Who needs to learn from who about shanzhai?

This story is the follow up analysis of our live coverage of the “Crossing the Line from Copying to Innovation” panel discussion last Friday.

What's the next step for shanzhai manufacturers of Shenzhen? How do they grow from copycats to innovators? These were the key questions that were discussed by a panel of leading international and Hong Kong designer at the 2009 China (Shenzhen) International Original Design Fair on Friday 18 September.


And naturally given that they are designers, their key message was that to move up the value chain shanzhaimanufacturers should hire them to create innovative new products that will enable them to stand out in the market place and start building their brands.

One of the speakers, Paul Cohen, CEO of Cube Industrial Design, even presented a concept mobile phone design for the shanzhai manufacturers to adopt, suggesting that its large keys and screen would be ideal for older consumers. It looked like an interesting idea, though it will be interesting to see if any of the shanzai manufacturers follow up with actual products.

Unfortunately, apart from this single concept design the panel members contributed very little in terms of practical suggestions for the shanzhai manufacturers, preferring instead to mouth platitudes about the need for innovation and differentiation and - in the case of Alan Yip in particular - condemning the popularization of shanzhai culture in China through the Internet and books celebrating the phenomenon. It's not so difficult to identify what challenges the shanzhai manufacturers face, but it's a lot harder to say how they should overcome them.   

Ironically, Brandon Edwards from Frog Design pointed to how the shanzai manufacturers are already going down the innovation path without any help from external designers and scaring some of the major global and Chinese domestic brands into the bargain through a process he called "rapid prototyping".

This refers to the ability of shanzai manufacturers to quickly create a new product design and then just as rapidly improve it based on the feedback that they receive from the market. Indeed, rapid prototyping combined with the ability of to carry out limited production runs of only a few thousand units are giving the Shanzai manufacturers a key competitive edge in the market place - and one that larger domestic and global companies with slower decision-making processes and higher product volume requirements are finding increasingly difficult to compete against.  

By the end of the panel discussion I was left wondering who has the most to learn from who:   yes, there's no doubt that the shanzhai manufacturers do need to significantly upgrade their ability to create truly unique products, but at the same time the major multinational and Chinese domestic brands need to increase their flexibility in responding to changes in the consumer needs.

One thing's for sure, though, as this panel discussion so vividly showed, the debate about the shanzhai has only just started and like them or not the shanzhai are not going to go away anytime soon.

Articles - Op-Ed