Made it in China: the Featured Entrepreneurs

Here's a brief introduction to the entrepreneurs who are featured in Made it in China and their businesses.

Scott Barrack

Scott Barrack developed and now runs SPACE Development.

Space Development has worked on many projects throughout China and have recently opened their flagship URBN Hotels—Shanghai's first boutique hotel which is China's only carbon neutral hotel. The hotel has attracted global interest from media and other hotel groups.

Scott went to China in 1998 and in 2000 he established his first venture in China: SPACE a boutique, luxury real estate agency. While still running SPACE he also got involved in property development specializing in high-end properties: luxury residential properties, serviced apartments, hotels, office complexes, and industrial buildings. SPACE Development grew into the hotel market through INNShanghai, a group of serviced apartments and URBN Hotel.

Bob Boyce

In 1994, Montana native Bob Boyce arrived in Beijing to study Chinese. Even at that time, China was a place with huge potential for adventure and opportunity, though Western food choices were still scarce and hard to come by.

In 1999, after several years of studying Chinese and working, Bob set about to fill that void by offering great quality, consistent, and classic Western foods at reasonable prices. Today, his company Blue Horizon Hospitality Group oversees eleven restaurants and bars spread throughout Shanghai, Beijing, and Macau and will open three more in 2009.

Bob is one of a handful of Western business pioneers in China. He is an active member of YPO (Young Presidents Organization) and the former president of Shanghai's Young Entrepreneurs Organization. He is also a frequent speaker on business and entrepreneurship in China.

Graham Jeal

Graham Jeal is a British born entrepreneur who has been working in China since 2001.

In 2002 Graham established Shanghai Vision Ltd, a property investment company which now has over 500 property investors from around the world and over US $200 million of assets under management.

Graham also set up Euro-China Consulting Ltd, a consortium of companies spanning investment, venture capital, international trade, e-commerce, and the construction industry.

In 2007/2008 Graham was the President of the Entrepreneur Organization in China. He is a regular speaker at business forums in China and commentator on subjects involving business in China.

Previously Graham worked for JPMorgan in the City of London, New York, and Hong Kong. Graham lives in Shanghai.

J C Lim

In more than 10 years of operations, J C Lim has built one of the largest sales operations in China now employing over 500 staff selling cookware to Chinese, Singaporean, and Malaysian families.

JC was born in Malaysia and went to Sydney, Australia to study accountancy and finance. He began his working life as an auditor in Malaysia, moving to be an internal auditor for a cookware company where he made the unconventional move into sales.

JC developed an aptitude for sales and rapidly became his company's highest achieving salesman, so impressing the company that they sent him to Hong Kong where he was appointed as the sales manager. From Hong Kong, JC decided to set up his own in mainland China business selling cookware and has since seen 30-50% growth year-on-year for over 10 years.

JC has diversified interests in several industries throughout South East Asia and gives his time to several good causes including motivational speaking and education.

Grace Liu

Grace Liu is the co-founder of Asianera, a company which specializes in fine hand-painted bone china porcelain with a unique contemporary Asian design aesthetic.

Asianera is committed to building a solid reputation on high-quality porcelain and innovative design in the country where porcelain was originally invented thousands of years ago. Asianera's fine china is sold globally to exclusive stores, and five-star hotels and restaurants.

Grace is an American-born-Chinese entrepreneur with a passion for ceramics and other traditional hand-crafted arts. Before starting Asianera 14 years ago, Grace worked for IBM's Sales and Marketing Division in New York and Hong Kong.

Richard Robinson

Richard Robinson's experience as entrepreneur is in creating new businesses, mainly in the mobile/internet sector, with a sweet spot in the convergence of media/entertainment and disruptive technologies.

Currently Rich is CEO and co-founder of Kooky Panda: socially connected casual mobile games using Flash Lite. He also co-founded Dragon Ports, China's largest mobile application outsourcing company.

Richard is an angel investor and board member/advisor Delhi-based ACL Wireless, Seattle-based IceBreaker, and Beijing-based Tianji. He is also on the board of governors for China Entrepreneurs, China's largest association for entrepreneurs.

In addition to these "conventional" business activities, Richard is also the co-founder of ChopSchticks which has been bringing live Western stand-up comedy to the Middle Kingdom since the 1900s!

Monte Singman

Montgomery Singman is the founder and CEO of Radiance Digital Entertainment, a Shanghai-based online game producer and publisher which is one of the leading pioneers in the online gaming industry. Radiance Digital Entertainment has produced artwork and online games for many companies including Google and Baidu. Their latest titles include Beach Volleyball and Go Go Racing.

Monte is a veteran of the US video game industry, having participated in the production of John Madden Football, Test Drive Off-Road series, Street Fighter series, Looney Tunes Racing, Hello Kitty Cubi-land and many other successful titles. He founded and was the CEO of Zona, a middleware company, before it's acquisition by Shanda Entertainment in 2003. Later he managed Shanda's 400 staff R&D department.

In addition, Monte is the Chief Professor at Shanghai Theater Academy heading the digital entertainment school, and is the author of several books in Chinese on the subject of creativity and next generation online gaming. Monte is also the founder and main coordinator of International Game Developer Association Shanghai chapter, the most influential trade association for game industry in China.

Paul Stepanek

Paul Stepanek is the founder of USActive and has over 20 years of manufacturing experience in Greater China. He trained as an industrial engineer and also speaks fluent Chinese.

In 2000, he started his own manufacturing consulting firm, USActive--an entrepreneurial success story--which provides due diligence and manufacturing consulting services (market studies, audits, sourcing, QA, facility set-up, import & export, warehousing, local distribution). USActive assists financial institutions and manufacturing companies with their initiatives to take full advantage of China's economic boom by helping them navigate the complex business environment.

Paul also retains stakes in several manufacturing companies and owns an adventure/team building company. He is often sought out as an expert and is a regular commentator on international business activity in China.

Henry Winter

Henry Winter is a leading expert in online marketing, virtual currencies, and member communities in China. He is the founder and CEO/Chairman of SmartClub Loyalty Management, based in Shanghai, China. SmartClub became China's first and largest loyalty points program, with over 2,000,000 Chinese white-collar members. SmartClub has created many innovative programs, which have been studied and copied by leading loyalty programs around the world.

Before SmartClub, Henry was founder and CEO of Groove Street, an interactive marketing agency based in Shanghai. Groove Street was a pioneer in combining online and offline marketing, and created China's first ever SMS marketing campaign. Groove Street won major regional industry awards in 2001 and 2002, the first mainland China interactive agency to do so. After 2002, the management team of Groove Street decided to focus its energy on developing a scalable business model: SmartClub.

A frequent speaker at national and regional conferences, Henry has been quoted in many international newspapers. In December 2006, Henry was selected as one of Shanghai's Ten New IT Stars, the first foreigner to ever be nominated for this.

He was also the first foreigner to compete on Win In China, China's leading business reality game show. Based loosely on The Apprentice, Win In China airs every week on a national business channel. 150,000 contestants were reduced to a final of 12 and during one show Henry proposed to his now fiancée on national television.