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10:43 PM |
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
SYCAMORE — Dale Kalenhaus wanted to know what DeKalb County companies had to offer.
So the St.Charles resident came to Sycamore on Tuesday for the 11th Annual Kishwaukee Valley Business to Business Trade Show.
"I don't live too far, and I've often thought of moving this direction," said Kalenhaus, who is 62. "I just like to check things out."
Eighty-four local businesses, ranging from banks to health-care facilities, set up booths at the DeKalb County Farm Bureau.
"We want to entice businesses to come, visit and network with other businesses," said Rose Treml, executive director of the Sycamore Chamber of Commerce. "This is not a money-maker for us. It's simply something we do for local companies."
Anyone can visit the business expo, Treml said, but participants are limited to those members of the Sycamore and DeKalb chambers of commerce.
Booths at the venue Tuesday featured food samples, office supply giveaways, games and informational brochures.
Jesus Romero was stationed behind a table cooking samples of his cuisine from his Sycamore restaurant, Taxco. Tuesday's expo gives business owners a chance to see what other local companies are up to, he said.
"It's a time for the whole community and the county to network and showcase what they can do," Romero said. "There are a lot of businesses in the community and you don't always know what they do. This is a good way to find out what local companies have to offer."
Kim Zamora, Bethany Healthcare & Rehab Center marketing coordinator, agreed. She was at the trade show to inform attendees of the array of services that Bethany Healthcare provides.
"It's always important to network in the community," she said. "You can see old friends, make new friends and make connections."
YUNDA FILTER was founded in 2001. Our main products are water filters and related accessories. We are one of the earliest free members of Alibaba.com. But as a new company, we did not invest much in internet promotion. After 6 years' development, the export accounts for 80% of our total sales. We realized that joining Alibaba.com, the global outstanding online marketplace, had becoming a top importance and a big advantage for us to promote our products in overseas market and to be outstanding in the fierce competition.
We joined Alibaba.com as a Gold Supplier in 2008 and got the good result immediately. We received 6 to 10 inquiries per day. We have developed cooperative relationship with many new customers from Middle-East, South East Asia and America, some of which have placed several orders. We combined the knowledge and experience learned from the professional training courses with our own practical situation. We arranged a series of trainings for our trade team and developed an Order Process Procedure to improve their judgment to inquiries, ability of negotiation and risk control so as to improve the probability of transactions and stability of orders. The other harvest we got from Alibaba.com was a great deal of information which helped us to adjust products' specifications, appearances and packing according to the analysis of the competitive strength of our products in different markets and special requests from these markets.
So far, we are not obviously affected by the economic crisis of 2008. We still kept a turnover valued 6 million dollars in 2008. We think it is directly related to our experience in Alibaba.com.
The annual cost of joining Alibaba.com is even lower than that of attending one international trade fair, but its coverage and effects are far more than a trade fair can provide. In the future, we will pay more attention to the operation of Alibaba.com, to be more careful in details, and actively participate in various training courses. We believe that we will make a breakthrough in 2009.
Third-party (between buyers and sellers) electronic payment (e-payment) services generated total sales of 274.3 billion yuan (US$39.5 billion) in China in 2008, hiking by 18% from 2007, and sales are projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51.6% from 2008 to 2012, according to China-based consulting company Shanghai iResearch.
Alipay was the largest third-party e-payment operator occupying 59.0% of the total sales in 2008, followed by TenPay with 17.9% and ChinaPay with 9.0%, the consulting firm said.
Of the total sales in 2008, 38.0% was for online shopping, 18.1% for buying flight tickets, 9.3% for paying telecom service fees, 8.3% for playing online games, 4.6% for B2B (business to business) trade and 3.8% for buying online lottery, it added.
Langfang Ruilong Trade Co., Ltd. was founded on the basis of our own furniture factory in June, 2008 for the purpose of developing the overseas market and offering better service to our customers. With 10 years’ experience in the industry of furniture, our products have won high reputation from our customers, and we have established long-term cooperative relationships with many customers from Europe, Asia, South and North America.
Apart from the good-quality products and our sincere service, E-business, the modern business model, is also a major reason for us to realize remarkable achievements within such a short span of time. At the initial stage of our foundation, we tried to find an E-business platform, and finally, we chose Alibaba.com after cautious investigation and consideration.
Because Alibaba.com enjoys a very good reputation for its excellent performance in the field of E-business, we believe that it can be a reliable partner. And Alibaba.com really does not fail us. They teach us how to use the E-business platform effectively, and run regular training courses to acquaint our staff with knowledge of foreign trade. We have made a great progress with their help within a short period of time and have become more and more professional in e-business and foreign trade.
We do not enjoy a good environment for the growth of the company due to the economic crisis. Fortunately, we chose Alibaba.com which surprised us a lot. The E-commerce can shorten transaction time and reduce buyers’ purchasing cost; therefore, more and more buyers pay their attention to the internet rather than various exhibitions which are really expensive. It is a good chance for us to develop and we have established new cooperative relationships with many new customers from USA, UK, and Ireland and so on. We give priority to efficient communication while negotiating with our customers, and try our best to let them know every detail of our products and factory. Therefore, we can build trust in each other which is the most important start for a successful business.
Since the foundation of our company, we have not attended any exhibitions, and even have not got our own brochure for products. However, we gain many customers with the aid of Alibaba.com, and have established stable cooperative relationships with those customers. We get what we want with less cost and energy. So we have to admit that the E-commerce is the mainstream of the future commerce pattern. With the help of Alibaba.com, we have entered a new E-commerce era, and we are very confident in our bright future!
As our products are quite special, we think that internet is the best way of promotion. We tried to cooperate with many e-commerce platforms; however, it did not yield good results. I attended a lecture delivered by Mr. Mayun, CEO of Alibaba Group at Canton Hotel in 1999, and from then on, I noticed that Alibaba.com is very professional and comprehensive in each catalogue they edited. I also found that if we displayed our products on this website, they were very easy to be found. Therefore, we became a free member of Alibaba.com in 2000. However, we got few inquiries then because many clients thought we were not authentic. At that time, our decision-makers almost lost all faith in that e-commerce platform. Things did not change until 2007. After many rounds of communication by TradeManager, an American client came to our factory and closed an order with us. Although it was not an extremely big transaction, our decision-makers changed their minds and decided to become a Gold Supplier of Alibaba.com. We also created some “Keywords” connected to our main products. From then on, we found that there were more and more inquiries from customers all over the world, some of which turned to be our potential clients later.
This year, everyone, including us, is faced with the challenges caused by the worldwide economical downturn. However, we regard it as another opportunity for us to develop because many clients want to get more products with lower price from China. So we will keep on cooperating with Alibaba.com, and we believe that with the help of Alibaba.com, we can surely improve our overseas business.
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