I’ve been flying all over the place lately. It’s crazy! I counted that day… every month I spend at least 10 days out of 30 overseas on business trips. Traveling is fun and all but sometimes it kinda makes you miss your routines. Miss your friends too.. that whenever they wanna ask you out you’re never around. So much that sometimes they even assume you’re not around and don’t bother asking you out whenever they’re planning something.
So when you travel around a lot like me it takes an extra effort to keep in touch with friends.
I’ve been away so much lately for conferences and also for setting up new offices in other countries. In 2008, we expanded Nuffnang from just having a presence in Malaysia and Singapore to Australia and Philippines. It was a big gamble for Ming and I at the time. We took whatever little money we had earned from Malaysia and Singapore and plowed everything we had there into Philippines and Australia. Then we spent the last two years growing those markets and making sure both Nuffnang Philippines and Australia stand on their own feet. Today both Nuffnang Australia and Nuffnang Philippines are profitable and are on their own feet.
So we’ve decided to spread our wings again… and last year we started setting up an office in Beijing for Nuffnang China.
China is a huge market so before we went in guns blazing we spent many months doing research, finding out how we can create a community of bloggers there and how we can add value to the bloggers there. That’s why before we’ve even started selling ads or anything there we’ve been holding blogger gatherings to talk to bloggers there and find out more.
After a lot of preparation and talking to many bloggers we’re finally comfortable enough to launch. So last week we did a soft-launch of Nuffnang China. The response has been great so far. Within the first week we signed up over 1,000 bloggers and more and more are joining us each day. It’s still a drop in the ocean for the huge number of bloggers China has but it’s an encouraging start.
Lots of people have told us about China. How very few companies in our industry have actually gone to China and succeeded but Ming and I decided that if there was any time we were going to try, it has to be now. Leading the team for Nuffnang China though is the very capable David Wong that we sent from our Malaysian office.
Exciting times ahead for us. Good luck Mr Wong!
Check out the Nuffnang China website here. It’s like the rest of our Nuffnang sites but in Chinese 🙂
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space