Hi, I'm Pinky Brand, and we're here live in Beijing, and speaking with my good friend,
Mr. Anton Lee, and you've been providing quite a bit of services, I understand, to the domain
name industry, colleagues that we have here.
Tell us a little bit about your business, the name of your business, and so forth, or
just maybe a brief introduction for the viewers.
Okay, my name is Anton Lee, just like Pinky described.
Now our businesses help the domain names registries to set up a movie here to meet the requirements
of MIT's application.
And this kind of business we are doing now will also help foreign nationals to establish
your business here, and if you want to invest in China, we help you set up Woofy, and when
the Woofy is set up, we help you do the compliance service so that you can make your business
legally in China.
Yeah, I know we applied for a Woofy as well in order to adhere to some of the MIT regulations
to be able to submit.
How long does it take on average to get a Woofy in China?
So in China, in different districts or in different provinces, the process differences
and time is different, but in Beijing, we have several districts.
So in Beijing, a high-deand district is the tech zone in Beijing, so it's more efficient
to set up a Woofy in a high-deand district.
Normally it takes one month to get the Woofy set up, and if you select China district as
your business location, it's going to take about two to three months to get it set up.
So it's up to you where you're going to locate your business or your office in Beijing.
Okay, and what about capital requirements?
Does there a certain kind of amount of money?
Capital requirements, for a Woofy, even for a tech company, Woofy, if you are a major
business tech company, the minimum registered capital is 100,000 RMB.
That's the minimum capital.
But normally, if you only have a registered capital of 100,000 RMB, it looks like that
you are a small company, you're not strong enough.
So we often suggest foreign companies to set up a company, to set up a Woofy with registered
capital of 1,000,000 RMB.
That looks better for your business in China, for business presence in China.
Does this require anyone setting up the Woofy to come over to China?
Do they have to be physically present here to do that?
It also depends how much business you're going to do in China.
Normally, when you set up a company, you are required to be physically present in China.
But in some companies, at the very beginning, they don't have that business growing so fast,
so they could have a virtual office here and set up the company and open the bank account
and get all the approval certificates and business license from the government, and
you can start a business without any employees.
And we help you guys to do the compliance service, including accounting and tax reporting.
When your business grows faster and grows bigger and bigger, you need to have a real
physical office and with your legal employees hired from local areas to do your business.
And it's all up to your business plan.
What about...
I know folks have asked about getting an RO, a registered office.
Is there a particular advantage or disadvantage between an RO and a Woofy?
Of course.
RO is only a liaison office.
It's kind of an office that its function is to help your clients in China to communicate
with your headquarters out of China's mainland.
So it's only a communication office.
And it cannot sign the business contract with the local clients.
So and also this is the main function of the RO.
The disadvantage of RO is every money you spent in China must be taxed.
And it means that RO doesn't make money, well, it has to spend money, and all the money
spent must be taxed.
So that's the disadvantage.
And for Woofy, it's different.
For Woofy, it's an incorporation.
It's kind of a real company, it's a legal company with a business legal entity.
You can sign the contract, you can hire employees, and you can get a lot of cash flow from the
clients, and now the cash flow out of China's mainland to submit, to give back your profits
to your parents.
But RO doesn't have that advantage.
Because RO also don't have the authority to hire local people.
As your employees, you have to use a third party to hire people.
So it's totally different.
So I suggest all you guys who want to do business in China to have a Woofy here in China.
And if you have a Woofy and establish a Woofy, you can go through all that process.
And let's just say for whatever reason, if you're in the domain business, then for whatever
reason you decide you're not going to pursue business in China, or any other business for
that matter, can you wind down that Woofy easily, or can you sell it to someone else?
What do people do when they decide, maybe I need to think about this?
Both.
You can sell your Woofy to other investors.
You can also wind up the Woofy, it's not a problem.
And the only problem is, when the Woofy is set up, you have to do business.
You have to have a very good compliance service.
Either you use a third party to help you do the compliance service, or you have your own
employee to do the compliance service, especially the accounting and tax reporting jobs.
And you have to do a very good bookkeeping jobs, and also accounting jobs, and also tax
reporting jobs, and also very good accounting verification jobs.
When you do all these jobs well, and you decide to wind up the company, and it's not that
difficult, because the tax bureau won't find you troubles, because you have a lot of tax
reporting, accounting jobs recorded well enough.
And you know, we have a lot of cases where many Woofies want to wind up the company here,
and because they haven't done a very good job in accounting and tax reporting, and also
other compliance jobs.
