Zenzu online Oriental Furniture store is about to branch out with a new website focused on solid wood doors handcrafted by a Chinese furniture supplier in the Zhejiang province. As yet we have not settled on a brand name or logo for the company and as with the naming procedure for the Oriental furniture business the process is proving to be an arduous task. Perhaps we are being a little too perfectionist in placing too much importance on a name, but it is something that we could be stuck with for many years and is somehow feels central to the marketing message that needs to be conveyed. The current process has served as a reminder of the methods we had to resort to in order to find a suitable name for the oriental furniture business. The first method is of course to sit and brainstorm brand names off the top of the head. However, unless you are of a particularly creative bent, it is surprisingly difficult to make the brain think laterally and focus seems to keep looping back to some relatively narrow confines. Having struggled with this method we decided that the Chinese furniture name choice needed a catalytic input from elsewhere. Firstly we tried the names of Chinese Kings and Chinese place names, and then we tried Chinese pinyin translations of classic English home furnishings nomenclature such as living, live, design, etc.

With a selection of almost 200 different pinyin words and goodness knows how many combinations that were filter through a spreadsheet we decided primarily to focus on something that simply had the most apposite sound to it; then hoping, given the type of names that were on the list that the combination would have a comprehensible and appropriate meaning. An added complication was that pinyin does not have an entirely intuitive pronunciation for English speaking peoples; thus, names that sounded fantastic pronounced correctly in the Putonghua mother tongue had an entirely different aural outcome when pronounced with a phonetic English language intonation.

We finally settled on a group of words which although not too imaginative seemed to conjure up the correct image for the niche Chinese furniture image that needed to be conveyed. Among these words were “Zen” which has obvious positive oriental connotations in the English language, Zhen meaning “really” and ‘Zhu’ or loosely changed to suit the English tongue ‘Zu’, meaning to live. We actually stumbled across the name of an ancient king Zhen-zu and having changed this to Zenzu we had a name which also meant “Pearl” any very loosely “To really live”. First and foremost the name was easy to pronounce by native English speakers, it conjured up images of the Eastern world, and also, rather fortuitously had a triple meaning all relevant to the marketing slant required for oriental furniture. After a lot of hard work we had our brand name.

Following a similar process for wooden doors we are hoping that the Chinese furniture brand naming methodology will save us a bit of time and effort. Our focus this time will be on Greek and Latin nomenclature for such words and phrases as “open door”, “gate”, “artisan”, “wood”, “forest”, “tree” etc. We don’t expect the process to be quick and easy but hopefully more efficient than our first effort for the oriental furniture market!

Following Zenzu’s recent business trip to see our Oriental Furniture supplier in China and also the Chinese Furniture manufacturers of solid wooden doors we are moving ahead with the launch of a new website focussed on doors. Separate to the Zenzu Chinese furniture website the new wooden doors website will be aimed at filling an online niche in the market. Google statistics and our own customer research has confirmed that there is high demand for high-end solid wood doors in the UK market place. Given this fact it surprised us to find a niche in the online market. Most UK suppliers online have a realtively low-end offering largely providing veneer doors without much stylistic website imaging and without value added service offerings. It is also almost impossible to buy doors online as you could do through our Oriental furniture website.

Now that we have established who our Chinese furniture supplier will be for wooden doors we have proceeded to the next phase and have had meetings with Roxxor our web developer and e-commerce advisor. Our aim is create a very stylistic interior design orientated website: to achieve this we will need to rely on our pohographer Martin Saban-Smith who has done an excellent job with our Oriental Furniture range. Martin will be responsible for close up shots, full length imaging and also in situ photo-shoots once we have installed doors at a trial location.

Of course the venture is still a launch in to the unknown, but we have run as many market analytics as is feasible given our resources and are confident that the business model which was so successfull when launching the Zenzu oriental furniture business can be replicated with equally impressive results. The aim is to launch a beta site in December so as to hit the January / February peak season in the new year. At the outset we are hoping to be offering unsanded doors, lightly stained doors and a bespoke staining service. We also hope to incorporate a range of handles and doors in keeping with the styles on offer. Initially these will focus on 4 panel and 6 panel colonial doors as well as simple ledge, frame and brace designs. At some stage we would also like to offer a door hanging service having established reliable regional contacts. We hope to bring to bear all of the e-commerce, warehousing, distribution and customer service experience that has been garnered over the last 3 years in running the Zenzu Chinese furniture business. We are looking forward with both eagerness and trepidation.

