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...design and production and concentrate on retail. He envisaged a chain of Li Ning shops, capitalizing on the goodwill that his name retained as memory of the Seoul snafu faded. "I realized if I ran the company by myself it wouldn't be a success," he says. So he began taking on expert advisers as the 1990s began, and over the next two decades expanded the business to more than 7,000 stores. (Read "China at 60: The Road to Prosperity...
...natural choice for the Olympic-flame spot - a free three-minute commercial that has passed into ambush-marketing legend. But in assessing his company's handling of Olympics opportunities it would be unfair to focus on that piece of good fortune alone. The truth is, his team began planning well in advance (662 days, by the count of CEO Zhang Zhiyong), focusing on bang-for-buck sponsorship choices. Knowing, for instance, that the U.S. Dream Team would wind up in the basketball finals, but that its NBA-star-packed roster would be too pricey to support, Li Ning sponsored eventual...
...Ctrip acquired a hotel-reservation operation, Xiandai Yuntong Tourism Service, which gave it a large presence in the traditional offline travel business. After giving its new acquisition a successful online dimension, Ctrip began to move into other travel sectors. In 2002, it diversified into air tickets, and after two more years package holidays. Recently, it moved into corporate travel. "That's one of the most important reasons why Ctrip was successful," says James L. Tang, vice president of sales and marketing. "We waited for the infrastructure, the manpower and the technology...
...Very gradually, however, he began to notice that his customers, mostly 25- to 45-year-old professionals, wanted their garments to have Chinese touches. "As the Chinese economy grows, and its market matures, we've realized that Chinese consumers have their own distinctive needs," Zhou says. That's why in Septwolves shops jackets are just as likely to have a Mandarin collar as a notched lapel. Color palettes are geared to domestic tastes and all garments, even those intended for casual wear, have a certain dressiness, fit and attention to detail that Chinese men prefer - you'll see no skater...
...allow medical marijuana since California first legalized it in 1996; Colorado voters did so by amending the state constitution in 2000. But with drug possession still a federal offense, it wasn't until the Justice Department said in October it would refrain from prosecuting medical-marijuana cases that dispensaries began to proliferate. In Colorado, particularly, they've found fertile ground: when the first dispensary opened in the capital three years ago, it didn't even have a sign in the window. Today, according to an estimate by the Denver Post, the city has more pot shops than it does Starbucks...