A few months ago, I made a promise — I told you I'd track down units with legitimate EPA certification, and I asked my Canadian friends to hold off on buying until I figured it out.
Well, I came up empty. Completely empty.
And honestly, that's on me. I went into this way too optimistic about the Chinese market. I thought my supplier contacts were solid enough to get this done.
Here's the thing though — before I went independent, pretty much everything I knew came through Hefei. Once I was out on my own and started visiting different markets across the country, I slowly pieced together a much more complete picture. And what I found was... not great.
It's complicated in the sense that almost every layer of the supply chain is running some kind of game on the next one. But it's also dead simple: most of those EPA labels are fake, and they won't make it through customs anyway.
So I'm dropping it. I'm sorry — I couldn't deliver on that one.
That's the first thing.

Second thing.
I asked some sales reps I know to put together proper, thorough walkthrough videos for individual units — full documentation for each machine: what's actually on the EPA label, whether it's legitimate, which countries it can't be shipped to. Give buyers a clear, complete picture upfront and save everyone the back-and-forth.
Nobody did it.
Instead, they're still spending hours every day cranking out random, context-free short clips — because short-form content gets views, apparently.
This week I deleted most of the short videos from my own channel. Didn't move the needle at all. Which tells you something: the people who actually follow this channel aren't here because of the short stuff.
Now you might be thinking — Mike, why don't you just make those videos yourself?
Fair question. But I'm not a salesperson. I don't have detailed firsthand knowledge of every unit. What I'm good at is finding problems. For these guys, a five-minute walkthrough video is nothing. I also wanted to see who actually takes this seriously. I told them straight up: this is what it means to actually serve your customers. Sell units one at a time. Give people real information. Don't just blast out a pile of vague listings for inventory you don't even control.
I'm still waiting to see who steps up first.

Third thing.
This one comes from a conversation I had with a client today. I'm putting it last on purpose — Chinese sales reps usually don't watch English videos all the way through, so this keeps things cleaner on my end.
Here's how these markets actually work: every market is made up of a bunch of different companies, and none of them owns more than about ten units. Everybody pools their inventory and shares stock across the market. But here's the part that matters — the repair guys are shared too. So the quality of any given unit basically comes down to who's been maintaining it. And the difference in skill level and how much they actually care? It varies enormously, market by market.
So if you need me to inspect equipment for you, tell me which market first — because some of these places have machines that are rough, and leaking oil is just considered normal. No point wasting your time there. If it's a market I haven't been to yet, I'm happy to make the trip and check it out — figure out whether it's worth your while or a complete waste of time.

One more thing for anyone who's new here.
My English is honestly pretty bad. I've never been able to get a proper handle on listening comprehension — maybe my brain is just too full of Mandarin at this point, I don't know. And my spoken English isn't great either. What you're hearing right now is me printing out a script, reading it out loud over and over, and then picking the take I hated the least.
So if we end up working together, Google Translate is probably going to be involved. Just setting expectations early.
And to my friends from India specifically — I say this with total respect — but when the T sounds become D sounds, my brain just completely gives up trying to decode what's happening.
I'm really sorry about that. Genuinely.

tag: none

Add New Comment