Strictly speaking, he was an orphan. His father died when he was two years old, and his mother took him all the way from Germany to Canada to make a living, and Sheng Zhiwen came out of high school to make a living. But the Jewish orphan was lucky enough to get into a growth industry - the textile industry in Asia - and after working part-time for just two years, Sheng Zhiwen raked in his first pot of money, a whopping one million Canadian dollars, and, sniffing out opportunities in Asia, he caught his own plane to the unfamiliar territory of Hong Kong, after which, he couldn't go back.
Today, Sheng Zhiwen is a man of fame and fortune. The original one million Canadian dollars has rolled out more than one billion U.S. dollars, he is known as the "father of Lan Kwai Fong", owns Hong Kong Lan Kwai Fong nearly 20 restaurants and bars; he is also the chairman of the Hong Kong Ocean Park, six consecutive years to beat the Hong Kong Disneyland; he owns the Andara top resort in Phuket, Thailand, plus two luxury yachts, known as the "third largest in Phuket", "the third largest in Phuket," he said. "Phuket's third richest man"; he opened the mini Lan Kwai Fong in Shanghai, built the Chengdu Lan Kwai Fong in Chengdu along the river nineteen shopping malls, and contracted the largest underground shopping mall in China, Huahui City, in Guangzhou.
In 2008, Sheng Zhiwen gave up his Canadian citizenship and obtained a Hong Kong SAR passport and a China Home Visit Permit, becoming a ghost who completely identifies with China. He was named a "Justice of the Peace of Hong Kong," and was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal and the Gold Bauhinia Star.
In December 2011, Sheng Zhiwen revealed to Hong Kong reporters, Lan Kwai Fong Holdings Limited is preparing to list on the Hong Kong stock market, with an initial expected fundraising of $700 million to $800 million, with the aim of building "Lan Kwai Fong" into a world-class entertainment business brand, and also to replicate the success of Lan Kwai Fong in the major cities of the mainland, this is the first time in the history of the company. The bald-headed gweilo, who is now past his prime, wants to fight for another two decades to become a pivotal entrepreneur in China's shopping malls!
Digging into China's textile gold mine
In the beginning, Sheng Zhiwen was digging into China's textile manufacturing gold mine, from the age of 17 working in Canada, he fully appreciated the advantages of China's garment factories of low-cost, hard-working laborers, and improving quality, he calculated that in Canada alone, with his less than 20 years of age, the hairy young man, fight for two years can be divided into a million Canadian dollars in huge profits, and if he goes straight to the yellow river, he will be able to get the money he needs. If he went straight to China, the profits would be unimaginable.
He had never been to China and had only two years of brief experience in the business, but he got himself on a plane to Hong Kong, and not long after, he went straight into ***'s hometown, Hunan Province, to start his textile business.
He says that in 1979, when China was just starting to reform and open up, even Guangdong was still full of the old revolutionary flavor, but he sensed in the batch of orders the strong will of Chinese laborers to seek a breakthrough.
He was only in his early 20s and was not afraid of anything, so he set up an office in Hunan province, looking for garment factories in inland Chinese cities to place orders for medium- and high-end fashions to be exported to North America and Europe (at the time, this kind of buying company was known as Sourcing). Goods from Changsha to Hong Kong by train, the middle has to stop ten stations, he took the plane, Guangzhou to Changsha only three times a week, sometimes can not get on the plane, you have to queue up and squeeze the train, the car ride up to sixteen hours, but Sheng Zhiwen was out of the window of the scenery fascinated: "Everywhere in the construction, full of motivation, are angry and strong, I fell in love with China at that time. "
Doing textile business requires quotas, Sheng Zhiwen also used to be in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines set up a company in the 1980s, Taiwan's textile industry costs have been gradually rising, and the mainland's low cost of textile quotas in Taiwan has a good market price, Sheng Zhiwen's textile trading company COLBY in Taiwan and Hong Kong is extremely well-known in the industry, and later in 2000, Sheng Zhiwen COLBY will be sold to Hong Kong-listed big traders Li & Fung, a mouthful of cash two billion Hong Kong dollars, in that year's currency conversion, nearly 10 billion New Taiwan dollars!
When it comes to Li & Fung, readers will recall one of the most lavish weddings in Asia last year, featuring Taiwanese singer Coco Lee and her groom, Li & Fung chief executive Bruce Rockowitz, at a cost of up to 20 million US dollars (about NT$600 million). Bruce Rockowitz and Sheng Zhiwen are both Jews, and the older Sheng Zhiwen came to Hong Kong first, and is considered the elder brother, the two partners in Hong Kong to break into the world, and are now super-rich with a fortune of more than one billion U.S. dollars.
