Founders: The American who built his business in China

Luke Wilson (0:01)

Hello, this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Luke Wilson. With trade tensions running high between the world's two biggest economies, what's it like to run a Chinese business as an American founder? That's the situation Jacob Rothman finds himself in, the co-founder of Velong Enterprises, which manufactures and exports cooking equipment from its headquarters in Shanghai to some of the world's biggest retailers. Welcome to the program, Jacob. So we're talking a lot about the US and China this week because of the meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. We want to talk about your experience running a business in China for more than two decades, but we'll start as you did, I guess, in the US. You grew up in California, didn't you, and helped out with your parents' business. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Jacob Rothman (0:48)

My family had a manufacturing business. And when I was a kid, I grew up watching my father move his factory from Carpentria, California, which is right outside where I grew up in Santa Barbara, to Knoxville, Tennessee, then eventually to Laredo, Texas, in the Maquiladora. So the early part of my life oddly mirrors what I'm going through now, which is change in manufacturing and government policy. Eventually NAFTA ended up changing everything for us. And that's how I got to China originally.

Luke Wilson (1:21)

Yeah. What did you learn from that business? It was a broom and brush business, is that right?

Jacob Rothman (1:26)

Yeah, brooms, mops and brushes. Really how I got to China was I got thrown out of college. And in that time, in the interim, I went to go work in the factory in Stockton, California. I really learned quite a bit that's applicable today. My father, as you might imagine, wasn't pleased with me. So he gave me a really broken down station wagon, loaded the back of the station wagon full of product. And I went around Northern California selling brooms, mops and brushes to hardware stores.

Chasing around family-owned businesses, because hardware stores in the United States are usually owned by mom and pop type of operations. And chasing them around on their lunch breaks, trying to get them interested in selling my product is not much different from what I do today, just on a larger scale.

Luke Wilson (2:09)

Absolutely. Not to make you dwell on it too much, but let's talk a bit about college, because you didn't go to study anything business related, did you?

Jacob Rothman (2:17)

No, not at all. I thought when I got out of school that I actually was going to be a rabbi, which didn't work out, so I didn't actually become a rabbi. But I think being a liberal arts major in college was actually perfect for what I was experiencing when I first got to China. I first went in the late 1990s, early 2000s.

I think what kept me here and got me fascinated with China was all of the social change and what I was watching on the ground. I actually think a liberal arts education is a perfect training for coming here at that time.

Luke Wilson (2:48)

Did you go down that route with that in mind, or are you kind of looking back now thinking, yeah, that did prepare me quite well for this?

Jacob Rothman (2:56)

No, absolutely not. I mean, we never know where life is going to take us. And I think when I was in college and studying, I never thought that I would end up in China. But what I learned there and studying religion and psychology and philosophy got me fascinated to be in China and actually more recently in India, where I'm surrounded by the religions that I started when I was in college.

Luke Wilson (3:19)

Let's talk about that first trip to China then. Tell us about it. Do you remember it? Do you remember the feeling going there?

Jacob Rothman (3:26)

Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday. And actually, when I first got here, I used to get around on motorcycle taxis, going to small factories, making relatively simple products. And you could feel at that time, how exciting and how different and the energy of China then. You knew something was happening. And I felt as if I was watching history in front of me. And I wanted to be a part of it.

Luke Wilson (3:50)

And for people who weren't there at the time, maybe don't remember that time, that was really when we saw, I guess, the China that we know now starting, wasn't it? There's this sort of title that we got, there's the factory of the world, that kind of thing.