Sofeast Ltd

Sofeast is a professional service provider. In China, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
# Supply Chain Management -- project management of your orders and developments
# Quality Assurance -- audits & inspections, MFG problem resolution
# Product Engineering -- DFM, engineering design, preparation for mass production
# Reliability engineering & testing in our own lab (RSQlabs.com)
--> We help companies that design & develop their own products. We set up supply chains and support product development, and we ensure our clients retain transparency and control.

Partner and CEO

Agilian Technology

Agilian is a Sofeast subsidiary — a 250-person contract manufacturer in Dongguan (next to Shenzhen).

Executive VP, Partner

Serenial Development Pte. Ltd.

Production transfer out of China, to India and Malaysia.

Partner

SynControl Technology Ltd

IT solution for managing product quality & compliance data, and for automating QC inspections.

Founder, Product Manager

China Manufacturing Consultants (CMC)

CMC (now called MTG) is a consultancy that helps manufacturers improve their operations. Now present in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, USA, Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

When I was involved in the operations, we served first-class groups such as Toyota Supply Chain Europe, Air Liquide Hangzhou & UAE, Michelin Shenyang & Shanghai, CCM (ex Adidas group), Electrolux Productivity Improvement Department, etc.

Founding Partner

European Union Chamber of Commerce in China

Chair, Sourcing Forum, PRD chapter

Charmco Trading

I managed some accounts from A to Z in this 2-person company: purchasing, new styles development, payment negotiations, start of manufacturing, quality control, shipping.

Business manager

Oeneo

Benchmarking of competitors' products (product: cork for wine bottles).

Benchmarking analyst

20 years in China, helping foreign companies manufacture new products at the right quality & reliability level. Founder/co-founder of the companies listed below.

Agilian is a contract manufacturer in Dongguan, providing supply chain transparency. Assembly, PCBA, plastic, silicone, and die casting. An amazing team of nearly 300 people working and a focus on continuous process improvement.

Agilian is part of the Sofeast group, which otherwise helps companies develop their own products. Supply chain setup, product design, and quality assurance, as professional services.

Besides, SynControl is SAAS software for automating quality & compliance operations.

I am part of the "experts" of the Hardware Academy and a startup advisor with the Start2 Group.

This is a great explanation of why developing & selling a hardware product is different from software. Many people have try to make the jump from SW to HW, but not many have managed to adapt.

Renaud Anjoran

New Product Manufacturing | Quality, Reliability, Safety | China, India, Malaysia

BUILDING HARDWARE vs. SOFTWARE

I spent years in tech startups, lastly as Head of Product at Zalando, shipping product updates twice a day.

Today I spend weeks in Shenzhen watching shower heads come off the line.

In software I could A/B test a button over lunch. In hardware that same button can mean a $50,000 mold and an eight-week wait.

PRODUCT THINKING STAYS THE SAME. BUSINESS REALITY DOES NOT.

You still listen to users, test assumptions, and ship imperfect work to learn.
The difference is that in hardware every product decision is a cash-flow decision.
Every quality issue is a trust equation.
Every iteration is a growth trade-off.

EARLY DISCOVERY IS FINANCIAL SURVIVAL

A prototype for a 2026 launch revealed a fitting issue in certain bathrooms.
In software that is a bug in staging.
In hardware it is 10,000 units of dead stock avoided, about $200,000 saved.
Prototypes are not about perfection, they are about finding expensive problems while they are still cheap.

MOLD INVESTMENTS ARE BETS, NOT JUST COSTS

Tooling for injection molding often runs $30,000 to $75,000. Precision steel, shrinkage, flow, cooling.
Our 2.0 launched October 2024. Stable so far, 2.7% return rate. Six months in we spotted mold tweaks that should improve quality. The upgrade costs $75,000 and goes live October 2025. It takes one year and $75k to do a single product iteration.
Two years ago I would not have placed that bet. Today I can. Affordability shapes conviction.

QUALITY FAILURES TEACH CALM

A supplier swapped O-rings without telling us. Eight percent failure rate. Bad reviews. Angry customers.
I was furious. Then I learned. Manufacturing is complex. If you punish every mistake you poison the partnership.
Our rule now: they cover product costs, we cover shipping. We share the burden and fix the system.
Direct cost was about $50,000. The emotional cost was worse. In software you can patch on the weekend. In hardware you live with discomfort for months while your product mistake sits in someone’s shower as a leaking shower head.

WHY SHENZHEN MATTERS

The density of component suppliers, the talent, the rhythm of factories make it the best place I know to iterate physical products. Being on the ground changes decisions because constraints become visible.

PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS MAKE YOU PRIORITIZE

A shower head has a size, a weight, and standards to meet. Every feature must earn its place. No abstractions to hide behind. That makes you a sharper product thinker.

SO WHY DO HARDWARE

The economics are worse than software. Margins are tighter. But there’s something about building a physical thing that millions of people touch every day. Something you created from scratch that makes a tangible impact in their lives.

I can’t fully articulate why that matters more than better unit economics.
But it does.

And I believe we’re returning to an analog world as software gets commodified. The perfection of physical products will offer great business opportunities.

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