Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Gabor Hock, an intercultural leadership coach and author of Dragon Suit: The Golden Age of Expatriate Executives In China (2023), looks back at his China career over the past 25 years and wonders whether China is still welcoming expats in 2025 as much as it did in 2000 on his weblog.
Consultant Gabor Holch looks at the efforts of Urban Revivo to take on international competition by opening. just like Zara, opening a major store in London. Gabor Holch, founder of East-West Leadership, a consultancy, predicted social and environmental issues, political issues, and data could also prove to be hurdles for Urban Revivo, he said, at Market Screener.
Market Screener:
The brand is among a growing cohort of Chinese consumer companies – including coffee chain Luckin and art toy maker Pop Mart – seeking growth abroad as spending weakens at home, where a prolonged property crisis and wage security concerns have dampened consumer sentiment.
Urban Revivo, which operates over 400 stores worldwide selling 130 yuan ($18.17) tops and 350 yuan ($48.93) sundresses, has set a target to open 200 overseas locations within the next five years and has already launched stores in New York and Hong Kong, besides London, this year. It has around 20 stores in Southeast Asia…
The brand launched a European design centre in 2024 to create products tailored to Western consumer tastes and avoid the localisation missteps made by some Western fashion brands in the Chinese market.
Gabor Holch, founder of East-West Leadership, a consultancy, predicted social and environmental issues, political issues and data could also prove to be hurdles for Urban Revivo.
“One of the main secrets of success for Inditex and H&M is a very strongly data-driven business model. When Chinese companies step out of China, they have to start learning about (the overseas data environment) from basically zero,” Holch said.
Why business will never be the same in China again, tells consultant Gabor Holch in a wide-ranging overview of how business in China has changed after the pandemic, and how Western businesses can face those changes.
Bridging cultures between Chinese and international companies is harder, now the golden age of foreign companies in China is over, says international coach Gabor Holch in an interview with marketing guru Ashley Dudarenok.
Foreigners have left China in large numbers, but the most important reasons were other than COVID-19, argues intercultural coach and consultant Gabor Holch in his video. Already before the coronacrisis, the exodus was taking place because economic growth was dropping, career opportunities for expats were diminishing and the expat community was already severely hit before the lockdowns, he argues.
China is taking a stricter line when it comes to national security and spying when it comes to foreign companies, including raids of the consultancies Bain and Capvision offices in China. Intercultural leadership coach Gabor Holch guides those foreign firms through the intercultural minefield, he tells in the South China Morning Post, in an article about the last warnings,
The South China Morning Post:
Gabor Holch, an intercultural leadership consultant in Shanghai, said steering round sensitive issues had been part of doing business in China since the early 2000s.
“I personally helped many corporate leaders navigate this minefield, from obvious political taboos to minute references such as country lists and images in brochures,” said Holch, who is also an author of a forthcoming book on foreign managers in China.
“In past decades, definitions of strictly off-limits topics became clearer and embedded in published laws, something that was missing in the early days.”
He said that nowadays executives had to be more “vigilant than before to avoid sensitive issues that can put their firms in jeopardy”…
Holch said: “Foreign firms must make sure to appoint politically able and well-informed, preferably Mandarin-speaking, executives to their [Chinese] businesses as opposed to technical problem-solvers typical a decade ago.
“Most importantly, China’s restrictive information environment demands that foreign and local managers at multinationals share information and keep their firms agile but legally compliant.”
