Word: productivity
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...firms stayed behind. In fact, as more work moved into China, locating a headquarters in Hong Kong, on the doorstep of southern China's industrial parks, became imperative. The trading firms quickly devised a new, cross-border manufacturing system. With poor technology and training, Chinese workers could complete basic product assembly but not the more complicated parts of a manufacturing process. So traders like the Fungs kept functions such as quality control and packaging in Hong Kong while outsourcing the assembly to factories in China...
Think of Hong Kong's traders as the world's matchmakers. "We're the search engines to find the best place in the world" to buy a product, says Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung's sourcing business. With 72 sourcing offices in 41 countries, Li & Fung can tap into more than 8,000 factories making anything from carpets to dog brushes. In 2006 alone, the company was involved in the production and shipment of some 2.4 billion shirts, toys and other consumer goods--an amount that has quintupled since 1999. "We're creating a world that is flat," says...
Similarly opportunistic, some Hong Kong--based manufacturers are now remaking themselves by providing supply-chain-management to big customers. TAL Apparel, which makes 1 out of every 7 dress shirts sold in the U.S. at its factories in Asia and North America, nimbly adjusts production for major customers like JCPenney based on weekly sales results. In a practice linked to the "fast fashion" trend, retailers can send orders to TAL each week. TAL then ships out the product in four days or less--emergency orders can be rushed through in a mere four hours. TAL sorts the goods into boxes...
Economists and policymakers who will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, beginning Jan. 24 have been furiously debating whether the world has "decoupled" from the U.S. economy. The U.S. constitutes about 28% of global gross domestic product (GDP) as measured in dollars, and it accounted for one-fifth of worldwide growth from 2000 to 2006. When the U.S. faltered in the past, the rest of the world staggered. And certainly there are signs of fatigue. A cooling housing market slowed U.S. GDP growth to 2% in the third quarter, and even if the economy has strengthened...
...Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Apple Chairman Steve Jobs gleefully proclaimed last week at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. Maoist China had Little Red Books, Jacobin France had Phrygian Caps; Any doubts about the icon by which our age will be remembered have surely now been dispelled with a Multi-Touch click. The vanguard of cell phones, laptops, and music players have finally achieved the sleek unity that is the iRevolution’s ultimate victory. And this revolution occurs at the crucial intersection of our crazed gadgetphilia...