In short, we have been trying really hard to make our brand promise equal our user experience.

Of all our activities, no where has taught us more about our customers, and allowed us to understand the way they work, their personalities, their issues and their preferences more than our social media presence.

We host competitions, offer special discounts, arrange giveaways, deal with questions, provide reviews, etc in a multimedia format that get’s our buyers talking. They talk because we listen and – crucially – we act.

Our promise equals our customers experience.

We have a way to go in making improvements to our business, but we are letting our customers know that we are working for them. And they appreciate it.  Transparency is key and 2.0 is the perfect channel to keep all informed and ask for feedback.

Have you been using social media to connect with your customers? If so, what approach do you find works?

visit www.facebook.com/dhgate to see what we’ve been up to lately.

Back in March of this year I somewhat hesitantly predicted that there would be no significant movement in the value of the Chinese currency (RMB) as against its major trading currencies like the US dollar and the Euro in the short term. This is still a hot topic of discussion and contention for many international and Chinese clients of my company, www.dhgate.com, as it has a direct impact on the costs of sourcing products from China.

Currently, the Chinese RMB is informally ‘pegged’ to the US dollar at a rate of about 6.8 and this undervaluation was arguably causing trade imbalances between the US and China. The argument goes something like this: while it was good for US importers and Chinese exporters to have the RMB at an artificially low level, at the same time it made products imported from the US into China artificially high thereby hurting US companies

In the past few months it was thought that there was a consensus amongst Chinese policy makers that the peg would be broken and the Chinese RMB would be allowed to gradually rise about 3-5% thereby cushioning the impact on the Chinese export sector. This, of course, was on the basis that the world economy was steadily recovering from the Financial Crisis and there were no other major financial crises in the world.

Well what a difference a couple of months makes!

The dramatic European debt crisis as a result of the Greek bailout and the plunging value of the Euro has meant that any plans for a slight rise in the RMB as against the US dollar are now on hold…again.

The Euro has plunged to its lowest level against the RMB in almost a decade. It has fallen 14.5% in the past 4 months alone and the future is uncertain. The dramatic slump has prompted Chinese authorities to publically warn that China’s exports to Europe are threatened. Indeed, there are a number of anecdotal reports from clients of my company that European importers are cancelling or significantly reducing product orders. This appears to be by virtue of an inability of European companies to obtain normal trade finance because of the severity of the debt crisis together with heavily reduced purchasing power of the Euro.

A number of Chinese domestic economic issues also cloud the picture. The Chinese Stock Exchange has fallen sharply in recent times. This is mainly due to the Chinese government’s attempt to restrict the availability of credit in order to prevent the real estate property bubble from bursting.

All of these factors mean that there will be no short term revaluation of the RMB as against the US dollar. There are important trade and economic bilateral talks next week between the US and China and it appears that the revaluation issue, always a perennial topic in these trade talks, has been taken off the table. The US Government has recently stated that it intends to press China on other trade issues like market access for US companies and increasing the value of US exports to China. The US has announced that it wants to double US exports to China over the next decade.

What does all this mean for US SME importers of Chinese products? I believe that the situation presents great opportunities as the prices of Chinese products available for export will remain low for the foreseeable future and there appears now to be no likelihood of major costs increases as a result of exchange rate issues. From my discussions with my Chinese manufacturing clients, there is now a lot of opportunity to lock in these prices for the future.

More importantly, because of the problems in the European import market, many Chinese suppliers and manufacturers will now shift their focus to other markets, particularly the US. This means that there is the ability to achieve much lower prices from Chinese exporters because of the excess product available. It maybe that there has never been a better time for US SME companies to commence or increase sourcing product from China.

The European financial crisis has sent shockwaves through the global economy and has a number of ramifications for the international trading sector, especially souring product from China via ecommerce platforms. However, like in all things, there is a silver lining for many companies, particularly from the US, who can take advantage of the situation.

