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COVER FEATURE: Seeking help

It's usually the little things that hold foreign SMEs in China back. But who has time to solve them?
------ By Josh Chin

Roughly a decade ago, on his first day of work as a consultant in Shanghai, Jeff Lin strolled into his new office, sat down in his new made-in-China chair and leaned back to contemplate his new job. The chair promptly collapsed underneath him. "I'm a big guy by Chinese standards," laughs Lin, now a partner in the China office of global strategy consultant firm Roland Berger.

Lin's point in recalling the story, rather than to heap abuse on the shoddiness of Chinese office furniture, is to illustrate how easy it can be for foreign firms in China - particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - to let their guard down without knowing it.

Last year, a joint-venture furniture company came to Lin with the sneaking suspicion that it was failing to take full advantage of strong growth in mid-range office furniture - a sector in which the company had traditionally done well. Lin and his team talked to furniture designers and the competition and discovered the problem was with their client's top management. Although seasoned furniture experts with years of experience in China, he says, they had lost touch with the market's changing tastes and rising standards.