Across my Tweetdeck came a message, “rumors Apple puts offer up for Twitter”. Now if I were @biz stone and the gang over in Twitter-world I would be putting my company on the auction block. The hype behind twitter today is nothing less than amazing — CNN, NYTimes, celebrities–all hyping Twitter as  the best thing since sliced bread.

It is great, it is informative, and it has a lot of room for growth opportunities. But remember this folks, pigs get slaughtered!

If the money is on the table and it is a fair value for the company — take it. I love taking risk, but this is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. My three reasons to sell today-

1. The hype will fade before a monetization model is produced. Have a look at Yammer.com. They have already figured out how to monetize the Twitter interface, and they have beat Twitter to the game.

2. It’s like Allstate Insurance, “Your in good hands with” Apple & Google

 3. I must repeat…Pigs Get Slaughtered!

The best business directory in China, or at least we think so can be found at www.NextStepDirectory.com

Here you can find answers to your many business service questions. Looking for an accountant, a logistics manager, or a graphic designer? Find all this plus more. In the coming weeks we will be launching some new features that will enable our users (for FREE) to get quotes from multiple service providers with one push of the button.

Tell me what you think about our new tagline…”NextStep Changing the way you interact with a directory.”

 You ask, how can you possibly interact with a directory? Well I will let you find out about by exploring the comments, rating, and announcement section of the directory. Let your voice be heard and find out how you can take advantage of our ever-growing directory.

 If you have any comments or suggestions on the directory please let me know

joseph DOT constanty AT nextstepdirectory DOT com

On March 10th, NextStep Shanghai was at Latitude Longitude on Yueyang Rd near Dongping Rd. Over 100 ppl came to enjoy the French venue, but also to listen to the Shanghai Young Bakers (SYB).

Celine Le Cotonnec, SYB Project Coordinator, gave a terrific presentation explaining all the legal issues that they faced and are still facing while bringing this project together.

After the event we received a very good feedback of their presentation, but what was most important to us was to know that we brought something to the Shanghai Young Bakers who had a dozen of interesting leads.

Here is what they said about the event :

“NEXTSTEP – Tuesday March 10, 2009

One month after the start of their training program in traditional French bakery for under-privileged Chinese young adults; Shanghai Young Bakers charity project was offered the opportunity to showcase at NEXTSTEP’s last event the hard work the team of 12 French volunteers has accomplished in the past 18 months to make this dream come true.

Shanghai Young Bakers is one of the 6 projects of the French Junior Economic Chamber in Shanghai (JCEF) and has been ongoing for nearly 2 years.

The number of difficulties you will have to go through and the time and energy you will have to spend when considering setting up a charity program in China as a foreign organization, especially when it comes to education matters are totally unforeseeable and countless. You can get a rough idea yes, but still whatever you enterprise you always have this feeling to progress in a grey area.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is really really embarrassing.  Today at the NextStep offices we had six US university interns brainstorming over different feature sets for the NextStep Directory.  One of the key value added attributes of the NSD are the company profiles and surveys.  NONE OF THE INTERNS KNEW THE COMPANY SURVEYS EXISTED!  There reasoning is that after clicking on a category, the information displayed looked like most other directories so they didn’t realize they could click on each company to find out all the additional information.  I was left speechless when Joe told me and asked the interns myself to make sure.  This is a clear case of the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and why its so important to get outside opinions.  Hopefully, someone will read this and avoid making the same mistake.

A confusing turn of events over the past week that now has the Hong Kong American Chamber of Commerce spearheading the movement to get the US a pavillion at the 2010 World Expo. Am I the only one wondering why the HK Amcham is taking the lead on this matter? I know the Shanghai Amhcam has been working on this in coordination with the Beijing chamber for the past year, but to no avail. This really is a matter of American corporations coming together for the mutual good of our future face as business managers and owners in the China landscape. It will be an embarasment if we do not have a pavillion. This is now the second time I am petitioning for all American business owners to write your Senators and Reps, get them to make an initiative from the states. I don’t need to pull out a calculator to tell you that the money needed for the pavilion project is peanuts compared to the financial meltdown war chest that has been opened over the past 5-1/2 months. If you are reading this and you are American and you are a business owner, and you have not yet written your officials in Washington, then open your mailbox and get writing today! See a previous post for a quick copy and paste email text body.

Something for all business owners to think about is how they position themselves in the marketplace. I am not talking strictly from a branding and marketing point of view, but I am talking about your physical location. A great for instance is an old project of mine,Lucky Greens Mini Golf (yes back in the day I thought I could become the mini golf king of the Middle Kingdom).

Here was the problem, we knew that our first wave of customers, our low hanging fruit would be expat families, but we also knew that our second wave of customers would come from the growing middle class families of Shanghai. If you are keen to the Shanghai geography and demographic layout, you will quickly identify the dilemma we faced. Where to place the mini golf facility?

