Amasia Marketing Consultants

1. If you are not a paid member, you will be able to read some general information of the job opportunities we post here. You decide if it’s a good fit for your company. If yes then pls pay us to become a member so that you can see the detailed translation job description, including the plans, drawings, etc. So that you can prepare a proposal and submit it to the client. However, if you are very established in China, or you have worked with Amasia before and supported our work. We will help you when we see necessary but we are not obligated to recommend you and help you. We are only obligated to help paid members whenever there is a project for them. They are always on top of our list.
2. Before you submit any proposal, make sure you have sent the client/us your brochure first, it needs to be specicially for the project you are proposing, we do not accept a brochure if the projects in it are not related to the job we are proposing.
3. If the client likes your presentation, then we will help you to prepare a proposal. When we pass your brochure/proposal to the client, we will copy you so that you know who this client is. We will also provide verified information of this client to you.
4. Please specify in your proposal that your fee is not tax included. In this country domestic tax is very heavy. Tell the client that they have to pay any taxes in China, and you cannot issue the formal invoices which do not exist in the rest of world except China. Only a registered tax payer in China can release that. If you agree to do so, then you are saying you will pay tax in China.
5. It is always very delaying when a Chinese client tries to pay to an offshore business bank account, so try to charge more in advance, modify your normal payment schedule. Do not ask the client to pay you monthly because you will have to wait for the payments every month. On average, for you to receive a payment from a Chinese client, it takes 40 days. Unless the client can pay you from their Hong Kong bankaccount, or an overseas bank account, do not agree to a monthly payment schedule. And always ask for more retainer than you normally charge.
6. Try not to buy air tickets yourself and then ask for reimbursement, before a contract is signed, unless you are traveling in China for other projects. Ask the client to book air tickets for you and pay for your hotel if you have not received any money from them. You may end up spending a lot of time to ask for the reimbursement. Do not think they can reimburse you quickly. Things are much more complicated in China for things like this, even it’s just a small amount.
7. Always ask for FarPeow (Fapiao), which is the formal receipt from the hotel/airline/restaurant/taxi…any business with a red stamp of the local tax government on the top of the receipt. When you check out of a hotel, when you pay the bill in a restaurant, after you check in the airport, always ask them to give you a formal receipt or a formal ticket so that the client can use it to reimburse you. They cannot accept an invoice of air fare that you printed out yourself. It needs to be from the airline in a formal format.
8. Try to take Amasia with you to be your translator when you meet with the client at the beginning. We are not only much more experienced translator who knows all the terminologies and rules, we are good consultants who know more than the client and you, in most cases. Just tell the client that we are your translator. Amasia prefer to be a supporting role whose name is unknown, this way the client will find it easier if they think they are talking to your company directly. Yes in many cases since Amasia recommended you to a client, they have known that. We always tell the client that we are just the translator and representative of a designer in China, whenever we can.

Is the client going to pay me an air ticket to fly to China?

Believe it or not, this is one of the biggest obstacle for an international designer to work in China. Because most Chinese clients do not want to spend money on a designer who they have never met, even though the brochure/portfolio shows the designer is well qualified. And very few international designers are willing to pay out of their own pockets to buy the tickets, before the client is committed to hire them or a contract is signed.

So the answer for your question is, probably not. But we will always explain to the client why it is necessary for the client to make a committement first, or buy the air ticket for the designer if he/she is invited to a city to meet with the client. If none of them are willing to take the risk, then we have to recommend someone who has already been working in China.

Why are you saying not to ask for reimbursement of our travel expenses?

1. First of all, in China travel budgets are always included in your design fee, the client wants to have a clear idea how much their budget should be. They do not want to argue with you when they think you are spending too much money on your air tickets later on. If you do not want to take any risk of losing money, you are putting them under risk of the possibility that they are out of control of cost.
2. Asking for reimbursment of travel expenses and other small amounts takes too much time of everyone. The client is too busy to deal with things like that. It would funny if you ask them to reimburse for some printing costs, or even long distance call. The time of everyone spent on things like this is much more valuable than the amount itself.
3. So always include a budget of flat fee for each man.travel to China. For instance, most design firms from America charge $6,000-$7,000 per man.trip. They would pay their own tickets and book hotels themselves. Some top designers would charge $25,000 per man.trip but Amasia tends to walk away from them.
4. Normally it is you that book the hotels in the city where the job is located, and you may for your own costs and it is part of the travel budget in your design fee. You should also include the travel budget of the translator if you are going to hire Amasia to work with you. We are cheaper than you fly your own translator to China but we are more expensive than you hire one in China. We recommend you hire us to be your translator at the beginning of each project as there might be more communication/collaboration to get things right and clear. We are much better than any of the translators you can find in this case. We do not rely on translation fee to survice so either way is fine.