Questions, answered.

E-HENG Group is the parent company — a Shanghai import, export and distribution business established in 2000, serving as an authorised China channel for manufacturers including Thermo Fisher Scientific, Agilent Technologies, Waters Corporation and Sartorius. E-HENG typically works with companies that already have a China presence and need specific execution support: customs clearance, warehousing, order management, payment handling.

ChineseAgent is the market-entry and channel arm. We work with manufacturers who have no China channel yet, or whose existing channel is not delivering. Where E-HENG executes inside an established structure, ChineseAgent builds the structure — strategy, distributor network, direct sales, technical support, and the local entity relationships that make institutional procurement possible.

Same company, same team, same 25 years of relationships. A different entry point depending on where you are.

No. Consultants deliver recommendations and leave you to execute them. We execute.

We act as your operating presence in China — recruiting and managing distributors, running direct sales, handling import and logistics, providing technical and after-sales support, and representing you at exhibitions and in front of end users. Our results are measurable in revenue and shipments, not in slide decks.

Advice is not something we invoice for. Early conversations about how your category behaves in China, what a realistic entry looks like and what that entry will cost are free, and stay free.

Four, in increasing order of commitment.

Project support. We take on discrete work — market research, an exhibition, a distributor search, regulatory registration. Fees are quoted in advance against a defined scope, with no long-term obligation.

Managed China operations. We function as your China office: sales, channel management, logistics, service. Compensation is a retainer covering fixed local costs, plus a performance component tied to revenue.

Exclusive distribution. We buy from you and sell into China under an exclusive agency agreement, carrying inventory, credit and after-sales responsibility. Our return comes from the trading margin rather than from fees, because we are holding the commercial risk of the China business. You deal with one commercial relationship instead of a fragmented distributor map.

Equity partnership. We will invest alongside the owner, for a small number of manufacturers where distribution has already produced meaningful China revenue. See our Partnerships page.

Which one fits depends on your product, your margin structure, and how much of China's operating complexity you want to hold yourself. We will tell you which we think is right before you engage, including when the answer is a small fee-based project rather than anything larger.

Three things surprise most first-time entrants.

Procurement runs through relationships, not portals. A large share of high-value scientific and industrial equipment in China is bought by state-owned enterprises, public research institutes, universities and hospitals. These buyers work through tender processes, approved-supplier lists and long-standing relationships. Having the better product is necessary and not sufficient.

Local presence is a purchasing prerequisite, not a marketing choice. Institutional buyers need a domestic entity that can issue a fapiao (the official Chinese tax invoice), hold inventory, honour warranty terms and answer the phone in Chinese. Without one, many buyers cannot complete a purchase even when they want to.

Registration and compliance requirements are product-specific and slow. Import licensing, product certification and sector approvals vary widely by category and are best confirmed before you commit to a launch date.

None of this is unmanageable. China simply does not follow the sequence that works in Europe or North America.

China is large enough that no foreign manufacturer covers it directly. You will need distributors. The difficulty is that an unmanaged Chinese distributor network reliably destroys pricing.

Distributors sell outside their agreed territories, undercut one another to win the same tender, and quote at levels that make your list price meaningless within a year. Buyers learn to play three distributors off against each other before every purchase. Once that pattern is established, it is very hard to reverse, and the margin you lose never comes back.

Channel management is the work of preventing that: defined territories, enforced price floors, registered opportunities so two partners do not chase one customer, regular performance review, and removal of distributors who will not comply. The work requires a local party with the standing to enforce terms. That is the role we take on.

Because it compresses two years of relationship-building into three days, and because it answers the question your prospective customers are actually asking — whether you are serious about China.

The specialist exhibition circuit in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou is where technical buyers and serious distributors go to see equipment in person. For capital equipment this matters more than in most markets — buyers want to stand in front of the instrument, ask detailed questions, and be told what happens when it breaks. When someone credible is on the stand to answer service and warranty questions in Chinese, orders are placed on the exhibition floor.

The second effect is positional. Exhibiting signals that you have decided to enter China, rather than that you are testing the idea. Distributors will not invest in a product line they suspect will be withdrawn in eighteen months, and institutional buyers will not risk a purchase they may not be able to service. Showing up is the cheapest way to demonstrate commitment.

A Chinese-language site hosted domestically is the minimum credential. Search and traffic behave very differently for sites hosted outside the mainland, and buyers researching your category will not find you otherwise. Translation alone is not enough — specifications, applications and technical documentation need to use the terminology Chinese engineers actually search for.

A representative office or local entity does something more concrete. It tells state-owned enterprises, research institutes, universities and hospitals that you are a long-term supplier they can safely build into a multi-year programme. For many of these buyers, procurement rules make a locally established supplier a practical requirement rather than a preference.

If you are not ready to establish either yourself, these are functions we perform on your behalf.

Almost never the product. This is the most common pattern we see, and the cause is usually weak follow-up rather than a lack of competitiveness.

