一位英国人在华创业的经历
Jim James is recalling how he watched with some trepidation as a group of potential buyers put his very expensive inventory through its paces on a recent wintry afternoon. He holds the Morgan Motor Company’s only China import licence and, taking advantage of an empty expanse of tarmac at a small airport near the Great Wall, his guests drove in tight circles at high speed in cars that retail for as much as Rmb2.7m ($440,000) after tax.
金宝(Jim James)还记得，在一个寒冷的午后，自己如何略带忐忑地看着一群潜在买家测试他那非常昂贵的存货的性能。金宝持有英国摩根汽车公司(Morgan Motor Company)唯一一张中国市场进口许可证。那天，他的客人们借用了长城附近一座小机场空旷的柏油碎石路面，在那里驾驶着税后零售价高达270万元人民币（合44万美元）的摩根汽车，高速兜着小圈。
Tyres squealed. Rubber burned. But no damage was done, he says – unlike on other occasions when Chinese inspection and quarantine officials have crashed his cars while testing them. “That caused some difficulties because we then had to send the car back to the UK to be repaired,” says Mr James of one particularly bad inspection incident. “It was in a sort of no-man’s-land because we had already paid the [import] taxes.”
轮胎发出刺耳的摩擦声，可以闻到橡胶烧糊的气味。但金宝表示，这次试车没有给车辆造成任何损害；与之相反，中国检验检疫官员进行的几次试车把他的车给撞坏了。“这制造了一些难题，因为接下来我们只能把车送回英国修理，”金宝在提到一起尤为严重的检验事故时说，“这就像进入了一个三不管地带，因为我们当时已经缴过（进口）税了。”In his designer showroom at Beijing’s Workers Stadium, Mr James ticks through a catalogue of mishaps, big and small, with typical British understatement. “That cost us a lot of time and money but it was a hiccup,” he says of the inspectors’ accident.
在北京工人体育场(Beijing’s Workers Stadium)他那由设计师设计的汽车展厅里，金宝以英国人那种典型的轻描淡写的态度，列举了自己遭遇的一系列大大小小的麻烦。在谈到检验人员造成的那起事故时，他说：“那让我们损失了大量的时间和金钱，但它只是个小插曲。”
An entrepreneur in China cannot pause to reflect on what goes wrong, he says. “We’ve had leaky ceilings, we’ve had cars not starting, we’ve had cars disappearing. But if you think about those things you’d probably not want to get up and try every day.”
他表示，在中国，创业者不能停下来反思哪里出了问题。“我们的顶棚漏过水，车辆曾无法启动，还丢过车。但如果你总想这些事情，你八成就不想每天起床努力打拼了。”The Morgan Motor Company, located in the Malvern Hills near the English-Welsh border, has been hand-building cars since 1909. Its 180 employees, many of them craftsmen, produce only about 500 four-wheel vehicles a year. Germany, the UK and France have traditionally been Morgan’s biggest markets, but China is catching up fast.
摩根汽车公司位于英格兰-威尔士边界附近的马尔文山(Malvern Hills)，自1909年以来一直坚持手工制造汽车。该公司有180名员工，其中很多都是能工巧匠，每年仅生产约500辆四轮汽车。德国、英国和法国历来是摩根汽车最大的市场，但中国市场正迅速迎头赶上。As a marketing executive for AMS Neve, which makes music studio equipment, in the mid-1990s Mr James travelled to Asia regularly for trade shows and was inspired by the sheer energy he saw: “I sold the house and moved to Singapore.” There he established his own company, Eastwest Public Relations, before moving to Beijing in early 2006.
上世纪90年代中期，金宝曾任音乐工作室设备制造商AMS Neve的营销高管，他经常到亚洲参加贸易展，亚洲的强大活力令他感到鼓舞：“我卖掉了房子，搬到了新加坡。”他在那里创建了自己的公司——易思闻思公共关系咨询公司(Eastwest Public Relations)，而后在2006年初搬到了北京。Mr James was appointed as Morgan’s first general distributor in China in November 2011 – more or less by accident. Driving his own Morgan Roadster in Beijing, he was surprised by the enthusiastic reception it received. “The reaction was amazing,” he says. “So I rang Morgan and said where is your local dealership? They said there isn’t one . . . So I wrote them a business plan.”
