Took a long drive out to the Shanghai VW plant this morning. Got a presentation from their German CFO. It was good to see the viewpoint of a foreign JV partner. You could tell he watched what he said since his Chinese "partners" were in the room. He did admit that he didn't know why the Chinese did some of the things they did but also told us that this plant was the most profitable venture in all of VW. However, it was difficult to get profits out of the country and, therefore, their new plant ($950 million) is paid for entirely from retained earnings. Got a tour of their body shop and assembly line - very similar to US plants. Some differences were 1) more manual welding (vs. robotics) and less safety precautions (no safety glasses or face shields), and 2) the design was also less safety oriented – it appeared that there was no safety cage or steel frame designed into the car. Now I’m even more nervous about riding around in taxis! Had more Chinese food in their cafeteria for lunch then took off for ITS’s brand new call center. It was very impressive and state of the art all the way. It’s run by a USC alum and was the first call center in China. They handle customer service calls for Johnson & Johnson, Xerox and others, and have plans to expand into outgoing telemarketing calls in the future.

Later, Adam, Mike Lui, Kevin and I took off to meet Rick Wang, another USC entrepreneur, for dinner. We hooked up with him at his office. He used to run a family ice cream business but sold it to Nestle. Now he’s got about five Nike stores and just bought the master license for the Athlete’s Foot for all of China. He’s got a great plan and shared some great experiences with us. One of the best company visits so far! He took us out to eat at the Pauliner Brauhouse – an authentic German brew house where they fly the beer and brauts in from Germany daily. We met this friend, Bill Seto, who is another SC grad and an audit partner at Ernst & Young. Got more great info about China from both of them over diner. Rick told a story from his ice cream days – it seems that advertising was very important in the ice cream business and he really wanted to get his brand name out. At the same time they were making their own wrappers and had a huge batch of miss printed ones. So, Rick hired some guys to go out at night and throw them on the streets to make it look like everyone was eating his brand of ice cream – only in China! After diner, he had his driver drop us off at O’Mally’s pub for a beer. Felt like a real shooter cruising through the streets of Shanghai with a local millionaire!