查看原文
其他

Making it in Shanghai - Aaron Landis

2017-09-16 ShanghaiWOWeng

In this series we are focusing on expats that have been successful during their time in Shanghai; whether it’s through business, industry or entertainment.


This week I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet with Aaron Landis and sit down for a coffee and a chat. Landis was one of the original founders of Enjoy Shanghai and I was keen to find out his story.


 

For those of you that are Shanghai whipper-snappers you may not be familiar with Enjoy Shanghai, let me fill you in briefly; Enjoy Shanghai started life as a coupon booklet that doubled as advertising space for restaurants, cafés, tailors anything you can think of really. If it was a fancy venue, it was in there. People could buy a coupon book and get great discounts throughout the entire city. This is Taste Card before membership cards existed, great deals before that age of APPs.


Then this company diversified and added a classifieds section in print (madness!?) and then turned into an online magazine. Eventually this multifaceted beast possibly become a little too unwieldy and lumbered to a halt, but it had a 13 year run and the classifieds are still going today (though not in print).


How it Started…


Landis previously lived in Hong Kong and was invited over to Shanghai to join a friend in a business venture involving inflatable costumes. Unfortunately when he arrived his friend told him he was actually packing up and going home, leaving Landis at a bit of a loose end…

He met with a friend, one evening in a hotel bar on Nanjing Xi Lu and they began talking. Landis mentioned an idea he had toyed with in Hong Kong, a coupon book that people could buy that would give them access to great deals all around the city. That’s how the original idea for Enjoy Shanghai was born. 

 

The simple beauty of this idea was in the dual revenue. Members of the public would pay to buy these books, and businesses would pay to be included in them. As any of you who have ever started a business will be aware, things are rarely that simple. Initially they didn’t have a product. They needed to convince businesses to sign up and handover quite a large sum of money to be included in a booklet that didn't yet exist.

 


It involved some pretty intense salesmanship and a few ‘China style’ instances of rule bending, however even when a few larger businesses started to warm to the idea yet a lot of companies were still very reluctant to sign up. At this point they were operating out of Landis’s living room, while he and Jozef were working long hours with little support and no wages.


''We didn’t have a product. We didn’t have a name. Due to restrictions on foreigners owning equity in advertising ventures and a relatively high initial capital requirement for WFOE formation in those days, we didn’t even have a local company at first. All we had was a passionate vision for bringing this product to life. We sold our asses off. We went back again and again and again to our preferred venues until (most of them) finally relented and coughed up a deposit. We had a saying in the office in those days: ‘It isn’t a ‘no’ until they call the police!”

 

A Piece of Good Luck Strikes…


Help arrived in the form of partner number three —who Aaron described as the company’s saving grace—Daniel Borin, an energetic Australian that Landis met on the old Mao Ming Nan Lu bar street (now closed, think Yongkang of old.).


Borin was spending a bit of time in Shanghai himself before starting a new job in Guangzhou when Landis told him all about Enjoy Shanghai and offered him a short term job working on a commission base. The more businesses he could convince to join the program, the more money he would make. Within a week or two, they were blown away by his enthusiasm and professionalism. Borin had walked into the company at exactly the right time, giving them the extra oompf they needed to sign up the critical mass of venues needed to launch the debut book.


It wasn't long until they had the majority of the high end F&B businesses signed up to the program. It took them about nearly one full year to go from inception to having a physical product in their hands and whilst having a physical coupon book in your back pocket is enough to make all the millennials shudder, we need to remember that in 2003, APPs weren’t a thing.


 

The time had come for Borin to head onto Guangzhou. Landis realized that the company needed him. He said ‘how much do we need to pay you to keep you?’ to which he boldly responded: ‘How much do I need to pay to become a full partner of this thing?’


And then there were three…


The initial launch of the product was very popular. You could see Enjoy Shanghai branding wherever you were in the city because venues were also distributors of Enjoy memberships, Enjoy was seen at 200+ top venues around town—door stickers, display stands, MaiDan cards, etc. This gave the impression that the company was a lot larger than it really was and helped to build credibility amongst their audience.


Whilst the company appeared to be doing very well in the public eye they soon began to run into difficulties.  Once the companies had paid up, and the public had bought their books, there was no more revenue… something needed to change, and fast.


They were also having another unexpected problem. Often when Enjoy Shanghai card holders would attempt to redeem their benefits in participating venues, staff would look back at them a blank stare and shake their heads in confusion. With customer complaints rolling in, Enjoy Shanghai assembled an operations team to train all venue staff in order to ensure things went smoothly.  Whilst this was great for customer satisfaction, it strained the fledgling company’s shallow coffers even further.