Back in March of this year I somewhat hesitantly predicted that there would be no significant movement in the value of the Chinese currency (RMB) as against its major trading currencies like the US dollar and the Euro in the short term. This is still a hot topic of discussion and contention for many international and Chinese clients of my company, www.dhgate.com, as it has a direct impact on the costs of sourcing products from China.

Currently, the Chinese RMB is informally ‘pegged’ to the US dollar at a rate of about 6.8 and this undervaluation was arguably causing trade imbalances between the US and China. The argument goes something like this: while it was good for US importers and Chinese exporters to have the RMB at an artificially low level, at the same time it made products imported from the US into China artificially high thereby hurting US companies

In the past few months it was thought that there was a consensus amongst Chinese policy makers that the peg would be broken and the Chinese RMB would be allowed to gradually rise about 3-5% thereby cushioning the impact on the Chinese export sector. This, of course, was on the basis that the world economy was steadily recovering from the Financial Crisis and there were no other major financial crises in the world.

Well what a difference a couple of months makes!

The dramatic European debt crisis as a result of the Greek bailout and the plunging value of the Euro has meant that any plans for a slight rise in the RMB as against the US dollar are now on hold…again.

The Euro has plunged to its lowest level against the RMB in almost a decade. It has fallen 14.5% in the past 4 months alone and the future is uncertain. The dramatic slump has prompted Chinese authorities to publically warn that China’s exports to Europe are threatened. Indeed, there are a number of anecdotal reports from clients of my company that European importers are cancelling or significantly reducing product orders. This appears to be by virtue of an inability of European companies to obtain normal trade finance because of the severity of the debt crisis together with heavily reduced purchasing power of the Euro.

A number of Chinese domestic economic issues also cloud the picture. The Chinese Stock Exchange has fallen sharply in recent times. This is mainly due to the Chinese government’s attempt to restrict the availability of credit in order to prevent the real estate property bubble from bursting.

All of these factors mean that there will be no short term revaluation of the RMB as against the US dollar. There are important trade and economic bilateral talks next week between the US and China and it appears that the revaluation issue, always a perennial topic in these trade talks, has been taken off the table. The US Government has recently stated that it intends to press China on other trade issues like market access for US companies and increasing the value of US exports to China. The US has announced that it wants to double US exports to China over the next decade.

What does all this mean for US SME importers of Chinese products? I believe that the situation presents great opportunities as the prices of Chinese products available for export will remain low for the foreseeable future and there appears now to be no likelihood of major costs increases as a result of exchange rate issues. From my discussions with my Chinese manufacturing clients, there is now a lot of opportunity to lock in these prices for the future.

More importantly, because of the problems in the European import market, many Chinese suppliers and manufacturers will now shift their focus to other markets, particularly the US. This means that there is the ability to achieve much lower prices from Chinese exporters because of the excess product available. It maybe that there has never been a better time for US SME companies to commence or increase sourcing product from China.

In recent posts, I have been discussing payment systems in China. Before I continue on that in my next post, today, I would like to talk about Alibaba’s recently developed hacker-technology and how this relates to another important aspect of the business environment here: the competitive situation in China.

One of the key challenges facing China is moving away from low-quality imitation of products and services to more innovative, high-quality equivalents. In fact, this is a key area of investment for my company, DHgate, as we development support and education systems for Chinese manufacturers. Previously, Chinese businesses could create value by lowering production overheads; however, in the twenty-first century, being ‘cheap’ is not enough. I believe the goal should be for Chinese businesses to create value in a totally different way: by innovating beyond the competition.

In recent years, what we have seen is the emergence of a vanguard of dynamic new Chinese businesses that are capable of this. Through DHgate.com, I have found that fostering this attitude internally has allowed us to achieve rapid expansion in international markets. In the West, audiences respond to originality and not, as has been the case in China, to replication.

