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Shuan Gao — a Chinese entrepreneur with natural business instinct

By: Jasmine Zhao

Caption:UK Integrity offices in China  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

Shaun Gao, now the exclusive director of both ‘UK Integrity’ and ‘Sensbay’, is a Chinese entrepreneur who set up two of his own companies in UK within five years.

 

Came in UK as an international student in 2008, Shaun Gao set up his first company --the UK integrity when he graduated in 2011. UK integrity is a business consulting company providing party b services for different companies. It provides Chinese companies services from UK and local British companies services from China as well.

Caption: Logo of UK Integrity  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

UK Integrity helps British or Chinese companies extend their businesses in China or UK respectively and it also helps promote cooperation between companies in China and UK.

 

Until now, there has been three representative offices in UK--London, Manchester and Birmingham and two in China--Beijing and Sichuan. UK Integrity now has three shareholders and a professional business consulting team of 20 people.

Caption: UK Integrity offices in London  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

Caption: Shaun is with his customer in Manchester  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

Caption: UK Integrity offices in Warwick  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

Shaun said that it was really difficult for him to set up this company in the beginning. ‘At that time I just graduated and had no experience in operating a company’, he said, ‘ and the nature of my company ‘UK Integrity’ is to get trust from companies both in UK and China, but no-one can take risk of putting the future of their companies in a graduate’s hand.’

When experiencing difficulties in operating his company at first, Shaun decided to attend various kinds of activities in UK and meet as many professionals as he can. Until now, most of the professionals in his business consulting team are whom he met during that period of time. Those professionals include Hongji Liang, a British Royal certificated accountant, was bullish about his company’s prospect and finally decided to join Shaun.

 

“The most important thing for us to do in the beginning is to make telephone calls”, Shaun described. He told us that there is a big difference to communicate with and get trust from British and Chinese companies. “British companies can get your trust very quickly but their trust level will decline as the time goes, whereas Chinese companies are very difficult to trust us in the beginning but the longer we communicate with each other the more trust we will gain from them”, Shaun said, “so we usually contact with Chinese companies first and match them to British companies later.”

 

“Normally when both British and Chinese companies trust us in a high level, it is the time to make a deal on the cooperation between the two parties”, he described, “and in most times we need 2 years or so to make a deal on the cooperation between both British and Chinese companies.”

After getting success in setting up the UK Integrity, Shaun gradually found some restrictions for his business--policies of trade protection make some British and Chinese companies do not want to extend their companies in other countries. In order to stabilize his business, Shaun funded another company in UK and name it ‘Sensbay’.

 

Sensbay is a bedding-selling company funded by Shaun in 2016 in UK. The brand ‘Sensbay’ has already been in many large shopping malls such as Debenham and Tkmaxx.

 

All Sensbay’s beddings are designed by local designers in Britain and made in Jincheng--a city in Sichuan province in China, where there is a sericulture base and dyeing factory. After being manufactured in the Chinese factory, all the finished beddings will be transported to UK and sold locally.

 

According to Shaun, the reason why he chose an already-existed company in China as Sensbay’s dyeing factory is that silk made there are cheap but has a high quality.

Caption: Sensbay’s sales hall in Sanxi province in China  Photo credit:Shaun Gao

As a newly-funded company, Sensbay does not have a large number of working staff until now, whereas its bedding products has been used as Prince Charles’ birthday gifts this year which worth 50 thousand pounds. Apart from targeting at those high-end customers, Sensbay also provides moderately priced beddings (price ranging from 400 to 600 pounds) for ordinary citizens in UK so everyone in UK can enjoy the good quality beddings.

 

Sensbay is regarded as a ‘blue ocean market’ by Shaun and he believes that this company with physical business can make up for the drawbacks UK Integrity (a non-physical company) may have in the future.

 

Growing up from an international young entrepreneur in UK, Shaun said it not hard to set up a company yourself here in UK, even as a foreigner. However, he added that if young entrepreneurs want their companies to be operated longer, learning how to solve different problems is really important.

“Keep with your dream, never give up and you will finally make it”, he claimed.

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