Over the past year, Shenzhen has become one of the most buzzing cities in all of China.
It is well known as the “Silicon-Valley of China” and half of the smartphones worldwide and other electronic consumers goods are produced in this single area.
All the way in the South and directly at the border to Hong Kong this city also attracts thousands of startups that leverage Shenzhen’s unique environment for rapid prototyping. Click here to see how the world’s largest hardware accelerator HAX helps startups to build their first prototypes in China.

But Shenzhen is not only limited to electronic products. In fact, the whole Guangdong Province is well known for its diversity of factories from various industries and rapid prototyping companies, that fully focus on design, product development and rapid prototyping.
Other than building electronic parts, factories offer 3d printing services or CNC machining services to create prototypes within hours and to iterate them with incredible speed.

Other typical manufacturing technologies are vacuum casting, die casting or plastic injection molding. After prototyping is completed, it is very easy to switch up to large volume productions in the same area.

The Number One mistake when doing rapid prototyping in China

Over the past years we’ve worked with entrepreneurs from all over the world, many of which who are trying to turn their dreams into reality by developing their own products and selling them online.

A very common mistake that we’ve seen a lot of times is to get lost into prototypes and iterations, rather than going out and testing the product on real customers. You can do that initially even without any prototype and just with photorealistic 3d renderings. After you’ve validated your product, you should reach out to at least 20 suppliers. We saw many entrepreneurs just talking to 3-4 companies which is way too less in our eyes. Keep in mind, that you should find a partner to cooperate and scale up for many years!
If you contact 20 suppliers you can be sure that there are at least 2-3 suitable companies, so you have a few as backup, in case there are issues with your favourite supplier.

Last, but not least, make sure to personally inspect the factory or hire a professional factory inspection agency like China Worx to confirm the suitability of your desired supplier.

China: Product Development on steroids

China is a great place to not only for prototyping and low-volume productions, but also to quickly scale up production volumes while maintaining a low-cost structure, which makes it the ideal environment for any entrepreneur.
Feel free to reach out to us If you need contacts to competent suppliers for your Chinese endeavor and we’ll be happy to assist you.