‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’
As big as Fosun has become, the largest private-sector enterprise in China traces its origins to the story of young entrepreneurs plowing their earnings, talent and energies into capitalizing on the country’s unprecedented and continuing economic liberalization.
“For an entrepreneurial startup, the first and foremost thing is to survive. Starting up a business is a long-term endeavor. Make sure you don’t run out of ‘bullets’ in the hard early years. If you aim for success, you’ve to be prepared for failure as well,” advises Chen Qiyu, who joined the company two years after its founding in 1992, and was named co-president of Fosun International in March last year.
“Fosun itself is an undertaking that got started through collective efforts. It’s the poster child of how a good team could bring an entrepreneurial idea to fruition,” he says. “The power has always been with the entrepreneurs if they are blessed with a good team in the trenches.”
“It’s a real blessing to have a group of people who cherish the same ideals and follow the same path.”
Despite its humble roots, Fosun has taken a good hard road to the lofty goal of “marrying Chinese momentum with global resources”, being a well-connected local partner for foreign brands and technologies in line with the nation’s growth trajectory, says Chen.
The company is nimble at trend-spotting, gaining traction from successive waves of economic growth and changing business trends in the world’s secondlargest economy at just the right moments.
Such a foresight comes from the company’s continuous learning skills, which prove to be a winning growth formula for running a business, Chen observes.
“As the Chinese proverb goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Fosun has risen from a great deal of small victories, which eventually have added up to a bigger one.”
He believes the company owes a large part of its success to going all out down-to-earth. “What matters is to strike up a delicate balance between developing the business in a proactive and steady manner. One should never be overly ambitious, neither should one stand still and rest on his laurels.”
As the latest business trend in China is largely defined by the aspirations of the middle class, the Shanghai-based conglomerate is well placed to gain momentum from the sheer size of the country’s increasingly fickle and choosy “super consumers” who have now gone beyond mimicking the patterns of the more sophisticated Western shoppers to being the trendsetters and innovators.
Chasing after the nation’s holidaymakers who are seeking novel holidays, Fosun had been investing in French leisure vacation chains operator Club Med since 2010, and bought it in its entirety in 2015.
Apart from introducing global circus troupe Cirque du Soleil into China, the company aims to replicate the glowing success of its Dubai luxury resort project in the seaside city of Sanya on southern Hainan province, billed as “China’s Hawaii”, with the official opening of Atlantis Sanya on April 28 this year.
To cater to the growing number of style-conscious consumers, Fosun is also making a big push into the fashion business with the recent acquisition of a major stake in 129-year-old French fashion house Lanvin and Austrian luxury textiles firm Wolford.
The company has also carved out a new unit, Fosun Fashion Group, to manage its rich portfolio of fashion assets, including St John Knits, Caruso, Folli Follie and Tom Tailor.
With collective efforts from industrial operations, investment and technology, Fosun is well on its way to consolidating the business empire and benefiting from more synergies.”
Chen Qiyu,