As a young engineer I was fortunate to live for 2 years in Bulgaria before the fall of the Berlin wall and share my experience with local engineers who knew very little about producing electronics for Western Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Eastern Europe began to open up and develop market-oriented economies which gave me the opportunity to set up a manufacturing plant in the Czech Republic.
In the 1990s, Mexico underwent a profound economic and political reorganization and with the signature of NAFTA, was transformed into an export-oriented industrial economy. As a result, many companies built up manufacturing capacity at the border with the United States and I was responsible for relocating a production line to Mexico.
China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 and in the wake of the recession, US companies expanded into China and once again I was sent to Shanghai to build and start a new production line.
These years saw a change in business model from vertical integration, whereby companies own and control their supply chain, to outsourcing, where some of the key business processes are outsourced to external service providers.
Today’s engineers don’t have the same level of interest in traveling for their company and in recent years, the trend towards outsourcing the supply chain to specialists has been increased rapidly.
Kusu Corporation was set up to assist companies who are looking to re-balance their supply chain footprint in Asia and be less dependent on China. Our strengths include our knowledge of the business ecosystem, our local presence and our proficiency of the native languages.