Field notes from China's export economy
AI systems that survive contact with a real small business.
I build AI workflows for small companies that sell, source, or operate across borders — and I publish what actually happens: the workflows, the failures, and the numbers. No vendor demos. No thought leadership. Field notes.
- 16 years running cross-border commerce before AI was a pitch deck
- 4 years deploying AI inside real export & manufacturing SMEs
- One rule every number published here comes from a live system
When Not to Use an AI Agent: Five Cases Where a Simple Rule Wins
The hardest part of deploying AI in a small business is not building the agent. It is knowing the five kinds of decisions where a plain if-else rule is faster, cheaper, safer, and never wrong.
Workflow TeardownsWhy Most "AI Employees" Die After the Demo: Seven Production Failure Modes
The gap between an impressive demo and a system a 20-person trading company actually relies on is not model quality. It is everything around the model.
From RFQ Email to Qualified Lead: A Complete AI Workflow for a Small Export Team
Every step, every cost, and the two places where a human must stay in the loop.
A Real Cost Breakdown of Running an AI Sales Assistant for a 20-Person Company
Actual monthly invoices, not vendor pricing pages.
An export trading company stopped losing overnight inquiries.
Overseas buyers write at 3 a.m. China time. Before: first human reply the next afternoon, and multi-product inquiries from the same buyer were answered piecemeal by different people. After: every inquiry is parsed, deduplicated per buyer across mailboxes, grounded against a verified product knowledge base, and a draft reply waits for human sign-off by morning — with hard rules on what the AI may never promise. Full teardown with numbers coming as a field note.
- Company size
- ~20 people
- Workflow
- Inquiry → qualified lead
- Human handoff
- Price, lead time, certification
- Status
- In production
Start with an AI Workflow Audit.
One week. I interview your team, map 3–5 of your repetitive workflows, and give you a prioritized 90-day plan with honest cost and risk estimates — including the workflows where AI is not the answer. If we build together afterwards, the audit fee is credited in full.
I'm Li Long — founder of Houkongfan, a one-person AI implementation practice based in Jiangyin, China, in the middle of one of the world's densest manufacturing and export regions. I spent 16 years building cross-border e-commerce businesses before spending the last four putting AI to work inside real SMEs.
This site exists because almost everything written about "AI for business" is written by people selling software. I implement, then I write down what happened — including the parts that failed.