Buyer consultant Qi Zhi Vietnam

For Wayne, the international trade like a river that is always flowing. Where there is a factory and a product, his migrating bird follows. In the circle, Wayne's more accurate career title is a business intelligence consultant, but he joked himself- "comprador".

Author: Gao Ruoyi

Figure: Tuwa Creative

Guide

One || One is familiar with upstream manufacturing, and one has grasped the purchase needs of downstream customers. In the international supply chain accelerated by globalization, Wayne found its living space as a "comprador".

E || Wayne needs to face the test of buyers "both want": how to reduce tariffs, how to control the costs such as manpower, transportation, and warehousing. This is like a mathematical problem that requires thoroughly computing, and those who are calculated need to balance the two ends at all times.

Three || At the beginning of trade friction, Zheng Cheng's strategic development of the company was "chaos" in his own words. The company's headquarters is in Dongguan. As the business grows, he needs to build a second production base, and the sudden tariffs are caught by surprise.

Few merchants can avoid such temptations: flexible markets, generous compensation, and self -showing opportunities. When the global supply chain makes a chicken jumping for the epidemic and war, as long as the abacus is faster enough, this is still the best time for Wayne.

In mid -August, a sunny morning, he and his old friend Zheng Cheng sat at the entrance of a hotel in Haiyang, Vietnam. At this time, the Russian and Ukraine War Wuyun was still dense, and European energy prices were soaring. Inflation, consumers are tired of cope with the price of food and gasoline and tighten their pockets.

The supply chain continues to be turbulent, and European leaders are even warning: rich days are coming. The transnational retail giants are also cold and hot. "Now, I even need to help buyers calculate the cost, personnel cost, freight costs, and various issues such as tariffs, inflation, and warehousing." Wayne said, "In the past, the accounts were fixed. Model, now it is a bit outrageous. You have to consider all factors, and the account will always be understood. "

Wayne still misses the more than ten years before the epidemic, and the public retail giants have set up a procurement office in Shenzhen and Shanghai, which is the prosperous era of world trade in his eyes. Although there is no official title, this 62 -year -old Taiwanese businessman has been behind the buyer group of multinational retail giants such as Wal -Mart and Costco for many years, providing them with front -line business information from upstream manufacturers: production capacity, quality, design ability To the time of the delivery standard, the packaging specifications of the product are all -inclusive. Professional and meticulous, familiar with overseas markets, and proficiency in manufacturing are the bargaining chips Wayne walking between these multinational retail buyers.

Zheng Chengcheng is the person in charge of a small appliance and office supplies manufacturer in Wayne 5 years ago. After the Sino -US trade war started in 2019, Zheng Cheng, driven by customers, invested in a branch factory in Haiyang, Vietnam.

Haiyang City is located in the northern part of Vietnam, located between Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam and the second largest port. In the evening, people on the street surged, and there were motorcycles coming from south to north. In this infrastructure, the small town of Vietnam, Wayne and Zheng Cheng vaguely saw the shadow of Dongguan 20 years ago.

At the beginning of the reform and opening up, due to the advantages of labor costs, Mainland China first attracted Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen to invest in inland investment. In September 1978, the first "three -to -one supplement" foreign -funded enterprise -Taiping handbag factory opened in Dongguan. In addition to bringing new equipment and new technologies to the former agricultural county, foreign capital influx, but also brought key connections to this new commercial hot land.

"In the past 20 years, I have met a lot of friends in Dongguan. If you have an order, you still hope to recommend Chinese manufacturers." But the three -year epidemic has indeed changed the original survival rules. Earlier, Wayne matched the location of buyers and student manufacturers. It was more in Shenzhen and Dongguan, but this time came to Vietnam.

Wayne said that whether it was from Taipei, Hong Kong or later to Shenzhen, the flow of people behind the manufacturing industry now began to feel the feeling of migration of Ho Chi Minh, which gradually gradually moved towards Vietnam. As Vietnam ’s foreign tourists have been fully liberalized in March this year, buyers have already asked Wayne if they can organize a group to see the factory in Vietnam. He has a Costco's list of goods in his hands, of which seven or eight products have been finalized in the Vietnamese factory. "In addition to buyers, they will bring sales this time."

For Wayne, the international trade like a river that is always flowing. Where there is a factory and a product, his migrating bird follows. In the circle, Wayne's more accurate career title is a business intelligence consultant, but he joked himself- "comprador".

The business of multinational consultants

After a lapse of three years, the two old friends met again, and Wayne lamented "I lost three years of youth." Compared with the fast -moving and refreshing Guangzhou people Zheng Cheng, the Wayne of Wayne, whose face is white, is a bit dull, but The small eyes seemed to be savvy.

