Matt Sheehan — This Chinese City Is Becoming The Silicon Valley Of Hardware

At the dawn of China's economic reforms in the late 1970s, Shenzhen was central to earning China the dubious distinction of "the world's factory." In 1979 the sleepy fishing village of Shenzhen was named China's first Special Economic Zone, triggering a flood of investment into the region and a tidal wave of cheap exports rolling out of its newly constructed factories. Since then, Shenzhen has grown into one of China's largest and wealthiest metropolises, one built on a foundation of free enterprise. 

But today's hardware startups say it's not low-cost and low-skill labor that draws them to Shenzhen -- wages in Chinese factories are rising and by some estimations are now20 percent higher than those in Mexico. Instead, Shenzhen and the entire Pearl River Delta region offer a manufacturing ecosystem unmatched anywhere else in the world, with clusters of symbiotic factories turning the area into a one-stop shop for many projects. That manufacturing process is also overseen by deeply experienced industrial engineers, ones who still come at a bargain rate compared with their U.S. counterparts. 

"You have engineers in factories here, and when you show them a product or prototype they can already see how many molds you need, how much it's going to cost, which parts are going to be a problem, and how you should modify it," said Benjamin Joffe, a general partner and mentor for Haxlr8r. "They see those things because they have so much know-how and practice with the tools." 

That know-how is invaluable when moving from garage-built prototype to factory-built product. Designers expecting factories to simply crank out perfect renditions of their blueprints soon discover that industrial engineers can be just as crucial in the creation of a finished product. 

"There's this predominant idea in the West that things are created somewhere in a glossy, fancy design studio in Silicon Valley, and then the designs are shipped over and it's just executed in China," said Silvia Lindtner, a professor at the University of Michigan who researches the intersection of manufacturing and maker culture in China. "A lot of redesigning and collaborative design processes happen with the manufacturer, happen on the factory floor."…

"Previously every factory was so busy with big orders from huge companies," said Eric Pan, the founder of Seeed Studio, a hardware innovation platform that partners with Haxlr8r and connects builders around the globe to Shenzhen's resources. "But as those companies are moving out, the manufacturing is becoming more flexible, more agile, more responsive, which is very good for generating new products."

China is maturing, just as Japan and South Korea did. The difference is scale. Japan and South Korea are small countries. China is not.

World Post
This Chinese City Is Becoming The Silicon Valley Of Hardware
Matt Sheehan