Guangzhou Factory Tours

First off, my apologies for the delay in posting updates. Every night I think I am going to write a new post, but then I'm too exhausted to do anything besides sleep.

The day after the Expo, it was time to visit some of the MedSpa device manufacturers. Long story short, when you are a business looking to do business ("B2B" for you business majors out there), then the manufacturers are happy to give you a behind-the-scenes look at their factories so you can check the process and quality first-hand. These tours reminded me somewhat of a tour I took of Disney's animation studio as a kid while they were working on the movie Mulan.

We ended up touring two factories: one MedSpa device factory, and one cosmetic products (skin care, creams, lotions) factory. The first tour included more behind-the-scenes looks at the people and machines, while the second included a long meeting with the company's founder (more on that in a bit).

To get to the first factory, we booked an Uber equivalent. My wife was shocked to learn the drive would be over an hour long. We drove out of Guangzhou and into the surrounding mountains north of the city. Every valley we passed was full of large buildings and tall apartment blocks. If there is a square foot of flat land, something is built on it.

After paying the toll for the highway, we drove into one of the towns where we passed hundreds of factories (including one that said it was manufacturing car tires). I had honestly never considered where car tires are manufactured. Finally, we rounded a corner into one of those factory blocks near a small amusement park (it had a little roller coaster and several carnival-like attractions).

The first thing I noticed opening the door of the car was the smell in the air. It was a familiar burns-your-throat smell that I had gotten used to on my first visit to China in 2010 (the air quality has vastly improved over the past 15 years, generally speaking). It's impressive how fast you can get used to the factory-city air quality, but you know it can't possibly be good for your health. A lot of people live in these factory cities and probably don't know what clean air smells like.

Two, no, three things stood out to me about the factory:

1. The building didn't look like a factory from the outside (in fact, none of the factories do). It looked like a normal office building with windows and a fancy front lobby area.
2. There was obvious assembly line or flow (i.e., raw goods start here, finished product comes out over there). Instead, things seemed to be grouped by function (floor 2 is the welding area, floor 3 is the electrical wiring area).
3. Did I mention it was right next to a small amusement park?

One of the highlights for me was seeing workers actually assembling things (I know - I'm in a factory, of course I should expect to see this! But, we just don't see this in America anymore).

Another highlight was watching the quality assurance testers have fun testing one of the devices (it appeared to be a back massage device with small roller wheels on it, and they were tweaking the settings on the machine while testing it on their arm).

After the tour, it was time to test one of the eye treatment machines. I got to be one of the testers, while my wife tested a laser hair removal machine. Immediately after doing demo treatments for us, the technician jumped on a video all with a customer to help them troubleshoot their device (I believe it was a surgeon calling from Vietnam - they had to communicate in English because neither spoke each other's native language). It was impressive to see the technician switch from doing treatments to doing a technical walkthrough of a device in broken/translated English so quickly.

After saying goodbye to the first factory, it was off to the second one! I thought it would be another MedSpa device factory, but it turned out we were scheduled to visit a cosmetic OEM manufacturer. As you might suspect looking around at all the products we have, some products from one brand look and feel identical to similar products from a competing brand... and you might think "I wonder if these products are actually produced in the same factory?". Yes. They are. We were invited to visit one of the largest manufacturers for skincare products sold by a lot of well-known brands (I'm not able to tell you which brands, though).

We arrived at a marketing department for the company, where we stood and talked for over an hour as I watched employees across a large open-space work area talk and play mobile games on their phones (it was after 5pm, so I guess they were off work at this point). The "boss" we spoke with had several errand-runners go off and fetch things like skincare samples and drinks for us. Then, he invited us to visit the larger factory area for a tour. He booked us an Uber equivalent taxi and we were off to the much larger factory.

As with all of the places I went around Guangzhou, I never know what to expect next (factory next to an amusement park?), but this next one really took me by surprise. We got out of the car and the "boss" led us through security to a large cargo elevator in a huge building. It was dark out, but I could see tons of trucks being loaded up with boxes from multiple large buildings. We took the elevator to the top floor that had a huge marble-stoned lobby area. The glass doors were locked, and the "boss" wasn't able to get in (he tried a code, but it failed). He then called somebody and apologized to us that we would have to wait a bit.

After several minutes, the elevator opened and a slim, athletic-looking man wearing new wireless headphones hopped out and greeted us with enthusiasm. He was the owner of the entire company, and he had left a dinner early to meet with us. He quickly opened the door and led us down a long hallway past dozens of large offices with names like "foreign brand relations".

There were some cubicle areas that looked like they were in the process of moving (new computers and monitors were stacked and appeared to be in the process of being set up). At the end of the hall, he led us into a massive room that I realized was his office. Inside, he had his own miniature golf putting course – not a little putting practice thing, this was a full-blown miniature golf course! What a flex to have an entire miniature golf course in your office, right? His desk was the size of a tour bus, with a massive bookshelf full of things that appeared to be a collection of things from places around the world. I found it amusing that the surface of the desk was probably larger than our entire hotel room, but he only had a tiny laptop on it with some small expensive-looking speakers. He led us over to a huge table with a tea area in the middle and pressed a button to start boiling water for tea.

Then, the long meeting began. I could barely understand a word of what was discussed, but I clocked the meeting as lasting over seven hours straight (I think we left around 1:30 AM). At one point during the meeting, the owner showed us something that I can best describe as a special type of water with special properties? He poured some of the special water on his hand to show how quickly it was absorbed by his skin, but then he poured some in a glass and poured some regular water in a separate glass. He opened a little packet of tea and sprinkled some tea into both glasses. The glass with the special water quickly changed color and he proudly announced that the special water can brew tea in seconds while regular water might take an hour at room temperature. I was afraid to try taking photos during this meeting (I really wish I could have at least taken a photo of his office). Needless to say, after the meeting ended, we took a taxi back to the hotel to sleep.

Up next, our train ride northeast to a small mountain village near Yingtan. I might do a post on the hotel breakfast and/or grocery shopping before that, though.