The Zenzu Chinese furniture website crashed 5 days ago and we are still not live. The database hosted by our internet service provider 1and1 has been spammed and the website corrupted. 1and1 have appalling service: on calling them to explain that our oriental furniture business was out livilhood and that we need to be up and running asap the useless individual on the phone informed us that the only way we could communicate with anyone technical would be to send an e-mail to their abuse / support team. An e-mail was spent and nothing was heard within 12 hours nor within 24 hours of for that matter 5 days later after sending repeated e-mails and making phone calls. Truly dreadul. Our excellent e-commerce and website development partnets Roxxor have been working tirelessly to move the chinese furniture site across to be hosted on one of their dedicated servers that have been recently installed.

Zenzu are probably going to lose about one month’s worth of business from essentially not having an oriental furniture shop front for 2 weeks: people tend to make a purchasing decision for items such as a chinese wardrobe over several weeks so with the website being down for 2 weeks the buying decision could have affected the natural buying cycle of many people who had visited the site in the weeks before hand.

However it could be a blessing in disguise as we are now migrating over to a much more secure environment with Roxxor who we will be working with in the future to expand from chinese furniture to develop more advance e-commerce website platforms. In addition to oriental furniture we should be launching sites for high send solid wood doors and for a high end designer barbeque. Watch this space. Of course that all depends on us selling oriental furniture which is not that easy without a live website! All being well, we will be back in action within a few days and then it is a waiting game while we generate more customer interest over the subsequent weeks.

Some of the Zenzu team have lived in South China over the border from Hong Kong which is an area that attracts people from all over China. Among these people are some from Sichuan province and the Chendgu area. Several of our close friends have family from that region but fortunately non were injured. The Zenzu team visited their Chinese Furniture supplier recently and it was remarkable to see what an impact the disaster had had on the nation. As a mark of respect all foreign / non-essential TV channels were taken off air for almost a week and several were only transmitted in black & white for a while.

During our visit to out Oriental Furniture suppliers our contact Ann said that she had put an offer in to adopt an orphan from the earthquake disaster. Apparently this was not unusual with people flooding in with offers from all over China. Stories abounded with hugely generous offers of monetary donations from officials and celebrities. Althought this focus was largely positive a murkier underside was the internet tittle-tattle comparing the amounts of money donated by film-stars, TV-stars, muscians and sportsmen. Singers deemed to have given selfishly have already seen sales of albums drop significantly, irrespetive of whether gossip-mongering was true. A real shame to focus on this in the contect of such a humanetarian disaster. In contrast though, it seems as if nearly every person in the population has donated a little and there was a heartening story of a beggar who had donated all of his meagre savings to the cause. As a company our chinese furniture suppliers had donated a huge amount of money to charities which we were quite proud of. A very nice company with a very nice attitude.

Really was fascinating to see the media response from within China with nearly every domestic channel dedicated to ongoing reports. While the European perspective tended to focus on the negative stories such as poor quality school buildings, the Chinese themselves seemed to have pulled toghether to focus on solving the immediate problems of food, water, shelter and resuce. Our Chinese furniture suppliers said they had heard of such rumours but were staying postive in the short-term. Of course we have no idea how much of this focus has been guided by the chinese state through the heavily controlled domestic media but the empathy did indeed seem genuine wherever we went.

Our Oriental furniture supplier is going to start increasing the number of Chinese furniture samples that they supply to us. Previously they were reticent to provide these in large quanities. Bizarely from a UK perspective, although perhaps typically from a Chinese persective, the owner of the factory had imposed a restriction on colour finish samples leaving the factory as he thought they would be liable for competitor copying. A rather unusual thought, but following our recent visit to China, our main contact has assured us that this mis-conception has been cleared up. We were also able to confirm during our visit that the beautiful dark red that we use for the Traditional Chinese Wardrobe would become the default red shade for the Zenzu collection. Samples are on the way to the UK. The red originated from a sumptuous interior design project that we were involved in and is truly stunning.

