It’s Tuesday, but the end of the week feels like it’s closing in fast. Maybe it’s the snow. Or maybe it’s just knowing that tomorrow, the 30th of January will be exactly one week from the start of Spring Festival, so any meaningful opportunity to get things done stops pretty much now. That makes this a pretty good interval for assessing project progress to date. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t have a Microsoft Project plug-in yet, so we’ll do this in narrative format. Maybe throw in a few bullet points for you business school graduates.
I officially left my old company on 21 December 2007, and at that time, I set out the following major goals to be accomplished by Chinese New Year.
- File for the new WOFE (Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise)
- Register the company trademarks
- Begin development of the new site
Now with one week to go before the holiday, and only three working days left before I escape to Thailand for a beach holiday, I am happy to join with Meatloaf in saying, two out of three ain’t bad. The WOFE was filed for today by Winni the Wonder Assistant — hooray! The trademarks were all taken care of last week. And the site development? Well, I am sure that by waiting until after Spring Festival to get this done that we will be much better prepared to build a great site for less money than if we had charged forward to get it done right away. (Did you notice the management stragegy on that web development bit? There’s a name for it – it’s called declare victory and retreat. Write it down — if you haven’t used it yet, you will need it someday).
Looking at the list above, it may not look like we have done much, but just getting the WOFE registered required many steps and procedures.
- Founding an offshore company
- Setting up a bank account in Hong Kong
- Signing an office lease
- Choosing English and Chinese company names
- Designing a strategic business scope
- Choosing the most advantageous district to register in
- Developing a business plan
And the folks in China even want all this done in Chinese!! Most of this work we did ourselves (that’s me and Winni the Wonder Assistant), and then we are using a local friend to push the filing through the various government bureaus. (The important entities to deal with are the Commercial and Administrative Bureau and the Tax Bureau, but several agencies are usually involved, depending on your company’s business scope).
Actual government fees involved? About RMB 15,000. Consulting fees for saving me from having to meet with a dozen government bureaus? About RMB 30,000. If you feel better about having all of this work done by someone who sits in a US$500 Herman Miller chair, you could hire PWC to set up your WOFE for you, but they just farm it out to local consultants anyway. The work that is, not the chair.
So, during my week in Koh Lipe (starting on Saturday) I will be working developing the detailed brief for the new site, so that when we do locate a new web development company that things can progress as quickly and smoothly as possible. In the meantime, if any of you have recommendations for dependable web development firms, please send them my way!
See you soon!
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