China’s manufacturing prowess and East Asian location make it a strategically important country for a global business like Sigma. Indeed, we have almost three decades of experience working in the Chinese market and today have a dedicated team based in China. Here we explore the work of the team and our extended Chinese operations and look at the global benefits it provides to Sigma and our customers.
Our China team
Sigma’s China team comprises 5 employees based at our local office in Hongqiao near Shanghai and in Dongguan in the south. All team members are Chinese nationals and speak Mandarin, with one also speaking Cantonese. Sigma also has a UK-based Hong Kong Chinese development manager who also speaks Mandarin.
China is a country where it takes a long time to achieve the level of trust and efficacy needed to establish relationships with manufacturers. To address this, Sigma has developed a unique way of doing business in the country, establishing a Sigma company that is both a legal entity and a wholly owned foreign entity – something few other foreign companies undertake.
This legitimising commitment, together with having specialised boots on the ground and local representation, has enabled our China team to build a decade-old symbiotic relationship with a family-owned factory that operates as Sigma’s manufacturing division. Sigma acts as the sales arm and the company acts as the manufacturing arm. Although a subcontractor, our relations with the company couldn’t be closer even if they were Sigma-owned.
This model delivers tangible commercial and margin benefits. For instance, our strong relationship with the manufacturing company gives Sigma access to its own extended supply network and thus to the wider Chinese mass production and commodity market. Our subcontractor’s buying power and leverage within the market provide supply chain opportunities that Western companies often find impossible to achieve in China.
Operations like tooling, for example, can be very complicated, costly and time-consuming, however, our relationship with the Chinese market means delivery times can be cut from months to days. As a result, Sigma can use mass production tooling in our manufacturing streams in a way not normally seen in the industry, massively extending capacity and radically cutting costs.
As an example, when one of our customers increased their order from 10,000 to 100,000 units and asked for them to be delivered in the same timescale, our subcontractor used their network to source six additional production tools in five days, enabling the contract to be completed on time.
Global benefits for Sigma
This unique way of getting fast-track, agile, best-in-class work done through our decade-old partnership, can be leveraged to support the wider Sigma group. As an agile and flexible supplier of end-to-end solutions, we carry out everything from store building to manufacturing little plastic price ticket widgets, with all work customised for our clients. We can design and manufacture products from scratch or replicate, adapt and improve existing designs.
Our China team works closely with our UK-based client management and project management teams. For instance, our UK engineering team will carry out CAD origination and CAD design and then send the manufacturing information to the Chinese subcontractor who carries out the manufacturing. The China team will then take responsibility for production delivery and quality control.
Once manufacturing is completed, Sigma offers two ways of supplying products to our clients. We can either supply directly from the factory to the end-user or supply via our own distribution centres. We also offer two types of delivery for clients. Our ‘Shop in a Box’ solution is designed for specific stores and enables us to put all the equipment needed for each particular store in a container and send it directly to the store’s location. Alternatively, we can ship products to a client’s own distribution centre. This is done using bulk containers whose contents can be sorted as required once they arrive in the warehouse. Its geographical location means our team in China is ideally situated to supply the Asia-Pacific region and Australia.
From a scale perspective, this year will see Sigma supply products for different clients with a value of around £15 million – £20 million via our China operations. Our manufacturing capacity within the country enables us to produce solutions for any retail applications, including grocery, pharmacy and fashion. We are also able to cater for major retailers with multiple locations in different territories. Currently, we serve clients globally, including in countries across Europe, Australia and the Asia Pacific region.
Overall, our team in China plays a highly valuable role in Sigma’s global operations. Working closely with our Chinese subcontractor and their wider supply network, they provide huge manufacturing capacity, with the flexibility to scale up and the agility to change production lines at pace. Moreover, our local representation and boots on the ground ensure high quality and low prices.