And This is Where Something Amazing Happened…


In 2005, a Taiwanese friend of Borin’s passing through town stopped by the office to say hello. After getting the grand tour, he was sent on his way with a complimentary Enjoy Shanghai kit—by now looking pretty fancy with great packaging. When the friend went back to Taiwan, he happened to meet a family friend who had been tasked with Mastercard platinum and corporate cardholder acquisition in Greater China. At the time use of domestic issued credit cards was virtually zero in mainland China so  Mastercard needed to incentivize Chinese bank customers to embrace credit cards. Seeing the Enjoy Shanghai kit, full of the city’s best venues, she struck upon the idea of contracting Enjoy Shanghai to build this kind of a program for Mastercard.

After a number of vigorous pitch meetings with Landis and Borin brainstorming with the Mastercard team, it was finally decided—Enjoy Shanghai would become Enjoy China, and—on behalf of Mastercard— expand its program to 5 more cities across the nation. This also gave the company a much-needed cash injection and so they could begin expanding and Landis and his crew could finally relax a little and begin to take a salary.


And this is Where The Madness Starts…


This is where the everything goes a little crazy. An ambitious employee of Enjoy was poached by a competitor looking to knock off the Enjoy concept. The new company had a very similar name… and unfortunately this is not where the similarities ended. They had essentially completely nicked the business model of Enjoy Shanghai and given it a different name. In fact when they initially went around to pitch their idea to businesses they actually took an Enjoy Shanghai booklet with them to show people what theirs would look like. 


And this is where guanxi comes into play. Landis made what he says in retrospect was a ‘far too public show of intent to stop the would-be Enjoy killer in its tracks.’ Almost immediately, every aspect of his business was being scrutinized by multiple branches of local authorities. The competitor had some strong connections on the Shanghai municipal level and intended to destroy Enjoy Shanghai from the top down. Luckily the team at Enjoy had, since its nascent days, run a very clean operation, leaving investigators from the Commerce and Industry Bureau and Tax Bureau empty-handed.


Whilst absolutely nothing was wrong, Landis was soon taken into police custody and had his passport confiscated. He was told that he had broken a visa law. The police were unable to tell him or his legal representation what law that was, what number the law was or how he had, in any way, violated it. After tapping his own guanxi in the form of an old friend from Hong Kong with the right connections, the matter was finally settled when Landis paid a ‘fine’ for the still-unnamed transgression.


The guanxi string pulling had got a little out of control with legal actions taking place on both sides, so Enjoy and the other company met face to face and did a hand shake. They agreed to become friends and work together. This was all for face and obviously they never worked together, or spoke ever again.


The Diversification…


This is where the trio met Jeff Moger, an ex-That’s-Shanghai-er who had built the core of a bilingual weekly classifieds concept and was shopping around for a suitable home. He came onboard with the Enjoy Shanghai team. They began to run a classifieds in print that advertised events, as well as buy and sell, lonely hearts etc. This is still running today online.

 

They were also approached by a company wanting to create a franchise, so Enjoy Philippines was created. Enjoy Shanghai also began to work on creating benefits programs for Bank of China, Bank of Shanghai, China Commercial Bank and others.


How The Story Ends…


Photo Credit: Business week


Whilst this was by no means the end for Enjoy Shanghai, this is where Landis decided to move on from the project. The company had grown a diversified immensely but the partners were disagreeing about the future direction of the company. Rather than insisting on his vision being seen through Landis’s involvement in the day to day operations of the company dwindled and eventually he sold his shares to the other partners and Moger took over as general manager.  


Landis and the Enjoy Shanghai partners and team are still in very close contact. In fact Landis tells me that 35 Enjoy Shanghai staff from back in the day are still in regular contact via a WeChat group and they talk often.


As business stories go, this is a pretty spot on one, a good idea, some adversity, some luck, some success a sprinkling of the Chinese police, profit and good friends.

 

What more could you ask for in a Shanghai buisness venture..?

WE ARE HIRING

We are looking for people who love life, food and travel to join our team! Currently, we are recruiting for the following positions:


Nightlife Editor

Food & Wine Editor

Wellness & Fitness Editor

Proofreader

Marketing

Sales

Interns


Ideal candidates are talented, energetic and creative people who can work in a fast paced environment, and Chinese skills are a plus. 


Want to take on a challenge?

 

Please send your cover letter and CV to: 

jobs@shanghaiwow.com

Related Articles


Making it in Shanghai: French Illustrator la Ptite Lu



Making It in Shanghai: Foste the Bearded Bear

您可能也对以下帖子感兴趣

文章有问题?点此查看未经处理的缓存