Well, we opted for the monstrous Cloud Nine Mall adjacent to Zhong Shan Park. This was to become the “new center” of Shanghai. For long term growth it was brilliant. It was at the intersection of three major metro lines, over twenty bus lines, and dozens of apartment complexes within a ten minute walk. But, it wasn’t convenient for our low hanging fruits. The expats were living far off in the hinterlands of MinHang or JinQiao in Pudong. We heard it from day one from these customers, “if you had just put it out by our home in JiQiao we would come every weekend”, “why did you put it here?”

So we were stuck between a rock and hard place. We had already put all of  our investment into this location with the intention of opening the second location in one of these expat compounds. Where we went wrong was creating a “destination-location” that could not easily be accessed by our first wave of customers, the expat-base. We closed up shop on Valentines Day 2007.

I see the same mistakes being made over and over again. Let’s have a look at Dunkin’ Donuts recent entry into Shanghai. Dowtown locations, perfect for the business crowd. But the locations they have chosen are just out of that 5-10min walking radius most office workers are willing to forgoe during lunch-breaks or smoke breaks. There business is most definitely not flourishing like they had presumed. Some of you may remeber “Frankies Italian Restuarant” on Fenyang Lu. One block off of Nanjing or Beijing Lu, but a million miles away from walk-by traffic.

Then there are places like “Pier 39″, just below my office on JinXian Lu (probably never heard of this small street), but the business is booming in this mini-cafe, becuase it sits on a street with a mix of dining and shopping experiences. It is a “known” destination, and gets considerable walk-by traffic. After two or so months of operation, you cannot reserve a table on Friday and Saturday nights.

Moral to this story is NOT location, location, location. But, IS first learn what type of location your business needs to be in, and then seek out the real estate to assist your business in becoming that location.

I don’t want to be singing the bad news bears here, but it is reality people. Watch this video, and think about what it will mean for China.  RMB holders beware, there is a perfect storm aligning, and at the center of it is a banking system built like a house of playing cards. A slight breeze will send everything crumbling, and we are talking Typhoon force winds are not in our distant future.

Check out this video at YouTube to see what I am talking about. It is powerful.

Is it me or has Coca-Cola taken the whole Beijing Olympics sponsorship in China too far? It is now January 31st, 2009 and I am still purchasing 600mL bottles of Coke and McDonalds soft drinks with Olympic’s sponsorship splashed everywhere. Either Coca-Cola thought a lot more people would be buying their product last summer and stocked China to the brim with Olympic sponsored products or they are milking every last dollar spent on their global sponsorship rights. I would be too if I spent nearly a trillion dollars for sponsorship rights on the Olympics. But honestly, let’s move on to sponsoring the 2010 World Expo, or maybe they will leave that up to PepsiCo who used to be the official sponsor of Shanghai’s busy corridor, Nanjing Walking Street. Who can forget the days when 7-UP and Pepsi dominated the lighting fixtures along the pedestrian ways?

Wen Jia Bao and his closest advisers are in Davos, and by all accounts it sounds as if some in media are beginning to take a more relaxed stance on China. To be honest it speaks of the times we now live in. If one day you condone the actions of a nation state, and the following you pride them for their economic achievements so that you may benefit, it makes you as a profession or nation look quite pathetic. If you have a stance and belief, keep it, please don’t peddle a flip-flopping opinions that are delivered as fact. For too long the western media and government has and still remains to look negatively upon China, and rightfully so on many levels, but what they have so conveniently left out of the stories in recent years is how they have benefited from China’s monumental rise.

Look at the facts of information decemination. It is only in the past eighteen months that media has latched onto the debt obligations the US now holds with the Near East. When times got rough and it was no longer to our (US and European) advantage to continue selling our debt at the rapid rate we had no problem with at the onset of this decade, the media and US government started speaking up. We got ourselves into this situation, and it will take a community effort to etract ourselves from this mountain of debt and trade imbalance. The answer is not confrontation and protectionist policies. The answer lies in cooperation between China-US-UK-Euro to fix what has gone so wrong.

The coupling of the financial collapse with China’s lock-up period expiring on many foreign banks’ share purchase of domestic Chinese banks may prove to be the “linch-pin” that brings this cliche house of cards crumbling to the floor. In recent weeks, the Royal Bank of Scotland has opted to sell it’s 4.3% stake in Bank of China for a cool $2.4 billion, profiting nearly $800 million. At the same time, Li Kashing unloaded $500 million in BOC shares, and UBS an additional $800+ million.

The question  is, as business owner and manager in China, “are these simply cash flow moves, or do these bank ‘insiders’ have access to information that the rest of us cannot get our hands on, or are simply too caught up in the China bubble to believe that these banks have a foundation in the swamps of Pudong?”

Varying opnions exist, but there are strong signs that the banks are nothing short of becoming insolvent in the next 12 to 18 months should the Chinese economy faulter and fall below 7.5% GDP growth (2009 est. 9%). Don’t forget who these banks open their biggest lines of credit with, SOE manufactures. These companies are shutting their doors on a daily basis throughout the south and across the northeast due to the glut of orders being placed. These same SOEs are culprits behind the Chinese banking crisises of the past decade, and I believe will be the dagger that will once again bring down the mighty Big Four.

Welcome to the brave new world of Chinese banking.