It took me a few days to get back to normal after returning from my trip to Shenzhen last week. Overall, pretty decent trip - I met with 16 vendors and suppliers over 5 days…but then got sick and had to cancel all my meetings on day 6. Managed to make it home in one piece though!

Here’s a big photo album of the trip!

I documented the trip in real-time on Twitter, Bluesky and Nitter (like Twitter but you don’t have to sign in). Scroll up to see the whole thread!

Some trip highlights and other Pebble updates

• My main goal was to test the first version (EVT1) of the circuit board of the new watch, and that went well! We confirmed that the board would be able to hit some very low power consumption numbers - early results show under 100uA average draw!
• I’m not ready yet to share any schedule/timelines or further details about the new watch we’re building. I want to get answers to a few more supply chain questions before sharing more.
• People who’ve been on similar expeditions to the center of the gadget factory world can relate - the trip had some ups and downs. I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped, but alas, needed to get home to the 2 kiddos or else my wife would delete my number from her phone (or worse).
• Open source development of PebbleOS is going well! 92 new commits since Google released the OS. One exciting new addition - one of my old Pebble colleagues on the Discord figured out how to massage an open source Bluetooth stack called nimBLE and get it compiling and running inside PebbleOS. This might enable open source PebbleOS to support Bluetooth on existing Pebble watches!
• Rebble is running a hackathon this week - learn more at rebble.io/hackathon-002
• Join the Discord or r/Pebble to stay fresh!

Sometimes my main purpose is to be eyes/ears/hands for other colleagues elsewhere in world, like here where I am helping debug Bluetooth issues over zoom

What was the purpose of my trip?

The majority of electronic devices you use are manufactured in Asia. More specifically, global gadget production is centered around the city of Shenzhen in a region called the Pearl River Delta. I traveled there to spend time with the factories and suppliers who will help build the next watch.

The supply chain here is unparalleled. Odds are everything if you need a component to build your gadget like a chip, motor, display, metal or plastic part, glue, glass lens, buttons etc, someone nearby makes or sells it. You can get in a car, drive 1-2 hours and visit the supplier.

This is great but not even the best part - it’s the speed at which business is done. I’ve been in meetings where we realize that we need more information or an alternative supplier for a part, then within 10 minutes we have that new person on a call or chatting with us over WeChat, and later that day we have an answer to our question. This speed simply does not exist with Western companies. For example, I’ve been waiting for 3 weeks to get 100 samples from a chip company. The shipment has been tied up in various stages of bureaucratic SNAFUs that are carried out over email, across timezones, each with multi-day resolutions (first we needed a phone number for the shipping, then we needed an import number…etc etc). Another example, I asked 8 days ago for a quote on a part….still waiting.

I can access a lot of this network from my home in California by texting with my friends and business contacts over WeChat that I’ve amassed over the last 10 years - I have over 900 contacts on WeChat and probably 400+ group chats. I spend most of my Pacific time evenings now texting and doing zoom calls. The fact that the entire country is on the same messaging app is a huge force multiplier. It makes it much easier to get introductions and pivot a text-chat into a voice or video chat.

But no amount of chatting can replace the magic that happens during a multi-hour meeting, preferably with a white-board, and copious amounts of green tea. Ideas can spring up out of nowhere, complex problems can be hashed out and solved. More importantly, new relationships can be felt out, working towards mutual trust. That’s why I get on planes!

Some differences from 10 years ago

I’m spending most of my time with wearable ODMs (Original Design Manufacturer) now, rather than general consumer electronics OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer). ODM = you give them a high level product specification, they build it. OEM = you give them mechanical drawings and electrical board layouts and they build it. Back during Pebble round one, we had to use OEMs because no one had ever made a smartwatch before (including us!). There were no ‘wearable’ ODMs at all, so we spent a lot of time working with OEMs to invent new processes, like adding waterproof testing fixtures to consumer electronics production lines. Nowadays, I can tour numerous ODMs and see specifically how they make smartwatches in mass production.

Getting around in Shenzhen is soooo much easier than it used to be. Back then, we would rely on vans sent by the person we were meeting with. Now I can either take the subway and/or hail a Didi rideshare. I personally prefer subway because most Didis are now electric and drivers are pretty bad at using regen braking (🤢).

WeChat is even more pervasive than it was before and now has built in chat translation! This makes it way easier for me to chat directly with suppliers even though I don’t speak Chinese. One other cool thing is WeChat Pay and AliPay both accept US credit cards directly, so I can pay literally anywhere. Before, I had to transfer money to a friend who would then send me a ‘red envelope’ inside WeChat. Weirdly I no longer can make person-to-person payments in WeChat - now I have ¥600 locked in my wallet that I can’t do anything with!

Haidilau with Bobak from brilliant.xyz and Nikolaj from Bragi!

Next trip

My plan is to return to Shenzhen every 2-3 months. I am careful to not just defer tasks and meetings to ‘the next trip’ because that would slow things down, but traveling there is a great forcing function - nothing speeds up task like an upcoming in-person meeting with the client (me!).