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Alongside building the product, you set up the business side: funding (savings, investors, accelerators, crowdfunding), protecting your ideas (patents, trademarks, and NNN agreements, which are Chinese-language non-disclosure, non-use and non-circumvention contracts), and deciding whether you need a company in Hong Kong or mainland China.
Tooling and first production orders need cash up front. Registering your trademark in China early prevents others from registering it first.
Varies widely. Trademark filing in China is relatively inexpensive and worth doing early. Accelerator programmes typically invest in exchange for equity.
Accelerators and incubators in the Community section, and legal and company-services firms in the directory.
Prototype-to-production NPI management for foreign hardware teams, on site in Mandarin
Shenzhen
01Community · 10 minWhere makers and hardware founders actually meet in Shenzhen in 2026: makerspaces, the weekly hackerspace night, factory tours, incubators and the big annual events, plus what has quietly gone dormant.
02Cost · 10 minThe cost buckets of developing and manufacturing a hardware product, explained for first-timers. Design, prototypes, tooling, certification and the first production order, with typical ranges where they're widely published, plus the costs people forget.
03Working in China · 8 minWhat an NNN agreement is, how it differs from a standard NDA, why it's commonly recommended when working with Chinese manufacturers, and what it can and can't do. Plain-English background, not legal advice.
04Basics · 11 minThe stages of making a physical product, from first sketch to boxes on a ship, explained for first-timers. What happens at each stage, why it matters, what you get out of it, and who in Shenzhen helps.
05Community · 7 minWhich hardware accelerators and incubators are actually active around Shenzhen in 2026 (XbotPark, Shenzhen Foundry, TroubleMaker's program), and what happened to HAX, x.factory and others.