Metro> Expats
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Metro> Expats
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Right online and on target
By Alexandra Leyton Espinoza (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-29 09:30 WeLiveinBeijing.com has become a well-known online community for foreigners as well as Chinese and has attracted more than 100,000 members in less than a year.
The website deals with everything from establishing business partnerships to romantic flings. In 2004, Bloc, the company now running the Beijing web operation, began a similar online networking operation in Norway. Joakim Lund Rangel, Kent Loset and Ole Loset set up a localized service in order to help people get together. Four years later they wanted to explore markets outside Norway and that discussion ended in Lund Rangel booking an airline ticket to Beijing. "After three weeks of getting to know Beijing, I booked tickets for the rest of the team and we moved to China in the end of March 2008," said Lund Rangel, CEO of the company. "Five months later we launched WeLiveinBeijing." Because they had set up an online community in Norway, they were very certain about how the operations should be done in Beijing. "Putting language barriers on the side, which obviously is a challenge, it doesn't really matter if the market is little Norway or big China," he said. They recognized that the first three months would be the most difficult time and discovered finding partners was also a major challenge. "When you don't know anyone and nobody knows you, you are really starting from the bottom of the food chain," said Range. "Today, the challenges are different. The company is expanding, but never enough to solve the challenge of limited resources but we are also today overwhelmed by the support of our members, and have made a lot of good friends in this city. Without them we wouldn't been able to achieve success this fast," he said. Rangel does not worry too much about other competitors in China. "It is people out there thinking that we are competing with them. But in a market the size of China I think there is only potential partners," he said. Members of the team have now lived in China for one and a half years, and feel the Middle Kingdom becoming their new home. They are not planning to move back to Norway any time soon. "While some people are convinced that you can't do business the same way in China as you do in other places, I in many ways, disagree on that," he said. Today, the second branch of the online business has opened in China -- WeLiveinDailan, and the team is about to expand even more. "We plan starting over again in many more cities in China," Joakim said.
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