China’s business world is littered with rags-to-riches entrepreneurs—Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, was an English teacher before starting Alibaba. Not all such magnates are equal, however, and joining Ma in the upper echelons of China’s rich list was Wang Wei, chairman of delivery and logistics company SF Express, who initially started out by lugging packages between Hong Kong and mainland China, operating in a legal gray zone as he did so. But now SF Express has grown to become the most successful logistics company in China. Listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange in early 2017, the company has many competitive advantages over its counterparts.
The e-Grocery Gold Rush
China’s e-commerce companies are suddenly stocking up on groceries. Buying groceries in Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai is a nightmare for many office-goers. After a long day at work, shoppers head to overcrowded supermarkets just to find noise, confusion and impossibly long queues at the payment counter. And it doesn’t end there: they also […]
Playing Favorites: Entitled and Earned Positional Advantages
Why earning a positional advantage is truly advantageous. In my last column I discussed how an inebriated citizen of Beijing surnamed Hou earned a 10,000-fold return through a positional advantage. Back in 2008 he bought the rights to a liquor brand name bearing a strong resemblance to Mo Yan, the winner of the recently-announced Nobel […]
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