Consulting · 咨询 · since 2008
I help European hardware startups get their products manufactured in China.
I have spent 18 years helping European startups manufacture consumer electronics in China. Not advising from a distance. Working in and with the factories, on the ground, across the Pearl River Delta and beyond. I have done this for products ranging from IoT devices and wearables to audio hardware and connected consumer goods.
Most consultants know either the technical side or the business side. I know both. I have a hardware and software engineering background and I have managed the full supply chain and project management process for dozens of products. That means I can read the schematic, review the tooling, negotiate the BOM, write the test spec, and hold the factory accountable to the timeline. In one person.
I work with European hardware startups building consumer electronics products in volumes of 5,000 units or more. If you are earlier than that, or building something outside consumer electronics, I am probably not the right fit. If you are at that stage and building that kind of product, keep reading.
Every project I take on follows this sequence. Each step builds on the one before it. Skip one and the rest fall apart.
The foundation everything else builds on. Numbered lines, version controlled, specific enough for a Chinese factory to quote and build from without guessing. If you do not have a PRD, we build one together. If you have one, I will tell you whether a factory can actually use it.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. We walk through everything that can go wrong, from component-level failures to supply chain risks, before the factory starts cutting steel. Fixing problems on paper costs nothing. Fixing them in tooling costs tens of thousands.
Who does what, written down, with names attached. Your side, the factory side, and anyone in between. Most hardware projects fail not because of technical problems but because nobody was explicitly responsible for a critical task. This document closes that gap.
Critical path, not sprints. Hardware has hard dependencies and fixed lead times. Tooling takes 6 to 8 weeks regardless of how agile your software team is. The plan maps every dependency, every gate, and every decision point with real dates and real owners.
Tied to every previous step. Tooling costs, BOM costs, NRE, MOQs, payment milestones, landed cost per unit. No surprises. You know what you are spending, when you are spending it, and what triggers each payment before a single dollar leaves the account.
Thirty minutes, no commitment, no pitch deck. Tell me what you are building and I will tell you whether I can help and what the process looks like.
Want the full playbook before we talk? Read The Hardest Hardware Lessons on hardware development and China manufacturing.