Feature: German entrepreneur singing upbeat tune in Hong Kong

BEIJING/HONG KONG, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Florian Simmendinger runs a music technology company and has been living in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in the south of China for a decade. Having developed a musical smartwatch that enables musicians to feel the beat, the German expat is in a good position to explore the dynamic rhythm of China and feels positive about it.

Simmendinger is from a musical family and learnt to play piano when he was growing up. He still remembers the "pain point" of using a traditional metronome during piano practice, saying that it proved very annoying. "My piano teacher would tap me on the shoulder to give me the beats. It was torture," he laughed.

In 2014, fresh out of university, Simmendinger had a smart idea, asking himself -- why not make a vibrating metronome that enables musicians to feel the beat of music, just like the vibrating smartwatch used for fitness purposes?

"Every single musician in the world from beginners to professionals, from drummers and pianists to guitarists, every single one has to practice from time to time. I wanted to make music practice easy and addictive," Simmendinger said in an interview with Xinhua.

Inspired by this idea, Simmendinger decided to start up a music tech company in his home country. "When I started, I just had the idea for a smartwatch, without any background or funding or anything," he recalled.

Simmendinger quickly found himself running into issues, as all the components for his future products were manufactured in Asia, requiring about a month to be transported to Germany.

Then he met an investor from the HKSAR by chance, who suggested Simmendinger go to the city of Shenzhen, a tech hub in south China's Guangdong Province, located close to the HKSAR. "You will find the full ecosystem of manufacturing there," the investor told him.

Simmendinger embraced the investor's advice and flew to Shenzhen, where he found that Huaqiangbei, one of the world's largest wholesale electronic products markets, contained almost all the components he needed.

In 2015, he decided to move to the HKSAR and established his company there, because "it would be much easier for both product development and mass manufacturing."

Simmendinger's company, Soundbrenner, has since developed five major products, and its corresponding mobile application has recorded 15 million downloads. "There are over 1,000 musicians practicing with our products every minute of each day," Simmendinger revealed.

The company's products are available on Chinese online shopping platforms like Taobao and JD.com -- at prices ranging from roughly 600 yuan (about 83.3 U.S. dollars) to 1,500 yuan. Soundbrenner achieved sales amounting to 3 million U.S. dollars last year.

Simmendinger attributes his success to choosing the HKSAR as base. A major advantage in terms of starting up businesses in the HKSAR lies in its proximity to technology powerhouse Shenzhen, which means securing easy access to a strong supply chain, he said.

During the initial stages of establishing his business, Simmendinger regularly took high-speed train trips to the cities of Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province to visit factories and look for good business connections -- a process he found "super convenient and efficient."

Simmendinger's story underlines the appeal of the HKSAR as a startup hub. With China advancing the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), the HKSAR beat is demonstrating even more vigor and vitality.

Fang Zhou, director of a HKSAR-based think tank, said that while the Tokyo Bay Area and San Francisco Bay Area are both impressive, there is no place that has as many sectors, ranging from trade and finance to manufacturing and technology, as the GBA -- illustrating its unique advantage for global entrepreneurs.

In reviewing both his decade-long stay in the HKSAR and travels to different Chinese cities, Simmendinger said that what he saw and experienced had smashed the stereotypes of China with which he had previously been presented.

One of these stereotypes concerns Chinese workers, who were portrayed as a poorly paid labor force grinding along in undesirable working conditions. However, Simmendinger came across a very different scenario at the many factories he visited. "I would be happy to send my children there for the summer to work on the assembly line, so that they can get some basic skills."

Now the German entrepreneur is targeting the broader Chinese market. "I recently discovered something really interesting -- Chinese children learning to play piano outnumber the total number of pianists in the rest of the world. I see a vast market in that," he said.

"I'm looking forward to building a Chinese marketing team, setting up our own e-commerce presence, and running our own stores, thereby enabling us to introduce our products to all Chinese customers," Simmendinger added. ■