FusiOrari

Rosanna Terminio lives in Shanghai. In 2008 she arrived in China, as it often happens, as an employee for a Spanish company. A year ago she took the big step: “I became an entrepreneur”. Rosanna dreams of working for a long time with AsecorpChina, the consulting company she contributed to set up. A young woman and an entrepreneur in a men’s world. "Isn’t it true that, as we usually say, women sell better?”

LEGGI LA VERSIONE ITALIANA

Would you like to trace your journey step by step?
I studied at the Catholic University of Piacenza, at the Faculty of Economics and Trade, and during the last year of the university I decided to attend the ERASMUS programme in Spain, in Barcelona. I immediately fell in love with this city, with its people and with its international flair. It was the year 2001. I stayed there, I wrote my degree thesis and in 2002, after having discussed it in Italy, I went back to Barcelona in order to find a job. I started working for a French company which dealt with product trading at international level. As  project manager I was in charge of the lines of credit, of the distribution management, of the contact with customers and of payments. A full experience which trained me but gave no job perspectives. Then, I approached the world of international cooperation attending a post graduate course and moved to Latin America for some months in order to run a development and co-operation project  in Colombia.

Was it a very strong experience?
I worked for a small local NGO I got in touch with thanks to a Colombian friend. The project aimed at offering shelter to baby- prostitutes, giving them an education and a professional training. A project I was involved in quite by chance and which turned into a very exacting activity for me. My journey to Colombia in December 2005 aimed at studying the project on the spot  and evaluating the Colombian counterparty, a religious institution – a recurrent element in these contexts in Latin America – and afterwards proposing this project to the financial backers in Spain. My co-operation was voluntary and hence, after a few months, I started looking for a job which could enable me to get a permanent salary and to continue a part-time cooperation with the NGO.  Among the several job interviews, I remember the one with a female selection consultant of the French Chamber of Commerce who, with a certain simplicity, suggested me to do the consultant. It would have been a job following different projects, different people: a monotonous and repetitive activity was absolutely not congenial to me.

Hence you have looked for a job in the consultancy field
Exactly. In the meantime I had started a distance master course in Studies of Oriental Asia at the Universidat Oberta de Catalunya. I understood International relations interested me. After all Humanities have always had a hold on me and there was a moment I even thought of attending a course in Political Sciences. I would have had to start from scratch and hence a master course represented a good compromise which enabled me to find a job in a Spanish consultancy agency, Asesores Corporativos. Asecorp was based in Barcelona and was organizing the opening of a branch in China, opening which had to take place in a few months.  Some clients of the automotive field had moved to China and hence opportunities for opening an office there materialized. I have started my career as the assistant to the director of internationalization, following all the steps for the establishment of the Spanish customers on the Chinese territory. Relying on my skills and competence in the economic and financial fields, I was able to follow the start-up also when it arrived in China, especially in the accountancy management.

What happened next?
The experience was interesting for me. We soon started to manage a purchasing center in China on behalf of a Spanish association: my responsibility was supervising it at a distance . It was a challenge which had a good outcome: it was not easy to be the interface between the Chinese team and the Spanish client.

From Barcelona to Shangai...
I stayed in Barcelona until 2008. In that year, the responsible person of Asecorp’s Chinese branch expressed the wish of coming back to Spain, and I offered to take that job: “We did not think you wished to go to China” they told me “You always speak about how much you love Barcelona”. That is how I left for China.

So did you go to China for Asecorp?
Yes, I did. At that time Asecorp counted about twenty internal consultant who, according to the kind of project involved, were supported by freelancers. The company had been present on the market for 20 years, especially in Catalunya, Barcelona area. In 2010, two years after my arrival in Shanghai, the company underwent an important change in management: the former Director who, beside being my boss was also partner in the company, sold his shares, leaving the company. When Asercorp, because of reasons linked to the financial crisis, decided to leave China, the person who had replaced my former Director and I took over the firm. The client base already existed and we were not short of projects. We saw a lot of potential in particular in the field of coaching and human resources. We threw ourselves in this adventure and we are still an hybrid between a start-up and an established firm: we are a start-up because it is the first time we build up a company and an established firm because at the same time we are renowned and appreciated for the services we provide. In addition, in the meantime one of our employees joined us in the entrepreneurial project.

Have you hence established a new firm?
Yes, we have. The headquarter was established in Hong Kong. Actually, it is a problem to have it in China, especially if you intend to get off cheaply. The feeling  we have is that of a market with great potential, which is facing a hardened competition, though.  The consultancy market is mature enough but if you have good knowledge and know-how and a very good product, especially in human resources, your future can be bright. At the same time, we merged in China into a bigger structure in order to hire people and have a formal presence in the country.

In the mid-term do you intend to strengthen your position with your present clients?
Yes, we do. Obviously, our goal is keeping the clients we already have. We want to convince them that our flexible and young structure  is not a risk for them, but rather an advantage: costs are lower and we are full of resources: widening our client portfolio, even geographically, is not less important. In Spain we are already quite renowned and we intend to insist on that market. However, the financial crisis put the Spanish market to test and hence we believe it is worth widening our horizons.

What are your future goals?
Nowadays half of our client base is constituted of Spanish clients and half of Italian clients. They are companies having similar dimensions. We look at  the Latin American market. It is not a frenzied strategy, not at all. Indeed, a particular trend in relationships between the states can be seen – a trend which has been called South-South cooperation – according to which richer countries, for example China, on the one side intend to be a protagonist and on the other side to become the champion of a model of aids different from the one implemented by the International Monetary Fund. At the basis of this approach there is the idea according to which there is no need to intervene in the domestic affairs of the single countries but rather to co-operate for their development.

Which is your most interesting feature?
We want to help our clients grasp  the cultural scheme of this market in order to live it in a less traumatic and more sustainable way. For us internationalization does not mean only focusing on a business plan but rather having the comprehensive knowledge for dominating the cultural context behind it.

As a Western young woman how is it difficult to be an entrepreneur in China?
At the beginning it was complicated. A cultural shock which, thanks to curiosity, has soon turned into a challenge. The first steps have been difficult. This is almost completely a men’s world, starting from the clients who generally are men. In addition, Chinese culture is very catchy from this point of view: it has happened to me to have a problem with an employee simply because I was a woman and, even worse, younger than him. The fact of being young is often associated with lack of experience . It is not always a true association and sometimes we can break it with a smile. Isn’t true that we say that women sell better.

However complex has been to “move” through China and among Chinese people, do you think is it easier to make one’s own way there than in Italy ?
I believe so. Sometimes I think about it and I tell to myself: “Dear Rosanna, Italy would not have given you an opportunity like this”!