This has been at the forefront of my mind recently, as one of our key competitors Alibaba, developed and introduced a mechanism which allows its suppliers to access rival backend system and pull content over to their site. This competitive imitation is the hallmark of the old way of doing business in China, and it is a worrying sign that a recognized company such as Alibaba has resorted to these tactics. This is not the environment in which Chinese business will thrive and become true international market-share contenders.

The philosophy we espouse at my own company, DHgate, is that to be the best you have to be able to innovate beyond the competition. First-mover advantage has proven to be key in online industries, but by the time a new feature has been widely replicated, a truly innovative company will already have developed another improvement.

The competitive situation is improving in China. Government regulations are slowly being rolled back, industries are becoming more diverse and dynamic, and a growing number of Chinese businesses have shown they have what it takes to be global leaders in their field.

China’s future lies in developing high-tech, fast-paced, competitive new industries, and I believe fostering a inventive business atmosphere, not competitive imitation, is the quickest and way to get there.

Read highlights below or the full article here

...But the indicators of ecommerce’s problems are not so obvious as long queues or a tired looking store front are to a physical high street retailer.

For online retailers, store layout means optimising the position of their most popular and most profitable products; check-out queues equate to the ease and speed of completing an order and the time from order to delivery. For the friendliness of the affable village butcher, online retailers must think about their after sales care and the tone and tailoring of their outreach.

Online, a company with a compelling and competitive service has an almost infinite catchment area, and it is often the big names who are investing most in understanding the science of effective retail and will prevail in the land grab.

So to avoid going the way of local stores, squeezed out by the major players – the supermarkets of the physical world – online retailers of all sizes must monitor and understand the importance of several key metrics.

First comes the number of visits and orders, and the source of traffic. This allows more sophisticated analysis than physical in-store footfall as it not only reveals total consumer number but also how they are finding the site – whether driven by direct marketing, banner ads, affiliates, search or other means…

And finally, the most obvious KPI for businesses to monitor – customer satisfaction. Many say they do so but their methodology is often based on the wrong metrics.

Businesses need a holistic view of end-to-end customer service and the efficiency of the website and back-end in delivering what those consumers want, when they want it…

It’s also highly relevant to US retailers and wholesalers who are currently sourcing their products from China, and also to those who are planning to do it in the future, because as the Chinese ecommerce market gets more sophisticated, secure and multi-faceted, the ease of doing business with Chinese suppliers becomes less of a headache, particularly for small to medium businesses and new players.

The first item was that MasterCard was entering the booming online marketplace by launching its own web shopping mall called’ MasterCard Market Place’. Clearly the move is an attempt by the company to boost its revenue in the face of cutthroat competition from its rivals like Visa and American Express and also form alternative, cheaper and newer (and hence more attractive in many ways) ecommerce payment systems like PayPal. I think this is the first time a giant global credit card company like Visa or American Express has entered this market in a substantial way. Whether consumers will flock to a shopping site run by a payment systems company rather than a retailer or a B2B intermediary site like my own company, www.dhgate.com, remains to be seen.

The second item was a recent report that for the first time in living memory US consumer credit debt fell for the 13^th month in a row. Clearly as a result of the recession and faltering labor market, Americans are curtailing their addiction to credit card and other consumer debt…for the moment. Maybe the days of credit-fuelled spending in the US are over. We will see.

‘Plastic money’ was invented in the US and its rise together with the benefits to the US economy, most notably for the banks, finance houses and retailers, and the resulting personal debt mountain and heartache for consumers has been well-documented. From a Chinese point of view, though, the situation could not be more different.

Credit cards and other forms of consumer credit are a relatively new concept in China. China is still a cash society. It is not unusual to see an ATM (also a new relatively new concept) user   withdrawing thousands of RMB at increments of 2000rmb ($285) per transaction to pay their monthly rent. The highest denomination is a lowly 100rmb, about $14. Consumers will often make major purchases like cars, high-end electronic goods and even apartments with suitcases and bags of cash, literally.

