AmCham China Brief- March, 2002  
 

When Jeffrey Bernstein went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, the path to future success was very obvious to him. “As a student of finance, I calculated that the risk/return of entrepreneurialism, was a bed deal. Entrepreneurialism must have been for people who couldn’t find a better job,” recalls the 32 year-old businessman today.
So Bernstein headed down the path of big business, signing on with an American corporate consulting giant. He worked in the U.S. for two years and was then transferred to South Korea, an experience that changed his whole outlook. He became addicted to the challenges of living and working in Asia and began to question the philosophy he once held to be true. “I was attracted less to the potential payoff, and more to the excitement of building something from scratch . I was an opportunity for creation, much as we experienced in the U.S. at the turn of the 2oth century and then again following the Second World War, ” says the reborn entrepreneur.

  

Bernstein thought China offered what his newfound entrepreneurial spirit was looking for, a large and growing market with an enormous need for development. After his two-year stint in South Korea was up, he quit his job and moved to Beijing where he enrolled in a beginner’s Chinese program at the Beijing Language and Culture Institute. He continued to consult while assessing what he hoped would be the right opportunity to start up his own company. “The business opportunity that I spotted, along with a good number of people, was the relative weakness of China’s distribution system relative to the quickly developing manufacturing and retail sectors,” He explains. “With little more than a hunch that supply chain spelled opportunity, I left consulting in 1997 to start a business.”

The business was Emerge Logistics, a one-stop service offering a distribution channel for overseas manufacturers to hold stock on the ground in China and fulfill local customers

 

orders, invoicing in local currency. As a wholly foreign-owned trading and service company registered in Shanghai’s Wai Gao Qiao FTZ, the company is able to distribute imported product into the local market.

For Bernstein, who had had a taste of expatriate life, there were some harsh realities that came with going out on his own. “I can remember agonizing over a single beer at a popular five-star hotel bar, let alone the second and third rounds,” he laments. “While students may steer clear of the high priced venues, it’s very difficult to do so when you are networking with other businesspeople.”

He was also burdened by China’s large registered capital requirements and an initial business identity crisis. But he had faith in the enormous upside China had to offer, such as the huge market, the difficulty large companies can have localizing, and the willingness of other expatriates to offer their wisdom and advice to a guy starting out. “In no other environment in the world have I seen so much

 
   



willingness for executives of different companies [non-competitors] to discuss business problems and share ideas.”


Today Emerge provides services to more than a dozen multinational clients including DaimlerChrysler, Freightliner Truck, Cerestar International, Gates Rubber Company, and Alcoa Reynolds, and hopes to become one of the premier logistics company in China by outperforming their competition. And the best part is Bernstein can now order a round of beer anywhere he likes бн without breaking a sweat.