Launch

Siemens appoints new Guangdong GM

Mr Poon Chi Ming was appointed as new general manager of the Guangdong branch, and vice president for Siemens China. Mr Poon, who previously was general manager of the Communications Group for Mobile Networks Region South, will be in charge of Siemens's overall business development in Guangdong province. Peter Weiss, Siemens China VP responsible for south China, said he is confident that Poon will further expand Siemens' business in Guangdong and continuously strengthen the long-term partnership with the province and local customers. Siemens has set up five new offices in Guangdong in the past two years. Allen & Overy appoints new Asian partners UK-based legal practice Allen & Overy announced the appointment of five new partners in Asia. The promotion, which is the largest number of associates to be named for the law firm in Asia in six years, took effect on May 1, 2006. "I am very pleased to announce the appointment of five new partners which further demonstrates our commitment to the growing markets in Asia," said Brian Harrison, head of the firm's Asian practice. Allen & Overy's new partners are: Jason Humphreys, International Capital Markets and Banking Group - Tokyo Office Linda Lee, Corporate Group - Singapore Office Will McAuliffe, Corporate Group - Hong Kong Office Walter Son, International Capital Markets Group - Hong Kong Office Matthias Voss, Banking - Shanghai Office

Siemens opens Yangzhou office

Siemens announced the establishment of its new office in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province in April to emphasize the increasing strategic importance of Jiangsu to Siemens' business development in China. As the seventh Siemens office in Jiangsu, the new office will serve local clients around the area including Yangzhou, Taizhou, Yancheng and Huian, following the launch of Siemens Standard Motor Ltd in March 2006. The German-based company expects to increase the number of regional offices to 60 to better serve local customers as part of their stronger regional presence strategy. At the ceremony, Siemens China Medical Solutions Group also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a strategic partnership with Yangzhou South Union Hospital in the fields of hospital funding, equipment procurement, hospital management and talent training.

Fiducia Management Consultants inaugurates Shanghai representative office

Fiducia Management Consultants Shanghai announced the opening of its representative office at the German Centere Shanghai in Pudong. With over 20 years of experience in China, the independent firm managed to support international companies entering and expanding in China with a multinational, multilingual team of business and management consultants. The Shanghai representative office is Fiducia's fifth office in China. Its other offices are in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Fiducia plans to provide more assistance to its clients with the new office.

Schenker opens Chongqing branch

Schenker announced the opening of a new branch office in Chongqing in March. The new location will mainly provide customized supply chain solutions to the key industries of the region, including automotive, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and a growing semiconductor sector. With the branch, the German logistics company becomes one of the few international logistics providers present in this region and its offices in China number 36, covering 26 cities all over the country.

Air France launches new online booking engine

Air France announced the launch of its new online booking system, "Monet Express", on its China website in April. The much more user-friendly system makes online booking easier and faster. By the travel date or price, travelers can search for flights by date or fare, with the fares for the six days before and after the requested date shown. Monet Express will display the fares by colour code, from lowest (in yellow) to the highest (in purple). With the new booking engine, Air France aims for more flexibility for customers in China making travel decisions.

BP launches new lubricant facility

BP started the construction of its industrial lubricants blending facility in Taicang, Jiangsu province. The UK-based oil & gas company plans to invest US$22 million in the plant, which will produce a full range of industrial lubricants and metalworking fluids. The new facility is designed to have an initial annual capacity of 45 million litres, and is expected to boost to 70 million litres by 2010. This will be BP's largest, most efficient and most flexible industrial lubricant facility in China when it starts operation by the end of 2006. With a computerized automated batch blender configuration, the plant will be able to produce over 400 products from over 500 different types of raw materials.

Aviva receives approval for new office

UK insurer Aviva announced that its joint venture, Aviva-COFCO, received regulatory approval to open a sales office in Jinan, Shandong province, following the approval for its Xiamen office. "This licence takes us a stage closer to achieving our longer-term ambition of achieving an average 10 percent market share in 10 provinces or municipal Chinese cities by 2010," said Philip Scott, the executive director of Aviva International. With the new office, Aviva-COFCO will have a presence in 12 cities in China - four branches and eight sales offices.

Nokia expands Chengdu R&D centre

Nokia announced that it will expand its Chengdu R&D centre to support part of Nokia mobile network infrastructure products development for both international and domestic markets and will further strengthen its R&D operation in China. Started as a focused R&D unit for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based communications applications in August 2005, Nokia Chengdu R&D Centre will engage in development of systems such as carrier grade platform middleware, WAP gateways for mobile browsing, intelligent packet core subsystems and increasing multimedia applications development efforts, in order to have more direct responsiveness to emerging customer needs in this market.

Dressing up China

Bestseller entered the Chinese market in 1996 and now has more than 980 shops around China. Mr Allan Warburg, co-founder and managing partner of Bestseller Fashion Group Ltd, shares his experiences working in the Chinese clothing market.

Q: Bestseller is one of the only foreign clothing companies successful at penetrating the middle price range Chinese consumer market. What has been Bestseller's strategy for developing in the Chinese market?

We decided very early on to delegate all decision making to the Chinese company. When you are operating in a fast-changing environment like the fashion industry, there is no time to involve a headquarter back in Europe in your decision process. This, together with a number of other initiatives, has enabled us to react faster to the changes in fashion trends and to the market demand than most of our competitors

Q: What is the niche for Bestseller's success?

We base our collection on our European designs but do quite a lot of adjustments to fit the Chinese market. We are selling a European lifestyle and design, adjusted to fit the Chinese market.

Q: From the perspective of the consumers, brands such as ONLY, Vero Moda and Jack & Jones are most popular with Chinese consumers. How do you manage your brands?

We try hard to sell a European lifestyle and always be the first with the latest trends. When a Chinese consumer enters our stores they have to know that they are buying the latest European fashion.

Q: In addition to brand management and marketing, do you also manufacture clothes or outsource the manufacturing?

We manufacture in China 100 percent of the clothing we sell here. This gives us short lead time and great flexibility.

Q: From your viewpoint, what are the major obstacles that hinder Chinese clothing companies in competing globally?

Creativity in fashion design and marketing as well as distribution networks. However, this is changing very rapidly as our local competitors are getting better and better.

Q: Do you see challenges in further developing in the Chinese market? What measures will you take?

As mentioned, our local competitors are getting better and better. We have to continuously improve our design, marketing, store concepts and staff training.