FHKI 60th Anniversary Commemorative Album

“To explore this huge and diversified new market, Hong Kong companies have to assign a team of sales and marketing specialists dedicated to this task. They have to build their own brands, construct effective sales channels and focus on segments with the greatest potential. Not many Hong Kong companies have been well prepared to explore this new market, which requires investment of vast financial and human resources. It may be sensible that companies should first review their own nature of business and strength before deciding if they should tap the Mainland market. The Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macau Greater Bay Area should be a good start if companies wish to enter into the Mainland market. The Greater Bay Area’s economic capacity in fact is very large and is comparable to the German economy,” Dr Victor Lo said. “The e-commerce is an important window for companies to obtain breakthroughs in sales and marketing as it can go beyond any geographic and physical limitation. Companies can deploy on-line and off-line shops to promote their businesses. E-commerce has gradually become a business norm. It may be fair to say that whether a company can sustain its development may depend on how well it can master e-commerce. Hong Kong should strengthen its capability in e-commerce; otherwise, it will soon lag behind many of its competitors.” After gaining sizeable profits and achieving exponential growth in the PRD region for about two decades, Hong Kong industries encountered obstacles which hindered their further development: surge in production costs due to labour shortages, increasingly stringent regulatory issues (labour legislation, environmental regulations, tax reforms, safety rules etc) and trade protection measures imposed by overseas markets. Some Hong Kong companies responded by further relocating to places where production costs were relatively low like northern or western Guangdong, or inner provinces. Some even relocated offshore to Southeast Asian countries. Another approach was to adopt high technology, apply innovation and design to upgrade and transform. With a population of 1.4 billion and rising levels of disposable income, the Mainland domestic market offers new opportunities for Hong Kong industrial enterprises. However, most of the Hong Kong companies are not familiar with the Mainland market. They used to conduct OEM/OBM operations and export products to overseas markets. The trading and marketing systems and sales channels on the Mainland are very different from those of the western markets which they have been engaged in for over three decades. To them, the Mainland market is totally new. Federation of Hong Kong Industries 60 th Anniversary Commemorative Album 39