The Negotiation

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Shanshan Tang, Global Business Lead for Canada at Alibaba. Alibaba’s Vancouver office was opened in 2018 with two main goals: to help Canadian brands (especially smaller ones) sell to China using their eCommerce platform, and to promote cross-border tourism and online and in-store enablement of Alipay. Alibaba was founded as an eCommerce company 20 years ago...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Barbara Finamore, Senior Strategic Director for Asia at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the author of Will China Save the Planet (2018). She started her career with the NRDC as an environmental litigator, a position she left after getting married to a U.S. diplomat in the 1980s. Her husband took her to China in 1990, when the country was considerin...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Xin Yi Lim, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Pinduoduo and former Technology Analyst for GIC in Singapore and New York. Xin Yi discusses interactive eCommerce, a relatively new term that aims to reproduce the experience of offline shopping by “trying to understand human needs through the community that surrounds each and every one of us.” Pinduodu...

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with TR Harrington, Co-Program Director at Mobile Only Accelerator and Program Director at SOSV. He is also a Startup Mentor at Antler, Mucker Capital, and Chinaccelerator. TR discusses the mindset and strategies he used to run a Shanghai-based marketing agency in China, and gracefully enact an exit strategy after over a decade of serving as CEO. He says that the...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author, speaker, university professor, and serial entrepreneur James Lalonde. He shares decades of experiences working in Asia, comparing and contrasting the social, cultural, and political characteristics of Japan, China, and North America to illustrate how these similarities and differences impact each country’s influence on the world stage. James belie...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Justin Mallen, Founder, and CEO of Silk Road Telecommunication. He shares what it is like being one of the few successful foreign entrepreneurs in China, having entered the market during a time when it was far from the economic powerhouse that it is today. Justin says, “China’s telecom infrastructure is owned and operated by three incredibly large, state-...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Andrea Fenn, a sinologist and journalist who regularly publishes articles and conducts lectures on China’s fast-paced, ever-evolving digital ecosystem. Andrea is also the founder and CEO at Fireworks, which he refers to as a “post-digital agency”. This is due to his belief that brand growth in today’s digital landscape should go beyond vanity metrics such...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author and educator Mark Greeven. He is a former Associate Professor at Zhejiang University’s School of Management in Hangzhou, China. Today, Mark serves as Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. The biggest difference between teaching at Zhejiang and at IMD is that the former “has all the features of a burea...

Today on The Negotiation, Michael Zakkour returns to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the state of retail in China and the rest of the world. Setting the context for the discussion, Michael says that it is not a question of which retailers are doing well, but which integrated systems are. One of the factors that held China together during the worst of the crisis was the “ecosystems for retail, co...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Bay McLaughlin, Co-Founder, and COO at Brinc.io, an early-stage venture accelerator. He describes his partnership with fellow Co-Founder Manav Gupta as unorthodox in that they were not wholly familiar with each other’s backgrounds when they first met. What they did have individually, however, was the self-confidence needed to dive headfirst into a new ven...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Dr. Julie Klinger, an expert on the rare earth elements industry whose research focuses on finding solutions for current and potential sustainability issues. Rare earth metals are, in fact, not actually rare. They are as common as copper or lead in terms of their occurrence on the Earth’s crust. The term refers to a family of elements located in the lanth...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Rick Watson, founder, and CEO at RMW Commerce Consulting. With over 20 years of experience in the eCommerce industry, Rick shares his thoughts on industry giants in China and the U.S. Asked how different Alibaba is from Amazon, Rick starts off by addressing the Western notion that these two eCommerce companies essentially share the same business model—the...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Joshua Eisenman, an Associate Professor of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and a senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. Joshua goes over his four published books on the topic of China and the developing world: China and the Developing World: Beijing’s Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (2007), China and A...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Sarah Weyman, Chief Growth Officer at Dentsu Aegis Network. She discusses the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese businesses and the future of marketing as the whole world marches on towards the new normal. The outbreak of Coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 fundamentally changed the business world. A few months into the pandemic, those who continue to not onl...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Ben Robinson, Merchant Success Manager at Shopify Plus. He shares his experience working with a growing number of large Asia-Pacific brands on the ecommerce platform, with a focus on the Japanese market. Many of the brands Ben works with today are generally “high-growth, high-volume stores that are looking to increase their presence in different markets.”...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Ann Lee, author of What the U.S. Can Learn from China (2012) and Will China’s Economy Collapse? (2017). Having risen to fame for predicting the market crash of 2008, today she is a leading authority on international finance and economics. Ann worked on Wall Street soon after graduating from business school, but made the transition to academia in 2006 once...

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Marian Danko, founder of the tech innovation platform weHustle; and TECOM, a conference for tech entrepreneurs. A native of Ukraine, Marian experienced culture shock upon arriving in China, particularly when it came to the rapid speed that defines the nation’s startup ecosystem. Speaking on Shanghai’s tech startup landscape, Marian says that “the ceiling...

Today on The Negotiation, Scott Laprise discusses his transition from a career in diagnostic medicine to a financial analyst and researcher for emerging markets specifically within China. Scott considers Chinese languages the most important to study because of the country’s position as a key player in world business. Additionally, it is not enough to converse in English because the Chinese express...

Today on The Negotiation, Olivia Plotnick talks about her entry into China as an entrepreneur from the United States. She shares how she was able to grow WeChat accounts at a massive rate in a fast-paced marketplace whose consumer culture is so different from her home country’s. She also explains how brands can capitalize on certain WeChat features, such as Top Stories, the “Wow” function, and WeC...

Today on The Negotiation, Kevin Johannes Wörner discusses his background in venture capital and the startup space in China. The German-born entrepreneur developed an “appetite” for the Chinese market at an early age. He studied at Tongji University before working for some time in Germany as a management consultant. Following this, he founded the business accelerator Properas in Berlin. It was arou...

Today on The Negotiation, Cyril Ebersweiler shares 20 years of business experience working with various brands in China. Cyril began his career as an eCommerce project manager for Carrefour, launching China’s first online retail platform. From there, he worked with Adidas for four months before making the switch to Air France, where he would work for the next three years. Air France at the time wa...

For the past 7 months, this show has been all about China and the amazing opportunities that lie in wait for companies willing to put in the work to be successful there. China’s business landscape and culture have been our bread and butter, it’s what this show has been built upon, and because of that, we need to talk about the tragic events that have been happening there over the last month due to...

Today on The Negotiation, Sarah Kutulakos talks about her experiences working for the Canada China Business Council (CCBC) for twelve years, and how doing business between both countries has changed over the last decade. Sarah talks about the evolution of the “depth of companies’ activities in China”. She highlights eCommerce as a big game-changer for the consumer market, as well as brands’ bolder...

Today on The Negotiation, Scott Silverman emphasizes efficiency and localizing new technologies as the two keys to brand success. When it comes to promoting your product, your service, or even your company, you must influence the perception around the thing you intend to bring exposure to. As to “what’s in the soup”, the most sacrosanct are 1) the product, and 2) the key benefit. The brand must be...

Today on The Negotiation, marketing specialist Lauren Hallanan talks about all things digital marketing, influencers, and social media for brands in China. Lauren shares her insights on what platforms are on top and which are soon to be left in the past by consumers and brands alike. Listen in to learn what tactics are being used by domestic Chinese brands and why studying their approach could be...