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Cutting costs the Chinese way

Oak Pacific Interactive is a Chinese company that runs several web 2.o sites, including mop.com and donews.com. After their 48 million USD VC round last year things have gone a bit downhill for them, especially after most of their revenue was cut off last August when China Mobile restructured the service provider industry. Since then they have been cutting costs heavily, among others by laying off lots of employees and moving to a cheaper office.

Likely the VC’s forced them to cut costs, but maybe the investors pushed a bit too hard. On BBS forums mop.com employees are now complaining that the company refuses to put the airconditioning on in the office. Given the fact that Beijing just went through a heat wave, that seems like a bit of a desperate and very short-sighted action. In that kind of weather even the most motivated person cannot do his job anymore.

If I would be an investor in this company, I think it would be time for a serious discussion with the management about how to run a company. Or maybe this action was intentional, and this is a creative way to get rid of more staff without having to fire them?

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  1. Correct, blogspot was blocked once again last week. It has happened 3-4 times over the past year, so it’s almost not worth mentioning anymore 🙂 I just use a proxy, but it is a hassle of course.

  2. brother can u tell me how to use proxy……i will be thankful to u

  3. There are several ways, but the easiest is to just use anonymouse.org and type or paste the blocked URL there.

  4. I am really happy that I found a cool blog site of you. I really enjoyed reading your blog. I can assure that you get a permanent visitor of your site. I tried to check the tudou.com but as you said its only have Chinese version so didn

  5. Hallo Marc,

    Wat een leuke blog heb je. Erg leuk om de laatste tijd regelmatig wat over je te horen hier in Maastricht; ik ben toch stiekem wel trots op mijn grote neef! Wel een beetje apart dat we elkaar eigenlijk nauwelijks kennen, maar goed, wie weet komt daar spoedig nog ‘ns verandering in. Je hebt ongetwijfeld een update gehad van Gijs. Hier in Maastricht gaat alles prima. Nog hartelijk bedankt voor je bijdrage aan de InFOCUS, als het goed is, is een exemplaar naar je onderweg.

    Groetjes,
    Leoni van der Chijs

  6. Hi Leoni,
    Leuk wat van je te horen via mijn blog. Ik was wel verrast toen Gijs over je vertelde, it’s a small world. Wellicht zien we elkaar eind van het jaar op het VCL kerstdiner – ik denk niet dat Gijs bij Morgan Stanley nog tijd heeft voor vakanties in China!
    Cheers,
    Marc