Our red range of chinese tables, oriental wardrobes and wedding cabinets do not sell in high numbers online, but when our customers visit the warehouse they tend to fall in love with the shades. The same goes for our rustic colour range and the dark purple that we use on our range of Hunan Trunks. The UK market is very conservative in this respect, with brighter colours being the most popular chinese furniture shades that are solid in Italy, Spain and Scandinavia. The U.S market is less eclectic in its choices but still far more liberal and open to alternative colour schemes that the vary conservative UK oriental furniture market.

Zenzu samples are made of jia-bam or ‘pressed wood’ with a very thin layer of Yu-mu veneer up on which the stain/varnish or lacquer finishing is shown. The construction of Zenzu’s actual pieces is of course in solid wood as much as possible. All jambs are made with solid Yu-mu (Southern Elm) as are wardrobe fronts and sideboard / sidetable tops. Most side panels are made with veneer finish and this is actually quite an important decision that we had to make because it prevents the likelihood of contraction and splitting. Chinese furniture can split in UK conditions when it is transferred from humid Chinese conditions into the dry homes of the UK. Even by kiln-drying furniture to 7% some homes are drier still than this and may contract down to 5% humidity. Veneer sections in combination with solid wood for the most visible areas reduce this risk. Lots of thought is given to this: in fact as all of our chinese wardrobes are made with solid wood doors they often contract and the construction of them is deliberately designed to accommodate this flex; however, this contraction can cause the doors to naturally swing open on their hinges once they are in a home so as a matter of course we added hinges to oriental wardrobes right across the Zenzu Chinese furniture range

Ahead of schedule on the final working day of our chinese furniture sourcing trip we had two remaining suppliers to see. The first supplier was appalling in every aspect which really did highlight to us once again the essential requirement of developing face to face relationships with manufacturers of oriental furniture for export. Their factory seemed to be geared up for manufacture of basic composite doors to the domestic Chinese Furniture market, was very cramped and seemed to pay scant regard to cleanliness and hygiene giving some concern to the likely treatment of the workers. Knowledge of types of wood suitable for solid wood manufacture was almost non-existence with the Zenzu team having to provide names of indigenous wood types in Chinese characters; the factory manager had to then call the local timber wholesaler to find out about the wood and the bulk cost. The result was a cost estimate almost double of the other suppliers. A worthwhile visit only to get a perspective of who business competent the other suppliers were in the context of the general Chinese market place.

Our last visit was to a much larger Chinese furniture company who had a huge focus on the domestic and export market for steel-lined security and fire doors. Their understanding of mortise and tenon solid wood door construction was excellent and they would clearly have the capability to deliver the products that we were looking for. However the size of the company suggested we would have a lack of focus moving forward and we certainly did not get a good impression of any mutual interest in our business requirements. The company were, however, about to receive EU certification for export of fire doors which was extremely useful to know as this is a market in the UK that we are interested in for the future.

In all a very successful trip to both our existing Oriental furniture supplier and to the new Chinese furniture prospects who we hope to develop relations with for the import of solid wood doors to the UK market. As ever, it was fascinating to see another city in China and although we wouldn’t say the trip was fun it was definitely interesting, at times very amusing and from a business perspective hugely promising.

Up at 6am on this day with 3 suppliers to see. The first Chinese furniture supplier was the one we were most hopeful about and in retrospect they didn’t disappoint. Their factory facilities were large and new, with an excellent kiln drying building able to accurately judge humidity levels to very low tolerances. Compared to our supplier of Oriental furniture levels of business acumen and English skills seemed to be on a par which was very encouraging. Our main contact was a University colleague of the owner who spoke excellent English and had a good understanding of her company’s capabilities and of Western requirements. From the visit we took away samples of Birch, Ash and Southern Elm for evaluation on the UK. Their advice for the UK climate was to kiln dry wood to 7-8% which was akin to that of the advise of our oriental furniture supplier in Cixi.

The craftsmanship skills of the carpentry team was also excellent and we were able to see the team working on solid wood mortise and tenon constructions while touring the factory. All in all an excellent visit.

