Chinese Pitching Dominance

Here’s a prediction from soothsayer salespodder; the Chinese will win big in business.  I bet you’re amazed at my foresight, right?!  You’ll probably know I’m one of the loyal Newsnight fanbase, and they regularly run items on how the Chinese will inherit the earth.  They try and cover all angles, including Will Hutton’s appraisal that the police state must surely crumble and cause momentary chaos, and the surfeit of service-orientated graduates that massively outnumber relevant job opportunities available.  If only the Kuomintang hadn’t suffered corruption and lost to those pesky commies by 49, then Taiwan-style success would have happened across the mainland decades ago.  anyway….

Their latest insight came through the back-door, with the ‘Tenner’ new business exercise for school kids funded by the bloke behind the Entrepreneurial TV channel.  At Manchester’s ‘City Academy’, one driven pupil was a girl arriving in England only three years ago.  Already sporting exemplorary English, she persuaded her team to invest their few quid in an origami business.  The output looked pretty cool, and would certainly add a distinctiveness to shop-window or retail environments.  The amazing thing was, that although only 14, she was filmed in a (Chinese) restaurant pitching a Valentine’s themed origami mobile, telling the owner (in business for 3 years and offspring of the pioneering Chinese restaurant in that town) how wonderful it would be.  It seeemed like she won the ‘deal’, hoping to expand her team’s £40 to £500.

What struck me about this, was how textbook her approach was, yet such ‘textbook’ doesn’t exist.  In this thumbnail, we saw how she’s approached a market she clearly understood (from her own community).  She even chose someone who’d be like-minded (another entrepreneur).  Then picked on a vibrant, topical ‘need’ (promoting specific event).  A lesson for any of us seeking to place a new product into the market.