Is China the first (ever) Growth Hacker
The situation

I am not a big fan of thinking. To be perfectly honest I am not even sure I am good at it. So I will go straight to the point. Yesterday evening, whilst enjoying my 2nd (or 5th) rounds of shots with some friends, I realised the glass I was using was “made in China” (for the record, I should precise I am a French man working in startups in London for 3 years now as a Web/user/marketing analyst and more recently as a Growth hacker).

Anyway that’s fair enough, there are no cutting edge discoveries here. However starting next week my first day as a full time Growth hacker for an email app (http://wizzmail.com), I somehow kept thinking all day about it (along with, “is taking a 4th x 500mg of paracetamol a good thing to do”). Cleverly (or not), instead I decided to write my thoughts about it.

Why is China so obsessed about putting its fingerprint on every single things they are manufacturing? I mean seriously, I am pretty sure that 80% of the products around me have been manufactured there and actually have a mention proving it, starting with the computer I am writing with at the moment.

Please, don’t take me wrong, I really like my laptop, and I believe China is quite good at what they are doing (eg: manufacturing very good value for money product that company can scale easily).

So why do they still feel the need to put that “made in China” sticker everywhere? I mean who else does that? And on EVERY products?

Time for the first argument

Let’s take an example of two friends of mine that needed a GPS receptor able to communicate with the GPRS French network (http://mapetitebalise.com ). Guess their first sourcing destination choice was?

If you have India in mind, well sorry to tell you but you are wrong. It was (TaDam…) China! If you are still reading, I bet you are thinking those dudes must (at least) have searched for such products on Alibaba.com (which by the way is saving Yahoo.com from going out of business).

And you are right, yes they did.

In fact, Alibaba, is really amazing for helping any company in the world sourcing products made primarily in China. For example, let’s say you need a JCT graphite nuclear reactor. Well, they have it : http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/1188259098/JCT_graphite_nu... (I don’t even know what that is).

Now, let’s say you just need an olive oil extractor, they also have it: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/877079592/cold_press_oil_e....

The list is actually so long I am not sure my computer’s memory can hold it. The fact is Alibaba.com will provide you the best deals for almost everything you need to manufacture.

2nd argument

Since the new government of Francois Hollande was elected in France (May 2012), the country got itself a full-time minister, nominated for the “productive recovery” of France : http://www.redressement-productif.gouv.fr/.

I should warn you, this is when you might be mind blown: guess what was his first move?

Yes, he created a lot of advantages for products made in France and also strongly advised companies to show that their products were made in France (by “strongly” I actually mean mostly financial advantages).

Third and last small argument

Finally, the other day, I found myself downloading an app called Frontback. This was in fact, just because a friend posted a cool personalized picture on facebook with the mention (“via frontback” - http://frontback.me/ ).

So, lets sum up:

- China is writing down “made in China” since at least the 90s (before that I wasn’t able to check)

- This mention, seems to make people/company looking for sourcing products, firstly search in China (just like the high CTR for the first ad on a Google search)

- The French government decided to try it - to make people buy more french made products

My conclusion:

Writing “made in China” on all products manufactured in China is a growth hack. In fact, I am tempted to say that China was one of the first Growth hacker using this method.

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