Shanghai Daily news

The philosophy of the SupportPlus Group of companies - "think global, act local" - has found active expression in China.
SupportPlus has transferred responsibility for decision-making on day-to-day operations to its managers and staff in China to improve the group's competitive edge.
SupportPlus in China still maintains its policy of providing products of the highest quality at the lowest prices in the market. But because all operational decisions are made locally, there are no delays in processing orders and customers enjoy incredibly fast "time to market".
The holding company of SupportPlus' group of subsidiaries is domiciled in the Netherlands with its registered office in Oldenzaal. The location was selected because it lies on the border with Germany, minutes away from SupportPlus' European Distribution center in Germany. SupportPlus was founded in 1999 in Germany.
About two years later, other European offices of the company were established in the Netherlands, France and Great Britain. Today SupportPlus is an international group of growth companies and has its own subsidiaries in Spain and Austria as well. It also has offices in Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.
The SupportPlus group of companies specialize in the marketing, development and distribution of products, such as home appliances, consumer electronics, sports and fitness products and DIY products.
SupportPlus sells these products to major retailers in the countries where they do business in order to generate huge order volumes. All its customers are basically chain stores with hundreds, or often even thousands of stores per country. According to the official Website, SupportPlus products can be brought to market under its own brand and also under own-label brand names, also known as OEM.
Its products are made in ISO-certified factories, predominantly in China and South Korea. SupportPlus regards its products as "fast-moving items" known for their excellent price/performance ratio. The complete chain from development to "just in time" delivery is controlled by one hand.
The company says that because of its philosophy, "think global, act local", as well as its effective and competitive corporate structure, SupportPlus can offer customers products and performance at very attractive prices.
SupportPlus started its business selling universal remote controls for HiFi products such as TVs DVDs, VCRs and etc to hypermarkets like Metro and Carrefour, said Jan Kemeling, managing director of Shanghai-based SupportPlus China Ltd and one of the five partners in the holding company.
"Then, based on queries from retailers, we extended our business scope and soon after we received many requests to supply other electrical appliances," Kemeling said. Retailers such as Metro, Carrefour, Plus, TCM, MediaMarket, Karstadt, Kruidvat, Makro, Lidl and Aldi etc. provided customers with special offers every week or two, so they needed something attractive to fill their promotional catalogues, he said.
"However, if some suppliers of products failed to supply, the retailers would ask other suppliers to develop and supply products to help them fill the catalogues."
Just four months ago, SupportPlus started selling MP3 players. Now it has become one of the leaders in this sector in Europe.
"Several factories are running at 100 percent capacity for us for the past several months and still we can hardly meet market demand - it's an exploding market," Kemeling said. He said SupportPlus now focuses on developing products in four categories: kitchen and cleaning appliances, audio and video products, sports and fitness equipment and Do-It-Yourself products.
SupportPlus arrived in China about 18 months ago, Kemeling said. "I was the only one, when I came here to open the office in Shanghai. I had to deal with everything like renting the office, getting licenses and looking for people."
SupportPlus China Ltd has now expanded to 40 people of six nationalities, including product managers, technicians, engineers, graphic designers, translators and editors for language, as well as sales, finance and IT people.
"We would like to describe ourselves as one of the first Chinese companies with a Western mind rather than a Western company with a buying or sourcing office in China," Kemeling said.
Each of the four product groups has a team led by a European product manager but, at the same time, each also has a Chinese product manager.
"The European plays a role as a bridge to bring the Europe market to China, because he has the knowledge on how to develop the product," Kemeling said.
"He will be responsible for developing packaging, color design and everything with regard to the products. And the Chinese guy will be in charge of communicating with the factory and processing orders. "This method of operation ensures that each and every team is able to make decisions by themselves. This means that SupportPlus can act efficiently because it truly is a Chinese company with a Western mind."
Kemeling also stressed that SupportPlus has moved all decision-making and processing functions to do with product management from Europe to China.
The offices in Europe are kept as sales offices only and focus on sales, marketing and distribution. Because SupportPlus's strong financial backing involves some of the largest players in the world of finance, it has also remained a function of the European operations. "China is expected to be the center point of SupportPlus," Kemeling said.
"To make full use of China, we make all decisions regarding products in China. We develop all products in China; we design all products and packaging in China; we manage the quality and technical input from China; we write and translate all packaging and manuals in China and we control all shipments from China," Kemeling said.
"We also do all our own artwork ourselves - we have our own photographic studio and our own graphic and product design team in the one office. By doing all this, we ensure that the heart of our operation is in China and not Europe." Kemeling attributed the shift to several reasons.
"First of all, the labor cost here is substantially lower than  in Europe." The production of everything in China is much cheaper, which makes SupportPlus able to offer a lower price than its competitors.
"We can add productivity on critical moments, by just working a bit longer or harder," Kemeling said.
"We do not send our products (samples or products under development) or artwork for boxes or photos for artwork or texts for translation from Asia to Europe for approval - we just approve all these things here in China ourselves - and we save an incredible amount of time and money on courier costs and duties and we eliminate the possibility of errors in communication between offices and this also saves time and money, and thus increases our speed."
"What is unique in our business is that most of our competitors are just sourcing from China - they make the products here but the whole design, the decision-making on the product management side, the artwork for the packaging and the engineering are still done in their European offices,"Kemeling noted.
"This is not logical. When you manufacture a product here, we say at SupportPlus, it is more logical and cost-efficient to also do your R&D, product development packaging development, manual development, translations and all decision-making here, close to the source, in order to save time and money."
"In that respect, we are truly different and ahead of 99 percent of our competitors. When our competitors receive samples at their European HQs from a Chinese factory, we have already received, tested and modified the products, designed the box and place the order - that's what makes the difference!"
"That is why we have chosen a 'one-stop shop' concept with staff who come from different backgrounds, from six nationalities and who possess different specializations so that all decision-making could be moved from Europe to China."
The Chinese staff at SupportPlus can also eliminate communication errors. "In the Chinese way of thinking, they will help us understand if it is the right time to say something or to keep quiet, while we are negotiating with manufacturers and other clients," Kemeling said.
In China it's easier to find staff who are well-educated and able to learn quickly, he said. "Our staff here come from six different language groups. In China, we can translate instructions on the packaging and in manuals into Chinese, English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese."
Kemeling is convinced that customers must have confidence in the company's managers and personnel. He revealed SupportPlus plans to enter new markets to increase their presence worldwide.
A new sales office has just been set up in Australia. In the middle of the year, SupportPlus will open a sales office in Dubai, and another one is expected to be launched in Canada by the end of next year.
"The secret of our success lies in having a huge customer base in most of the countries where we operate because we purely focus on sales, sales and sales. Now that all other functions have moved to China, finding customers is the task rather than finding products," Kemeling said.
"Most other companies here do not have the strong customer base that we have and would not be able to match our volumes." In China, two new offices will also be established next year.
One will be in Dongguan in Guangdong Province and the other in Ningbo in Zhejiang Province. Both will focus on product development and quality control.