could someone, if they want to go into that, maybe
one thing that they could do in my mind, even big companies,
Uber, that they make mistakes of naming things that has
a sound like a funny sounding meaning,
in Chinese, too, right?
- [Vic] Uber, Airbnb
- [Dan] Airbnb, yeah
- [Victoria] Brands from Australia, it's a little bit
surprising but at the same time it's
not so surprising as well.
You would think that big companies, they would know enough
to partner with the right Chinese partners and affiliates
to make sure that the naming process is appropriate,
the naming convention is appropriate.
Whereas a lot of, you know, when Airbnb announced their
name, on a Weibo, which is Twitter version in China,
they went wild on kind of mocking the Chinese version
of the name because it just sounded so off.
It makes sense maybe in English in terms of meaning
but translated to Chinese, you really need to pay attention
to the individual word and characters and homophones,
like what does it sound like in other words, right?
Because there's different meanings with the same words
in Chinese.
- Yes.
- But there is also some really good examples, like
they translate to Chinese name translated as even meaning
better, as in Coca Cola.
- Yeah, Coca Cola.
In Chinese it's Ke Kou Ke Le, that means it's tasty
and while you're drinking you're happy.
That's a great name.
- That's a great name.
- Fits perfectly.
- Yeah.
- So even naming things, and know how what about like
in terms of even like holidays?
Certain holidays in China, it's culture, right?
That you know,
- [Jennie] Very different.
- it's not just a (mumbles).
The big shop in town, it's December, Christmas, right?
Share with us some big holidays in China that's
a good time to spend money.
Where people spend a lot.
- I'd say first one is the Mid-Autumn Day, like the
full moon, which Chinese celebrate once a year in China.
- [Dan] Once a year.
- [Jennie] That means that all families that gather
around, yeah, that's the one big one.
- [Dan] That's one, we don't have an Autumn-Day here.
- [Jennie] Yeah, Chinese New Year.
- Chinese New Year.
- Right, one of the biggest like
- 'Cause Chinese don't take, we don't take a lot of time
off in December, we take time off in Chinese New Year.
- [Jennie] Yeah, around January, February.
- [Dan] Yeah, so it's equivalent of the North America
Christmas.
- Christmas, yes.
- Yeah, so that's pocket money.
- And then usually Chinese take a month off.
- A month off.
- Just so you know.
Yes, everything stops.
If you get manufacturing in China
- Everything stops.
- Like, where the hell are these guys?
Yeah, one month off.
So they don't work for a month.
- The incredible thing with that is, there's so many
people in China that the Government is considering having
staggered holidays because, I don't know if you've seen
some of the photos, where people want to go back home
to visit their family during Chinese New Year.
- Yeah, hundreds of millions of people.
- They get stuck on this highway where there's like
not an exaggeration, like 20 lanes of cars trying to
merge into 2 and they're stuck on the roads for like
a week, or like a month.
- And the train station, you see millions of people
getting stuck.
- [Victoria] Exactly, and that's just really another thing
about understanding the culture.
A New Year's for them is not the same as New Year's
for us here.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Even on Labor Day.
They have a long holiday, they have a whole week labor day.
You go to all the like Great Wall, those kind of tourist
sights, Chinese people are just like zombies attacking!
- It is.
- It swarms, yes.
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