Another View on Going North and West

Here's the view of others within OPS about investing in offices to the North and West in China. They argue that we already have relationships with primary goods producers there, but assembly factories are still concentrated in the South. The real limiting factor in factories locating in the North and West (either existing factories moving or new factories being started) is management talent.

There is a great shortage of management talent in China. Factories that do assembly have a high need for good management to juggle purchasing, inventory, labor, production, etc. Because management talent is concentrated in the South, that's where the assembly factories are. For this reason they believe a positive ROI on new offices in the North and West (we already have one in Hangzhou near Shanghai) is still in the future.

This is a key strategic issue for our company and we will continue to discuss and review our current position.