Three things go wrong.

Follow-up happens by email from another time zone. Chinese business communication runs on WeChat and phone calls, and an English email sent from Europe a week later often goes unanswered even by a genuinely interested buyer.

Purchasing cycles are long and institutional. For capital equipment, six to eighteen months between first contact and a purchase order is normal, with budget approval, tender procedure and internal technical review in between. A buyer who goes quiet for four months has not lost interest; that buyer is inside a process you cannot see.

There is often no local party to buy from. Interest converts to an order only once someone can quote in RMB, issue a fapiao, deliver, install and service the equipment.

The fix is a local presence that follows up in Chinese, stays with the buyer through the procurement cycle, and can close the transaction domestically.

Established manufacturers of proprietary scientific and industrial equipment — test and measurement, analytical instruments, metrology, inspection, industrial imaging, sensors and process equipment. Their products are typically capital equipment rather than consumables, sold to research, industrial and institutional buyers at unit prices generally above USD 10,000. Most partners have revenue between roughly USD 1 million and USD 30 million.

What matters is the economics of each sale rather than the size of the company. High-value, technically complex equipment sold to institutional buyers is where local presence, technical support and channel management change the outcome. Low-value, high-volume consumer products are better served by a different kind of partner.

We do not work only with companies new to China. Roughly half the situations we are approached about involve a company that has already tried China and is unhappy with the result — an underperforming distributor, an agent who has gone quiet, a channel producing occasional orders but no growth, or pricing eroded by distributors competing against one another. Replacing a channel is a different exercise from a first entry: it involves an orderly transition, retention of customers who currently sit with the outgoing partner, and usually the recovery of price discipline. We do it regularly.

Occasionally, and never as an opening position.

A distribution agreement already delivers everything we need as a market-access partner. Asking an owner for equity at the outset would mean asking to be paid twice for the same contribution, and we do not do it.

Equity becomes relevant later and only in specific circumstances: when a distribution relationship has produced substantial, proven China revenue; when that revenue has become an asset worth protecting on both sides; and when the next phase — local assembly, dedicated engineering, a China-specific product variant — requires a commitment neither party can justify under a contract either side can terminate. At that point a minority strategic investment aligns the two sides properly. Our Partnerships page sets out how we structure it.

In a small number of cases, yes.

Where an owner is approaching retirement with no succession plan, and the business would benefit from a China channel it has never had the resources to build, an acquisition can be the cleanest structure for everyone. We are a strategic buyer rather than a private-equity fund — we buy to operate and hold, not to resell in five years — and we have no interest in relocating manufacturing or breaking up an established team.

Our criteria and process are set out on our Partnerships page. Enquiries to Julian Feng, Managing Director.

Your IP stays yours. We do not manufacture your products, we do not license your designs, and we do not take ownership of your technology under any of our structures.

As for your brand, our practice is the opposite of white-labelling. We sell your equipment under your name, because the credibility of a foreign scientific instrument brand is a substantial part of what makes it saleable in China. Chinese-language marketing materials, technical documentation and the domestic website are produced under your brand and remain your property.

IP protection in China is a genuine issue and worth handling properly. Trademark registration in particular should be filed early, and before your first exhibition. We will raise it with you if you have not done so.

Yes, and we are strict about the list.

We do not work in defence, ITAR-controlled products, aerospace supply chain (AS9100), nuclear supply chain, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, advanced laser and photonics systems, quantum technology, or anything related to missiles or unmanned aerial systems.

This is deliberate. Exposure to export controls and investment screening is the fastest way for a China partnership to become a liability for the manufacturer, and we would rather decline in the first conversation than create a problem for a partner two years in. If part of your customer base is defence-related but the product itself is a standard commercial item that is not export-controlled, that is usually workable — tell us early and we will assess it.

For capital equipment, first meaningful orders typically arrive nine to eighteen months after launch, and a stable distributor network takes two to three years to build properly.

Anyone promising materially faster results at this price point is describing a one-off sale rather than a market position. The exhibition-to-first-order path can be quicker where a buyer already has a budget allocated, and we have taken orders on the exhibition floor. But building the channel that produces repeat revenue is a multi-year exercise, and it is worth planning for as one.

We take three kinds of introduction.

Clients who want a China partner rather than a buyer. Owners who are not ready to sell, or who have run a process and decided against selling, but whose product would sell well in China and who have no route into it. We are a distribution counterparty, not a competing bidder.

Owners open to a strategic minority investor. These are rare, but where they exist we can move quickly — and we are not a private-equity fund competing on valuation.

Portfolio companies of sponsors you have sold to. A newly acquired portfolio company under pressure to show growth, with China named in the investment thesis and no capability to execute on it, is our strongest fit.

Our buy-box, sectors, size range and exclusions are set out on our Partnerships page. Direct enquiries to Julian Feng, Managing Director — julian@chineseagent.com.