There is a common joke that the India talk over people and they say yes to everything. I can honestly say for the few people from India I have had contact with, this has been true.
I asked for UK style shoes – i.e. shoes numbered 3 to 8 and I asked if he can do them. The answer was yes. Only to find out a few weeks late when the sample arrived, this was not the case.
Phone calls are hard. Unbearable even. They speak in high tones ( not shouting) and they want to be heard. Listening comes across as optional. A quick yes to shut you up and if you don’t follow up with an email, you might be buying socks instead of shoes.
As for emails, I find the Chinese being very professional, almost English (They will not write it unless they can deliver it and they will use a language that makes you think they agree but it is just diplomatic!). For the Indian I find that the emails can be too many a day and you might still not get the answer you need. Whilst fast to say yes on phone, they also don’t want to put the same down. They also work Kind of African, they don’t bother to tell you that there is a delay and they give estimates. The Chinese give you a fixed date on completion of production but it is always and over estimate e.g. if the shoes will take 2 weeks, they will tell you 3.5 weeks. It may sound like a good thing, but it might not be necessary so on your cash flows!
It is easy to go buy the shoes from traders such as in Guangzhou market but dealing with factories is the best.
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