What else is unique to the China e-commerce market? As a foreign entrepreneur working in a super-competitive e-commerce space in China and raising investments and overseeing operations, how have you found the journey?
Its very exiting and challenging, sometimes although you think you have a better project and opportunities, not being Chinese can sometimes be a handy-cap, but at the end of the day we built a team with 150 people and 148 of them are Chinese.
もっとよいプロジェクトやチャンスがあるかもしれないと考えることも時々ありますが、とてもエキサイティングでやりがいのある仕事です。中国人ではないことがハンディキャップであることも時々ありますが、結局のところ、私たちは150人態勢のチームを作り上げ、そのうちの148人は中国人なのです。
What I like with this business is that although it goes super fast, it always goes in stages. Sometime we wake up and think “merchandise” so we put a lot of effort into the merchandise, then “wow, I have so much merchandise, but I need more clients”, so you focus energy on building traffic and customer, then “wow, I have merchandise and customers but too many orders, so I need to fix my operations.”
The best reward we can have is the recognition from our customer and over 70% of customers are repeat buyers (I never got more than 50% in my previous jobs) and the second thing we get recognition from our brand partners, 90% of them are willing to come back and work with us.
最高の報酬はお客様からの認知で、70%のお客様はリピート客です (以前の職場では 50%以上は無理でした) 。そして、二番目はブランドパートナーからの認知です。90%の企業の方が私たちと一緒に再び仕事がしたいと言ってくれています。
私たちにとって最高の報酬は、カスターマーから認めてもらうことであり、70%以上のカスタマーがリピーターとなっています。(これまでの私の仕事では、50%以上というのはありませんでした。)第二の報酬はブランドパートナーから認めてもらうことです。90%のブランドが私たちと再び取引したいと言ってくれています。
Overall, the Chinese business ecosystem and environment is pretty positive because e-commerce is a booming industry. The local Shanghai Municipal Government is supportive and believes in e-commerce companies operating in the district.
We want employees to be happy, and develop themselves and behave like entrepreneurs and we are lucky enough in this industry to offer entrepreneurial careers in an environment that is changing so much that people anyway have to learn and in an environment which we try to keep fun and playful.