2011年11月，他被任命为摩根汽车的首位在华总经销商，这一结果多多少少是出于偶然。在北京驾驶自己的摩根Roadster汽车时，这辆座驾引起的热烈反响让他感到意外。“反响相当惊人，”他说，“因此我给摩根汽车打了电话，问他们的中国经销商在哪里？他们说在中国还没有经销商……于是我给他们写了一份商业计划书。”Twelve months and some 14 Chinese ministry approvals later, he began business in earnest, making Morgan and its accidental China rep rare exemplars of the entrepreneurial spirit that UK politicians hope British businessmen can bring to bear in emerging markets everywhere.
金宝花了12个月时间拿到约14项中国部委的批文，然后郑重其事地启动了业务，由此让摩根汽车及其偶得的中国经销代理成为彰显创业精神的罕见范例——英国政治人士希望，英国企业家能在各个新兴市场彰显这种精神。When London mayor Boris Johnson and George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, travelled together to Beijing in October, Mr James’s dealership was centre stage at an exhibition of British industry. The mayor lit up when he saw the Morgans, boasting to the press how fast they were. During their brief encounter, Mr Johnson and Mr James were a study in contrasts – the expatriate entrepreneur trim and neat, London’s mayor in his usual famous state of disarray.
当伦敦市长鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)和英国财政大臣乔治•奥斯本(George Osborne)去年10月访问北京时，金宝的车行在一个英国工业展会上成为了焦点。在看到摩根汽车后，约翰逊非常开心，他向媒体夸耀这些汽车能跑多快。金宝和约翰逊进行了短暂的会面，两人的仪表对比鲜明：移居国外的创业者衣着整齐利落，伦敦市长则像往常一样，是出了名的邋遢。To be representing British business alongside Marks and Spencer and Jaguar Land Rover was never the most likely outcome as Mr James pursued his new entrepreneurial venture.
在金宝创办他的这家新的创业型企业的过程中，让它与马莎百货(Marks and Spencer)和捷豹路虎(Jaguar Land Rover)一道成为英国企业的代表，始终都不是最有可能出现的结果。Securing the necessary government approvals to import and distribute cars was Mr James’s first challenge, especially as he was operating as a mom-and-pop outfit with his Chinese wife Erika Chen, a former IBM executive. “Some government officials didn’t believe an independent foreign entrepreneur could own an import licence for a foreign car brand,” he says. “All the other [luxury carmakers], like Porsche or Bentley, they do it themselves. I had to meet with the Customs officers, show them my passport and company share certificates. They were still slightly bemused but at the end of the conversation they were like, ‘well done’.”
拿到必要的汽车进口与经销的政府批文，是金宝面临的第一个挑战——考虑到他的车行只是他与华人妻子、前IBM高管Erika Chen开的一家“夫妻店”，这里面的难度更是可想而知。“一些政府官员不相信，一名独立的外国创业者能拥有一个外国汽车品牌的进口许可证，”他说，“所有其他（豪车制造商），例如保时捷(Porsche)和宾利(Bentley)，都是自己做。我不得不拜会海关官员，向他们出示我的护照和公司股份证书。他们仍略感困惑，但在谈话结束时，他们大多会对我说，‘做得不错’。”Throughout the process, Mr James kept an online blog – “Experiences of an entrepreneur in China” – that covered how he negotiated the bureaucratic approval process, including the wrangling that ensued after the inspectors’ expensive car crash.
在整个过程中，金宝一直撰写在线博客“一名创业者在中国的经历”(Experiences of an entrepreneur in China)，记述了自己如何成功通过官僚审批程序，还有在检验人员制造了那起代价高昂的撞车事故后如何与对方争吵。“It’s essential to have someone you trust and is also bilingual,” he says – in his case, his wife. “None of the documentation was readily available online. Erika and I had to go to various offices around Beijing, and sit there, and take a number, and find out who it is you have to supply documents to. We make it sound streamlined [on the blog] because if you don’t think of it that way you couldn’t keep going”
金宝说：“身边有一个你信赖且会说双语的人是至关重要的。”在他的例子里，这个人就是他的妻子。“所有文件都不是能轻易放到网上的。我和Erika不得不走遍北京，去各种各样的办事处，坐下来，取个号，等着看你到底应该把文件递给谁。我们（在博客上）把这一切写得听上去挺简单的，这是因为，如果你不保持那样一种心态的话，你就没法继续下去。”Paperwork finally in hand, Mr James then confronted a funding dilemma. Reluctantly, he had to sell his most valuable asset – his own Morgan car – to raise the money for his Beijing showroom. “We had a capital constraint,” he says. “My solution, not a pleasant one I have to tell you, was to surrender the car we brought in.” He points to a picture of it on the wall.
