East intersects with west in amusing ways in Mike Bellamy’s professional and personal life. The American founder of Passagemaker, a sourcing company that acts as a go-between for midsized western companies that supply retailers from factories in China, laughs when he describes how his teenage daughter symbolises this cultural ambidexterity. She picks “the eyeball out of a fish-head with chopsticks with one hand while helping herself to mashed potatoes” with the other.
在Passagemaker的美国创始人迈克•贝拉米(Mike Bellamy)的职业生涯和个人生活中，东西方文化以一种有趣的方式交织在一起。Passagemaker是一家为西方中等规模企业提供居间服务的采购公司，这些企业用中国工厂生产出的产品向零售商供货。当贝拉米描述自己十来岁的女儿如何娴熟地掌握这两种文化时，他大笑了起来。她能够用“一只手拿筷子从鱼头上夹出鱼眼睛，同时用另一只手吃土豆泥”。
Mr Bellamy’s office also offers a hint at this dual cultural identity. At its centre, harnessed to a stationary bike, is a work table whose construction is emblematic of a new model of doing business through vendors and suppliers in China. He says that while everyone wants the China price – ie the low costs associated with sourcing from the country’s factories – clients are just as concerned about being copied by suppliers who quickly become competitors. “We are a buyer-appointed firewall. Buyers don’t want the sub-suppliers to see too far up the supply chain,” he says.
贝拉米的办公室也为这种双重文化身份提供了线索。在其办公室中央有一个与健身车相连的工作台，其制造过程就体现了一种在零售商和中国供应商之间牵线搭桥的新商业模式。贝拉米表示，尽管所有人都想要中国的低价格（也就是从中国工厂采购所带来的低成本），但客户同样担心产品被供应商复制——这样供应商就会迅速成为竞争对手。他称：“我们是受买家委托的防火墙。买家不希望分供应商过多地看到供应链上端。”
The process used to manufacture his exercise bike-enabled desk is a case in point. Its steel legs are made by one manufacturer, the plastic table-top at another. The unit is then assembled at a factory owned by Passagemaker and shipped directly to Amazon – without even the middleman client in the US seeing the finished product. The manufacturer of the steel legs could have been used to make the whole product but breaking up the process allows the company to protect its intellectual property.
他的健身车工作台的制造过程就是一个很好的例子。工作台的钢腿是由一家制造商制造的，而塑料台面是另一家制造商制造的。然后工作台在Passagemaker旗下的工厂组装，并直接运至亚马逊(Amazon)，甚至美国的中间客户也见不到成品。Passagemaker本可以让钢腿制造商制造整件产品，但分解制造过程可以保护知识产权。