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Background built on experience

Mr. Kang Shuchun graduated from International Economics Department at Central States University in America, worked in foreign trade at the China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinochem Corporation, and stared several of his own companies beginning in 1996, such as Teloon Chemical, Teloon Soft Strategy and Teloon Shipping Information, any of which have performance numbers that are envious, but Kang has managed to accomplish all that and more.

He now sits as the first chair at ShippingChina.com, a successful website and China’s No.1 platform for shipping information. With the ambition of being the Alibaba, Ctrip, or even Wal-Mart of shipping world. Kang Shuchun has his own development strategy.

“At the very beginning, we stared in other IT fields, including software research and others. But right now, we are mainly focused on ShippingChina.com, and our target is to be similar to Alibaba but for shipping information, however, there are still many more areas we can take advantage of. For example, Alibaba only refer to a B2B model, but we could cover both B and C every form.

“On November 23 and 24, we’ll hold an International Shipping Summit in Shenzhen. Also, we will have a series of meeting at the ports of LianYungang and YingKougang, and promote the Old North-east Industry Base as well. Yingkou port which was once a very small river port near the Liao River, has been developing very rapidly. It boasts a lot of natural resource with access to the river and local mineral deposits which could save on transportation expenses.” When Mr. Kang discussed his recent schedule, he had too much to say.

Shipping is the cheapest transportation mode of logistics, which means there is huge market potential. When China’s Foreign Trade asked him why he decided to create ShippingChina.com, he smiled.

“Many people have asked me this question. It may seen strange to quit a decent job at a big SOE. But it’s that decision that allowed me the chance to realize this opportunity. I had a frequent headache since it was always really hard to find a proper agency to ship the goods. We often had to find the shipping-route, price and other by ourselves, which sometimes could take more than one week, and still prove to be unsatisfactory or inefficient.” Mr. Kang told his story to us. “It is always in a dilemma that opportunity lies. Discovering and seizing the opportunity quickly has always been my style, so I began to draft our plan for building a shipping information flat without delay.”

“As many people know, the most convenient way to collect information is the internet. A professional team of 5 experts worked for 45 days, which led to the creation of ShippingChina.com in 2002, and was later followed by a lot of promotion work. But just one week after we stared the business, we received the first book money from our clients. Today, after 4 years of development and experience, research shows that we have already built an excellent reputation in the market.

Bring future outlook

With his new company off the ground, Mr. Kang has confidence in the future of ShippingChina.com. One of their consultants, Luo Kaifu, who was once the chairman of the China National Foreign Trade Transportation (Group) Corporation (SINOTRANS), and is now the president of China International Freight Forwarders Association, gave the website a lot of support.

Mr. Luo Kaifu once said to Mr. Kang, “Kang, if you could make ShippingChina.com a success, you could be the Chinese Bill Gates. However, it remains very difficult to achieve that. The preparation for such an endeavor requires a lot of energy, wealth and time.” With the philosophy of “nothing risked, nothing gained”, ShippingChina.com has come to fruition, and 1,000,000 clicks per day ensure the prosperity of the website.

Last year, Mr. Kang managed shipping for 300,000 containers through the website, putting it in the top 10 list in shipping volume for the year. “ This year’s target is 600,000 containers, which could put the company in the top 5, if that happens we could get better prices and pass the savings along to our customers. So we hope we can accelerate the process.”

Yet there are still many advantages of this approach. For traditional logistics enterprises like COSCO to add support for 1 million containers they incur additional costs, like US$ 200 million just to buy a new ship. But for ShippingChina.com, using the information flow and sales model, the cost is much lower. Acting as a middle man, both the clients and shipping agencies can all benefit from the information provider.

Mr. Kang told us, “In 2006, China’s GDP for the first time exceeded RMB 20 trillion yuan, but there was a cost of RMB 3.8 trillion yuan for logistics, accounting for 18.43% of the annual GDP. In developed countries, this figure is only 10-15% of GDP. So it is reasonable that 3-5% of logistics costs could be cut down.” The potential market for logistics in China is still huge.

China is currently one of the biggest transportation markets in the world., but 80% of logistics and express services are controlled by giant foreign enterprises. “It’s a real challenge and obligation for us to do better. Our manufacturing industry has already made an impact in overseas markets, and it’s our turn.” Mr. Kang said with confidence. We are all looking forward to that day.