China Brand Development · US-Market Entry · Positioning & Distribution
Neither a Chinese-owned agency nor a Western consultancy. The third option.
Chinese brands entering the US have two conventional choices. A Chinese-owned agency that speaks the founder's language but has never sold to an American distributor. Or a US consultancy that understands the American buyer but has never walked a Guangzhou factory floor.
Sena Qiao Group is the third option. A US operator, based in Southern California, with twenty-five years on the China-North America trade lane and twelve years working in Guangzhou. Conversational Mandarin. Twenty years operating consumer brands in international sourcing, manufacturing, ecommerce, and sales before starting SQG. American brand and channel judgment applied to Chinese products.
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Who we work with
Categories we run: Kitchen and bath. Small appliances. Furniture and home goods. Hardware and home improvement. Outdoor and garden. General consumer packaged goods.
Outside scope: Consumer electronics with connected components. Medical. Food and supplements. Apparel.
No Western joint ventures. No Western ownership. No Western VC or growth equity. If your cap table has any of those on it, we're not your fit. If it changes mid-engagement, tell us and we'll re-scope honestly.
Primary market: US and Canada, direct execution. On request: UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Spain, Australia. Senior local contacts activated per engagement. Hub-and-spoke, not global firm with a Frankfurt office.
Why we exist
Option one
Understand the founder. Speak the language. Handle the Alibaba integration and the Amazon compliance in Chinese. What they can't do is walk into a Home Depot vendor meeting or a KBIS booth and read what a US buyer actually thinks about the product. They can't tell you that your name doesn't work in English, or that your packaging reads as generic to a specifier who's seen a hundred similar SKUs this year. They optimize the operations. They cannot fix the position.
Option two
Understand the American buyer. Speak the market. They can build brand positioning in English and connect to KBIS specifier networks. What they can't do is walk your Guangzhou factory floor and know whether the QC will hold, whether the price is real, or whether your supplier is going to change your product spec halfway through the first PO. They can't tell whether the founder's brand story is 20% true or 80% true because they can't read the Chinese domestic media coverage. They build positions on products they don't fully understand.
Option three · SQG
SQG does both. American brand and channel judgment on our side. On-the-ground Guangzhou execution through long-standing manufacturing and QC relationships. The positioning is built by someone who lives in the US market you're entering. The vouching that goes with it is built on real Guangzhou relationships, not a satellite office. That combination is not what you get from a firm with a Shanghai office and a Culver City satellite. It's what you get from a US operator who has spent a quarter century on this trade lane, in both directions.
That is why we exist. If you want the operations firm, hire a Chinese-owned agency; there are dozens of good ones. If you want the strategy firm, hire a US branding consultancy; there are hundreds. If you want an operator who can do both sides of the trade lane and tell you the truth about your product and your positioning at the same time, this is the shorter list.
What we do
We own what we can vouch for and partner what we cannot. Brand positioning, Western creative, and distributor recruitment in our core categories are direct-delivered by the SQG team. Amazon operations, paid media, and DTC digital are handled by specialist partners under our brand direction. Not because we can't operate an Amazon account, because operating one well requires a full-time compliance and operations team. Hire a specialist for that and let us direct their work.
Tier 1 · Entry
4–6 weeks
A complete US-market positioning platform your team can execute against. The foundation every distributor conversation depends on.
Every engagement starts with a free 3-account diagnostic audit. It's a sample of the thinking, applied to your brand and two reference competitors. If you read it and want to argue specifics with us, we're a fit. If you read it and want to skip to buying more Amazon ads, we're not.
Tier 2 · Full program
Retainer + success fee · 6–12 months
Positioning, plus US and Canadian distributor recruitment, trade-show representation, and first meetings with qualified buyers. Compensation tied to signed distributor contracts.
We take one to three of these engagements per year. Not because we're precious about it. Because they take real time and real operator attention, and we won't split that attention across ten clients.
Tier 3 · Distribution only
4–6 months
For brands that already have US-ready positioning. Qualified distributor pipeline, first meetings scheduled, and follow-through into signed accounts.
If your positioning isn't ready, we'll tell you honestly. Distributor conversations without positioning is how launches burn cash for six months and produce no signed contracts.
Why we start with positioning
A US kitchen and bath distributor sees fifty Chinese sanitary ware brands per year. They remember the one with an answer to "why should I put you in my showroom next to Kohler?" Product specs don't answer that. Positioning does.
The 500-review threshold that opens up brand growth on Amazon is a positioning threshold. Reviews come from repeat purchases and word-of-mouth, both of which require a brand identity that isn't "generic ceramic bathroom fixture from China." Paid media accelerates a broken position. It does not fix one.
Every distributor contract, retail placement, and paid campaign locks in the position that was in market when they signed. Fixing it later requires renegotiating relationships and refunding shelf space. Cheaper to get it right first.
Positioning is the smallest amount of money and the shortest amount of time in the service ladder above. Everything else costs more if it's done in the wrong order.
Frequently asked
Amazon underperformance is almost always a positioning problem, not an Amazon problem. We start with positioning, then decide whether Amazon-specific work is worth doing.
We don't work with brands that have Western ownership, joint venture, or growth equity. Hard filter. If your cap table changes mid-engagement, tell us and we re-scope honestly.
Any size, as long as ownership and category fit. We run 6–10 active engagements at a time. We select on category, coachability, and category fit, not revenue.
Yes, as an add-on to a North America engagement. We activate senior contacts in UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Spain, and Australia per client. We don't sell Europe or Australia as a standalone engagement in year one.
Consumer electronics with connected components. Medical. Food and supplements. Apparel. Positioning consulting on some; no distribution or channels work in them.
Answered above in section two. Short version: we do the American brand and channel judgment they typically can't deliver. They handle the operations we don't run in-house.
Also answered in section two. Short version: we walk your Guangzhou factory floor. They don't.
Yes, through our sibling service line, SQG Sourcing. Both practices run under strict client-level confidentiality; client information does not cross service lines.
About Sena Qiao Group
SQG Sourcing helps Western brands buy from Asian factories. Factory qualification, quality control, landed-cost discipline.
SQG China Brand Development (this service line) helps Chinese brands enter and scale in North American, European, and Australian markets. Positioning, distributor recruitment, Western creative direction.
Both practices run under strict client-level confidentiality. Client information, supplier relationships, product roadmaps, pricing, and channel strategy do not cross engagements or service lines. Written into every MSA.
We do not represent both sides of the same commercial negotiation. That is a client-conflict rule, not a category rule. Two clients in the same industry is normal. Two clients on opposite sides of one deal is not.
American, Southern California. Conversational Mandarin. Twenty-five years working the China–North America trade lane in both directions, twelve of them in Guangzhou. Twenty years building and operating consumer brands in international sourcing, manufacturing, ecommerce, and sales before SQG.
Long-standing Guangzhou-side execution partners. Factory qualification, on-the-ground quality control, supplier network access. Not subcontractors. Part of how SQG delivers. Named on request, once we know it's a real conversation.
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