Really Cheap China Products, With Sex Please, Even Though We're British

Great story over the TimesOnline, entitled,"To China for the holy grail: a price of 99p."  Its about TimesOnline reporter, Michael Sheridan, following "a British buyer on a frenetic tour of Chinese factories," in search of items to buy for 99 pence stores back in England. 

Though I have never been on such a venture, I have worked with enough companies buying goods in China to think this story is indeed quite representative.  Sheridan is a superb writer.  Some quick and somewhat random snippets from the article:

• Everything about the buying business in China is fast: schedule, decisions, payment and delivery. There is not much time for second thoughts and none at all for mistakes.
• But on that first morning, after the long haul through Hong Kong to the Pearl River delta, the man in the check-out queue does not feel dynamic. On the wrong side of 40, as he puts it, the man we will call Daniel considers himself a veteran of the buying circuit in China after more than 40 visits. There is not much romance left in it for him.
• He has seen the rice fields transformed into factories and rutted tracks turned into highways; watched container trucks sweep down to once sleepy fishing ports and fought his way through thousands of buyers in markets and trade fairs built on the sites of Mao Tse-tung�s collective farms.
• For the next few days, on a guarantee that his commercial confidentiality will be respected, he will take The Sunday Times inside the mysterious process by which a piece of cheap plastic leaves a Chinese factory for 22p and ends up on a discount-store shelf in Britain priced at 99p.
• �Low-income groups see them [dollar or 99p stores] as a necessity and high-income groups see them as amusing,� said Daniel.
• �It�s just things. Things you don�t even know you want. A lot of the time when you get this stuff home you realise you shouldn�t have bought it. That�s why at the low end of the market they create a sense of adventure. In the US they call it a treasure hunt. And believe me, we�re at the low end.�
• Everybody loves a bargain, except the men fighting it out inside that remorseless equation: 22p to 99p. That�s why bonding with the Chinese suppliers, who exist on some of the slimmest margins anywhere, is a must on the first night in town.
• [Referring to the buyer's Chinese handler] He is fixer, translator, travel manager, bargainer, drinking companion and sage. No foreigner, however fluent their Chinese (and Daniel�s is nonexistent), can manage without a Lai. He can make you a fortune or help you lose it. Lai, it turns out, could be game for either. Daniel lives with that.
• �The suppliers will pick us up from the hotel,� said Daniel. �The Chinese are very hospitable � as long as you�re spending money.�
• �Cheap sex in China is like any cheap product in China,� sighed Daniel, sipping his �5 pint of Guinness. �You get what you pay for.�
• Along the chain, the Chinese factories, Daniel, the shippers and the retailers are fighting over the margins. Every day, every load, every week.
• �Think about that,� said Daniel. �It means that the labour costs in China could double and you would hardly notice it.
• Not for the small fry like him are the social audits, compliance documents and worker standards that major brand names insist on. �They have to,� said Daniel, �because nobody wants to end up on the front page of the News of the World. For us, it�s all about price.�
• On the way he waxes lyrical about the buyers� holy grail. �Holograph �bling phone� stickers for mobiles � eight pence a pack FOB in Ningbo and a quid in the shops,� he said dreamily, �that�s a nice one.�
• �It�s impossible to enforce anything legal with China,� he said, �and to be fair they�d have no idea how to go after a crooked Brit in our courts.�
• The buyers� lore of disaster is legion: the consignment of blue colanders that arrived a lurid yellow; the container of gel-based air fresheners out of which poured a molten mass of purple sludge on arrival in Britain; the toy weighted with toxic mud as ballast. Goods can be short, broken or defective.
• Then there is the �long firm� Chinese scam. �A long firm is a confidence trick,� explained Daniel. �The buyer visits someone. Their prices are unusually low. He�s suspicious, so he just places a small trial order. It�s perfect. So he places another, and another. It can run six or eight months like this. They build up a load of customers. Then one day the guy in China takes the money, ships containers stuffed with rocks and waste products all over the world, and vanishes.�
• Of course, the buyers could pay for professional inspections, or work through agents, but that eats into the precious margins. Both Chinese and British write off the occasional loss and trade on.

Great stuff.  Do read the article.