China - never a dull moment!

[Cruiser Elite]

First 'POPEYES' chicken outlet opened in SH today cnr Huaihai Zhong Lu and Chengdu Lu - FFS - how good could a KFC copy be? Yank mates in China FT thread are going gaga over it

 

[MEL_Traveller]

ooo!!! Popeyes! It's delicious!!

 

[Cruiser Elite]

ooo!!! Popeyes! It's delicious!!

You'll be as happy as a dog with 2 d*cks when you get back there then MEL - courtesy of Hong Kong from China FT Group herte is the address for you and others:
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen (Huaihai Zhong Lu)
Address: 566 Huaihai Zhong Lu, near Chengdu Nan Lu
淮海中路566号, 近成都南路
Hours: 10am-10pm

Edit: MEL you will be able to gorge on POPEYES no matter which city you head to:

 

[Cruiser Elite]

OK who can spot MEL in the line waiting to get a crack at his all time fave POPEYES?

MEL waiting in line at POPEYES

 

[MEL_Traveller]

shhhhh!!!

 

[Cruiser Elite]

28 day quarantine in Beijing now

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Now that a BRIDGE

 

[mushez]

2.8bn of loans backed by fake gold in China

83 tons presented as Gold for collateral towards 2.8 billion in loans, turns out to be nothing but copper alloy

 

[Cruiser Elite]

That's not a bed! This is a bed!!!

 

[daft009]

That's not a bed! This is a bed!!!

haha, great example pics bow chika bow wow

 

[MEL_Traveller]

That's not a bed! This is a bed!!!

And look at the price! I bet you retail here would be like $5000!!

 

[Cruiser Elite]

MEL a 4x multiple USD-AD is not uncommon for Chinese Manufacturer to AU Retailer

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Many may be aware Australian bicycle wholesalers are having horrendous problems sourcing sufficient stock to meet demand – and TEBCO is well and truly experiencing similar problems.

Our biggest hurdle is our manufacturers just cannot access sufficient components in a timely manner to build our Orders. Shimano, Suntour and many other component suppliers just cannot keep up with demand – but our biggest problem is frame supply – frame manufacturers are TOTALLY SWAMPED with Orders and are all working 24/7 to attempt to supply but there is a limit to supply capacity.

Australia is a miniscule market on the world stage and given the unprecedented world-wide demand for small electric personal transportation devices then our supply difficulties may not disappear overnight. We are working very hard to minimize future supply delays by ordering forward where possible.

In regard to frame supply – this is the type of thing we are up against – Mertuan which is a huge logistics Company in China have Ordered 3 million electric bicycles for short haul Courier deliveries – pictured here are the first 100,000 of these produced by Sunry factory in Wuxi.

Add to this the huge upsurge in ‘Share Bike’ requirements right across China in cities large and small to transport 1.4bn people to and from work / in and around crowded cities for day to day activities - when pre Covid 19 this huge population base was heavily dependant on grossly over crowded public transport which that population base is now increasingly avoiding.

Our latest intel is that the 6 biggest bicycle manufacturing companies in China combined will produce 40 million electric bicycles in the next 12 months – just a staggering figure.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

One has to wonder how much longer there will be international demand for Chinese goods?

 

[tgh]

I have been flirting with a two wheels downgrade, Surron (electric) or a KTM FreeRide (4t)
Surron (China) containers are coming in but sold out 3 months ahead.. KTM (Austria), not a bike for sale anywhere in au… welcome to our new world.
The supply chain challenges should make for interesting outcomes down the track...

Post automatically merged: Jul 21, 2020

One has to wonder how much longer there will be international demand for Chinese goods

We have no choice, we threw away the other option years ago...

 

[Cruiser Elite]

One has to wonder how much longer there will be international demand for Chinese goods?

MEL you want product A made in China for $2K or product B made in Euro / USA for $4K - tell me about your demand preference?

Over the next week or so I will put together a folio of the images of electric cars I have seen in China over last few years

 

[MEL_Traveller]

MEL you want product A made in China for $2K or product B made in Euro / USA for $4K - tell me about your demand preference?

Over the next week or so I will put together a folio of the images of electric cars I have seen in China over last few years

For sure price is an issue. But it’s not always as big as people think. New fridge the other day: Chinese brand $759, Japanese brand, $929. Latter comes with latest technology and 5 year warranty compared to just 2 years and older technology in the chinese version.

Lots of things are changing at the moment. Tariffs on Chinese products could change the market in an instant.

 

[tgh]

Tariffs on Chinese products could change the market in an instant

Indeed… and the pay back drop in the value of exports of "our own au manufactured " commodities (iron ore coal et al)… would smash our generous social welfare system

Like I just said ...it's all to late, we are stuffed

 

[mushez]

The biggest issue is not capacity - it is people.

People cannot travel in China (or maybe don't want to travel), so migration from the west to the eastern factories is not happening.

My whole supply chain is telling me it is about people. They don't have the option of migration labour in China, and are stuck with local labour only. And that is the bottle neck squeezing production lines.

I haven't been impacted with any issues other than production taking twice as long as it has in the past, like 4 weeks instead of the normal 2.

I guess I have not been impacted at all/much as we pushed all our stuff into production in March/April as the world was shutting down and orders were being canceled. Every supplier I had was happy to have my orders still to have work and our orders was the only work they had. Suppliers I hadn't placed orders with were calling me chasing an order, because all other orders had been canceled.

I also have gone from 2 x TEU's for the year, to 8 x TEU's for 2020. We normally carry about 4-6 TEU's on hand of stock, and that quickly had runs on it from March - but we were able to replace most stock with a 2/4 week out of stock period as we normally order all our stock in March, to land in June/July - for that level of stock to last until July the following year. All our stock went into production in March, and was spat out eariler and shipped earlier, and we rolled more into production in April onwards to meet demand that was stripping out stock both in house and while it was on the water.

We are now looking forward to run overstocked for the next 12 months, so we can handle any hick up - supply chain or run on product lines. But is it overstocked in these now new times? Or just stock levels adapted to the new norms.

As I see it - if you don't have stock on the shelf, you have nothing to sell. Just in time goes out the window in times like these - be that buying toilet paper for your household, to buying in stock that you trade with. Increasing/padding out your stocks you carry so you can handle a hick up is the cheapest insurance policy you can buy for it.

 

[p--and--t]

MEL a 4x multiple USD-AD is not uncommon for Chinese Manufacturer to AU Retailer

If you don't mind explaining, what are the drivers behind that multiple?

I have noticed sometimes it is cheaper to order goods in from the US that have been shipped from China to the US and then resold at retail and then re-shipped to AU than to order the same item "discount" in AU.

The other thing that I find interesting is that (at least in the IT world) China are outsourcing to India because labour is "too expensive" in China, yet I don't see a lot of India manufactured goods in Australia. Maybe they haven't reached the level of diversity of goods, sophistication or reliability to be trusted by AU importers?

{BTW: This is one of my favourite threads, an eclectic mix of informative rarely seen information]