Trade Show... What a week!

For the past 4 days I have been manning a trade show stand at Taiwan Health, in the World Trade Centre in Taipei.

This was to launch the Zoono range of products that my new company is introducing to Taiwan. Zoono is an antimicrobial coating based on breakthrough technology. (long term germ killing protection for hands, surfaces, textiles and more.)

I have spent the past 3 weeks in Taiwan preparing for this trade show, plus a lot of time before that back in Australia. Any hopes I had of perhaps being able to operate the business in English have been quickly abandoned.

Whilst there is some English in Taiwan on things like road signs, train time tables etc, for dealing business to business or business to consumer - if you want to get the message across it has to be in Chinese. You also need a Chinese brand - not a western brand.

For someone that cannot yet speak Chinese this presents some challenges. For now I am creating the marketing messages in English, then getting them translated to Chinese.

Another challenge that I face is with my CRM system. Do I get everything entered in both English and Chinese or just Chinese? I don't know the best strategy for this yet. With my accounting I have outsourced this to a large company that is part of an international chain of accountants. I have done this because: I hate accounting, I don't want to spend my time doing this kind of thing, and they will provide accounting reports in both English and Chinese.

I know I am paying a premium over a local Chinese accountant, but communication is much simpler. Also I was able to haggle and save a few dollars anyway.

The justification that I had given myself for attending the trade show was that I figured it would be a way for us to meet a lot of prospective customers in a very short period of time and gauge the market reaction to our product. I am happy to report that the trade show has accomplished that in spades !!

In 4 days we have handed out about 1,000 flyers on our product offering. We met hundreds of people and have around 70 good leads to follow up on. The very first prospect that I spoke with within 15 minutes of the trade show opening was a guy that is a major distributor to around 2000 pharmacies. It was a great omen.

Taiwan has a lot of trade shows. This one was focused on Health. At the same time this was running there were 2 other trade shows running in the same building.. Seniors Care (SenCare) and Hospitality.

We are booked in for another trade show next month which focuses on Biotech. Hopefully that will be a success too.

The people that visited our stand generally liked what they saw and heard about our product. One thing to note is that they are very keen to see independent proof on any claims made.

I made a lot of new friends during the trade show. The Taiwanese people are very friendly and enjoy a good laugh. The interactions of people from neighbouring stands was very friendly. People from each of the stands would take drinks or snacks and offer them people working on the neighbouring stands. One other observation I have is that it seems accepted practice to eat your lunch while on the trade show stand. This is not something that would happen commonly in Australia.

For the 4 days I was handing out brochures and welcoming people to our stand in Chinese. The Taiwanese seem to like and appreciate you having a go - even if your Chinese is not very good.

The show would have been of no value to me if I did not have my two amazing staff members helping. Clare and Lynne were amazing. Full of energy, always smiling and always doing their best to communicate our message to everyone that came by our stand.

A number of owners of other stands came to me and commented "where did you get such great staff?" A number of them also gave very "non subtle" hints that they would love to have Claire and Lynne come and work for them.

I have to say I am just very lucky that I got such great people on the team, and I think it has something to do with karma.

Now the work begins... following up all these prospects!

My first ever blog post

At the suggestion of a friend (Greg Head), I am writing a blog to tell my story.

I am an Aussie that moved to Taiwan 3 weeks ago to create a new business based in Taipei. This blog will capture my experiences, observations, frustrations, daily life, and hopefully provide a small window for the reader to see what modern day Taiwan and its people are like, and how a foreign entrepreneur goes about trying to establish a successful business in a very foreign land and set of customs.

I am sure this will evolve over time - but this is the goal for now.

Some background....

For the past 25 years I have been involved in the IT industry in Australia. The past 15 years running my own business implementing custom CRM solutions for the SME marketplace based on packages such as SalesLogix and Microsoft CRM.

One thing that I loved about the IT industry is that things are always changing. That kept things interesting. I hate the mundane and have a very short attention span for such things. But after 15 years of designing and implementing CRM systems it was becoming much less satisfying.

In around 2006 I read a book that changed my life. It was called "The Diary of Ma Yan". Ma Yan was a 13 year old schoolgirl living in Ningxia, a very poor province in Northern China, just below Mongolia. The book is her story as recorded in daily entries on scraps of paper of her struggle to get an education, whilst dealing with constant hunger and poverty. When living in such conditions a good education is a means to make a better life and escape poverty.

In November 2008 I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit Ningxia and stay with Ma Yan's family and see first hand how people in the region survive with so little. I visited a number of schools in Ningxia and also in Southern China in GuangXi. In GuangXi I was lucky enough to be able to teach a class of 4th graders for a week. Working with these children and interacting with their local community changed my life. Whilst these people have close to nothing - whatever they have they are willing to share with you.

During this trip to China I realised that I want to work full time in the future helping children in poverty get access to education. As part of this I want to learn to speak Chinese fluently and this is a contributing factor in my decision to move to Taiwan.

Another thing that I gained from this trip to China was an ability to appreciate simple things in life that we in the west take for granted such as hot running water, or a sit down toilet that flushes. We have so much compared to many people in the world, and the gap in living standards between the west and those in poverty is not acceptable.