Business Tour Guide? No, I’m a Chinese E-commerce Consultant

Have had my ‘tour guide’ hat on the past couple day, and expect to keep it on for the rest of March. I was tour guide of the year at my university, being one of the first tour guides to start during my first year enrolled there. I enjoy showing people around new places and giving them insight and advice.

Doug, from a USA fulfillment and returns center in USA called SKUtouch has been talking to me for years online about doing business in China, to provide warehousing and return services for export driven B2C chinese e-commerce businesses. I have tried in a few different ways to help him attending trade shows, discussing it with ecommerce friends of mine doing business from China. But I was never fully confident I could offer him a valuable solution and network.

But that started changing once I took the new role of helping the Chinese ecommerce network Hero Meets Hero. They have been having events and networking conventions all over China for almost 2 years now, and me being their first foreigner, they thought I could help them find more foreign members and sponsors.

And here is Doug, staying in touch with him on a regular basis, we decided now was a good time for him to take a trip over to China…..for him to meet the foreign trade federation, visit some potential strategic partners and clients, and have a focus group for him.

I am so excited things are starting to come together, network, and relationships to offer my American counterparts back stateside.

Picking up Doug at the Hong Kong airport was quite the experience last night, I have met a few people at the airport before, but still I get excited about it….someone who has never been to China, and they are relying on me to guide them. His flight was about an hour late….having to standyby I was being a social geek posting on twitter and foursquare. I pulled his linkedin profile and asked the other random strangers in the arrival gate to keep an eye out for him as well. Funny thing is, one of those random strangers saw Doug before I did and helped make sure I found him right away.

Immediately took Doug to the skylimo vans and into Shenzhen. I could see his amazement at all the cramped apartment buildings, and shared with him all kinds of fun experiences and stories along the way to Shenzhen bay border.

Today being his first full day he met the hero meets hero ecommerce foreign trade federation, which we so excited to meet him. Amy helped me confirm his powerpoint for Saturday, as well as the Shenzhen government ecommerce summit on Friday.

Later in the afternoon we went to visit a potential alliance with logistics companies and ecommerce warehouses.

Jet lag finally hit Doug and I dropped him off at his hotel. typing todays blog from my bluetooth keyboard and mobile phone…..my mac air screen problem is still not resolved.

Living my dream…..tour guide, international business, and e-commerce consultant.

Few more days with Doug, visiting factories tomorrow. Trying my best to keep up with daily work replying on my mobile phone during transit between business meetings…. And of course trying to keep up the regular blog posts here.