The second day of our chinese furniture sourcing trip took us into more unknown territory. We arranged for a taxi to take us from Ningbo to Yongkang city, quite a challenge in itself given the basic Chinese language knowledge of the Zenzu team. Fortunately, with the help of the supplier we intended to visit and the use of the mobile phone we seemed to be able to communicate things to the driver. The journey took approximately 4 hours to travel the 300 miles to Yongkang city, a small distance to travel on business in China. On arrival at the first supplier’s factory we were amazed to find that not only did they make chinese furniture (with doors as a specialty) but they also bred and raised deer for sale to the Chinese venison market. It is not uncommon for factory owners to diversify in unusual ways but this was the most bizarre contrast that we had ever come across. The factory and workshop were probably on a par with our current oriental furniture supplier in Cixi city, but the Kiln drying facilities were not great and we did not feel that the manufacture of solid doors was enough of a core competence from them; their focus seemed to be on steel/wood composite security doors.

It probably goes without saying that is it very important to ensure that a supplier has a good English speaking capabilities, and you need to meet someone face to face to ensure this (it is easy to hide a lack of good English skills behind e-mail). Perhaps more importantly though is getting an idea of how close your contact is to the owner and also how skilled your contact is at interpreting information. If they are not quick to grasp basic concepts needed for the export of oriental furniture to the UK market when you meet face to face then it is likely it will be even more difficult when thousands of miles away via email and telephone. Our contact was very pleasant, but unfortunately she was not directly employed by the supplier and we also felt that her business competence was not really to be desired. A good starting visit from which to gauge other suppliers but we instinctively thought from our own experience of exporting Chinese furniture to the UK that we would not go with the suppliers.

Zenzu Trip to China Day 1 cont…

During our first day at the workshop we took the time to discuss the different varieties of indigenous woods which are available in the local regions of Zhejiang province and in the wider areas of China. We already knew that Zenzu’s Chinese furniture range is made from Southern Elm. This wood is kiln dried before construction to 7% to help avoid the propensity for cracking when the wood is moved from China to the UK. The humidity content of wood when in the UK is usually 7% although problems can be faced which importing Chinese furniture as homes in the UK can be a lot drier than the external atmosphere which can cause cracking as the wood dries more excessively than normal and then cracks. Unfortunately if the wood is dried to as low as 5% as is the case for Middle-East then the wood can re-absorb water in average UK conditions and can crack on expansion as easily as it can crack on contraction. However Southern Elm is particularly suited to ‘weather’ these changes and this is why it is used for export; it has a history of use in Chinese Wardrobes and Oriental furniture in general and is also not adversely affected by changes in humidity between continents which makes it ideal.

One of the main purposes of our trip was to investigate the best varieties of timber for the manufacture of solid wood doors as we are about to start a new business selling these in the UK market. Indonesian and Burmese woods are imported to China at low cost and are then sold abroad but these are not from sustainable forests and although the timbers are of excellent quality and variety we were not comfortable investigating these in any more detail. Our supplier then described the varieties that are grown in China. In addition to Southern Elm, a northern Elm is also available as well as Chinese Ash and Chinese Birch. Huang wood from Hunan province and a darker reddish Liang wood were also discussed. Each has its own advantages and armed with this knowledge we were able to take samples with us to see prospective suppliers in the interior of Zhejaing province where there is a centre for the production chinese furniture doors.

At the end of the day we retired to Ningbo city to our hotel and prepared for the next day’s travel to Yongkang City which is the centre of the region which focused on solid wooden door manufacture.

We landed in Shanghai from Heathrow on the first day of our Chinese Furniture & Wooden Doors sourcing trip to China. We were met at the airport by the driver from our supplier and were expecting to arrive in Cixi city 4 hours later having driven around the river delta via Huangzhou. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the new bridge across the delta, which essentially connects Shanghai to Ningbo City (North East Zhejiang province), had opened earlier than expected and therefore reduced our travel time to only 2 hours. The bridge is in fact the longest in the world surpassing the road bridge which connects Denmark to Sweden, and will expand the ease of trade for the area immensely. As well as Oriental Furniture and a wide range of other furniture the region is renowned for its export of power tools, security doors, fire doors, steel parts and solid wood doors. We arrived at our supplier in time for lunch and had an excellent discussion about quality issues relating to our Chinese Furniture range. We then discussed new Oriental Furniture concepts that have been successful in export to foreign markets including Chinese wardrobes, oriental tables and different surface finishing. We also discussed a new range of oriental beds that our supplier has introduced to their portfolio. We took the opportunity to meet the head carpenter in the workshop and some of his team; himself and his immediate team have been with the company for over 10 years which is always a good way to ensure continuity of quality and craftsmanship is maintained.