Despite all the talk about China being the world's largest economy by the year 2015, enormous logistical problems -- including an overburdened and antiquated infrastructure -- continue to hamper its development. What to do? Larry Alberts, a Hong Kong-based vice president of Mercer Management Consulting, has three suggestions for companies doing business in the People's Republic:
- Build redundancy into the logistics systems (barges for shipping chemicals, for example, don't always appear when scheduled).
- Establish a holding company that can oversee distribution, sales, and marketing of goods from all manufacturing plants.
- Develop relationships with and investments in local distributors (and get exclusivity in return).
