The Story of Setting Up a Factory Operation in China with Greg Fisher

Topics Covered in this Episode

• How did you get into the hardware space?

• For those listening, and want to get into hardware – do you think they need educational experience – like a mechanical engineering degree, to get in?

• So we had lunch recently where you mentioned you had your own factory – pretty epic – how does that work?

• What exactly is a factory in China

  When I was doing my own product back in 2008/2009, I was considering hiring workers – at Hai Wang Dasha – nearby you – to do final assembly – literally in our office. Would that be a factory?

• Mould + Material + Components + Final Assembly

  Are these the main processes of different factories? In China, there are various parts of China that have different specialities – like Shenzhen of course is known for electronics, I tell people ningbo / Zhejiang province is often the lower tech, more home gadgets, Zhongshan I did some inflatable beer pong tables for a client back in my sourcing days – there are these 4 parts of a factory – and each one can be done either in the same factory / location or all done separately – hope I’m right or you can correct and clarify – there is the mould factory that makes the mould – which many factories outsource. Then there is the materials needed, raw materials, which can even be imported from overseas. Then we have components – often times injection mould plastic parts that use the mould we made (if a custom product) and then the cream of the crop, the part taking all the parts and making final assembly. Of course there is a QC that the factory should do, at each phase here. Am I getting all the parts ready? Of course packaging you order from a print shop factory and that is part of final assembly.

• Bigger factories do all of this? Smaller factories outsource

  Is that the main idea or do even larger factories outsource parts of these various phases in manufacturing?

• How can listeners living overseas know what a factory even is?

  The reason I am making this joke about me having an assembly factory in my office is – I could have said I am a factory, right? So for listeners there scouring Alibaba and Global Sources – trading companies vs factories – what is the way someone can decipher?

• Thanks for following our e-commerce series show – hope to synergize and get some of your exclusive new products plugged in to our seller community!

• So about Hardware Massive -this is a great community for people manufacturing – which I know a lot of our listeners are. You also have Hardware Con conference – your yearly conference in April. And some new projects you told me about which is exciting called Elevate – maybe we talk about these and how listeners can get involved

People / Companies / Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Episode Length 33:06

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