Category: Business

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Business Fun

Gadgets from Business Perspective

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I used to love new cars and gadgets. Some evidences: I can call out the make and model of most cars on the street; I bought the Dell 1st generation Pocket PC Axim, later returned it because it’s too bulky, bought the Palm Tungsten E instead.

These days I was looking for a LCD photo frame. I noticed this thing for a while, but it was until now I found this is a very lucrative business at this time. The reason? It’s still kind expensive. For a decent 7″ philips, it’s about $199 at sharper image. For comparison purpose, I found LCD monitor is very cheap these days, e.g., this Acer 22″ LCD display only costs $190 at Bestbuy.

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Business China

Barbela Sparring Pizza Hut in Shanghai

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The following picture was taken at Barbela, a popular Pizza place in Shanghai. One nice feature of Barbela is they offer the same quality food as Pizza Hut, but at half the price. No wonder people will form a long wait line at Barbela during weekends. As you may know, Pizza Hut was (and still is) a very popular place in China, it’s not the good old Pizza Hut you see in the US.

IMG_4879 

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Business China

Found a Bug in Home Inns Rujia

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I’m sorry being a flip-flopper here, because I was bullish on its stock until last Thursday. But like many things in life, I think sometimes it’s worthwhile to have a second look, this is especially true on investment. It’s no good to hold on a stock “no matter what”, or “fall in love with a stock or a company”, because we don’t want to throw away our hard earned money. At least I don’t. 

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Business China

The Golden Pillow Award

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I heard about this thing first from reading Home Inns’ IPO prospectus. Don’t know how big a deal it is. But it was ineresting to see Home Inns’ (Rujia) being mentioned again in this list. I did not see the Jinjiang (2006.HK) being mentioned here, a bit surprised.

Think that as a “best hotel” award, if you will. This Golden Pillow thing is a bit of Chinese English.  

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Business Fun

Shoe Business is Hot

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A while ago Amazon launched Endless, its shoes and hand bags division. To promote its web site, Endless is giving away $5 for Overnight shipping. Maybe guys at Amazon learned that from Google Checkout promotion?

Zappos, the largest shoe store on the web, is continuing gain momentum. I used their service and was satisfied with them.

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Business China

New US China Flights

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This is a part of the deals reached during Ms. Wu Yi and Mr. Paulson’s talk today. Here is an excerpt from MSN.

“Under the agreement announced Wednesday, starting this year, U.S. carriers will be able to operate 13 new daily flights to China within five years. One new flight will be awarded this year and one in 2008, four new flights will be awarded in 2009, three more in 2010, and two each in 2011 and 2012.”

Ms. Wu Yi

I also found the following very interesting, from Financial Times.

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Business China

Home Inns Q1 Results

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Here are the results. I listened to Home Inns Q1 conference call (see the scripts here).

Some of the positives:

1) Revenue growth 65% Year over Year. Profit did not follow because of foreign change loss, tax expense and share based compensation. Note the foreign exchange loss won’t be one time as they continue moving the IPO money (in USD) to China (RMB), and you know these days the USD depreciates (wrt RMB) non-stop.

IMG_3976

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Business China

Where are All These Jobs?

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One thing I noticed during China trip is it’s difficult for college graduates to find a decent paid job. This applies to the graduate student too. I don’t have statistics but this is what I heard from friends, relatives, and the media. This reminds me a similar trend in the US, in recent years college graduates here had a hard time to find jobs too. Things improved as the US economy recovered from the recession.

China job seekers

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Business Fun

Free Coffee at Borders

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I got it in email. The Seattle’s Best Coffee is opening stores in the Borders Creve Coeur and South county stores (it already opened in Borders Chesterfield and Brentwood). Here is the link for coupon.

As you may know, Starbucks also started in Seattle in 1970s.     

seattle's best coffee

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Business China

The Best Business School

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There are lots of rankings among B-schools. But I think the best B-school in the world nowadays is China. This seems biased because I am from China. OK how about I say India? 

Seriously, here are my reasonings: China is at its first stage of captalism. As I said in my previous post “is China imitating the US too closely?” China is learning from the west in many ways: from consumer goods to infrustructure (highways, 3G), from banking system to stock market, from Merge & Acquisition to branding & distribution, from automobiles to real estate, REIT, etc.  

IMG_4873

(Picture taken at SunIslandClub in Shanghai suburban Qingpu.)

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