It Takes Two Movers: Why Asian Tigers Was in San Diego
Some of the Asian Tigers Group team meeting with fellow movers at the IAM Annual Meeting in San Diego. If you are moving from Hong Kong to Houston, you will meet one moving company.
Your belongings will meet two.
One crew packs and loads at origin. Another, on the far side of an ocean, clears customs, delivers to your new home and unpacks. You choose the first. The second is chosen for you, by your mover, long before your shipment sails.
That is why around 15 of us from Asian Tigers offices across Asia spent a week in San Diego this October at the IAM Annual Meeting, alongside roughly 1,500 moving professionals from around the world.
“You need a partner that you know”
When our Digital Council talked about the conference afterwards, YB Ng of Asian Tigers Hong Kong put it most plainly:
“You need two movers to complete a move. There are many times when we have no control over the situation at the other end, so you really need a partner that you know. Conferences are how we get to know the people over there.”
Patrick Goh of Asian Tigers Singapore agreed: “It takes two good partners, one at each end, to make a move successful, and the reason we come together every year is to reconnect and strengthen those partnerships.”
It is a simple idea with real consequences. When a vessel is delayed, a customs rule changes or a delivery date has to move, the outcome depends on whether your mover can pick up the phone and reach someone they know and trust. A name in a directory is not the same as a person you have sat across a table from.
Partner meetings were the order of the day
Asian Tigers hour
Navigating the current
This year’s theme, “Navigating the Current”, suited the moment. Shipping schedules have been unsettled for much of the year, and every mover in the room is dealing with the same pressures on transit times and costs.
Nobody at the conference had a magic answer. What the week did offer was something more practical: the chance to compare notes with partners on every major route, to hear what is happening at ports and borders from the people working there, and to agree how we will keep customers informed when plans change. When conditions are uncertain, the quality of your partners matters more, not less.
Gus Sunwoo with two partners from opposite sides of the world who arrived in the same outfit
Proof that it works
Good partnerships show up in results. In San Diego, our underwriter UNIRISC presented Asian Tigers Group’s record for the latest policy year: more shipments handled than the year before, with both the average claim and the total value of claims coming down.
Gordon Bell, Chairman of Asian Tigers Group, put it this way: “More shipments with fewer claims is the result every mover wants and very few achieve. The credit belongs to our crews, our coordinators and the partners we work with.”
UNIRISC’s Susy Castellanos called our offices “an absolute delight to work with”. Fewer claims on more moves is what you get when both ends of a move are in good hands. Read the full story here.
Thank you to our partners
To everyone who made time for us in San Diego, whether in a scheduled meeting, over lunch, or at the Asian Tigers hour at the end of the day: thank you. Our customers will never meet most of you, but they rely on you every time a shipment leaves Asia or arrives here.
We look forward to seeing you again next year.
Eric Lim with Grace Bishar of PTS
Asian Tigers Group is a FIDI-FAIM certified international moving company with 15 offices across Asia. Planning a move? Contact your nearest office or ask Cindy on our website.
