Chinese manager says Dutch study period helped him develop professionally

Martin Hang says that a year of study in the Netherlands fundamentally influenced his already hard working and open-minded personality, and gave him the confidence about doing business globally.

Hang, the 31-year-old manager of the Chinese magazine Tennis Club, is a second generation family business owner who feels proud of his father's achievements but constantly wants to build on it more.

"My father has a dominating management style and wants to take everything in control. I respect him, but I also have my own views and leadership style," Hang says.

In 2008, his father's publishing firm Fangyuan Media has acquired Tennis Club from the state owned Jiangxi Publishing Group, and asked his son if he would be in charge of the title.

It was not the career opportunity that Hang had planned, but he took it and has never looked back.

"The first three years are the most difficult times. We invested a lot of funds into the magazine, but it took a long time for us to build the distribution channel, increase readership and win advertisers.

"At times I had doubts as to if we would ever become profitable, and I did not know what the future held for me," he says.

But with hard work and smart ideas Hang turned the business around. From a team of just about 6 employees in 2008, the team grew to about 50 today. The readership grew to more than 160,000 across the country, and the business also became profitable.

Despite these incredible achievements, Hang's ambition for his Tennis Club does not stop here. Having studied financial management at Nimbas Business School in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Hang realized that there are many ways to leverage the magazine's strong platform to create additional business.

His team is currently preparing summer school and winter school camps for young tennis players in Western countries, using the magazine's large circulation and established reputation to attract Chinese children who want to learn tennis from the best.

"If I'd never studied abroad I probably would have imagined doing global business to be a big challenge, like my father's generation. But my experience in the Netherlands has taught me it is very manageable," Hang says.

"I came up with this idea because I saw a big gap in the market where every year many Chinese children go overseas to visit Western countries, and I felt we can provide a different product and allow the children who are enthusiastic about tennis to learn something truly rewarding," he says.

Hang had been influenced by his father's entrepreneurial spirit since childhood. His father started a new business in Nanchang in 1993, focusing on advertising and publishing, which now employs about 200 staff.

"I was very much moved by his hard-working attitude. When everyone else is taking a break, or going on holiday, he is still working," he recalls.

His father was founding a business at a time when the Chinese economy was in a period of great transition as private sector businesses in China surged, but the harsh environment that China's first wave of family businesses had to face has shaped his father's harsh and imposing management style.

"If we have differences of opinion, then he will have his way. I think this is quite common for China's first generation entrepreneurs because they have to be very decisive and imposing to give their businesses a strong sense of direction, amidst tough competition," Hang says.

As a younger generation entrepreneur, Hang believes his management style is much less imposing because the spirit of cooperation is more important in China's modern business environment. "I will listen to my father, and not argue with him, but I'll also implement my own ideas," he says.

For example, one difference of opinion Hang has faced with his father is the amount of attention to dedicate into hosting events for advertisers of the Tennis Club magazine.

Whereas Hang believes it is better to minimize costs associated with organizing events for advertisers, his father believed such investment to be essential in maintaining good relationships with advertisers, so he followed his father's advice to devote attention in these projects.

But when it comes to international projects, his father allows him to make the decisions. "Perhaps it is because he does not understand the international market so well, so he is relying on me to lead on this front."

Reflecting on his success at Tennis Club, Hang says it could be attributed to three of his personal characteristics, which are his forward looking views, his patient personality and his speed of learning new information.

"I have a forward looking perspective so I focus on trends that are likely to happen in the future, so we are always one step ahead of competitors," Hang says.

A few years ago when the Chinese twitter Weibo first came to the market, Hang immediately realized this is a big trend in the future. Under his leadership, Tennis Club established a Weibo account to connect with users. And this process happened a few years later when the Chinese rival to the WhatsApp free text service, WeChat, became popular.

As well, Hang says his patience really paid off. "I realized that the process for a new publication to establish a brand and receive all due respect from readers is very tough, and I took a long term perspective to achieve results eventually."

Finally, Hang's great ability to learn new things allowed him to come into the publishing sector with almost no prior experience and make the business great, and he said this attitude was built up in his student days.

Having completed an undergraduate degree in China in marketing, Hang initially enrolled in marketing at Nimbas, but after a semester he decided to switch to the more challenging area of financial management.

"It was a great challenge for me, as I had almost no finance background, but I was determined and I managed to acquire all the knowledge. I think this attitude has greatly helped me in business."

Being so determined to face new challenges, in 2009 Hang led the founding of a new magazine called Jie Li, a magazine associated with the Relay China Youth Elite Association, a group that offers young entrepreneurs and successors from private companies a platform to exchange ideas on business, self-improvement and making their voices heard.

"I became a member of the club, and the idea was suggested to me, I readily took up the challenge," he says. Today the magazine has a nationwide population of loyal readers and is a profitable business in itself.

Despite Hang's successful career in the publishing industry, this was not the career route he has once planned for himself. One regret he has is never having worked in a large corporation and learnt the ins and outs of structured management methods.

"I've never really been an employee somehow, and I think that experience could help me in my role if I have it."

After graduation, Hang started his own business in the internet gaming business. He came across a new web game technology, bought the copyrights and took it to China in 2008.

"It was successful, but soon the problems in China's gaming market like copyright and lacking of regulation started to emerge, so after working on it for almost a year I sold the business," he says.

That was when the Tennis Club opportunity came along. Having decided to take it, Hang joined the business, which was based in Shanghai, and he rotated himself across the circulation, marketing and editorial departments, quickly learning the tricks of the trade.

Looking into the future, Hang says his need to take over his father's business one day is obviously a responsibility at the back of his mind. "It does give me some pressure, but I choose to focus on what I do now and make it successful," he says.

But his ambition does not stop here. He says his next step is to create a family office, employing professional managers to manage the finance and wealth of Chinese family businesses by leveraging on the social network and trust he has built up over the years at the two magazines.

"This is a new industry quickly emerging but very much lacking in China. I have already built up a good social network in the media industry and that will be my advantage to tackle the new challenge of setting up the family office," Hang says.

To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com

Editor: Chris Peterson