CHINA’S POTENTIAL – AND PROBLEMS
August 11th, 2008 by Nico Luchsinger
It is true that the web has made the world a smaller and more connected place. But of course, there still are a lot of differences between regions – be they social, cultural, or political. If you’re building a web business, then just because everyone can reach your website does not automatically mean that you’re going to be successful everywhere.
That insight is precisely the idea behind Web2Asia, a Shanghai-based consultancy and expansion partner co-founded by Markus Fuhrmann (pictured). The company, says Markus, helps American and European web companies to establish themselves in China covering everything from market research to server deployment, business development, and operations.
The market has undoubtedly huge potential – after all, China has the biggest internet population in the world.
Nonetheless, only a few of the big web companies from the West have been successful. This is partly because they usually enter the market too late, when local copycats have already taken the lion’s share. But it is also, says Markus, because a lot of the companies don’t pay attention to the small cultural differences. “Ebay didn’t work in China for several reasons, one of them was not realizing that auctions don’t work here. “People want to buy stuff right away”, he says.
Markus is originally from Austria, where he studied biotechnology and co-founded two gaming companies. One produced game series sold more than 1,5 million times on the mobile phone. He fell in love with Shanghai when he was there for part of an IMBA program -and decided to stay. And although he thinks that China has a lot of potential, he also sees some growing problems. “The gap between rich and poor, cities and countryside grows on a daily basis”, he says. Pollution is another big worry. “The streets may be very clean in top tier cities, but the air and water are becoming extremely polluted.”
Markus’s biggest problem, however, is that he can’t find enough skilled people to hire. “It’s extremely difficult to find good managers who have also good collaborative and team skills.” Lack of experience in non-hierarchical environments combined with Chinas enormous economic growth, might be partly to blame for the lack of qualified personal.
