The Negotiation

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...

Tom points to social changes as most fundamental to the rapid growth of the Chinese market, particularly with how quick consumers are in adopting new technologies. There are three keys to this change: 1) Immersion, or maximizing the buyer experience (i.e. standardizing vertical video); 2) Innovation, and framing these novel platforms as a positive lifestyle change; 3) Entertainment, which was neve...

The China tech scene has been on the rise for the past decade. However, challenges still exist (and are actually increasing in number) for foreign companies looking to enter China and vice versa.             As the first foreign correspondent to interview Jack Ma, Rebecca was witness to the eCommerce tycoon’s early days as an entrepreneur. She remembers him as being charismatic, honest, and open....

Today on The Negotiation, Shawn Graham discusses his transition from a politician in Canada to a business consultant in China. As the 31st Premier of New Brunswick, Shawn participated in a highly successful trade mission to China which brought an influx of new business for the Atlantic province. Speaking of the various Canadian business leaders that Shawn accompanied on his trade mission, the form...

Today on The Negotiation, Doug Pearce discusses the rapid transformation in recent years of the media and advertising landscape in China. Doug says that the media scene in China “is like nowhere else”. In place of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, the country has BAT, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and now TikTok creator ByteDance. The difference between these Chinese companies and their Western “counterpar...

Today on The Negotiation, William Bao Bean discusses what makes China one of the most competitive markets in the world. He points to the quick adoption of new technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—as one of the main drivers of the country’s economic growth. William says that machine learning allows for personalization of consumer experience on a virtually infinite scale, and many Chine...

Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Bessie Lee, founder of Withinlink. She shares her experience working for WPP, a marketing and communications holding company. She discusses WPP’s challenging journey as it steadily grew into one of the leading advertising groups in China, from its timely entry into the market during the foreign investment boom in the mid-1970s to the rise of the internet and...

Today on The Negotiation, Elizabeth Campbell discusses her experiences working in marketing communications in the Chinese market. She considers building up her businesses’ digital marketing capabilities as a “critical part of the overall growth strategy” in the country. We start out diving into the differences in Pay-Per-Click in China vs. the West.   When Elizabeth began looking into digital mark...

Today on The Negotiation, Sally Zhang, a certified lecturer at Alibaba Taobao University, gives us a masterclass on the largest company in China today. What impresses Sally the most about Alibaba is its big data capabilities. “They know their customers, where their customers go, what they like, and what their habits are,” she states. As a lecturer, Sally notes that a lot of new vendors do not know...

Today on The Negotiation we speak with Jordan Rosenberg to discuss the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency with regards to China. Cryptocurrencies were created around 2007 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. They were noticed very early on in China, a country that had, in fact, been at the forefront of digital currency. China had already been specializing in server farms and hardware...