In a low-slung office building at his giant ceramics factory in southwestern Nigeria, Sun Jian insisted that we have tea. He had just returned from a trip to China, and he had a batch of top-quality tea he wanted to share with visitors, in an age-old gesture of Chinese hospitality. Sun is from Wenzhou, a midsize city in southeastern China. Nearly 4,000 years ago the lustrous, pale green glaze called celadon was invented in Wenzhou, which became the birthplace of Chinese ceramics. In the 1970s, however, times there were tough. After elementary school, Sun dropped out and started working. In 1978, two years after Mao Zedong’s death, Wenzhou was the first city in China to establish private enterprises. Sun worked his way up through several leather-processing factories and eventually saved enough to start his own leather manufacturing business. But by the late 2000s costs were climbing at an alarming pace, and he knew he needed to move out of China. A friend suggested he think abou
BUSINESS RESEARCH | BRANDING | ANALYSIS