design services

China's manufacturers and designers must learn to think more creatively to stimulate innovation and build value-added brands, but are hamstrung by design services and traditional cultural values that tend to discourage such thinking. As Chinese companies seek to build global brands and foreigners aim to boost sales in China, they're transforming the country's design services business. Chinese manufacturers realize they need better products if they want to break out of China and beef up their margins on sales abroad. And foreign companies such as Sony are starting to see that as Chinese consumers get more discriminating, they're no longer content with the tired, designed-somewhere-else models that many overseas-based marketers once sold in China. This is powering a boom in design services in China. The best Chinese companies are building their design staffs or hiring outsiders to help them make more products of their own. Design is one of the most popular majors at Chinese universities today, and hundreds of design consulting firms have sprung up in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou.