Mission
Move African buyers from contact to contract — by curating business visits to the manufacturers, fairs, and partners that match their sector, and standing beside them through sourcing, payment, and delivery.
About Shang You
We don't sell flights to China.We sell a closed deal — for African importers, manufacturers, and investors.
Mission and Vision
Vision
Become the trusted commercial corridor between Africa and China — the first call for any African operator who wants to source, manufacture, or invest on the other side of the Indian Ocean.
The corridor
One commercial line, drawn between two continents.
We don't treat China as a destination. We treat it as the far end of a corridor — and we operate every station between Lagos and the Pearl River Delta as part of the same delivery.
§ 01Origin
Built on a familiar frustration —and a hard-earned address book.
- Year founded
- 2025
- Phase 1 sectors
- 10
- First mission
- Sept 2026
Too many African operators arrive in China with great intentions and leave with the wrong factory. A WeChat group. A business card. An order that ships late, or never.
Shang You was founded by operators who had already made the trip a dozen times over — for textiles, for power equipment, for construction profiles. The pattern was clear: the value isn't in the plane ticket. It's in who picks you up at the airport, which factory floor you walk first, and who's in the room when the price comes down.
We turned that experience into a programme. Pre-vetted manufacturers across ten priority sectors. Sector-matched interpreters who know that “tolerance” means something different in injection moulding than in finance. And a follow-up desk that keeps moving long after the cohort flies home.
“The trip is the introduction. The contract is the deliverable.”
§ 02The five we operate by
Operating principles — written down, on purpose.
We codified these the day the company was registered. They're how we win business, and how we're comfortable losing it.
- I
Sector before showroom.
Every itinerary is built from a declared target product. If a factory doesn't make what you came for, it doesn't make the schedule.
- II
Verify, then visit.
We desk-check before we travel — registrations, capacity, export history, references. The trip confirms what the file already says.
- III
Translation is technical, not tourist.
Interpreters are matched to your sector. They know your vocabulary — incoterms, tolerances, certifications, payment terms.
- IV
The follow-up is the product.
Procurement, payment routing, freight, QC — the post-trip desk is where most of our hours actually go.
- VWhat we won't do
We won't sell volume we can't service.
Cohorts are capped at 25. That number is operational, not aspirational. Beyond it, attention gets diluted and contracts slip.
§ 03By the numbers
A small ledger, kept on purpose.
We'd rather hold these numbers steady than chase a higher row in a brochure. Quality scales by attention, not headcount.
- delegates
- 25
- sectors
- 10
- cities
- 3
- days
- 10
Hard cap per cohort
Priority verticals at launch
Guangzhou · Shenzhen · Foshan
Per business visit & tour
§ 04From the founding desk
A short note, instead of a long bio page.
We've spent the better part of a decade flying the Lagos–Guangzhou route, sourcing for our own businesses and for the networks around us. Shang You is the company we wished existed when we started.
If you're weighing your first mission with us, talk to the team directly. We'd rather have a candid 30-minute call than push a brochure across email. The cohort is small on purpose — the conversations should be too.
The founding team
Shang You · Lagos