The Chinese are generally fiscally very conservative. They are the greatest savers in the world. Although estimates are difficult, it is thought that the Chinese save between 30-50% of their disposable whereas the US rate is close to 0%. Also Chinese are much less leveraged than their counterparts in emerging and developed countries. Total consumer debt as a percentage of disposable income is estimated to be about 30% compared with 94% in the US.

The situation is, however, changing dramatically. As the Chinese economy booms and the level of disposable income of its people has increased, the rise in popularity of credit cards, online ecommerce payment systems and other forms of personal consumer credit has exponentially increased. I’ve talked in previous columns about the extraordinary rise in online shopping. This is largely been brought about by the rise of the credit card and other ecommerce payment options.

China is encouraging non-cash payment options, and the banks are aggressively marketing these avenues to boost revenue. Although the area is still relatively small, (for example, only 5% of Chinese have a credit card compared to 60% in the US), the industry is expected to boom in the future. According to a recent report by McKinsey & Co, China has issued only about 50 million credit cards. By 2013, it is estimated that the figure will surpass 300 million. The increasing comfort and ease in using non-cash payment options means that there will be increasing innovation and sophistication, particularly for online buying and selling and the B2B market.

My own company, www.dhgate.com, has been at the forefront in the B2B field through our innovative partnership with one of the leaders in the online payments market, PayPal which has give our overseas clients and Chinese suppliers a safe, reliable and fast payment system.

Which leads me to my third item of interest: PayPal have recently announced a partnership with China UnionPay, the national bankcard association of China which has to date issued over 2 billion ATM, debit and credit cards. The partnership means that China UnionPay card holders can use PayPal to shop online domestically and internationally. I believe it has the potential to position PayPal and its Chinese partners like my company as the number one online payment option in the future.

In my next post I will talk more about how US small to medium online retailers and wholesalers can now take advantage of the using innovative, safe and reliable B2B online payment systems.

Beijing has become the focus of China as over 3000 government and people’s delegates descend on the capital for a ten day Congress which decides the economic, social, legal and other policies of the country. It is a particularly important and timely meeting as there are a number of pressing economic and financial issues, like inflationary pressures and the valuation of the Chinese currency the yuan, that are uppermost in many people’s minds – Chinese and foreigners alike.

February was a great month for Chinese exports which were up about 45% on the previous year. There is guarded optimism that this trend will continue and I believe that cross-border ecommerce will be a driving force.

Looking at our transactional data and talking to our DHgate.com Chinese suppliers, I believe that foreign companies, particularly US firms, are replenishing their inventories and introducing new product lines. This is a strong sign of increasing confidence in the future.

Also in my discussions with Chinese and international clients and colleagues, I am constantly asked about my opinion on the direction of the value of the RMB. Clearly this has a direct impact on the costs of sourcing and has tremendous importance. You will no doubt have seen and read numerous analyses, commentaries and articles on this issue.

I don’t want to get into a debate of the rights and wrongs of this issue, but I think it’s suffice to say that there’s a lot of misconception and misunderstanding on both sides. I believe though that there will be no significant movement in the value of the RMB in the short term. Whether there will be a slight rise in its value later in the year as some are predicting will depend on the economic performance of the country. In the meantime, China-sourced products continue to remain extremely cost competitive for SME buyers. Stay tuned as there is a lot more to come on this issue.

The other major Chinese financial issues that have the potential to affect Chinese suppliers and overseas buyers are the specters of inflation, wage rises and looming labor shortages.

Despite a recent spike in inflation (particularly in the food, housing and wages sectors) over the past few months, the Government appears to have it under control. With respect to the labor market and costs, I’ll post on this issue in the future.

On a final note, during the Congress, the Government announced a major commitment to the development of China’s ecommerce platform, particularly in the SME sector. This is the first time it has been made a ‘front and center’ policy. A number of initiatives will be promoted to introduce SME online suppliers and manufacturers to better business practices and ecommerce trade. This is a welcome development.

My own company, DHgate.com, is actively developing its training and education programs for our online Chinese clients and welcome this Government policy which complements our vision for the future of high-quality product and service offerings from China’s manufacturing sector. I’ll talk more of these initiatives in a later post.

