Business gifts

It's not always easy to do business with foreign people. That's mostly because of the cultural differences we have in the world. If it's wanted to success in international business, you should learn to know the habits of other cultures.

For example in Asia the behavior might be a lot of different than in Finland. Smile is not always a good thing when asian people does it, because it might be a way to cover their real feelings. So finnish people might have some difficulties to read their minds and know what they really think.
When you go to Asia to your business trip, you should make sure that you have enough time to do the business in there because asians want to know you better before they start business with you.

Business Gifts

If you bring business gift to foreign country you should take account of few thinks:

• If the gift is wrong kind, there might be some loss of face as a result
• The gift might be a tabu in some country
• If the gift is too expensive, they might think that it's a bribe in some countries
• Still don't ever bring odds and ends even to a developing country

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Before buying a business gift, you should read some facts and tips of the country you are going to. Here's some rules of some countries business gift -culture:

In Belgium they think that is rude to give a present in a first meeting.

In South-Korea there is a big meaning of business gifts. They hope that foreign guest leaves something concrete of itself. South-Koreans also gives a lot of business gifts themselves and they expect to have something back from every business gift. The mental balance of gifts recipient might suffer if a gift you give to them is inferior than the gift that they gave to you.


In China, the business gifts are indication of thankfulness and appreciation. Even tough it's good that the business gifts reminds the recipient of the givers country, for example finnish people should remember that never give blue-white -coloured gift in China! Also there is some forbidden gifts in China, for example a clock and a green cap or hat.

In USA they give business gifts a little, but usually it's not a habit of the country. There are a lot of companies that has an exact rules of receiving a business gift. You should follow a good taste of giving a gift in USA, or else it might be a bigger mistake to give the present that it would have been not to give it. Business women should not be given any personal gifts, like cosmetics or clothes.

In Japan is very usual to give and to have a business gift. You should ever give paper knife, scissors etc to japanese people. Also "forbidden" gifts are anything that's cheap and commercial, like t-shirts, caps stickers and cheap ink pens. You should also never give something that you have given earlier to japanese people.

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Lumon

Lumon sales, produces and installs balcony facade and terrace products: balcony glazings, frameless glass curtains, balustrades. It's an international company from Finland. They have had subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway, Spain, Germany, Canada and Russia. Now they have bought a new place from China. It was a balcony glazing -company near Shanghai that already existed. At the moment there's two finnish people and 30 chinese working in Lumons Chinas factory. The managing director of Lumon, Tapani Kinnunen, says that there's customers in China and new orders comes all the time, but the volumes are still quite small.

It's good to be careful at start with China. There is a lot of opportunities, but also the risks are are also known because of Chinas unpredictability.

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In China there are a lot of copies of brands and there are copies of Lumon too.

source:  Kouvolan Sanomat