Building Through Change: Asia’s Relocation Pioneers – with Gordon Bell and Allen Fan

Host: Welcome to The Global Move podcast. And welcome, Gordon Bell, Chairman of Asian Tigers Group. And Allen Fan, the founder of Asian Tigers China. You’ve both been in this industry a long time. What are some of the bigger changes that have happened over the years?

Gordon Bell: I certainly think there’s a fear of having too many people and not enough work. I think there is a fear of paying for a warehouse and not having enough cargo to fill it to pay for it. I think a lot of companies have made decisions to only use labor, only use trucks, only use space in a warehouse when it’s necessary.

Allen Fan: After being in the industry for fifty-something years. Always in my mind is how to control the quality of the service. That is something that you feel comfortable. You know, whether owning a truck or whether you are subcontracting a truck is how much you can control that can deliver the service. I’m in China, 1.4 billion people. It’s a huge market. I mean, the great, you know, investment opportunity for a lot of companies. And we have people, customers coming in from all over the world. They all look at the quality of the service with very different standards. For us, it’s continue to control that we can deliver the service, continue to develop the training program. The old days we were holding the packer’s hand how to do the packing. Nowadays we’re taking shots, videos. We’re having PowerPoint presentation training. We’re using tablet to do survey. We’re using tablet to do the inventory. By the time finished, the customer signed on your tablet and then automatically it’s going to go into the systems. We’re communicating with our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is not something that you can copy in the industry. It is in our blood. Every couple of weeks we talk about it, we share ideas, and we’re having dinner together, we’re having breakfast together. We’re just so close to each other. I mean, I can’t say more. It’s just like a happy family.

Host: Allen, how would you sum up the approach to new technology for Asian Tigers?

Allen Fan: Every customer that we have is important because we’re not just moving their belongings. We’re moving their lives. Because those are the things that have been with them for the last 20, 30, 40 years. We’re talking about, you know, what we can do to develop a system that, you know, we’ll communicate with our customers and we expecting that this is going to be something different. It’s a big step and I can’t tell you more how important this is going to change the quality and the level of the service to our customers.

Host: Allen, Gordon, thank you for your time.