Page 61 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Tangos Chan of China Web 2.0 Review places his bet on Joyo because its
Amazon parentage gives it access to a large pool of money, an advantage over
Dangdang, which is dependent on raising venture capital on favorable
financial terms. “The winner will be the one who lasts longer,” he concludes.
The pitched battle between the two contenders has set up an interesting
contest between domestic and foreign-operated players. Chinese start-ups with
overseas parents typically are not as flexible or adaptable to market needs as
are locally owned firms, observes
Beijing consultant Mark Natkin.
“Overseas owners tend to bring “My inspiration was to run the largest online
over what worked well in the retailer in China and to bring a lot of
United States or Europe without products to consumers.”
really considering the local market
Peggy YuYu,
needs,” he says. “On the flip side,
cofounder and copresident, Dangdang.com
deep-pocketed multinational parent
companies can leverage company
resources and bring more capital
and technology to the competition.”
Behind Dangdang’s success story is a woman who is as genteel as Bezos
is brash: Peggy YuYu. Don’t be fooled by her personable style, silky voice, and
ballerina-like grace or even her easy laugh that is far from Bezos’s loud
guffaw. She is raw ambition and energetic drive personified. “My inspiration
was to run the largest online retailer in China and to bring a lot of products
to consumers,” she says.
YuYu may not have the star power of the publishing magnate Katharine
Graham, but she wants to be in that league. “When I get to the age of
Katharine Graham when she wrote about the Post and her work, I may decide
to write a book myself. Hopefully, by then I will have more interesting things
to say,” she wrote in an e-mail to me.
It was fate and love that first led YuYu down the Dangdang path in 1999.
Working on Wall Street after earning an MBA from New York University, she
met a Chinese book publisher who was on a business trip in Manhattan. She
soon began going to China to see him. Their love story ended in marriage.
YuYu left behind her career and lifestyle in New York City to settle in China
in 1998. Back home, she was appalled by the state of Chinese retail outlets,
most of them poorly lit, stuffy, and unorganized.

Dangdang.com—The Amazon-Plus of China 35