We caught up with Andy Liang, sales manager at MingFeng Packaging and ask him about the company and what it's like to cover a portfolio of large, international brands all over the planet.

What does your company do and what is your place in it? 

MingFeng Packaging provides comprehensive packaging services, including design, development, production and logistics. We have professional and experienced packaging designers who are able to design custom packaging. Customers can bring us their ideas and we help bring them them to life. MingFeng Packaging provides not only packaging that protects the product during transportation, it offers upscale display and delivers a company’s message directly to targeted consumers.

I am the Sales Manager of our US office. Basically, I'm responsible for implementing marketing strategy, generating and tracking sales orders, and organizing US events.

What's unique about MingFeng? 

MingFeng focuses on the high-end market and has a large production capacity, with over 4,000 highly trained and skilled workers in our factory. MingFeng has been tops in the luxury packaging industry for over a quarter century. We've successfully provided packaging solutions to many recognized, world-class brands. We have always been a name to call upon for international brands so they can develop their very own exquisite packaging designs.

Is MingFeng primarily a manufacturer?

Yes, we primarily manufacture. Our production is carried out in China at our large manufacturing facilities. We have space totalling about 230,000 square meters in a new industrial park. This new facility consolidates our operations and maximizes our efficiency to produce as much as three times more than we used to just a few years ago.

How many locations do you have?

Quite a few, actually, it's convenient for us to maintain presence in several places. I'm currently location in our branch office near Los Angeles, California, in a lovely place called Baldwin Park. We have two primary bases in Dongguan and Kowloon Bay, two cities that are both near Hong Kong in China.

What markets and companies do you target? 

I can speak for myself, as I deal with most issues here in North America. So, I target a lot of luxury and cosmetic companies, as well as those that work with precious metals, like high end jewellers and such. On our end here in the USA, we take point with clients like the US Mint, the Mint of Finland, Longines, Versace, Omega, Robins Brothers, Jostens, Guess, Marathon, and a whole bunch of others.

What brands are currently using your products in international markets? 

We have developed an elite portfolio of customers that are leading brands, retailers and organizations. We try to extend into a number of different sectors to ensure we're not just focused on one thing, we think diversity is a great way to approach business, and the fact is our facilities are large enough to handle not only high volume runs, but also a variety of simultaneous runs of vastly different products. So, at any one time, we might be working for comapnies like the Swatch Group, Swarovski, L'Oreal, Beigjing Tong Ren Tang, Beijing Caibai, Richemont Group, Macallan, Huawei, the China Gold Coin Incorporation, etc.  We were also the proud packaging partner for the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, and both the Beijing and London Olympic Games.

What changes has your firm undergone over the last decade?

We went from being a medium-sized company dealing with mostly local or regional customers to becoming a multi-national company. We had to open up a new location at an industrial park in China, with a new printing department dedicated to producing printing products. We're actually in the midst of preparing for an IPO.

What challenges and opportunities do your firm currently consider?

The biggest challenge being faced is that the manufacturing industry is transforming in China. A lot of the costs associated with production have increased, the most representative of which is workers' wages. How do we plan to face these changes? By adapting to the new market landscape. We try to embrace new technology age and are constantly bringing in new manufacturing machines and technology to increase efficiency and reduce costs. We also plan on being a lot more outward-facing. We are going to beging to attend packaging expos and events with much more frequency. I'll be at CES 2017 for sure, it's a global consumer electronic and technology tradeshow that takes place every January in Las Vegas. We also plan to engage with prospective and existing customers more online and follow through with targeted marketing campaigns. We've upgraded the old website, we're using the Webpackaging platform -

How is that working out?

We subscribed to Webpackaging in order to increase our exposure on the Internet. The most important thing we need right now is a marketing effect, we need people to know that our products are here.  

Do you have any new items or services that you want to mention? 

A lot of people are getting very excited about using bamboo as a less environmentally impacting material, so we have several items under development, experimenting with that material to best effect. Even though we currently have a small volume of production, it is still not mature enough for the market because of it's cost and limited production scale. We plan to change that.