Building Asia's first street of nightclubs
In 1980, Sheng Zhiwen opened his first restaurant in a cobblestoned alleyway between Wyndham Street and D'Aguilar Street in Central, Hong Kong. Initially, he also sold ready-made clothes. This alley, known as "Lan Kwai Fong", is short, steep, narrow and L-shaped, which in the eyes of Westerners is not a good condition for setting up a store, but Sheng Zhiwen started only because of his own needs. Thirty years ago, foreigners who came to Hong Kong could only mingle in the restaurants of big hotels. He felt that if there was a Western-style bar where he could not have to wear a suit and tie and could drink and bullshit like he did in New York or Montreal, it should be helpful to his textile business. So he took the plunge and opened a bar-restaurant there called the Californian.
As with Sheng's textile business, Lan Kwai Fong has become a must-visit destination for Western businessmen and tourists, and Sheng has continued to buy up apartments in Lan Kwai Fong's alleyways with his own textile profits, investing in the development of this unlike a shopping mall, and in the past 30 years there have been as many as 80 restaurants, bars and nightclubs in the area, of which Sheng himself owns nearly 20, and there have been many movie stars and celebrities. Movie and TV stars and celebrities continue to make news in Lan Kwai Fong, making it the focus of constant media coverage, and the man who built the legend of Lan Kwai Fong, Sheng Zhi Wen, has been labeled "the father of Lan Kwai Fong" and has become a frequent celebrity in the media.
Lan Kwai Fong is now a must-see destination for almost every tourist in Hong Kong, packed to the rafters on weekends and holidays for all-night revelry. In a continuation of his desperate business philosophy, Mr. Sheng remodeled the entire building he bought in 2011, and in two years Lan Kwai Fong will be ready to meet the world's celebrities and tourists with a brand-new look, securing its place as "Asia's No. 1 Nightclub Street".
Interestingly, Sheng Zhiwen, who gets tens of thousands of people drunk every day, doesn't drink himself, and he has been in the garment business for four decades, except on a few formal occasions, never *** socks. He opened a nightclub but did not drink, and sold ready-made clothes but *** socks, it is amusing.
Let Ocean Park come back to life
In 2003, Sheng Zhiwen received a phone call from the then Hong Kong Chief Executive *** Hong Kong *** Huge sums of money to build Disneyland, but Ocean Park, which already has a history of 30 years, is looking old and tired, and *** He hopes that Sheng Zhiwen will assess for the Hong Kong *** whether there is still any value in the existence of the Ocean Park, and how it can be brought back to life, or simply closed down. The company's business is in the process of being shut down.
Sheng Zhiwen, who has been working in Hong Kong's shopping malls for more than 30 years, has long since realized that "Liu Bei's three visits to a hut" is a good idea. He asked *** to make five phone calls before agreeing to take over the post of Ocean Park's chairman, and he said that he would not receive a single dime of salary, and that he would purely be working for the park, but on the other hand he has also gotten as much as $50 million from Hong Kong *** to support the park's development. But on the other hand, he also got a loan of up to HK$5.5 billion from the Hong Kong *** as a fund for the redevelopment of the Ocean Park.
Over the six years that he has been in charge of Ocean Park, Mr. Sheng has beaten Disneyland every year, and has been dubbed the "Mouse Killer" by the media. He not only found a professional international team, constantly updated Ocean Park facilities, rides from 35 items doubled to 70 items, and their own personal on the front line, "Jellyfish Museum" opening, he dressed up as a jellyfish to open a press conference to publicize; Chinese Ghost Festival, he put on? The Chinese Ghost Festival, he put on a corpse suit painted red cheeks, on TV as a ghost; 2007 Hong Kong returned to the decade, he even put on a cat and bear suit, but also like a clown, the nose painted black, funny picture not only stirred up Hong Kong, and even Beijing *** officials are full of praise.
Today, Sheng Zhiwen is definitely a mogul to be reckoned with in the Chinese business world. In the past few years, he actively entered the Chinese market, the Chinese cities everywhere imitation of his Lan Kwai Fong not to think, he first in Shanghai to get a small Lan Kwai Fong, two years ago, the bidding for the Guangzhou landmark TV tower, Pearl River New City, a mega-underground mall investment, the results were the local *** enterprises with controversial methods of dividing up the media in Guangzhou to cry foul for him, said Lan Kwai Fong investment was "subcontracting, Localization", but the bald-headed gweilo but put on an unimpressed posture, said this is only "small adjustments, the general pattern will not change".
It seems that Sheng Zhiwen has been completely "localized", he knows how to get the case from the hands of ***, but also understands that there is a cake everyone share of China's unspoken rules, he arranged the listing of Lan Kwai Fong Holdings, in addition to the promotion of Lan Kwai Fong to become a well-known brand of China's shopping malls, but also to let him in the mainland's new case as a tiger to add wings. The Canadian gweilo, really a good hand in doing business
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