A woman steps into a Youngor store in Beijing. Youngor has had a stranglehold on the biggest share of China's shirt market for 15 consecutive years. [Photo/China Daily]

Youngor Group's Li says drive to achieve powered diversification of his company

shanghai - Li Rucheng, the 59-year-old president of the Youngor Group, has witnessed the Ningbo economic resurgence and growth of a multinational corporation.

The farmer-turned-garment-maker, together with his team, turned a basement workshop with several sewing machines into an enterprise in manufacturing, equity investment and property development, including several hotels and a zoo posting a 2009 profit of 4.15 billion yuan ($626.55 million) on sales of 27.4 billion yuan.

In interview, Li credited the economic development of China in general and the success of his company in particular to what he calls "the farmer's instinct" - the drive to always achieve more.

Li Rucheng

Although Youngor can boast a fine record in equity investment, its property development strategy has repeatedly been brought into question by investors and competitors since making its first foray into this high-stakes game. But Li has never doubted his decision to diversify into a field that was totally unrelated to garment manufacturing. "Did I not make a successful transformation from a farmer to a manufacturer?" he asks. "Of course I did," he answers.

Like many of his peers who dropped out of high school during the turbulent late 1960s, Li was assigned to work at a farm when he was 15. In the early 1980, he was posted at a garment factory in Ningbo, a port city in Zhejiang province.

In the factory, founded on a grant of 20,000 yuan with 20 workers, Li rose from a menial laborer to head of the cutting department. After saving the factory from closure by securing a large outsourcing order, Li was promoted to director and changed the name of the factory to Youngor in 1993, when it began to diversify into other lines.

The company secured a listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1998.

Li says there is no reason a company cannot engage in different lines of business as long as they are profitable and benefit one another. Success, he says, depends on the care put into planning for the company's future, "just like you need to think carefully in a romantic relationship," he says.

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He takes stock analysts' criticism of his "romantic" style of management as a "kind warning," but he has his own definition of proper management.

"I always want to be practical and pragmatic," Li says. "I seldom socialize because such activities are mostly unproductive."

Branding, on the other hand, is what Li considers productive and strives to perform well in. His efforts in promoting the Youngor name helped catapult the company to the list of "Top 500 China Enterprises in 2010" compiled by the China Enterprise Confederation and China Entrepreneur Association.

Youngor has had a stranglehold on the biggest share of China's shirt market for 15 consecutive years. Its share of the Chinese market for men's suits is also the largest among all competitors, according to statistics from the China National Commercial Information Center.

Li says his company has achieved satisfactory returns in equity investment and property development. "My dream is to see more and more people in Zhejiang and all over China dress in Youngor garments, live in Youngor apartments and have fun in Youngor Zoo in Ningbo," he says.

Regarding the less well-off and the needy, Li says he and Youngor Group take a "pragmatic" approach that focuses on results rather than publicity. Youngor, he says, is still a "medium-size" enterprise, compared with some of its competitors in the global marketplace. "Our task is first and foremost to accumulate capital," he says.

If that sounds cold-hearted, so be it, he says. "I am not a stingy person. When I make a donation, I want to make sure that the money is spent on projects that bring visible and accountable benefits to the needy," he says.

In the past, the company made "generous" donations to fund the building of schools and homes for the elderly, Li says.

Since 1997, Youngor has sponsored the construction of more than 10 primary schools in Sichuan, Jiangxi, Gansu, and the Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions.

Li had said that he had planned to retire at age 60. But he changed his mind after meeting a 70-something president of another company. "He made me think twice about retiring," Li says. "I don't think I need to retire as early as I originally planned."

Meanwhile, he is devoting some of his time to the planning and design of a Chinese-style businessmen's club in Ningbo. "I would like it to be a pavilion with Chinese characteristics, just like this beautiful chamber," he says, pointing to a picture of a historic building in Ningbo.

The club is obviously meant to be a lasting legacy for his adopted hometown.