8 lessons from a European design company visiting China
Mingus and me visiting Beijing to give design courses at CAFA

8 lessons from a European design company visiting China

We spent quite some time in China this year working, teaching and meeting with tens (if not hundreds) of Chinese entrepreneurs, designers, professors and business people in Shenzhen, Changsha, Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Here are 8 things we learnt:

1. European designers work less hours

“The European designer is lazy.” Hytal Ye, COO and co-founder of Digitaling, the largest creative site of China, shared with us. It confirmed what we had observed: you will not find employees working on a regular Sunday until 6pm in Europe. In China, it is a common practice if you are building a company that wants to become the number one.

Ye does admire the European creativity though. It is not clear however if he understands that creativity is a product of the European ‘laziness’.

Nevertheless, not all Chinese designers believe in the Chinese work ethic. Cheng Hangfeng (a designer and founder of the design agency Des Glory) is seeing also great value in taking it slow. He closes his studio at 5pm and does not allow his employees to work during weekends.

To find the balance between working hard and slow is key, but for the young aspiring Chinese designer it seems that working on weekends is just fine. So if we do not step up our game, we might pull the shortest string at one point.

2. Ditch the ‘why’

Simon Sinek got 6 million people to watch his TED talk on “Starting with why”. Thousands of consultancies help businesses define their value propositions. We spent hundreds of hours on getting our ‘why’ right. But when we asked some small and large Chinese companies on their ‘why’ they looked at us a bit confused: “We are still an 8 year young company, we do not need one yet.”, a response of an entrepreneur running a ‘small’ community site with 200.000 monthly active (Chinese) users.

Designer Cheng Hangfeng explained that this ‘Why-thing’ isn’t really part of the Chinese culture. Our experience with Chinese apps (as far as we understand them) is that they are just build around a metric (active users, revenue, etc.) instead of around a mission. We thought that was very refreshing. Let’s ditch the why and build around a feature.

3. Iterate & copy what works

Kai-Fu Lee, former head of Google China said in an interview: “WeChat today is an amazing innovation [watch this], but it didn’t come about because someone at Tencent dreamed it up and built it and shocked the world. They kept layering on features that users wanted, they iterated, they threw away the features that didn’t work, and at the end they had a product that was the most innovative social network. It’s so good that Facebook is now copying them.”

Design and development in China is really about answering a clear need and just building around that, optimizing all the time and throwing away what does not work. At Digitaling, Hytal Ye, the COO was not afraid to claim they are copying Behance (a portfolio and job site owned by Adobe) in numerous ways, but their version is made for the Chinese market. Behance is struggling to grow in China.

In fact, most technological companies do not understand the Chinese market. Companies like Ebay struggled (wasted millions) and now LinkedIn is facing similar challenges.

4. Get status

When we asked Minhong Yu, our Chinese design partner, on why we had the opportunity to meet so many important people in Beijing and Changsha, she mentioned that it probably had to do with my role as a board member of the Association of Dutch Designers and our participation in the Amsterdam Light Festival.

In Europe these titles are great for your LinkedIn-profile, but in China these titles are much more respected than we could ever imagine. If you happen to have a title (not founder of company X, but board member of a proper association) you should leverage it in China. Also awards and certificates are highly respected. We never really cared about winning awards, but now we should.

5. Embrace the long, directionless meeting

When meeting with a Chinese company expect to sit down for two hours to exchange ideas and interactive presentations. The other side will expect you to give a presentation full of pictures and videos of your work. The goal is to arise as much “Oohs” and “Aahs” as possible, to mutually admire each others work and to exchange and respect viewpoints. The boss on the other side will probably keep silent for a long while and will eventually conclude the meeting by sharing his or her vision. But you never know really how interested he or she really is. It is a mystery and confusing, and we believe it is meant to be this way.

If the meeting goes well, you will be showered with gifts, and if you really hit the jackpot, you will be invited to a long dinner. Do however not expect anything to come out after the first meeting. Doing business in China is a long process and then one day, suddenly, you might end up working on a deal while enjoying a beer.

6. Don’t do business in China, when you have no plans to settle in China

We did not travel with a clear plan to China to get some nice leads and fly away. Although it would have been nice. In the US you can show your work, have a few good references, fun meetings and you would have closed in a new client, but not in China.

You need to attend at least 5-10 of the previously described long meetings, seriously investing and understanding your potential client before you get something out of it. And then possibly during a late dinner you get a project on your lap that was supposed to be finished yesterday. So pressure is on and you need to have a lot of patience.

If you are not considering moving to China, also do not consider doing business there. Because it will only leave you frustrated, and you need time to build good relationships. You might even have more chance inviting some Chinese potential clients to your home country.

7. Get your base right

Overall in Europe and in the US it feels like you can compete successfully with focus. You have a clear value proposition (e.g. you are the infographic guru or the photo editing nerd). In China things are different: you need to make sure that your base is right. It is important to understand all basics of design (you are an icon designer but you also master 3D animation). If you cannot master the basics, you simply make extra hours to learn a new skill. This is how you succeed as a designer in China: growing from the base instead of making a choice for one specific skillset.

We feel by getting the base right, you have less chance of losing, because you can satisfy your clients on all levels.

8. Keep playing it cool

Americans and Europeans like to impress, they walk in and they throw out the most spectacular stuff they have on the table. A Chinese will probably first wait and decide later on what he or she would like to show. Maybe he or she would even consider playing the role of the not so good designer and copy the best things from the other side, because why not?

We believe that this method of just waiting and being the more on the surface and playing the unexpected attendant can be more valuable. As you can still pick which cards you want to play and what you think you can get out of the meeting.

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Dieter Bruns

Director at RDB Limitada

5y

Always good to travel and to learn about new cultures. It opens the mind. The 21st century will be China’s century.

Merel van Garderen

Psycholoog i.o. tot GZ-Psycholoog (PIOG), cognitief gedragstherapeut VGCt® i.o.

5y

Good read!

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Rowinda Appelman

Education Pioneer I Obama Leader Europe I Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science

5y

Great one, Jus! 

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Philip Berckmans

Group Strategic Development Director at Euroports

5y

Great read Justus. Patience and relations indeed is key on doing business here! 

Tjomme Reeringh

Strategisch redacteur & Ghostwriter ♦ Structureert en richt gedachtegoed, boek & carrière

5y

Great read indeed!

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