Yue’s Yappings

Today is the last the day of the first quarter, and I am glad it’s over. It was my first full quarter since starting at Skyetek late last year. Although my title is director of business development responsible for Asia, my job is essentialy sales complete with a yearly quota. At the end of each quarter, I submit a report on all the deals I closed and what deals I think I’ll close in the upcoming quarter.

Q1 has been successful for me. Starting from scratch, I was able to meet my first quarter target. In fact, at one point I even managed to sell out all our inventory (luckily that was quickly fixed)! More importantly, I have also built a healthy pipeline for the coming quarters.
Working in Asia is fun. Compared to Europe and North American, there is a tremendous amount of RFID activitiy, particularly in China and South Korea. Both country’s governments are actively promoting RFID technology in a number of fields, including supply chain, retail, health care and animal tracking. When you visit those countries, the excitement in the air is palpable.

Of course each Asian country is quite different - different cultures, different laws, different ways of doing business. Now if only I could speak Korean and Japanese, in addition to English and Chinese Nevertheless, in the first quarter I’ve managed to sign up customers in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand.

Later this month I’ll be in Singapore for RFID World Asia and then in May I’ll be in China for the Smart Cards Smart Label Conference. I may also try to squeeze in a trip to Korea. Drop me a line if you’d like to meet up.