批文终于拿到手后，金宝又遇到了融资难题。他只得不情愿地卖掉他最宝贵的资产，也就是他自己那辆摩根汽车，来筹资建设他的北京展厅。“我们遭遇了资金紧张，”他说，“我的解决方案——我不得不告诉你那不是一个什么令人愉快的解决方案——是拱手出让我们买的这辆车。”他指了指墙上挂着的那辆汽车的照片。That car was sold to a media executive. Other recent buyers of Morgan cars include a well-known singer and a not very well-known tailor from central China.
那辆车卖给了一位媒体高管。近期购买摩根汽车的人，还包括一位知名歌手和一位不是太知名的、来自中国中部的裁缝师。Mr James’s capital constraint extends to his advertising and marketing budget. He takes opportunities to display his cars at film premieres, air shows and other public events, and encourages people admiring the vehicles to post pictures of them on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent.
金宝的资金紧张也影响到了他的广告和营销预算。他抓住各种机会，在电影首映式、航空展和其他公开活动上展示他的汽车，并鼓励爱慕这些汽车的人在新浪微博(Weibo)上张贴它们的照片。While a government crackdown has damped Weibo’s popularity as venue for political discourse over the past year, Mr James says it remains invaluable as a marketing tool. Since January 2013, his Weibo following has grown to more than 1,200, helping to generate more than 20,000 unique visits to Morgan’s China website. “That’s without large budgets and by leveraging social media,” he says. “It is possible to build a brand here by using, if you like, guerrilla tactics.”
过去一年，中国政府的整治行动影响了微博作为政治言论场所的声望，但金宝表示，它仍是一种极为宝贵的营销工具。2013年1月以来，他的微博粉丝数量增至逾1200人，推动摩根汽车中国网站的独立访问数超过2万。金宝说：“这是在没有花费大量预算和有效利用社交媒体的情况下做到的。在这里，如果你愿意的话，是有可能以游击战术来打造品牌的。”While Mr James’s outlet handles sales in the capital, he has appointed sub-dealers in Chengdu and Qingdao, and is in talks with a potential representative in Shanghai. Some of his partners are leading car distribution companies in their own right. But for a business whose supply is constrained by its own meticulous manufacturing process, keeping orders in check to avoid long backlogs and unhappy customers may not prove easy. Mr James met his 2013 sales target of 18 Morgans – a number he chose because it is lucky in Chinese – and expects to sell 30 this year.
金宝的车行负责北京的销售，他还在成都和青岛委任了二级经销商，此外他正与上海的潜在代理展开谈判。他的一些合作伙伴本身就是知名的汽车经销企业。不过，对一家产品供应因其自身极其注重细节的制造流程而受限的企业而言，控制订单数量以防止长期积压订单和客户不满可能并不容易。金宝在2013年实现了售出18辆摩根汽车的销售目标。他之所以选择这个数字，是因为它在汉语中代表幸运。金宝预计，今年将售出30辆摩根汽车。He also worries about how “British” his pitch should be. “To some degree, the Chinese perception of British brands can be old-fashioned or staid.”
另一件让他操心的事情是，到底应该在营销宣传中强调多少“英伦气息”。“某种程度上说，中国人印象中的英国品牌可能代表着老式或古板。”Instead, he hopes to associate the Morgan brand with “what might be a new Britain, almost like the Olympics Britain, more multicultural, a bit fresher, younger”.
他希望让摩根品牌与“可能的新英国”联系在一起，这个新英国“就像是奥运英国，文化更多元，更清新、年轻一点。”He is, after all, selling cars that look like antiques but can still do stunts on the tarmac.
毕竟，他销售的汽车尽管看上去像古董，却仍可在柏油碎石路面上表演特技。
