Liu Minxia

    CANDID and precise, Bernard Duburcq is more a technical person than a businessman.

    But the 51-year-old Frenchman has won the hearts of his customers since he started a consulting firm in Shenzhen about a year ago, Frenchman In Asia Consulting Ltd.

    Worried that the business might lose steam in the economic downturn, his customers are voluntarily looking for new customers for him.

    “This is the other side of the coin. He may not be able to win a large number of customers at once, but those who trust him are very loyal,” said Duburcq’s Chinese wife, Wang Lanqing.

    When he came to Shenzhen for the first time on a business trip in 2003, Duburcq found most problems with international trade stemmed from misunderstandings arising from cultural and language differences.

    “Only after some time did I realize that when Chinese say ‘Yes,’ they may mean ‘maybe’ or even ‘No,’” Duburcq said.

    After meeting Wang in 2004, Duburcq began to learn more of Chinese and Chinese culture from her.

    With a growing understanding of Chinese culture, Duburcq decided in late 2007 to establish a company to provide consulting and quality checking services for Western firms.

    “Following several high-profile scandals involving China-made products, some Western customers were shunning goods from China,” he said. “So I set up such a company and went to factories in person to check the quality for Western outsourcers. By doing this, I hoped to help restore faith in China-made products.”

    With a slowly growing customer base, Duburcq is planning to expand the company’s business scope this year.

    “It used to be very complicated to set up a new company in France, with a lot of paper work and very strict requirements,” he said. “But with an increasing number of people losing their jobs in the global economic recession, the French Government has eased the rules and made it very easy to register a small company.”

    As a result, more than 1,000 new small businesses have been created in France during the past months and the government expects about 200,000 new enterprises to come into being in 2009, Duburcq said. “Some of them might have the need to source from China and we can do some trading business with them,” he said.

    These small businesses, according to Duburcq, are usually run by one person and buy in small volumes, so that large trading companies are reluctant to help them.

    Currently with no employees, Duburcq and his wife share the responsibilities. “I talk to foreign customers and check product quality and Lanqing deals with Chinese manufacturers,” he said.

    Previously working for Hewlett-Packard as a computer engineer and project leader for 17 years, Duburcq highly values HP’s company culture and wants to build a similar one for his company in the future.

    “I plan to employ some really capable people when I can earn enough money and give them good salaries,” he said. “I want to give them what they deserve and keep them working for the company for a long time. High (staff) turnover is bad for a company.”

    The global economic crisis has dragged many small firms into the mire, but Duburcq is seeing opportunities. “In the past, local manufacturers didn’t pay much attention to us because I usually buy in small quantities. Now they are losing clients and we are becoming more important to them,” Wang said.

    Duburcq hopes he can expand the company to other parts of China and even other parts of Asia, to live up to the company name: Frenchman In Asia.