Alan Coughlan: The Irishman transforming global logistics

Podcast Ep 213: Lansil Global founder Alan Coughlan talks about going from teaching English in China to building a global logistics business.

Cork native Alan Coughlan’s Lansil Global is creating 30 jobs in the US after opening a new warehouse in Pennsylvania. This is the company’s second facility in the US and is envisaged to speed up shipping for online retailers.

Now based in Dubai, he talks about how he want from teaching English in China to establishing his global logistics business.

Founded in 2015, Coughlan’s Lansil Global is an end-to-end supply chain service.

The international enterprise, which was born whilst Alan was living in China, supplies everything from cosmetics, electronics, toys, apparel, household and DIY items to e-commerce companies across Facebook, Amazon and Shopify. It also offers China and US sourcing, manufacturing, quality checks and order fulfilment.

The global company which has offices in Shenzhen, China, Nevada, US, Dubai, UAE and now, Pennsylvania, has generated revenues of $40m. The next stop is most likely Texas.

Employing 100 people, Lansil Global’s growth has seen it bolster international trade through delivering over 15m packages globally.

Making the world a smaller place

While Coughlan started his business in Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong, comparisons to another famous Corkman know for his success in China – Liam Casey aka Mr China – end there. Unlike Casey who had form in manufacturing and fashion beforehand, Coughlan’s beginnings in business were quite accidental.

“I had just finished my Master’s degree in China and spent maybe a year and a half teaching English because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. During that time I thought of buying and selling goods in China and it took off from there.

“I had the pleasure of meeting Liam Casey a while back and it’s funny, before I started Lansil I applied for a job at PCH and I didn’t even get a reply. And when I met Liam about two years into starting my business we had a good laugh at that because he said the luckiest thing I ever did was not getting a job with him.”

Casey gave Coughlan a tour of his Shenzhen operations. “It was fantastic to hear how he started and it was a very similar. He still has his first staff member running the show and so do I. The majority of his staff are female and the majority of my staff are female. It was amazing just to meet him and hear his story and see where we both kind of came from.”

Coughlan’s start in business was out of necessity. “I had finished my Master’s but couldn’t get a decent job. I was looking at coming home and started looking at jobs in Dublin. I called my parents and said I had decided to stay and buy and sell some goods. They just said: ‘Go for it!’ I went home for a month but returned to China with the intention of starting a supply business.”

He found a niche in going to various factories in China on behalf of overseas businesses to get goods manufactured. “It kind of snowballed from there. I was an Irish person who could be a trusted source on the ground and word spread to American and Australian businesses that there was a non-Chinese person on the ground in China who could go to the factory on your behalf and tell you the honest truth about what is going on.”

Coughlan traversed south China’s manufacturing landscape on trains, planes and mopeds, often far from the major cities. “I was learning from my mistakes, whether it was pricing or quality and in my next deal I would improve on that. It would also prep me for my sales pitches to customers, how to get the customer, how to close the deal and how to deal with factories.”

Often businesses looking to get goods manufactured in China would learn lessons the hard way in terms of price and quality. But word of an Irishman on the ground who would ensure the best outcomes spread around the world.

“The amount of time involved you would not believe it. It was seven days a week for three years, visiting two-to-three factories a day and improving my Chinese as I went on. Often I would play one factory against the other in order to get the best deal for my customers.”

Coughlan now spends most of his time in Dubai but also operates warehouses in the US and China. He mostly shuttles between Dubai, Pennsylvania and Nevada. “I work 18 hours a day but I take Sundays off.”

Shortening the global supply chain

“We had begun shipping products from China and then we noticed that the US was our customers’ biggest market so 80% of our products were going to the US. My thought process was: ‘Okay, I need to set up a warehouse in the States so that we can accommodate our customers by having a faster delivery time.”

This meant Coughlan could guarantee deliveries in days rather than two weeks for a shipment to come directly from China.

“I literally jumped on a plane to Las Vegas and within five days I hired staff and rented my first warehouse there.”

The decision to locate warehouses on both the west and eastern coasts of the USA meant Coughlan could reduce delivery times even further. “In total in the US we are doing 15,000 orders per day and that’s the process: see what our customers need and act on it. I don’t overthink things; I just jump right into it and jump on a plane.”

What is remarkable about Coughlan’s journey in just nine years is he had no strategy at first; that came later. What he had to learn was focus and selecting quality over quantity.

“I had no business plan, and no investment, or nobody guided me on what to do. I had no friends who had started a business. I had no peers or uncles or aunts that started a business. So I kind of just winged it myself. So I had no real plan. At that stage, within the first two years, I would do anything that came that fell on my on my lap. There was an Irish company had a container of wine in Hong Kong that they couldn’t get sold into China and I took it on me to try and sell it and I got it sold. But the rewards from that sale and the effort it took me to get it sold wasn’t worth it.

“But you know, it was a great learning processes to stick with what I’m doing. I’m in China, I can help people purchase goods in China and export globally. I focused that on what I was good at. And as soon as I focused on what I was good at, which was going to factories and negotiating and improving quality, that’s around the time my business took off; when I stopped taking every opportunity that came my way and I actually turned down some things that would take a lot of my time, and just focused on what we do. And that was around a two and a half year mark. And that’s when my company really started to grow.”

In a world where Chinese retail giants like Shein, Temu and Alibaba are dominating e-commerce from Asia, Coughlan maintains his focus on quality. “They were meant to cut out the middlemen but in fact they’ve created more middlemen. They are much bigger than us and I don’t class them as competitors. We just focus on what we do and we slowly grow from word of mouth.”

Asked where Coughlan may go next with Lansil, he says opportunities in Europe and India are tempting but he maintains a process. “The only way I would invest in a city in southeast Asia would be if I could put a team on the ground to do the quality checks and guarantee the supply chain. We do get asked by customers about setting up more operations in the USA because that market is big for cosmetics. It’s all about speed, and the costs and efficiencies in China still can’t be beaten. It’s good quality at a great cost.”

Coughlan says where Lansil wins is ensuring brands can get products manufactured in China at a fifth of the cost of what it would take to have it made in their local markets.

Sustainability is a key theme of Lansil’s business and a key focus of his team on the ground in China is ensuring products are sustainably sourced and recyclable. He explained that customers need to be able to demonstrate and account to shareholders and customers alike that goods are responsibly sourced and manufactured.

Coughlan admits his business journey is a surprise even to himself. “It’s funny, if you told me 12 years ago that I’d have a global business I probably would not have believed you. I knew I couldn’t work for somebody else. Any job I had during college I was always trying to find an easier way to do a task. I had reached 26 or 27 and all my friends were getting great jobs and I felt like I was letting myself down.

“And that’s when lightbulbs went off and I decided to try working for myself. I became a workaholic for five or six years and I didn’t take a day off, I just kept putting everything into my business and eventually I saw the fruits of my labour and I’m at 120 staff now, which means I’m looking after 120 families and making sure they are paid. It’s a big motivation for me.

“We are looking at opening a Texas warehouse in the next year that would again shorten our delivery times. Providing a great service to our customers means a lot to me. We’ve had customers who have been with us for nine years and that keeps me going. Just building a company that while we didn’t have a business plan, it has grown into something that I am proud of and my family would be proud of.”

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