Dan Harris

Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris Bricken, an international law firm where he mostly represents companies doing business in emerging market countries. Most of his time is spent helping American and European companies navigate foreign countries by working with the international lawyers at his firm in setting up companies overseas (WFOEs, Subsidiaries, Rep Offices and Joint Ventures), drafting international contracts, protecting IP, and overseeing M&A transactions.

In addition, Dan writes and speaks extensively on international law, with a focus on protecting foreign businesses in their overseas operations. He is also a prolific and widely-followed blogger, writing as the co-author of the award-winning China Law Blog.

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Selling Products Overseas

Selling Your Product Overseas: The Business Basics

A startup U.S. consumer product company with an ultra-hot new product line wrote one of my law firm's international lawyers asking what they should do to sell their product through a Chinese company that had expressed interest in being the U.S. company's "Chinese representative." After a few emails on various different legal subjects, our international lawyer wrote the following email (modified a bit) that provides such good and basic business advice that I wanted to share it here.

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Payment terms for overseas sales

Payment Terms When Selling Overseas

Whenever my law firm is retained to represent a company that is looking to provide goods or services to a new overseas buyer. China, one of the first things we want to know are the payment terms. If our client is going to get 100% payment before it provides thegoods or services, a written contract may not even be necessary. The old expression about posession being nine tenths of the law holds true, though I'd probably update it to say that it's 99 percent of the law when it comes to selling to many emerging market countries.

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China manufacturing contracts

China Manufacturing and the Bike Lock Theory on Preventing Bad Products

Our international litigators have lately been getting more than the usual number of emails/phone calls from companies (mostly American and European) wanting to pursue litigation against their Chinese manufacturers for bad product. In this post we explain one relatively easy way to reduce your bad product risks.

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China Manufacturing Agreements

Manufacturing in China: Minimizing Your Risks by Doing Things Right

This very long post aims to provide an overview of the challenges of manufacturing in China, as well as strategies for minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities. It outlines the administrative and regulatory requirements, process and production challenges, and specific cultural and market-specific risks.

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Even if You Diversify Your Supply Chain, You Need to Keep Your Head on a Swivel

Small- and medium-sized companies have smaller toolboxes than large manufacturers when it comes to de-risking their supply chains, but even the big players have endured plenty of pain over the past few years. Multinational behemoths including Toyota, Apple and Sony have struggled to meet customer demand for their products, and in many cases, semiconductor shortages

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