For more than ten years after the end of the 1990s, Wayne has been traveling to the mainland to do the import business of electronic products. With the rise of online procurement, many small retailers have closed down, forcing the pressure of shipping and materials. Around 2007, Wayne began to consciously undertake the marketing business of domestic manufacturers. On the other hand, in the face of the strong retail giants, the retail giants are paved online and offline at the same time. They have Wayne of the sales team in Wal -Mart and Costco. They follow the needs of gradually reduced the needs of customers to slowly transform and undertake the business of helping customers find products. Taking Wal -Mart as an example, before 2002, Wal -Mart did not purchase goods directly from overseas, but was purchased by agents. At that time, Cui Renfu, the global vice president of Wal -Mart and the president of the Global Procurement Office, who had just performed his duties, used half a year to set up more than 20 branches in charge of procurement in the world. Prior to this, at the end of 2001, Wal -Mart had moved the global procurement headquarters from Hong Kong to Guangdong -Shenzhen as the base.

The main responsibility of the Wal -Mart Global Procurement Center is a competitive product for the Wal -Mart chain store purchase in terms of quality, packaging, and price. Check it. This global procurement center does not have actual purchasing behavior. Instead, it gathers the searched products and suppliers and convenes buyers distributed in the Wal -Mart stores in various regions of the world to choose to buy and buy, which promotes transactions.

The reality is that Wal -Mart has 100,000 active SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit minimum available units to save inventory control). Costco with fewer categories and membership fees is 90%of the source of profit, and the SKU has also around 4000. The buyer team within the retail group is difficult to inspect such a large number of products and more complicated factory qualifications behind it.

One is familiar with the upstream manufacturing, and the buying needs of downstream customers are grasped. In the international supply chain accelerated by globalization, Wayne found its living space as a "comprador".

Wayne people are regarded by manufacturers like Zheng Cheng as a lubricant that promotes business exchanges. "What products do retailers need, they will entrust them to find good manufacturing factories, or directly find good products. When we want to find customers, we also want to find customers, and we also want to find customers. You can pass him. "

"During the epidemic, the buyer was not convenient, so I told us what the product they wanted. Like this time I came to Vietnam, I also brought a list, went to find the right factory, and then handed it to Costco." Wayne said he only involved outdoor outdoor outdoor , Furniture, small appliances and other categories.

Buyers don't even need to educate factories. "A project, I will only recommend a factory, and I will not find two or three factories that produce the same products to customers. Of course, before making decisions, I will deeply understand the factories' qualifications and production capacity. , Quality, Design Ability, Shipping Metropolitania Time, Packaging, Labor Welfare and other details. "

Starting point of stress

Wayne needs to face the test of the buyers' "both needed": how to reduce the tariffs, how to control the costs such as manpower, transportation, and warehousing. This is like a mathematical problem that requires thoroughly computing, and those who are calculated need to balance the two ends at all times.

Once the constant changes in the equivalent means that all accounts must be re -inventory. In Wayne's view, three years ago, Sino -US trade rubbing the United States to impose 25 percentage tariffs on some Chinese goods, which is the biggest variable, and it is also the starting point for later pressure.

The requirements of the buyers will quickly change: they want to avoid tariffs, whether they can find factories outside China; in order to control the cost, the factory must be able to automate as much as possible; they also hope To deal with the pressure of emergency turnover of inventory. The sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic makes things more tricky.

The cooperation between Wayne and the buyer once went deep into the upstream raw materials. Analyzing "remove aluminum, iron and other raw materials, or the price of textile fabrics, how much profit can the factory be available?" Since May this year, Wal -Mart has issued a profit early warning twice since May this year. High inflation is affecting consumers who are the world's largest retailer services to prices. "In the past year and a half, many containers can't go on the boat, and the freight will be two or three times. They will also give us these pressures." Last year's global logistics congestion, so that retailers prepared high inventory to cope with the possible possible possible Risk of broken supply chain.

However, with the improvement of logistics congestion, the high inventory effect has triggered a chain reaction.

As Wal -Mart warned in July this year, the changes in consumer expenditure promoted by inflation have led to excess inventory of Wal -Mart, especially clothing. The price reduction to clean up inventory has led to Wal -Mart's gross profit margin this quarter by 132 basis points. At the end of July, Wal -Mart's inventory reached $ 60 billion, an increase of 25%year -on -year. Now, Wal -Mart has emptied most of the summer seasonal inventory, and is still working hard to clear some excess inventory of electronic products, home supplies and sporting goods.

Earlier, Nordstrom, a US high -end chain department store retailer, faced the same excess inventory; recently hot MEME MEME shares BED BATHAMP; Beyond was troubled by the company's cash flow and inventory problems for a long time; Target, the second largest retailer in the United States, not only provided too much inventory, not only discounts provided discounts not only discounts, In order to clear the inventory and even cancel orders with suppliers. Inventory needs time to digest, and the amount of ordering places will be affected. Wayne said that when the retail front line is under pressure, it will be transferred to the factory, and the factory must have business to survive.

In Wayne's view, if you do not communicate well with the buyer, many factories will be broken, and many are not a problem with the Chinese factory, but I don’t know what the reason is. Now the change is a bit outrageous. The current freight is not counted before, and the current epidemic and inflation are not counted. "

Although the cost of control is still the most important decision, the importance of factor credibility and stability is prominent. Wayne said that sometimes, although a factory is slightly more expensive than other homes, because of stability, customers such as Wal -Mart and Costco are more willing to cooperate with it.

