Shenzhen is the epicenter of world’s mass manufacturing industry. This means that Shenzhen is the perfect playground for engineers. To make the best out of the Shenzhen ecosystem, engineers need to learn how to find components, tools, and service providers. You will feel lost and intimidated, but the reward for navigating Shenzhen’s ecosystem successfully is a smooth ride to develop your product quickly and cheaply.
Having developed several products in Shenzhen, I have learned my lessons the hard way and captured some of these lessons in this blog post.
Find inspiration through exploration
From electrical shops that display hundreds of stepper motors to mechanical shops that dissemble CNC mills and sell them for parts, you can always find inspirations by taking a stroll through Shenzhen’s component markets. The markets are enormous; the mechanical market in Baoan is IKEA sized, and the electrical markets in HQB span four city blocks. Despite their size, markets are nicely categorized, you will have a floor dedicated to batteries and another floor devoted to LEDs. Just by strolling through the market, you can get inspired by checking out new electrical components, touching and feeling mechanical parts and learning from existing solutions.
Gain knowledge through experience
Sometimes striking up a conversation with the shop clerks can be very rewarding, since they are amazingly experienced in their craft. The shop clerks have all been in the industry for a long time, and seen a lot of applications and designs. They know all the problems and advantages to their components. Throughout my travels, I met a glue seller that could instantly show me a can of glue to use when I name any two materials that need to be bounded; I also met a teenager that could swap out the NAND in my iPhone with a larger capacity one in 30min. As you can imagine, both curiosity and engineering knowledge drive my desire to explore the markets.
Beware of fakes
Components are cheap in Shenzhen, however, be mindful that fake components are also rampant in China. Some fake components are hard to spot, and some quality problems are hidden until you push these fake components to the limit. For examples, I once bought a large shipment of “NSK” bearings, and unknown to me, they were generic bearings with NSK’s logo and “made in Japan” etched on the sides. They worked fine until I started spinning them above 6000rpm. That was when the bearings rapidly heated up due to poor tolerances.
So how do you prevent buying fakes? The only sure way is to buy your components from factories directly, and only use reputable contract manufacturers. Be vigilant and continually inspect your shipments and test your components.
Expect more service, even when you are a small startup
I remember when I was in Canada, I asked a Keyence sales rep to come to my office and show me one of their sensors for my prototype. I waited for two weeks and he came only because he was passing through for another client. In Shenzhen, it is very different. When I called Keyence last year, I waited for only one day, after which two reps came with two suitcases of different sensors and tools, and installed their sensors personally on my prototype.
Do take advantage of this close relationship between technical reps and your startups, it is an excellent source of engineering know-how and a direct way to negotiate discounts.
DIY, but don’t over-do it
The DIY mentality is crucial in hardware startups. But you might ask, do you still need DIY when you have so many resources around you? From soldering custom Li-ion cells to making carbon fiber parts, you can find everything on the streets of Shenzhen. My recommendation is to do it yourself at least once. It doesn’t matter if you are good at it or not; by doing it once you gain fundamental knowledge in the execution of design, and the ability to anticipate potential problems in future manufacturing.
As an engineer, you will have a blast in Shenzhen. Hopefully, this quick guide can help you navigate some of the obstacles while maximizing the benefit of what Shenzhen offers.
Photo credit: HAX
Originally published at sosv.com on February 22, 2017.
