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Global Business: Smashed Fridges and Catfish: The Story of Haier

ZhangRuimin.jpg

09/11/2013

Smashed Fridges and Catfish: The Story of Haier

BBC World Service - Global Business, Smashed Fridges and Catfish: The Story of Haier

How a failing fridge manufacturer became one of the largest white goods companies

How Zhang Ruimin transformed a failing fridge manufacturer into one of the largest white goods companies in the world.

In 1984 Zhang Ruimin went into a failing factory making fridges and smashed them all with a sledgehammer. “Work started at 8.00am”, Mr Zhang tells Peter Day, “but if you went in there at 9.00am and threw a grenade nobody would die because they had all gone home”. This factory has now become Haier, one of the largest white goods manufacturers in the world. Zhang Ruimin tells Peter Day how he transformed the company and how he developed his own style of management. Managers at Haier, for example, have their own ‘catfish’ who always shadows them in order to stir things up when they are not performing at their best.

(Picture: Zhang Ruimin, Credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)

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