Ye Ji had a dream: to build a unicorn enterprise. Ji, a serial entrepreneur in his forties, had the experience of setting up three businesses as an entrepreneur. From 2010 to 2014, he owned and managed Dalian Lingdong Technology Development Co. Ltd. (Lingdong), which specialized in developing e-commerce systems. From 2014 to 2017, he was the agent for Baidu Waimai’s Dalian operations. In 2017, he set up Flashfood.Shop, a company providing office workers with affordable and convenient fresh meals, twenty-four hours a day. However, Flashfood.Shop was almost brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. By April 2021, Ji had yet to realize his entrepreneurial dream of building a unicorn enterprise. The time had come for him to make a decision. Should he stick with Flashfood.Shop’s operation and wait for a turnaround? Should he close Flashfood.Shop and return to Lingdong, a business with which he was more familiar? Or should he start over with a new venture? Ji needed to seriously consider how to choose his next step.
Established in 2015 in Shanghai, China, Shanghai Kmind Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. was a strategy consulting firm that specialized in helping enterprises overcome market competition through the provision of its consulting services. It not only provided strategy consulting reports to clients but also acted as a business partner in assisting clients in implementing the reports. Among its many clients, nine leading enterprises had achieved rapid growth, and five had reached revenue of ¥10 billion. However, behind its success, the firm was facing a shortage of consultants. Although its clients had increased in number since the firm's founding, it had had to turn away many high-quality clients because of the consultant shortage. The firm’s chairman had to consider how to rapidly improve the firm’s service capability.
On April 1, 2017, Flashfood.Shop, a new brand in self-service retailing of fresh meals, was founded in Dalian, Liaoning province, China. The self-service retail platform provided office workers with affordable and convenient fresh meals 24 hours per day. Flashfood.Shop used intelligent self-catering machines as its physical sales terminals and it used an intelligent self-catering system as its online service interface. By the end of June 2018, Flashfood.Shop had launched 51 catering machines, where customers could buy fresh meals. The company had 14 catering suppliers, 135 different types of catering products, and over 500,000 customers. However, along with its success, Flashfood.Shop incurred a loss in five consecutive quarters. After its establishment, the only source of income for the company was the sale of its catered products. However, operating costs were high due to the instability of the hardware and software systems, as well as low operating efficiency and other factors. Faced with these issues, the start-up’s founder and general manager was wondering how to resolve his company’s ongoing losses.
In 2012, Sina Weibo stood out from competing microblogging products and developed into the largest social media platform in China. However, in 2013, competition from WeChat, a lack of high-quality content, and the exposure of an excessive number of fake accounts led to difficulties for Sina Weibo. By addressing three aspects of user activity—content producers, content consumers, and the platform operator—Sina Weibo was able to get back on the right track. The platform went from a loss in 2014 to a profit in 2018. However, behind the prosperity, in January 2019, Sina Weibo was facing new threats—namely, the disappearance of Chinese Internet user traffic dividends and competition from rivals Toutiao and Douyin. Sina Weibo’s chief executive officer had to determine how to deal with these new threats.
The chief executive officer of Dalian Zhangzidao Chuo Cold Logistics Co., Ltd., a Chinese company that specialized in cold chain storage and logistics services for imported frozen aquatic products supply chain, faced a series of urgent decisions. Since beginning operations in 2014, the company’s business volume had increased faster than other enterprises in the industry. However, in 2017, the company still faced the typical dilemma of enterprises in its industry—a lower net profit margin. As a middle link in this supply chain, the company was in fierce competition with upstream suppliers, downstream buyers, and horizontal competitors. The chief executive officer faced some tough choices: Was the company capable of implementing a vertical integration strategy to enhance its competitive advantages? If so, should the company pursue forward integration or backward integration? And how could the company achieve vertical integration, given its current circumstances?
A businesswoman owned two franchised stores of Carpenter Tan Handicrafts Co., Ltd. (Carpenter Tan) in Panjin City, China. Carpenter Tan was a leader in the wooden crafts industry. When the first franchised store was set up in 2012, she was excited by and satisfied with Carpenter Tan’s franchise model. However, after her second franchised store was set up in 2014, she felt that this franchise model was restricting her development and autonomy. In 2016, Carpenter Tan suggested that the businesswoman open a third franchised store in Panjin, where the wooden crafts market was close to saturation. The businesswoman, who had become dissatisfied with Carpenter Tan’s franchise model, faced a tough choice about whether she should set up the third franchised store.
Founded in 2012 in Dalian, Liaoning Province, China, Dalian Venture Workshop Technology Service Co., Ltd. (Venture Workshop) was a business incubator that provided early stage start-ups with incubation and investment services. In 2014, China identified Venture Workshop as a “state-level technology business incubator.” By 2017, Venture Workshop had become the largest incubator in Northeast China. However, behind its prosperity, it had faced years of losses. Since its establishment in 2012, its only source of income was the fees it charged for renting office space to start-ups. Its standard rates were far lower than market prices, which made it difficult for Venture Workshop to generate sufficient income. In February 2018, the chairman of Venture Workshop needed to increase Venture Workshop's income and avoid subsequent years of losses. What was the best strategy to pursue?
Ziwo Agricultural Service Co. Ltd. (Ziwo), located in the city of Shenyang in Liaoning Province in northeastern China, was a market leader in sales of agricultural materials. In 2006, China began changing how cropland was distributed and used. Over the next few years, decentralized, small farm households gave way to larger, more centralized, family farms. The change undermined Ziwo’s business, driving it into a sharp decline in market share and income from 2008 to 2011.<br><br>In December 2011, the company considered integrating the supply chain vertically to survive the decline. Was this move necessary, and if so, which direction should the vertical integration strategy take—forward or backward? How could Ziwo even achieve vertical integration under its current circumstances? Finally, would vertical integration help Ziwo deal with an emerging threat from Chinese Internet retailers that were entering the agricultural supply chain?
In 2007, the chairman of Supor Group led the company in a new venture in the sanitary ware industry. Supor Group was the first listed company in the Chinese cookware market, and Supor Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd. (Supor) was Supor Group’s most important industry. Supor established three production bases in Zhejiang and Shenyang, China. Its marketing channels included brand agents and direct-sale stores. The company also opened an online flagship store on Tmall, a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer online retail. Since its performance on Tmall was poor, the company outsourced this channel to Company X. However, this led to channel conflict between online and offline channels. How could Supor Group resolve the conflict, improve channel performance, and achieve channel synergy?
The general manager of market development for the Dalian International Airport in China was worried. Two years after he had successfully launched the Northeastern Hinterland and Bohai Rim Region Airport Aviation Market Strategic Alliance in 2009, it was facing serious external and internal challenges. Competitors had begun to impact on the alliance by intensively adding flights to regional airports with the support of subsidies from provincial and local governments. And as alliance members gained more air traffic, they began to compete for transport resources, which challenged the organization’s sustainable development. From the beginning, Dalian International Airport, as the core of the organization, had shared its routes and ticket fares with other alliance member airports, had removed landing fees for stopover flights and had organized a trade fair to encourage interactions between small regional airports and the airlines that had ignored them in the past, not recognizing how China’s booming economy was making even remote routes potentially profitable. The general manager had three possible options: utilizing outside help, increasing his airport’s market position and strengthening internal ties to resist external forces. All three options had their pros and cons. What should he do?