“Brand identity” has become something of a buzzword in business and marketing circles. But that doesn’t mean that the brand you establish for your own business isn’t really important. Years ago, countries and companies battled for land and resources. Today’s savvy, web-enabled companies are fighting similar turf wars, only now, it’s for a share of the consumer’s memory. With customers being exposed to literally thousands of icons, logos, product names, and promotions per day, having a memorable brand is key to your businesses success.

One of the challenges of establishing a strong brand identity is that it can take a lot of time and money. If you’re a start-up or small business, it might seem like an unnecessary added expense. But remember, if your brand isn’t memorable it will have a negative impact on all your future advertising and marketing efforts. People might love the new bus stop ad you put up, but they still might forget your company name or customer might buy a great sweater from you once, but not remember your URL when describing it to a friend who’s just paid a compliment.

Not all of us have tens of thousands of dollars to hire a branding agency. But what we lacked in dollars, we can commitin time and energy. If you follow the steps outlined below, you can make sure your company is memorable too.

1. Know the Brand Basics

First off, it’s important to know what a brand is. A brand is “the promise, the big idea, and the expectations that reside in each customer’s mind about a product, service, or company.” Your company’s mission, vision, ethos, unique selling points, customer satisfaction policy along with every interaction a customer ever has with you help define your brand. Everything you or your employees do can have an impact on that brand awareness.

Brand identity is the application of a brand that allows a customer to interact in some way. Your company name, logo, signage, packaging, marketing efforts, slogans, et cetera all inform your brand identity.

2. Research, Research, Research

Before you begin your branding exercise, you should conduct plenty of research – both about the competitive landscape and the goals and values of your own organization.

When conducting a marketing audit of your own business, compile or construct information that includes:

• Mission, vision, and values statements

• Value proposition (what is the unique offering of products/services that you are making available to consumers?)

• Organizational structure/chart

• Any business plans or strategic plans

• Existing marketing collateral and assets

• Any press releases or company-related media

• Organizational history

If you have this information in one place, you can easily review it during the branding process to ensure you’re establishing a brand that’s in line with what your company is all about.

Be sure to compile information on the competition so that you can a) be non-duplicative by establishing a unique brand, and b) avoid spending time and money on work that’s already been done. It’s important to know the following about the competition:

• Who are they? Compile a list of companies that offer similar goods and services to your proposed business. Be sure to identify indirect competitors too (e.g., if you sell ceiling fans, potential customers might be drawn away by discounts on air conditioning units).

• How are they branded? Create a list of all the company/product names and logos. Identify any similarities in words, colors, shapes, symbols, typography, etc.

• What are their key messages? Just as you’ve compiled your mission/vision, be sure you understand what’s driving the competition and how they’re presenting that to the rest of the world.

• What are they sending out? Gather as much competitive intelligence as you can by collecting marketing material including ads, brochures, flyers, coupons, website URLs, etc.

• What’s the consumer experience like? Whenever possible, play the role of a customer and see how the competition interacts with consumers. You don’t have to actually buy anything!

3. Design Your Identity

When you start to design your identity, a company and/or product name is the first step, followed shortly by a logo or graphic representation of organization or product. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and your logo is no different. It’s likely going to be the most memorable part of your brand that the customer will interact with prior to making a purchase.

When it comes to having your brand designed, you may want to consider this a major investment and spend money on a reputable designer with specific experience creating brands. You’ll save on costs if you’ve done your homework by researching the market and have a good idea how you want to represent yourself. The more details you can provide, the more targeted the first round of designs you get back will be. Focus your thoughts on shapes, color, and then content/text that you want your brand to convey. That’s the order in which most people recognize logos.

