Chinese Women Business Leaders Charm Barcelona
Three of China's most successful female entrepreneurs - Yang Lan, Zhou Xiaoguang, and Shi Xiaoyang - recently shared their business strategies with executives in Spain. Speaking at the evening forum, the trio, all CEIBS alumni, impressed executives and members of the media with their frank and open discussion of the lessons they had learned while building a business in the fields of broadcast media, jewelry exports, and home furnishing retail.
By Laurie Underwood
“Hola! Bienvenido!” “Ni hao, huanying!” A mixture of Spanish peppered with Chinese filled the air as 400 business executives filled the auditorium of the IESE business school on February 26 to attend the “Chinese Business Women in Leadership Forum.” The event featured three of China’s best known and most accomplished businesswomen: TV personality and Sun Media Investment Holdings Chairman Yang Lan, Beijing Illinois Founder and President Shi Xiaoyang, and China Capital Investment Group CEO Zhou Xiaoguang. All three speakers are alumni of CEIBS.
“Tonight, we will be hearing from three marvelous ambassadors from China, each of whom was educated a CEIBS,” CEIBS Executive President Pedro Nueno told the crowd in his opening remarks. “Each of these women business leaders learned a lot during their business management studies but above all, they learned the art of teamwork - including cross cultural teamwork - since CEIBS strongly emphasizes this.” Prof. Nueno added that the forum itself was an example of cross-cultural teamwork, bringing three top Chinese businesswomen to share their stories and their professional insights with a European audience. Sponsored by CEIBS and IESE along with Spanish media groups Expansion and Actualidad Economica (AE). the forum was also co-moderated by AE Director Miguel Angel Belloso.
ATTRACTING CHINA'S FICKLE BROADCAST VIEWERS
Taking the speaker’s podium first was Yang Lan, one of China’s most highly respected broadcast journalists and media entrepreneurs. As co-founder and chairman of Sun Media Investment Holdings, Ms. Yang’s combined media ventures reach 200 million viewers per month.
Ms. Yang began her address by telling the audience, “China is going through an unprecedented transformation, and we three forum speakers are very fortunate to be part of that.” She explained how her own career has, in many ways, developed “in parallel” to the economic development of China over the past two decades. Sharing the highlights of her career, Ms. Yang told how her beginnings as a TV personality for CCTV lead her to seek a master’s degree from New York’s Columbia University, then to return to media as a talk-show host at China’s Phoenix TV after graduation. Since then, she has interviewed more than 400 Chinese and international celebrities and business leaders, and also had the opportunity to follow her “dream” of launching her own company in 1999.
Ms. Yang went on to share her first-hand experience in discovering that business dreams - especially early ones - do not always come true. Her first business model, which was based on a pay-per-view service, “was a failure,” she said, because China was not ready for such a service. “After four years, I had to sell the company I had started. I cried for half a year, thinking: I have 50 employees and I can’t let them down.”
But failure in business also brings new opportunities, Ms. Yang stressed. “Failure does you a lot of good. Running a business is like a being a butterfly; sometimes you have to go through a process of transformation.” After re-vamping the company and breaking it into separate companies - while at the same time attending the CEIBS CEO programme - Yang eventually revised Sun Media to focus more closely on the needs and interests of Chinese media consumers.
Her new business model, she says, targets specific niche audiences or “communities” of viewers. “In the past, individual media channels were supposed to satisfy the needs of all audiences,” she says. Today, viewers have far greater choice in their entertainment and information, and the most successful media groups are those that meet audiences’ new demand for content that specifically caters to their interests.
Ms. Yang says this new approach has worked with Chinese consumers. Today, her weekly TV show reaches 8 million viewers per week, her e-magazine receives 3 million downloads per week, and her professional women’s site, Her Village Daily also receives 600,000 downloads daily.
All told, Sun Media programming is now viewed by 40 million watchers every month. Much of the focus of the company is on catering to the needs of China’s professional women, and men. Recent examples of content include the launch of awards for the top 10 businesswomen in different fields, or programming that helps bridge the gender divide in modern China, such as an explanation of the top concerns women have of men during a first date. “It is very important to target different viewing communities,” Ms. Yang explained.
BUILDING AN EXPORT EMPIRE
It was a humble upbringing that drove Zhou Xiaoguang, founder and chairperson of Neoglory (China) Holdings Group, to found a company that has become one of China’s most successful players in the global fashion jewelry industry. At the age of 16, faced with severe financial constraints within her family and few opportunities to continue her formal education, Zhou made a brave decision. In her own words, she “packed a suitcase and traveled around China” - an adventure that left her determined to start her own company in China.
Ms. Zhou launched Neoglory in 1995 with her husband. By 1997, the company had obtained approval to go international. Today, the business employs 6000 staff and sells 5000 tons of product - or 300,000 items - per year. Under her direction, in 2007, Neoglory became China’s first jewelry enterprise to obtain an inspection-free certificate for exports.
Today, Zhou’s focus is on further internationalizing and expanding sales overseas. “We have a distribution network nationally (in China), we are starting distribution operations abroad,” she said. “We now have customers from more than 70 countries, from Moscow to Madrid. It is my hope that we will be able to build cooperation worldwide.”
Zhou went on to explain that she worked to compensate for her initial lack of advanced education by gaining firsthand business experience as well as serving as a representative in the local people’s assembly, and taking other roles such as her current position as Vice President of national costume jewelry association. She then went on to attend CEIBS, EMBA programme.
Known for her mentoring style and emphasis on CSR work, as well as the successful growth of Neoglory, Ms. Zhou has been named one of China’s Top 10 Businesswomen. Ms. Zhou concluded with a message of optimism for those doing business in China now. “China has an open economy now and it is my hope that it will continue to be so.”
RETAILING THE GOOD LIFE
The Forum’s final speaker, founder and president of the trend-setting lifestyle retailer Beijing Illinois Ms. Shi Xiaoyang also attributed part of her success to the fact that she launched her company just as China’s consumer population was gaining wealth. Ms. Shi shared her success story built on the simple goal of bringing quality home furnishings to Chinese consumers. She also showed a video produced by her adult son, showing the high-end retail products that have built Beijing Illinois one of the nation’s most successful retail enterprises.
Beginning 13 years ago as a “small furniture shop mainly for expatriates,” Ms. Shi has since then built the business by appealing to Chinese consumers and “changing people’s lives” by offering high quality, high comfort products. For example, she attributes her company with introducing to China a larger Western standard size of bed, literally adding comfort to the daily lives of her customers. “My goal was to supply a really good lifestyle to Chinese consumers - that was my dream and that is my philosophy.” Today, the company operates 40 shops across China.
Her only regret, Shi said, is that she has not learned to create work-life balance. Ironically, her work to bring comfort to her customers has left her with a work-a-holic pace of life. “My own lifestyle is not so good,” she told audience members during the forum’s lively Q&A period. “I work 12 hours days 365 days a year to make a better life for Chinese people.”
CHINESE SUCCESS STORIES-Shi Xiaoyan, Yang Lan, and Zhou Xiaoguang, three of China's Bestknown female entrepreneurs, shared with Barcelona executives advice gleaned from their tumultuous career journeys.
