The land of hardware. The place where you can find knock-off-techs like no other. The one stop for all manufacturing needs and requirements. All of us who are going for the trip have high expectations of that place before the trip. And Shenzhen definitely did not disappoint. Located at the south of China, Shenzhen is approximately 1 to 2 hours away from Hong Kong. As such, many people here can speak cantonese and mandarin fluently. This trip was planned by the entrepreneurship centre for us to look for potential suppliers and manufacturers that can assist us to fulfil our Kickstarter campaign in the event it is successfully funded. To those that wish to visit Shenzhen in the future and wish to fulfil their entrepreneurship journey too, join us on this reading to find out the places we visited to get an inkling on what you can do there.
Day 1
The day where we flew over to Shenzhen. By the time we reached Shenzhen, we were famished and tired from the 4 hours flight. We took some quick bites, settled some admin and then we headed off to the hotel. We ended the day with some exploration around the hotel. Onwards to day 2!
Day 2
The breakfast was A-M-A-Zing. Wish i could share some delicious pictures with you but the food was devoured by me so quickly that when I realised i needed to take a picture of it, the plate was already empty.
Our first visit was to a 3D manufacturing plant called Soongon Technology. The 3D printers there were eye-opening! I was wondering why are the printers printing the same thing? The prints those 3D printers were printing were called stock prints. The reason for that is because the printers have to go through multiple quality checks before they can be sold to customers who wish to own a 3D printer. Hence the engineers there will be able to remedy the 3D printer by analysing the quality of the prints.
We were given a tour of the facility and after which, we broke off to see the products they can print. From the Eiffel tower to the T-rex, all the prints done over there are of such a good quality that I would actually pay money to buy a print from them.
There was actually a print that amazed me and got me real excited at the 3D printing industry.
What’s amazing about this print is its ability to bend and compress. In another words, this print actually functions like a real shoes. Just imagine being able to print a new shoe whenever your old ones spoil. That would actually reduce the cost of owning a pair of shoes. Forget about the Adidas’s Futurecraft 4D, you could make your own future-carved 3D printed shoes.
Tip 1:
If you intend to mass produce your prints, look for Soongon, they can reduce your unit cost by a large margins. Any amount lower than 1000, it is better to print on your own.
After lunch, we visited Anyka electronics. It is a company that specialises in making chips. Their product ranges from home security to consumer devices. Any product that requires a chip to function are able to be recreated by them. One of the area that they excel in would be their bluetooth capabilities.
Tip 2:
If you are thinking of making something that connects through bluetooth, Anyka can be someone that fits the bill (they charge affordably too for their chips).
The late afternoon was spent in Huaqiangbei, the place where you can buy the hardware you want to your heart’s content. From batteries, wires, lights, printed circuit board (PCB) to switches. Anything that is in a product can be found over there. Huaqiangbei is literally a maker’s paradise, your imagination is the only limit to the things you can create.
Interestingly, that place not only sells hardware parts. Huaqiangbei is filled wit food and consumer products. For Singaporeans reading this post, that place is very similar to a combination of bugis street sim lim square and sim lim tower.
Tip 3:
Check Huaqiangbei out even if you have no idea what you want to do. That place is surging with inspiration.
Day 3
This was the first stop for that day. Their office is huge and portrays a very spacious experience.
Some of the services they provide include:
- The solution provider from start to finish
- In house engineers, designers and product development managers
- Fast prototyping 3D printers capabilities
- Contacts for manufacturing/suppliers
If one would like to prototype their idea, you could look for them for advice and help in places you are not an expert in. The people working there have developed an experienced workflow and checks that make sure your product meets certain criteria before they proceed to the next stage of development. For example, in the prototyping stage, your product may contain certain parts that you deemed to be essential. However, these parts would be hard to manufacture in a large scale and hence, World Maker Group(WMG) would advise you to either change that part or find other solutions to replace that part. Such stringent quality checks would allow the startups to manufacture lean and save them the trouble of rectifying future problems that they may encounter in the future.
Tip 4:
A non recurring engineering fee is usually charged in the event a startup engages a service with a group like World Maker. Make sure one have enough spare money to do so.
