Over the past week, we have had the pleasure of having several distinguished guests from China over at our offices to chat about the growth of the supply side of our marketplace, both present and future. These included several key members of Jilin Province’s Department of Foreign Affairs (Europe and United States), as well as several of our machinery manufacturers in China. There is a lot of buzz about Toolots in China – here’s a look inside how we’re facilitating international trade and making waves in bringing affordable equipment and machinery to US small business.
Although China has made great strides in opening up its economy over the past few decades, navigating the country’s business-government ecosystem is still incredibly challenging for companies who are unfamiliar with it. Growing and managing a user base of Chinese suppliers on an e-commerce platform is even more challenging. It’s no surprise that Porter Erisman, Alibaba Group’s former Vice President of International Marketing, often attests to these two very challenges throughout his highly acclaimed books and other writing on Alibaba and e-commerce more broadly.
Fortunately for Toolots, CEO Jason Fu has nearly 20 years of experience working with that ecosystem. Of particular importance in this industry, though perhaps less obvious to the average US business owner, is ensuring the good graces of local government offices that are tasked with economic development in key provinces and cities. As each region is usually tied to only a handful of specific industries, the economic development departments of these regions are deeply familiar with their respective industries and have direct communication channels with business leaders in these industries. As such, garnering the willingness of these departments to vouch for Toolots to its constituent manufacturers is almost as important as promoting to the manufacturers themselves.
CEO Jason Fu speaks with officials from Jilin ProvinceWhile meeting with the representatives visiting from Jilin Province this week, Fu spoke about how Toolots is helping small and mid-sized Chinese manufacturers break into international trade. Jilin is one of the three provinces in Northeastern China. It is rich in natural resources, reaching about 4.4 billion USD in exports in 2017. Among their key export industries is timber and wood products, which includes products such as wood flooring, wood doors, furniture parts, plywood, particle board, and other engineered wood products and small wooden products.
Similar to other local Chinese government offices, it is the role of commerce and foreign affairs officials from Jilin to seek potential economic development initiatives and foster international business interest in their region. Our visitors from the province were enthusiastic about Toolots because they recognize that our involvement with manufacturers in their region would align with their regional goals of providing relief to industrial over-capacity as well as pressuring their industries to be accountable for quality.
Other e-commerce platforms such as Amazon have tried to woo Chinese manufacturers, but they have only had success for limited categories of consumer goods, leaving the enormous supply of Chinese industrial equipment largely untapped. That is to say, their model only allows them to support vendors who are largely self-sufficient from a platform perspective. Unsurprisingly, this means that the majority of Chinese equipment and machinery manufacturers are not able to successfully break into the US market using a platform like Amazon.
Unlike consumer goods, industrial machinery requires a higher degree of English language customer support and after-sales services. Toolots makes it possible for US small businesses to get Alibaba prices (or lower) on Chinese machinery – without any fear of lacking customer service, after-sales support, adequate product information, warranty fulfillment, spare parts, customization accommodations, etc.
