Zhou Xiaoguang knows a thing or two about surviving hard times. As a girl of 17, she left her poor Chinese village to make a living as a peddler. She sold embroidery hoops, needles and patterns, hefting a 200-pound sack as she moved by train from town to town.
Often chased off by police, she slept in 20-cent flophouses and survived on 5-cent steamed buns. She lived this way for six years, covering half of China in her wanderings.
Today she is the millionaire owner of the world's biggest maker of costume jewelry. Her company, Neoglory Holdings Group, employs 4,000 workers in a vast factory complex in this trading hub three hours from Shanghai. Her whole family lives with her on the top two floors -- 28 of them, including her mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and son.
Having come so far, so fast -- the company is just 14 years old -- she is not inclined to throw in the towel over something as trifling as a global economic crisis.
To the contrary, she says the crisis is a chance to snap up faltering rivals, shift into new markets and move up the food chain from maker of costume jewelry to designer, retailer and marketer.
"It's a dangerous time but it's an opportunity too and we are ready to take advantage of it," said Zhou, dubbed the "queen of costume jewelry" by a Chinese newspaper. "We are the top company in China in this industry. Why not take this chance to buy?"
That gung-ho attitude is common in Chinese business these days. China may be going through its sharpest downturn in years, with exports crashing and millions thrown out of work, but many companies see it not as a disaster to moan about but an opportunity to seize.
Big Chinese resource companies are scouring the world for bargains. In one week last month, they spent nearly $60-billion to sew up supplies of iron ore, copper, zinc and oil.
"This is a good opportunity to buy land, buy labor and expand factories," said Andy Zhong, marketing manager for a solar power company, CEEG, in Shanghai. He expects the economic crisis will put all but 30 of China's 80 to 100 solar-module makers out of business -- good news for the survivors. To be ready when markets bounce back, the company is adding six new assembly lines. "It's a gamble," Zhong said. "but if we trust in solar we will win."
Zhou is using the crisis to sharpen Neoglory's edge. The company started off as a simple low-cost manufacturer, knocking off cheap rings, bracelets and necklaces from copied foreign designs. Now it has 600 of its own stores around China, with plans to open 2,000 more in the next two years.
It has hired 300 designers, who produce more than 100 new designs a day. It has teamed up with diva Celine Dion to produce a new line of high-end jewelry. It has formed an alliance with Austria's luxury brand Swarovski to use its crystal in Neoglory products.
"The more you know it, the more you are moved," says an ad for its glittering hair clasps.
With demand for Neoglory jewelry off by half in Europe and the United States, the company is shifting its export focus to emerging markets such as Russia, South America and the Middle East. Like other Chinese manufactures, it is also putting more emphasis on the domestic market.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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