Brian Hager from Tradesparq.
We all know how China is like the world’s factory. Even an article from New York Times talks about the breathtaking speed and flexibility of Chinese factories in satisfying Apple’s manufacturing needs.
With literally thousands of suppliers and manufacturers to choose from, small and medium sized businesses have an issue with picking the right supplier and manufacturer.
Tradesparq plans to solve this issue. Brian Hager, co-founder of China-based Tradesparq, tell us more.
Kim Sia: Give us the background of Tradesparq, Brian.
Brian: Previously, Michael and I worked in GlobalSources.com for seven years. GlobalSources.com is a competitor of Alibaba.com — the site that does business directory listings of suppliers, manufacturers and vendors in China.
While we were in GlobalSources for seven years, we spent time visiting factories, sites, talking to suppliers, talking to buyers — people from Kmart, Walmart, small importers, distributors and many others.
At the same time, we were paying attention to the technology space.
Business directory listings online were not meeting the manufacturers’ need. The prospects for the manufacturers are not ideal in terms of price, response and ROI. One major reason of this mismatch is due to the lack of filtering.
On the buyer side, many buyers have a common complaint, “Oh I cannot do due diligence on three thousands suppliers. Isn’t there anyway you can minimize this?”
Over the seven years spent connecting with suppliers and buyers, we saw how the social networks were taking the world by storm, so we think that a B2B social network would work well with a B2B marketplace.
Hence we came up with Tradesparq.
KimSia: One thing I really got from your pitch was how Tradesparq was like LinkedIn meets Alibaba. Could you tell us more about this?
Brian: I am glad that you got that from our pitch because we are quite concerned that the audience won’t get this. So we tried very hard to portray the buyer’s perspective within the six minute time limit.
One thing that we did not highlight due to the time limit, is that we made a conscious choice to have a dashboard feel for our website, provide a product feed and allowing users to actually contact the references of the suppliers. These references would be fellow buyers.
Buyers can search for suppliers based on their keywords and we layered that data using the buyer’s social network contacts.
And if you shortlist suppliers, you can get a feed that alerts you when your shortlisted supplier comes up with a new product.
Kim Sia: Allowing buyers to contact not just the suppliers but also the references is useful for a buyer to go from doing due diligence of 3000 suppliers to just a handful.
I have a colleague who cannot see why the merchandizers, purchasing agents in big companies like Procter & Gamble would recommend suppliers to other people, potentially their competitors.
Kim Sia: What is your take on that comment?
Brian: First of all, we need to differentiate between competitive suppliers and non-competitive ones. For example, for smartphones and iPhone, the entire supply chain is within a small group of manufacturers. Anybody within that circle knows who is doing what for whom. Manufacturers inside the circle would be considered as competitive suppliers.
However, not all components of a product are considered strategic. For example, packaging boxes is not strategic and there are no strategic concerns in terms of choosing your suppliers. I am sure buyers don’t mind sharing packaging boxes suppliers with each other.
Second point and more importantly, those who make sourcing and purchasing decisions are people after all. They are mobile and when they move from one company to another, they would be bringing with them their rolodex of contacts. It is in their very interests to build up a network of contacts with not just suppliers and fellow buyers, but also with everyone in the entire supply chain — logistics, inspectors, regulators, etc.
On a plane recently, I was talking to someone who was working for a large company that was sourcing for two billions dollars worth of products in China per year. 70 percent of that is a result of referrals. Referrals from buyers, manufacturers, suppliers, logistics, inspectors and many others.
Kim Sia: I definitely did not consider how so many parties in the entire supply chain are exchanging so much information with each other offline already. That means your users already exist and you only needed to bring them all together in a single place.
Brian: Let me make it clear that buyers still need to go to factories and sites to do due diligence before finalizing on their choices.
Tradesparq does not replace that.
What Tradesparq does very well in one important area is that, we reduce the time to shorten the supplier discovery cycle. No more going through 3,000 suppliers but just a handful.
KimSia: One last question. Your experience in starting a business in China. How difficult is it? what tips would you have for those who want to start businesses in China?
Brian: It is difficult to start businesses anywhere.
While people starting businesses in China tend to target the China market, we had a slight advantage in that sense that part of our user base is not in China.
It makes sense for us to be based in Shanghai, China because we already knew a high number of suppliers, manufacturers, logistics and buyers who are doing their sourcing in China.
However, we have buyers coming from all over the world. We even have beer distributors from Germany, cocoa distributors from Brazil listing with us.
We had 1.2 million inquiries last year and 24% of that came from US, 19% from Europe, so we are global from day one. Make no mistake about it.
Kim Sia: Thank you for your time, Brian. All the best in the People’s Choice Award. You are my top two picks for that.
Brian: Thank you.
Read also: An entrepreneur’s rude awakening in finding suppliers in China
Link to full article
When Japanese people hear the word Monaca (or 
