The Irish company Serosep is a leading producer of laboratory diagnostic products that are broadly used in hospitals and clinical practices. After identifying China as a market with huge potential for their products, Managing Director Dermot Scanlon and Export Sales Manager Eoin Kelleher had the idea of opening up a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) in China. However, after attending a seminar of the EU SME Centre and enquiring several times with the Centre’s experts, they realised that it would be better to start with working with a distributor instead.
Dermot and Eoin then found Beijing ALT Biotech, a Chinese distributor with knowledge of the healthcare market in China. Together they completed the lengthy process of registering their company and products in China. This took more than 6 months, but then sales could finally start in China. At the time of the interview with Eoin, he expected the first order to be coming in the following weeks and it shipped from Serosep in May 2014. For the beginning the target clients are private practices and laboratories that work for private hospitals.
Serosep first got to know the EU SME Centre through another Irish SME. They took part in many of the Centre’s webinars and used the documents in the Knowledge Centre on the EU SME Centre website. In the beginning they sent several enquiries about setting up a WFOE in China through the Ask-the-Expert service. The information they received from the Centre made them change their perception of how to do business in China and how difficult it would be to enter the market. It directly impacted Serosep’s change of strategy.