4. Put Your Brand to Work and Manage Assets

Once your brand has been designed, it’s time to make it work for you. In addition to the obvious applications in signage, letterhead, envelopes, business cards, and your website, you should think of creative ways to incorporate your identity into your business. If you have a physical location, this could mean using the colors in the logo when painting or decorating the space. If you exist online, incorporate design elements of your brand into email communications, customer receipts, and promotions. When you have the budget, custom packaging (boxes, shopping bags, etc.) can also be a great way to promote your brand.

There are also countless promotional items ranging from pens and mugs to calculators and other gadgets you can add your brand to. The key here is to select items that are going to be used over and over again (spend the money on a oversized coffee mug for a client gift rather than disposable water bottles) and that ties in to your business in some way (if you sell eco-friendly cleaning products, skip the branded sticky notes in favour of a reusable shopping tote).

For more related articles, why not log on to www.IntroducingSuccess.com. Don’t forget to leave your feedback here!

You can read more about how the site works in the press release pasted below or by logging on to the site here, but what I wanted to talk about in this post is how the launch represents my attitude to business growth.

As frequent readers will know, when I started DHgate I did so to help small and medium business enjoy the same opportunities which had previously only been available to Big Box retailers. We were the first company to fully integrate all aspects of the cross-border wholesale trade with China on a single ecommerce platform, allowing cross-border trade to be conducted entirely online. This process involved (amongst many other things) designing proprietary technology, attracting the web best systems development professionals, securing investors, educating the market and doing everything we could to make it actually work. It hasn’t always been easy, and the work is far from over, but it has certainly been rewarding to watch it, and its users, flourish.

Creating a healthy, prosperous environment where SMEs have the tools they need to thrive fuels good business for everyone. And I know that that extends beyond transactions; SMEs face other challenges where help is also welcome.

I’m not claiming that one microsite will hold all the answers, but perhaps it is a step in the right direction and may inspire others to invest their time and expertise, too. Being open, proactive and supportive is win-win for all involved – and I’m prepared to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

So please log on to the site, offer your opinions or suggestions for improvement here and let me know if it helps. It was created to help you, and I want to make sure it does.

DHgate.com First in China to Launch Virtual Office

New Website is Geared to Help New and Growing Online Retailers

Navigate an Ever-Evolving Industry

China’s leading wholesale marketplace and champions of small businesses, DHgate.com, today launched IntroducingSuccess.com, a virtual office created exclusively to support America’s aspiring entrepreneurs and SME retailers.

The free site serves as a repository of information about starting and running a successful online business. IntroducingSuccess includes detailed guidance on all avenues from website tips to international product sourcing – including practical know-how on increasing profits through easy dealings with China-based suppliers.

The site, a first of its kind in this market, features a team of animated professionals all working for fictional start-up company, ‘SuccessCo’. Each team member has a specific area of expertise, such as Susan Oliviera in Accounting and Richard Cooke in Operations, all headed by CEO and Founder, Maggie Succesco. They share their insights and resources with visitors in an easy-to-navigate virtual office space.

Introducing Success is broken into three primary areas. The first is for ecommerce novices and provides a questionnaire for would-be-entrepreneurs and details on starting a business. The second section which provides content ranging from web design tricks to shipping options is geared towards those who might already be retailing, just not online using an international sourcing model. The last section includes marketing and sales tips that can be used by newcomers or experienced sellers. The site also features valuable information on doing business with China.

Ecommerce pioneer, DHgate.com, is the first Chinese company to specifically focus on helping western business owners get the most out of trade with China by addressing everything from “Chinese Business Practices” and “Choosing the Right Supplier”, to useful resources such as ““Taxes, Duties and Customs Considerations”.

This innovative thinking is typical of DHgate.com and Founder and CEO, Diane Wang.

Diane is an experienced entrepreneur who left senior management at Cisco and Microsoft to start Joyo.com, which she grew to China’s most successful B2C site and was subsequently acquired by Amazon in 2004. Having been an ambitious online retailer with little start-up capital, Diane learned the hard way that international trade with China could be made much easier. She launched DHgate.com that same year.

