August 2010 marked an important milestone for Qingdao Applied Chemistry Company (Kingking). In this month, the company opened its flagship store in Beijing’s fashionable Wang-fu-jing district. The store opening signalled an important shift in the company’s strategy. Until recently, Kingking had positioned itself primarily as a world-class manufacturer-supplier of wax (candle) products and relied heavily on exporting to major retailers in the United States and Europe. However, in recent years the company has focused on the expansion of its business in China, while maintaining its global footprint as a supplier to the world’s largest retailers and customers in more than 50 countries. The key elements of the company’s new strategy are to: (1) establish Kingking as a prominent global brand, both in local and international markets; (2) grow significantly in the Chinese market; and (3) sharpen the company’s manufacturing advantages in order to increase its share of the export market. The challenge for Kingking’s top management was to determine how to best coordinate and implement this new strategy.

The Kingking story

Kingking was established in 1993 by Chen Suo-Bin, a native of Qingdao in China’s north-east Shandong province. Chen grew up in Shandong during the tail end of China’s Cultural Revolution. Like most young people of his generation, after completing his formal education he was assigned to work for a government-owned business – a State Owned Enterprise (SOE) in Beijing. His assignment was to be the assistant to the company’s chairman and president. While this post would have been a dream job for many, Chen sensed little room for advancement and growth. Not willing to take the traditional seniority-based career path, he became restless and resigned from the company after two years. Chen’s timing was auspicious, as China was in the midst of its economic reform in the early 1990s, providing aspiring entrepreneurs like Chen with unprecedented opportunities.