There’s one thing that you need to do business in Asia. It’s not business connections, inventory, partners, customers, nor even an idea. What you need to be taken seriously here is a business card. Woe to the businessman who enters a meeting and doesn’t have a
business card to exchange.

Indeed, a business card in much of Asia is considered almost an extension of the person, due the same deference and respect as the person himself. Imagine then a man (or woman) who cannot arrange to have his name printed on hundreds of little cardboard rectangles! Such a person is almost a non-entity and certainly not someone who can be trusted in a
business partnership.

So, I too joined the entrepreneur’s pilgrimage to the printing shop to legitimize myself and my business. As a bit of background, my business has a full color logo with, even more bothersome, gradients and other inconveniences. This, the printer told me, would mean four plates for the four primary colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black) that can be combined into the full gamut of business card colours.

Four plates would also mean expensive. 7000 Baht for a run of 1000 cards, which was the minimum number although far more than I really needed.. Well, I understand now why business cards are so respected here. Anyone who can throw away that kind of money on coasters-to-be really is someone to be reckoned with.

But that didn’t help me any. I don’t have money to throw away, but still need to legitimize myself as a person. The solution was to go where every man is an individual and every man has a card, and a big lawn, and a gun: America. In good old America they
can print you 1000 full-color business cards for 700 baht (US$21).

How can the price of a 1000 cards cost one tenth of that in the States? I don’t know. Even adding the 1000 baht for shipping, I saved 5,400 baht. When you’re just starting, every bit counts.

I have two pieces of advice for others looking to become real people with real businesses and real business cards: get your cards done in America for a sensible price and mark the incoming package as “business documents,” which is generally exempt from import duties.

As a sort of postscript, the standard business card in America is slightly smaller than the European or Asian variant. However, we all know what men with big business cards are trying to compensate for anyway.