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Helping companies determine whether and how they should dip their toe into the Chinese market has been the mission of Kent Kedl for the past 20 years. As executive director of St. Paul-based Technomic Asia, Minnesota native Kedl and his business partner, Steve Ganster, work with American companies to research opportunities and develop strategies for doing business in China. Kedl and Ganster recently wrote a book, The China Ready Company, to help companies assess their risks and opportunities in the Asian nation.
What does Technomic do for businesses?
We work with companies to help them find and go after growth opportunities in Asia, and particularly in China. There are three steps to what we do. First we go and find out whether there is an opportunity there. Where is the market for someone’s products and services? What does it look like, what is the pricing, what is the potential? The second step is to discover how they go about doing it. In talking about growing internationally you either build it or buy it. They can find some alliance partners or do a joint venture. What is the best way to go after it? And step three is to execute it. If it’s build it, we help set it up. If it’s a joint venture, we help them walk through that process.
What is an example of work Technomic did for a specific company?
We’ve done more than 600 programs in China over the past 20 years. One client in St. Paul supplies the computer laptop industry. We did the first phase: Do they need to be in China? Yes, definitely— 80 to 90 percent of laptops are built in China. They need to be there to supply them locally. We also found market opportunities for office automation products and power tools. If they go to China and meet clients’ immediate needs, they have incremental opportunities for growth that could be cool. Phase two is figuring out how to do it. They are leaning more to building it themselves.
What’s the most important thing business owners should know about doing business in China?
We think every company needs a China strategy. Sometimes the strategy can be “no” or “wait.” I talked with a company that did the online assessment from our book (www.chinareadycompany.com) and it was clear they shouldn’t do anything about China. They should just wait. Businesses keep hearing about China, but it’s not for everyone. But every company has to think through the process. They can’t just bury their heads in the sand.
How did you get into this field?
I was doing some relief work in the Philippines and got interested in Asia, and really interested in China. I started reading Chinese history and then I stopped in China in 1984 on my way back to the States. I fell in love with the place—it’s fascinating. I’m a middle class kid from Roseville and it was about as foreign as you could get from where I was raised. In the 1980s and ’90s, I taught English and journalism, ran a Chinese language school, and then moved into business in the mid-1990s.