After lunch, we went over to the office of Renzi capital. This venture capitalist is relatively new but they have an excellent group of investment consultants that specialises in many different areas. Their main offerings would be helping the startups to expand their business and provide the necessary help for the startup to grow in China. One thing to note is that Renzi usually provides funding beyond the seed funding. As such, for startups that have yet to achieve their seed funding, going to Renzi for help would usually end up in a failure (One could always try right and if your vision is revolutionary, why would any investor turn you away). However, the help you could get from them if they decide to invest in your company would be immense. Founders should definitely look for opportunities to work with them in the future.
Tip 5:
Expanding to China would not be easy especially for foreign companies, but with the help of a Chinese VC, life can be made easier.
Day 4
The last stop that was scheduled for us was HAX — accelerator, incubator, investor, working space for hardware company to work and build their product. They offer many more services like industrial designers that startups working there can consult with. Having already admitted more than 50 startups, HAX has a wide network of people who can help one another out if a startup faces a problem. One thing that they emphasised was that some startups who have been with them go on to become successful and were even invited back to HAX to help out the startups that are still in the incubator. One benefit of going to HAX as a startup would be the convenience of iterating your product. You could just head downstairs and purchase the components you need for your product and you could start working on it in the same day. The reason for this is because HAX is located in the heart of Huaqiangbei.
Having interned at Accenture, i somehow got the feeling that HAX has this similar community spirit as well. Whenever anyone has a question about hardware in HAX, he or she could ask the people over at HAX and he or she would be able to answer the questions. There is no problems that the people over at HAX have not experienced before. This is very interesting because one would usually believe that startups would not share or help anyone else not in their startups. But that is not true in HAX and this is because the startups that were in the same batch would not be competing with one another for the same venture capitalists and hence such competition would not be present there.
Many groups pitched their Kickstarter projects to some HAX alumni and we got many valuable feedbacks on how to improve our pitches and products so that we can be more successful on Kickstarter.
Side note: We are launching on 14 November, do keep a look out for us!
Day 5
The last whole day spent here in Shen Zhen. Woke up early and had breakfast before heading down to Dongguan for a factory visit. The company is called AQS, a solution provider like World Maker Group that i have mentioned earlier.
The one that attended to us was Zoey and she is the product manager. One very nice gesture that they did was that the general manager actually took us students for a tour of their factory. From the supply chain of their company to the testing of their products, everything is done over at that factory. It is very interesting to see the products in real life. Different stages of that product is managed by different people. This specialisation allows for maximum efficiency to be done. After which we were given a brief summary on AQS and the services that they provide for their customers.
Tip 6:
Always ask to visit their factory if you are seriously thinking of working with your partners. The state of their factory would tell you the state of their workers and the state of their workers would tell you whether your products would be produced in the manner that you wanted.
Here are some of the services that they provide.
1. Design — Industry, Mechanical, Layout, PCB etc
2. Prototyping — PCBA build, CNC machining etc
3. Production — Plastic/Metal, Process Engineering, Logistic solution etc
It was a good interaction with them and the time spent over there allowed us to get an inkling as to what it is like to be a startup working together with a major manufacturer and supplier.
In the afternoon we visited Edadoc, a PCB layout design, manufacturing company. We were told that the bosses of that company originated from Huawei and hence they would have deep industry knowledge on the manufacturing and production of PCB. I mean one would actually believe that they can do their job well with the awards or products they have done in the past.
We were keen to work with them since our product — Pau — requires a PCB inside to function. If they can fulfil our needs and is able to make the PCB at an affordable cost, we would seriously be considering to work with them.
Day 6
It was time to go back to the sunny island, a place i call home — Singapore.
Conclusion
This trip to Shen Zhen was an eye-opening one for me. As someone who is not very technical, a trip to the land of hardware was definitely an insightful one.
As someone mentioned before: Have a close relationship with your suppliers and manufacturers. This way, you would have a much easier time when things go wrong over at your side or at the China side. I hope that through this trip, I would be more well prepared to engage in the services that some companies in Shen Zhen can provide.
Hope you can get something out of this post on Shen Zhen. If you have any queries or on the places we have visited, you can contact us or reach us through our mail and we would answer your query!
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Till the next post! Continue Pau-ing!
