I met Antoine Moussali during a Biznest meeting and I almost immediately understood that he had a lot of great stories to share with young entrepreneurs. He is one of the partner of Sineo, a trading company between the Middle East and China.
Could you tell me more about your background?
I am French/Syrian and I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I lived the majority of my youth in Egypt, Dubai and other countries in this area of the world. I studied in Dubai and Montreal in Canada. Then I went back to Saudi Arabia and I started to work there. However, the goal of my life at that particular time was to come to China therefore, I started to learn Chinese on my own. A friend of mine was actually working in China, he set up his own company and when he told me his situation, it was the trigger. First, entrepreneurship is what drives me and second it was time to move to China. The first step was to find a MBA in China and then I started to work with the company of my friend and now I am his partner. Since then, we have gone through a major restructuration in order to properly develop the company.
What is the mission of the company?
We are exporting goods from China. We are trying to become the ambassador of Chinese high quality goods for the Middle East. We have two main divisions: the F&B packaging (paper, biodegradable materials…) and the LED.
The most difficult is not to find clients because everybody wants to buy from China and they need us because of many factors such as time difference or the cultural differences. Middle Eastern and Chinese are quite different when it comes to business. You need to understand the Chinese culture in order to deal with them.
The actual most difficult part of our job is to find good and reliable suppliers. The good ones are not always on Alibaba or in showrooms. They are not interested in small volume clients, they produce high volumes and they are not interested in having too many clients. My advice is: find a good one, not necessary the best, look if they have all the regulations (ISO, SGS.. ), check on the relevant website (because suppliers can produce fake reports), check their other clients and bank accounts, go to their factories and meet them. Sign guarantee and collateral agreements as well. In China, only trust matters.
What are the strengths of the company?
First, our network in the Middle East is the most important strength. In this part of the world, the network is really important; you have to harvest it, to take care of it. It is something you are doing really well. Trading is all about networking. In addition, the three partners of the company are strategically located where our customers and suppliers are. Finally, we don’t have any language issue; we all speak Chinese, Arab and English, which allows us to overcome the language barrier when negotiating.
How do you see the future of the industry?
The biggest challenge is: Will China remain the competitive “factory of the world” or not? A lot of factories are slowly relocating to Vietnam, Africa, Cambodia… Many factories are offshoring because salaries are rising in China as well as social reforms. These are huge threat for the trading industry.
For now we prefer to stay in China because of advantageous logistic services. China is highly developed and competitive in terms of logistic. Besides it is easier in terms of language as well. We believe that in 4 to 5 years, the neighboring countries will become real competitors but for now, we are in the right place to be.
What are you next ideas?
We would like to invest in our suppliers and have a warehouse in China. A lot of our clients do not necessarily order huge volumes. With bigger stocks we would be able to be more flexible and reduce our costs. We are going to launch the warehouse soon. Besides it will add value to our customers it is purely customer relationship management.
In addition, we would like to open a design department in order to offer a unique service for our clients. It is extremely expensive to do it in Dubai. We think we could do it locally and it would be easier at the end to communicate with our suppliers.
To sum up we would like to create an exhaustive and more comprehensive platform for our clients. What is important for us is customer relationship and this is why we often consider ourselves consultants and not traders.
Could you tell me more about your background?
I am French/Syrian and I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I lived the majority of my youth in Egypt, Dubai and other countries in this area of the world. I studied in Dubai and Montreal in Canada. Then I went back to Saudi Arabia and I started to work there. However, the goal of my life at that particular time was to come to China therefore, I started to learn Chinese on my own. A friend of mine was actually working in China, he set up his own company and when he told me his situation, it was the trigger. First, entrepreneurship is what drives me and second it was time to move to China. The first step was to find a MBA in China and then I started to work with the company of my friend and now I am his partner. Since then, we have gone through a major restructuration in order to properly develop the company.
What is the mission of the company?
We are exporting goods from China. We are trying to become the ambassador of Chinese high quality goods for the Middle East. We have two main divisions: the F&B packaging (paper, biodegradable materials…) and the LED.
The most difficult is not to find clients because everybody wants to buy from China and they need us because of many factors such as time difference or the cultural differences. Middle Eastern and Chinese are quite different when it comes to business. You need to understand the Chinese culture in order to deal with them.
The actual most difficult part of our job is to find good and reliable suppliers. The good ones are not always on Alibaba or in showrooms. They are not interested in small volume clients, they produce high volumes and they are not interested in having too many clients. My advice is: find a good one, not necessary the best, look if they have all the regulations (ISO, SGS.. ), check on the relevant website (because suppliers can produce fake reports), check their other clients and bank accounts, go to their factories and meet them. Sign guarantee and collateral agreements as well. In China, only trust matters.
What are the strengths of the company?
First, our network in the Middle East is the most important strength. In this part of the world, the network is really important; you have to harvest it, to take care of it. It is something you are doing really well. Trading is all about networking. In addition, the three partners of the company are strategically located where our customers and suppliers are. Finally, we don’t have any language issue; we all speak Chinese, Arab and English, which allows us to overcome the language barrier when negotiating.
How do you see the future of the industry?
The biggest challenge is: Will China remain the competitive “factory of the world” or not? A lot of factories are slowly relocating to Vietnam, Africa, Cambodia… Many factories are offshoring because salaries are rising in China as well as social reforms. These are huge threat for the trading industry.
For now we prefer to stay in China because of advantageous logistic services. China is highly developed and competitive in terms of logistic. Besides it is easier in terms of language as well. We believe that in 4 to 5 years, the neighboring countries will become real competitors but for now, we are in the right place to be.
What are you next ideas?
We would like to invest in our suppliers and have a warehouse in China. A lot of our clients do not necessarily order huge volumes. With bigger stocks we would be able to be more flexible and reduce our costs. We are going to launch the warehouse soon. Besides it will add value to our customers it is purely customer relationship management.
In addition, we would like to open a design department in order to offer a unique service for our clients. It is extremely expensive to do it in Dubai. We think we could do it locally and it would be easier at the end to communicate with our suppliers.
To sum up we would like to create an exhaustive and more comprehensive platform for our clients. What is important for us is customer relationship and this is why we often consider ourselves consultants and not traders.