Tessera Multimedia

Joe Sierra accepted to answer our questions to introduce Terressa Multimedia.

Maxxelli blog: Name, sex
Joe Sierra, male

Maxxelli blog: What do you do in China?
I am general manager of Tessera, a company specializing on creating multimedia presentations on the web and on CD/DVD. By multimedia, I mean using medium such as video, sound, slideshows, photography, virtual tours and 3D to convey your sales/marketing message in a way that you can positively distinguish your business from your competition in an impressive and memorable fashion.

Maxxelli blog: What did you do before?
I had a Graphic Design business in California with my partner, Maryann Ohki. You can still see samples of our prior work by going to www.tesseramedia.com

Maxxelli blog: why did you come to Chengdu?
Basically I wanted to come to China because it is now the most economy to be a living in. Yet despite all its advances, there is still a need for greater sophistication in sales presentations. I felt, in a very TINY way, I could contribute to improving this.

Why Chengdu? I needed to be in a city where the living expenses and cost for operating a business was reasonable. Several expats that I met while visiting China before recommended Chengdu because of the lower living cost, livability and dynamic economy. I think it was a good decision. There is so much difficult learning to be done in China that if I had gone to city such as Shanghai, I would have, very quickly, fail!

Maxxelli blog: When was your company created?
It was started late last year. Then, a lot of time has been spent in teaching staff how to design websites and create video more along a more western style. Doing things from a western prospective is the only thing I feel we can do contribute to Chinese business. I felt it would be foolish to compete with Chinese company doing basic websites. Chinese web developers can do these just as well as us and can do a better job selling their services because they Chinese and understand how to sell to other Chinese. So, offering my services with a different point of view is the one thing I can offer that, usually, they cannot compete with.

Maxxelli blog: Who are your customers?
With the Chinese market, is businesses who are open minded and want to make a statement with their sales presentation. They want to say they are advanced and cutting edge. I think this type of statement can be made with the marketing tools you use. I try to convey the idea that being different can be a positive thing and indicated to their more sophiscated customers that the company’s mind set is to look for new innovative solutions in the products and services offered.

But, admittedly, this is a tough message to convey in China! Usually, Chinese business are looking at what the competition is doing and going out and doing the same thing because it have been proven to work and is a safe direction to take. Also many Chinese business’s way of looking at things is very different from the west. Sometimes very pessimisitic! For example, if you propose a new idea, many will give you 5 reasons why it will not work in China and maybe one reason why it might work. In the west, if that one reason is a great reason to explore the idea further, we might proceed to refine the idea and overcome the difficulties. In China, they just give up on the idea..immediately! Frankly, I don’t care about doing business with these type of people. Instead, I focus on finding the small group of Chinese that want to try different and innovative things. They the future of China.

Maxxelli blog: What kind of services and products do you propose to your customers?
We say that you only get one chance to make a first impression. And that first impression can be so important! So, we suggest using video, Flash, high end photography to make a dramatic impression to your prospects. If appropriate, using virtual tours and 3D is also very exciting. We feel providing a lot of useful information in an entertaining manner is really vital in making the prospects proceed with further inquiries. If that first impression is not good, they will abandon your presentation and forget about your business. So to prevent that from happening we propose using one or more of the following tools:

Websites
www.oldchengduclub.com