“DHgate.com takes the hassle out of cross-border trade with China, allowing safe transactions to take place in a few clicks of the mouse. 1.5 million small businesses have been able to grow their profits through purchasing from the 500,000 China suppliers on DHgate.com, and IntroducingSuccess.com has been created to take that further.”

IntroducingSuccess.com is a resource hub that helps with the other fundamentals, and is designed to save businesses time and money.

“It was also important to me that the site doesn’t just cater to those businesses which use DHgate.com to buy their inventory – we wanted it to be a place that ANYONE interested in starting an online shop could go for information. That’s why we used a virtual office and separate URL. “

As a market-maker, DHgate.com adopts a forward thinking business model, based on providing “freemium” (free and premium) services to business owners. IntroducingSuccess.com is a free, value-added service which complements the free membership model offered by the DHgate platform. On DHgate.com buyers pay nothing upfront; DHgate earns its revenue through commissions paid by the seller—only after a transaction is completed successfully.

The company is focused on providing easy access for buyers to learn more about making the most of China’s supplier base and making the most of the boom in ecommerce. They frequently update their Facebook page and Twitter accounts as well as running two popular blogs. Blog.dhgate.com focuses on wholesale trends and The Gateway Blog (www.thegatewayblog.com) shares Diane’s personal advice to entrepreneurs and retailers. With webinars, podcasts and even a YouTube Channel in store for 2010, buyers will find DHgate.com a hub for all their business needs. And starting this month, Diane will also host a regular blog entitled “The View from China” on PracticalEcommerce.com.

As Diane says, “It’s not just about transactions – It’s about leveling the playing field for businesses of all sizes and opening up China to the world.”

Online publication, Internet Retailer, recently published the findings of a report prepared by Retail Systems Research LLC entitled “Online Commerce in 2009: The Game Has Changed—Have Retailers?”. The prospects for online retailers in the coming 12 months looks promising. IR conclude that “in an increasingly multichannel retail world, retailers surveyed in the report listed online merchandising and cross-channel capabilities as the two technology areas that will bring the most value.”

See some of the findings below. Are these in line with your thoughts? Let me know!

]]> http://www.thegatewayblog.com/trend-insights/ecommerce-challenges-and-solutions/feed/ 0 http://www.thegatewayblog.com/personal-insights/future-rewards/ http://www.thegatewayblog.com/personal-insights/future-rewards/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:28:09 +0000 Diane http://www.thegatewayblog.com/?p=327 Recently, my company DHgate.com, and China-based search engine, Baidu, began a project with Beijing Normal University and the China Development and Research Foundation to help China combat a concerning global trend – graduate unemployment.

The pilot program, entitled “Ecommerce and New Job Creation”, tests a training model that coordinates business, education and government entities. Starting with a modest group of 70 students, experienced staff from DHgate.com and Baidu provide recent graduates with practical in-job training and valuable international ecommerce skills.

On completion of the course students are awarded a qualification detailing the expertise they have gained in various areas of ecommerce. Then, we will make official introductions between graduates and enterprises that will benefit from their newly acquired skills and academic background. If successful, our plan is to grow this pilot program and roll it out to other institutions across China.

While I am entirely invested in the positive impact this will have on China’s youth, my efforts are not entirely philanthropic – there is a business benefit here too.

With 400,000 China-based wholesalers and manufacturers using the DHgate platform to connect with 2.1 million global small-business buyers, I also hope that the training course will prepare students for international business and help Chinese suppliers exceed the expectation of the global marketplace.

I believe that improving the abilities of SMEs to conduct fruitful cross-border wholesale, will increase the number of international busineses that choose to source from China, and that a proportion of those will choose to do so via DHgate.

Even though the immediate value to my business is limited, this could be significantly important in the future – and I’m playing the long game. Sure, in the meantime I am implementing other ways to better the experience for users that will have a more immediate affect, but programs like this one have a deeper value too, and it feels good when efforts are rewarded in more ways than one.

Are you conducting any long-term improvement programs? Why not share your details here?