Interview with BC Electric | Benelux Companies showing Resilience
Benelux companies in China are operating under COVID19 measures. What have been the impact of these measures and how are companies doing at this time? With a series of interviews of the Benelux of Commerce business community, we aim to share the stories of Dutch, Belgium and Luxembourg entrepreneurs in the South of China (PRD/GBA).
Company: BC Electric
Location: Foshan, Guangdong
BC Electric is owned by Mohammed Berrekkal, from Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Mohammed lives since 2015 in China and started his current company producing and selling Digital Signage products. Together with his Chinese partners, he started the business to mainly focus on products such as "Digital Advertising Displays" and "Touchscreens". They primarily export to the Middle-East and South-East Asia and they hope to expand to Europe and the US after the current virus crisis.
1. What has been the impact of the Coronavirus on your company and business?
The coronavirus has had a great impact on our business, firstly our company was closed until march first, secondly many of our workers are from Wuhan/Hubei so they can’t come back to work and thirdly our existing orders got canceled and we’ve had only a few new small orders come.
2. What kind of government regulations did you have to implement? How has the communication been with institutions?
We had to disinfect the factory, make sure we had enough hand sanitizers /soap available, workers need to wear masks and temperature checks and we had to report if anyone had been to or came in contact with anyone from Hubei.
3. How did you start-up your business again and on what capacity have you been operating?
We manufacture digital signage products and the orders have significantly dropped or cancelled. To be able to survive we have decided to start a new project with our partner factory in Anhui. We started making Infrared thermometers. Our workers that are stuck in Hubei can work from home selling these products online and the rest of the workers who can, come to the factory.
4. What kind of business activities can and can you not do at the moment?
Our digital signage products have almost completely stopped at the moment but the infrared thermometers have a lot of inquiries, the problems that we are facing now is the shipping. Many flights have been canceled and the waiting time is quite long.
5. What are your expectations for the coming months and this year?
We have had a meeting about this and we are trying to make a plan for the coming year but truth be told it’s hard to predict what will happen. With our thermal scanner displays and thermometers, we hope to maintain some business and survive and for the future, we are thinking of focusing on more products that can help ease online meetings, classes, etc. We can see that this pandemic has a great impact on our world including how we do business and how we teach and we believe working from home and having classes online will become more popular and standardized so we see opportunities in that.
6. Any other information you would like to share please feel free
This pandemic has shown us how unpredictable life can be and that you need to be flexible as a business and try to act as fast as you can to implement changes. I understand it's not possible for all businesses to do that, we are a bit lucky because we are already involved in products that use LCD/LED screens, plastic frames PCB boards, etc. so it was relatively easy for us to make this change. However it's not a guarantee for us that it will succeed or help us to survive, but we are doing our best. I believe that with hardship comes ease and that this situation in the world will also bring us new chances and new opportunities.
See below an impression of BC Electric's office and warehouse. Due to the closed schools, BC Electric's workers had their children at home. As a solution to this problem, they made a playing ground and children's corner so that employees could work at the office and take their kids along.