From Shenzhen to Ho Chi Minh

At the beginning of trade friction, Zheng Cheng's strategic development of the company was "chaos" in his own words. The company's headquarters is in Dongguan. As the business grows, he needs to build a second production base, and the sudden tariffs are caught by surprise.

"The result we discussed with customers at the time was: Assuming that I built a factory in Vietnam, for example, he would increase the purchase amount to me by 10 points to help me overcome the cost of increasing the establishment of a new manufacturing base. Half of ways face tariffs. "Zheng Cheng said it was because of that opportunity. He began to think about why he couldn't go overseas. After investigating Cambodia and Malaysia in Southeast Asia, he decided to build the factory in Haiyang City, which is "closer to China, simple folk customs, and convenient transportation".

Because of this factory, Wayne also brought Zheng Cheng's important order for Sam Member Store. In the past three years, the revenue of Zheng Cheng's factory has not increased.

The offline exchanges that are not smooth, making him more and more anxious. Every year, he goes to Europe and North America to visit customers on a regular basis to understand the needs and changes of customers face -to -face. Before this Haiyang Bank of Vietnam, he had not been abroad for three years.

In Zheng Cheng's opinion, the foundation of the survival of the manufacturing industry is to meet market demand. All innovations based on demand often come from the sparks that communicate between people. Both heating costs and supply have encountered great problems. I am a friend who specializes in winter heating equipment. German customers are very anxious, hoping that he can launch a series of equipment to deal with cold winter. "And producing such a device involving many of them involved a lot Details: Which room is used to warm in the Germans; the heater should choose energy saving heating or directional heating. In the process of design and production, the engineer needs to be engineers, engineers to customer managers, and customer managers with samples to customers and collide with each other. "The real needs are not a shot of the head, and they are repeatedly modified." In Zheng Cheng's view, if the manufacturing industry only stays in improvement machines, uses machines to replace people, the market is not related to the market, and the internal efficiency is simply improved and reduced. This may deviate from the core of the development of the manufacturing industry: To creatively meet market demand, it is necessary to close the market and manufacturing end, and people always stand in the core position of the manufacturing industry.

Therefore, Wayne representing the market has been flying in the sky. In the past, he had to come to Asia twice a month, and he had to run a trip to China. However, the policy of restricted China's epidemic prevention and control, Wayne has not inspected Chinese factories for three years. "Buyers of multinational companies cannot fly casually. If they are separated in one place, they will retreat. "This is why he and Zheng Cheng met in Vietnam.

In March of this year, the Vietnamese government announced the reopening border with international tourists to fully restore international tourism activities. During his meeting with Zheng Cheng, a buyer was already asking whether Wayne could organize a group to visit Vietnam to see the factory. Wayne has a Costco find list of goods, and seven or eight products will also look at the factory in Vietnam. "In addition to buyers, they will bring sales this time."

In fact, Costco's sales are directly in place with the buyer's service. The factory wants to participate in a project of Costco, and basically does not have the possibility of talking to the buyer. "But because we are often on their side, we can always mention which factory products have, but what can be imagined is that there will be more and more buyers in the factory in the future." Wayne said.

Vietnam, which is very close to China in geographical location, has spared no effort in attracting foreign investment. In Wayne, although it is very hard, the biggest problem is exactly what Zheng Cheng values, that is, almost blank understanding of market demand. "Many factories. There is no certification at all, and they do not know the basic requirements of the buyer, and the product packaging is not qualified. Once they can lead people or enterprises, they are willing to follow, which feels similar to when I arrived in Dongguan in early 20 years ago. "

Taking the marine province invested by Zheng Cheng as an example, as early as ten years ago, Japanese -funded enterprises represented by Canon have been transferred to here, and their main products are printers and copiers. According to incomplete statistics, the production capacity of Vietnam's printers and copies has been overtaken in China. "In other words, Vietnam has laid the efficiency foundation of the supply chain of this product, not just the accumulation of simple time." Zheng Cheng said. "If China has no way to open, the US tariffs are so severe, and buyers will go around Vietnam to discuss business. This may also be a long -term direction, although this process will be long." Wayne is worried that once the manufacturing network will be connected, the connections of the manufacturing industry will Flowing here, you may not be so simple to call back in the future. In order to prevent this situation, Zheng Cheng has agreed with Wayne, and will go directly to Wal -Mart's US procurement office in September. “但不是所有制造厂商有郑成这样的能力和机会。”Wayne说，如果能在越南工厂和中国工厂之间做选择，他还是会以中国工厂为第一优先；如果中国能够放开，他I will return to Dongguan as soon as possible. "Too many friends are there, I miss it very much."

(Zheng Cheng became a pseudonym in the text)

In the city, I have to prepare 4,400 stocks to collect Yin Yin A shares.

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