Posted on March 16, 2010 - by musicwhiz

Sun Tzu – War On Business Part 2 (Chinese Cultural Centre)Sun Tzu – War On Business Part 2 (Chinese Cultural Centre)

Photo by Kyle May

Part 2 on the Sun Tzu series shows James Sun in Beijing, China, where he is similarly applying the principles of the Art of War veteran onto businesses here. This time, he is focusing on the Chinese Cultural Centre (“CCC”) in Beijing, which is rich in cultural heritage, history and Chinese culture. The CEO and boss is called Feng Cheng (“Feng”) and he is by and large a very culturally rich person who strongly believes in promoting and preserving Chinese culture. However, as the program initially alludes, Feng is not a very business-oriented person and he is not running the CCC as a profit-maximizing business. Hence, James’ job is to review the organization to suggest improvements.

To start off, the CCC is located off a small side street, thus is not easy to find and has no visibility. When James visited the CCC, he found out that it was organizing many activities for participants such as noodle-making workshop as well as tours to the “original” Beijing, which consists of guided tours to parts of Beijing which have been spared China’s rapid modernization. In other words, the CCC’s job was to “sell” culture to foreigners and visitors who are interested to not only find out more about China’s culture, but to also immerse in it and experience it for themselves. However, the CCC had no marketing strategy in place. There was no marketing department as well as many of the contacts and customers were based on word of mouth – not exactly a very effective or wide-ranging method to garner more business.

Feng himself was rather indifferent initially to the state of affairs at CCC. He knew he was losing money on most of the courses and workshops being organized but was content to let them continue running as they were rich in culture, and deep-down he was a cultural person, not a business person. James then went on to interview his No. 2 in charge, a lady called Crystal Ma (“Crystal”), who shared that tour bookings for the ancient city of Beijing made up 90% of CCC revenues, and most of the profits came from organizing such tours (note: no numbers such as pricing of tours or costs were provided). Other workshops like the noodle-making involves many tourists and “novices” but the CCC hired a costly top chef to conduct the training, thus it would imply that the CCC did not mind losing money as long as it retained its “core values” of promoting China culture and practices. Feng is also too much of a “hands-on” man, preferring to sit in on every lecture and workshop to personally oversee it; as well as providing info as a tour guide on the tours which CCC organizes. As the CEO, his time could be better spent on more strategic affairs and he could delegate these tasks to his subordinates. Read more…

Related posts:

1. Sun Tzu – War On Business Part 5 (Ozone Gym)
2. Sun Tzu – War On Business Part 3 (Plastered 8)
3. Sun Tzu – War On Business Reality TV Series