Li Ning, founder of the British Prime Minister's visit to China

Two years ago by the domestic media attention to a round of Foshan, China, overseas sales of made.com, is a man named Li Ning's study in the UK founder, was Telegraph this kind of British mainstream media also attention. Today he appears as a British start-up company representative in the delegation of British Prime Minister David Cameron. In fact, Li Ning to travel between China and Europe once a month, he thinks he is still a genuine Chinese entrepreneur. Li Ning's biggest dream is to return to China and devote himself to the Chinese consumer market. Li Ning was born in Foshan, a small town in southern China. Two years ago today, he and his companions founded an interesting company--made.com in London. Most of the furniture sold on the site comes from excellent or even well-known designer hands. However, users find that their prices are only a fraction of the traditional furniture store. The company's business grew by 700% in 2011 and now sells three to four 40-foot containers a day. Li Ning, founder of the first start-up company, has been on the Time magazine more than two years ago because he founded such a Fast Company. At the age of 16, he went to a boarding school in France and, like many of his teenage Chinese students, quickly melted into the local culture and entered a prestigious European business school in Paris. After graduation, Li Ning successfully entered the investment bank, continuing an enviable personal development path. But he soon found himself different from others: he liked ideas and needed plenty of free time to realize them. In the 2007, Li Ning had his first company. The original inspiration came from his own home experience in Paris. At that time, he was going to spend 3,000 dollars on a Chesterfield leather sofa. But a friend told him that the sofa was assembled in China with a production cost of only 300 dollars. Saved a sum of money at the same time, Li Ning was driven by Curiosity to do a survey: Foshan is one of China's furniture production base, some export high-end furniture from his home to Europe from the hall, the middle to pass through more than 7 intermediaries, there is a huge profit margin. Based on this discovery, Li Ning founded a furniture sales website called myfab.com, and has been successful. After leading his company to a leading position in France, he sold his shares and began a Round-the-world tour. Before long, he met the founder of Lastminute.com, the UK's fastest-growing online travel and retail business Company, Brent Hoberman, The latter, together with him, agreed to continue to optimize business models on the basis of Myfab.com's success, and to unite the founder and CEO of Meetic, the biggest dating site in Europe Mark Simon Sydney, an interactive media agency Syzygy John Hunter, and Pro founders Captial Company, together for the new company to invest 2.5 million pounds. Founded Made.com2010 April, Made.com was established in Notting Hill, northwest corner of Hyde Park, London.Chinese readers know this place because of a film of the same name, which tells a fairy tale about a grey boy. Li Ning and two entrepreneurial partners are Julian Callede and Cloy Cloy respectively. In a recent interview, he mentioned that two partners have complementary talents. However, his responsibilities include from day-to-day management to strategic decision making, and so on. In addition, I have to deal with the urgent problems of daily operation. "Today, Made.com has 65 employees, 16 of whom are in Shanghai, responsible for working with more than 40 furniture manufacturers in China," he said. The company has worked with some of Europe's finest furniture designers to deliver their works to Chinese factories. In this process, whether the collection of creative, testing the popularity of creativity, or sales, are done through the Internet, thereby subtracting the intermediate links, significantly reduced prices. Currently, there are similar crowdsourcing sites in other industries. For example, Threadless, a sales website for online t-shirts in Chicago, used a similar approach to collect design ideas from users. After that, some big companies, such as Procter and Gamble and General Electric, are reportedly starting to use similar methods to collect ideas for products and advertising. However, made.com slightly modified the pattern of reliance on collective intelligence. The company mainly works with world-class designers and artists, including Hirst, the most expensive contemporary artist in the UK, and the design is exclusive. Of course, it is up to the user to vote on the value of these designs and ideas, and the company will decide what to sell. In addition, Li Ning said in an interview with The Economist, the most important thing is that the power of the Internet, the company's final price only a fraction of the ordinary price of these design works, because there is no middleman, warehouse, inventory costs, etc. Although some European media believe Made.com is already the leader of the UK's online furniture retailer, Li Ning believes he and his team are far more than that. When it comes to the future, his answer is straightforward: to be the next IKEA. "The challenge to the traditional furniture retailer, Li Ning, is that the company's main competitor is the traditional furniture retailer, whose performance in both the UK and other parts of Europe is generally the same. It is understood that although these companies have a very strong brand, has been recognized by local consumers, but the operating costs are very high, especially in the display, inventory and other links. The biggest problem is that these traditional European brands are moving very slowly towards the Internet. In the opinion of Li Ning's team, this is the best time for their innovative companies to create their own brands. However, the virtual world can not cover all the business links, the first purchase after the single mode although let Made.com get a lot of cost advantages, but the requirements for logistics is very high. Although users can show more patience with the arrival time for low prices, the patience is not endless. Li Ning also recognizes the difficulty of the company, and even thinks it is the biggest challenge in the future. From the beginning of the establishment, the company investedWe have built a very sophisticated and sophisticated ERP system that allows companies to track and monitor Cross-border supply chains and customer orders. Logistics is the main link that we need to innovate and move towards excellence. Li Ning explained. 2012 is crucial for him and the company. The young businessman, who travels once a month between China and Europe, believes he is still a genuine Chinese entrepreneur. His biggest dream is to return to China and devote himself to the Chinese consumer market. ”