predire Johnas

Johnas Rundgren, flanked by Scandic Sourcing's staff Fredrik Sundström and Linda Du, inspecting the premises of Predire's new testcenter in Jiading.

 

Johnas Rundgren is the newly appointed General Manager for Predire Testcenter. The parent company Predire Group is a family owned business with over 100 employees working with test simulations and quality assurance services, mainly within the automotive industry for customers such as Volvo, Audi, BMW and Mercedes. This year, Predire deceided to expand to China with help of Scandic Sourcing.

 

Why did you decide to move to China?

Johnas Rundgren: There were two reasons, one was that we wanted to situate ourselves close to Volvo which has a big plant in Jiading. Predire Testcenter is Volvos firsthand choice on their preferred supplier list; we also have 30 other customers operating here in Shanghai. The second reason was that Shanghai is on the way of becoming the biggest centre in the world for research and development within the automotive industry, and that's why it's important that Predire is part of that to keep staying ahead during the coming years, it's an investment for the future.


 

Why did you move this year?

Johnas Rundgren: We did actually plan to move last year, but then chose to invest in Germany instead. And this year we also got financial support from the investment partner Swedfund, and that gave us the push we needed to expand to China.

  

What was the process when you decided to go to China?

Johnas Rundgren: We contacted the sourcing firm Scandic Sourcing to help us set up a factory in the Jiading province, located close to the Volvo plant. They researched and found a group of suitable suppliers according to our requests; enabling me to start visiting possible candidates as soon as I stepped of the plane. Scandic Sourcing also helped us register our company, which makes the start-up process that much faster.

 

Why did you pick Scandic Sourcing?

Johnas Rundgren: We had some initial dialogue with their CEO Per Linden found that they had been established for a long time here and that they where here, on site in Shanghai. Furthermore, many of their co-workers had extensive experience of sourcing which we value greatly.

 

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Johnas Rundgren inspects a possible factory hall. 

 

What are your experiences this far?

Johnas Rundgren: I've only been here for a short while, but already encountered a lot which is very different from Europe. China is a dynamic market, a bit of a 'Wild West' atmosphere, a lot differ from how things are done back home, like for example, negotiations takes a lot longer here in China and all the bureaucracy is on a completely different level. Personally I like challenges, and there are so much to learn here, like the business culture, customer needs, priorities, language and last but not least how you run a company here as an entrepreneur. I find the whole thing very exciting.

 

 

Do you have any advice for other companies thinking about moving to China?

Johnas Rundgren: You need to do your research beforehand; I read a great number of articles and books and watched documentaries before I came here. That made me feel more prepared of how things work here in China, I developed a certain sense of how it worked here and that has really helped me. If you come to China unprepared you'll encounter more of a culture shock. Another tip is to get help from a consulting firm and then bombard them with questions – you cannot be afraid to ask questions; there are no stupid questions in China. What we take for grante din Europe can be found to be the opposite here, so you need to ask questions and not assume things to be a certain way.