For example, some of the certificates are not kept well, and the governments, especially
tax bureaus, find a lot of troubles.
And then before they wind up the company, they have to pay more taxes, and also they
got to be fined without paying all the taxes well in the previous years.
So that's the problem, also the problem happened all the time.
So this is what I want you foreign nationals who want to establish business here.
So to do a very good compliance job is very important.
I'm wondering, is compliance like one of the big challenges that a lot of companies have,
and what do you see people coming over here who are not familiar with doing business in
China and running an actual entity, legal entity here?
What are some of the challenges that they maybe don't see that you see?
So I think the biggest challenge is that, okay, first, they don't speak Chinese.
So it's not easy for them to understand Chinese laws and regulations and policies.
But even they speak Chinese, they have very good Chinese friends here, and in China, policies
and regulations are always vague.
So sometimes it's not easy for you to explain specifically how this policy means, how this
regulations means.
And that's the biggest challenge.
Even for us Chinese, we have different explanations for some policies or regulations.
And also that's why we are here working for foreign nationals.
Because if you're foreign nationals who want to set up a company, especially you guys,
foreign entrepreneurs, you want to do business here, want to make money here, and of course
all of you guys want to do business legally here, you don't want to do anything against
the laws.
But you need someone to provide some consulting, provide some information, provide some services
for you that we are here to help you guys.
And even for one policy or regulations, there are different explanations, we're going to
sort it out and consolidate all the information and find out the real solution.
So we always can have a solution to different policies and different explanations of one
policy.
So I suggest you guys should try your best to meet the requirements of MIT currently as
soon as possible.
And so that catch the window to get the license done.
Yeah, it's very helpful, very helpful information, because if there's anything I learned in coming
to China since the 90s, actually, and not just for the domain name business, the business
environment, the regulatory environment can change very, very quickly.
And making sure that things are not lost in translation, as we say, in the language and
understanding is extraordinarily important, sometimes just little minute details.
So it sounds like you really have quite a bit of, well, obviously, we've been working
with you as well, and you definitely have a lot of that knowledge.
And I think if for anyone that might be setting up any kind of a business in China, it seems
that it's very important that they engage with someone local, especially perhaps someone
such as yourself.
So I'm sure that a lot of the viewers out there have hopefully have learned something
today from our conversation, and we'll see what the future holds as it relates to the
domain name industry here in China.
That's definitely evolving.
There's been a lot of activity going on here over the past year.
Prices have gone up in the secondary market for domain names here, for premium names,
and now we've seen them come down a little bit in 2016.
Have you yourself bought any particular domain names?
I'm just curious.
I'm just wondering if you got caught up in all this here.
You mean the premium name, right?
Yeah, like premium names, any of these new GTLDs, or just registered just on your own,
your own idea.
Yeah, I bought a premium name, Woofy, W-F-O-E.
Woofy means wholly foreign owned enterprise, because this is a job I help foreign nationals
to set up a company in China.
So we call it Woofy, W-F-O-E.
So I bought this premium name.
So maybe premium name dot club, premium dot online, and Woofy dot club, Woofy dot online,
Woofy dot VIP, or Woofy dot etc.
So this is what I'm doing.
I bought some of the premium names.
That's very good.
Are you going to develop these sites?
Have you already?
Yes, yes.
I'm going to develop some sites with those premium names.
That's great.
That's great to hear.
I'm sure the folks that heard their TLDs mentioned are happy that as well.
Yes, yes.
I know TLD, especially new GTLD is very promising in China.
It's promising in China.
I know there are so many TLDs coming to China trying to get a special license from MIT,
and I'm here to help you guys.
So if you need some help, I need some consulting, please come to me.
I'll try my best to help you.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot, Anton.
And he likes dumplings too.
So if you like dumplings, I'm sure we can arrange a meeting at the local dumpling place
just down the road.
There's a lot of dumplings.
Can we pay you with dumplings?
Yes, there are so many good foods in Beijing, and then especially those spicy shrimp, spicy
crab.
I love those.
I love those spicy lobsters.
Many TLD owners who come to our services, they all like those foods.
If you guys come to me, I'm going to invite you to eat those spicy foods and also dumplings.
We could do a whole show on just the food, it's just so unbelievably delicious.
There are so many varieties to choose.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, thank you, Anton.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you for sharing a little bit about your business and your knowledge as well, and
we hope to have you on again sometime soon talking about the successes that various TLDs
that have set up operations here.
So thank you.
Thank you also.
Thanks again.
Thank you everyone.
