by Claudia Bruemmer

FOBShanghai.com has developed a business forum that provides quality business answers for new entrepreneurs in a global marketplace of buyers, sellers, and manufacturers on the FOB Business Forum. The forum has many different threads posted under four major sections: Trade Forums, World Trade, Non-Trade Forums and FOB General Purpose. Members can select various topics under these major sections, which have moderators overseeing the content. Content threads are also organized under four geographic areas: Asia, USA, Europe and Africa. Members can search for threads by keyword and send private messages to other members through the P.M. (private message) messaging client.

FobShanghai.com is the largest international trade community in China. Founded in 2001, it has more than 1,000,000 members located mostly in eastern and southern China. FOBShanghai provides a free B2B portal for Chinese and overseas buyers to help Chinese exporters develop their business with zero cost.

The FOBShanghai forum came to the attention of TopTenWholesale CEO Jason Prescott on his recent trip to China in establishing a sales team for Manufacturer.com.”Their community and content is purely amazing,” said Prescott, “there is a Chinese and English version.”

According to the FAQ, the forum was developed to provide a resource for entrepreneurs when time is of essence as finding access to quality leads can help turn time into profit without going through extra steps.

“Nearly all the export and import staff in China is using this forum,” said Manufacturer.com Sales Manager Hagard Wei. “It helps newbies to solve problems and allows experienced guys to share their knowledge and make friends,” he added. It is well known that the Chinese business community likes to post information in forums or bulletin boards. Chinese business is largely focused on personal interaction. Therefore, this forum was established to fulfill cultural and business needs.

China has come a long way toward becoming one of the largest economic powerhouses in the world due to the economic reforms that started in the late 1970s. Another factor that helped China transform itself from a third-world country into one of the worlds’ most influential economic powers was inception of the Internet and electronic commerce starting in the mid 1990s. In some sectors of the Chinese business community, the understanding of free enterprise and competition is still vague, thus international business forums go a long way toward helping Chinese companies deal with the current economic realities.

Below are examples of the different sections and topics members can access on the FOB Shanghai Forums.

Trade Forums
• Business Talk
• Fraud and Security
• Basics of Import Export
• Inventory
• Ecommerce
• Business Opportunities
• Logistics

World Trade
• China Business
• Business India
• Brazil Business
• Other Countries

Non-Trade Forums
• Free Talk
• Putonghua
• Travel Guide
• Expats

FOB General Purpose
• User Comments

You can access the FOB Forum after registering, and it’s also useful to set up a profile with a photo to make your interactions more personal.