(Ecns.cn)--Playful yet serious, gentle yet ambitious, Zhang Jindong is the founder and current president of Suning, one of China's largest electronic appliance retailers, who recently announced an aggressive 10-year plan in a bid to expand his business empire.
Under a new plan published on June 19, by 2020 Suning will increase its stores to 3,500, contributing sales of 680 billion yuan ($106 billion).
In front of his guests, the smiling Huang is known for speaking in a playfully serious way, and often credits his staff for Suning's success. However, behind closed doors, the ostensibly down-to-earth retail king can turn into a tough boss.
"To outsiders, Zhang Jindong is a friendly, laid-back person with a sense of humor. To the Suning employees, Zhang is very prudent and cautious," revealed Ling Guosheng, vice president of Suning.
Rumor has it that Zhang is a "scary" leader, with whom employees dare not share an elevator.
Even some "post-70s" generation senior managers disclosed that they are sometimes nervous and even tremble with fear in Zhang's presence.
Zhang has ample reason to be authoritative. A talented businessman, he founded Suning in 1990 out of a small store selling air conditioners in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, and has grown it into the nation's largest retailer, with over 156 billion yuan ($24 billion) in sales and 72.8 billion yuan ($11 billion) in brand value.
It is Zhang's perseverance that has secured the rapid growth of Suning in the cutthroat commercial war with its counterparts.
"Competition in the home appliance market is fierce. For over 15 years, most of our rivals have quit," said Zhang at the company's 15th anniversary. "We should thank those rivals, because they have given Suning more chances to develop by giving up their own businesses."
Gome, Suning's biggest rival, became mired in crisis at the end of 2008, followed not long after the arrest of its founder Huang Guangyu on suspicion of insider trading. That allowed Suning to finally overtake Gome in 2009 after years in the shadows.
"It would be a lie to say Suning has not been given an opportunity by the Gome crisis," said Ling Guosheng.
"China has a huge market, but somehow Suning and Gome are always compared to each other. Gome's business and reputation undoubtedly were influenced by Huang's departure," he added.
Back in December 1990, Zhang started realizing his ambition by resigning from Haowei Group, a clothing factory, to set up Suning.
"I was indeed planning to grow a big company, but had never thought of expanding its businesses across China or to other countries," recalled Zhang.
Some have said that Zhang has been focused on only one thing over the past two decades: enlarging his commercial empire. Besides focusing on home appliances, Suning has expanded its business to books, household items, and even virtual products like point cards for computer games.
Zhang stressed that unlike Gome, which tends to enlarge its business through mergers and acquisitions, Suning prefers to increase its own chain stores.
However, with Gome still recovering from "internal trauma," Zhang has started looking beyond the mainland, rushing to make inroads overseas via mergers. In 2009, Suning invested 57.3 million yuan ($9 million) to acquire 27.36% interest in Laox, a home electronics chain in Japan, later increasing its share to 65.3% by injecting 160 million yuan ($25 million) in 2009 and 721 million yuan ($113 million) in 2011.
In December of the same year, Suning purchased Hong Kong-based Citicall Appliance with HK$190 million ($24 million).
According to Zhang, in 10 years Suning will become a multinational chain in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas with a combined business model similar to Wal-Mart and Amazon.
Zhang said that Suning is still exploring new business models and predicted that e-commerce in retail business will maintain rapid growth in the coming decade, making 300 billion yuan-turnover ($47 billion) from its e-commerce platform a realistic goal.
On the Forbes Mainland China Rich List, Zhang was ranked No.5 with 33.61 billion yuan ($5 billion) in 2009, and No.4 with 38 billion yuan ($6 billion) in 2010.
