| | Type | Public (SEHK: 1169
SSE: 600690)
OTC Pink: HRELF | Industry | Home appliances
Consumer electronics | Founded | 1984 (Qingdao, People's Republic of China)
Adopted current name in 1992 | Headquarters | Qingdao, People's Republic of China | Key people | Zhang Ruimin: Chairman and CEO
Yang Mianmian: President
Wu Kesong: Vice-Chairman | Products | Major appliances
Small appliances
Commercial heating and cooling systems
Consumer electronics | Revenue | CNY 150.9 billion (2012) | Employees | 80,000 | Subsidiaries | Haier Electronics Group Co. (SEHK: 1169)
Qingdao Haier Co. | Website | www.haier.com |
About Haier

History of the haier
The origins of Haier date back long before the actual founding of the company. In the 1920s, a refrigerator factory was built in Qingdao to supply the Chinese market. After the 1949 establishment of the People's Republic of China, this factory was then taken over and turned into a state owned enterprise.

Zhang Ruimin and the corporate revival
By the 1980s, the factory had debt of over CNY¥1.4 million and suffered from dilapidated infrastructure, poor management, and lack of quality controls, resulting from the planned economic system and relevant policies. Production had slowed, rarely surpassing 80 refrigerators a month, and the factory was close to bankruptcy. The Qingdao government hired a young assistant city-manager, Zhang Ruimin, responsible for a number of city owned appliance companies. Zhang was appointed the managing director of the factory in 1984.
When he arrived in 1984, Zhang decided that improvement was needed to the factory's quality control.
In 1985, a customer brought a faulty refrigerator back to the factory and showed it to Zhang. Zhang and the customer then went through his entire inventory of 400 refrigerators looking for a replacement. In the process he discovered that there was a 20 percent failure rate in his merchandise. To emphasize the importance of product quality, Zhang had the 76 dud refrigerators lined up on the factory floor. He then distributed sledgehammers to the employees and ordered them to destroy the refrigerators. The workers were hesitant; the cost of a refrigerator at the time was about 2 years worth of wages. Seeing their distress, Zhang said: "Destroy them! If we pass these 76 refrigerators for sale, we'll be continuing a mistake that has all but bankrupted our company." The refrigerators were destroyed. One of the hammers used is on display at company headquarters as a reminder to posterity.

Founding a new company
Haier had been founded as Qingdao Refrigerator Co. in 1984. With China opening up to world markets, foreign corporations began searching for partnerships in China. One of these, Germany's refrigerator company Liebherr Group entered into a joint-venture contract with Qingdao Refrigerator Co., offering technology and equipment to its Chinese counterpart. Refrigerators were to be manufactured under the name of Qindao-Liebherr (琴岛—利勃海尔;: 琴島-利勃海爾; Qindao-Libohaier). The installation of Liebherr's equipment and technology was accompanied by new quality management processes. By 1986, Qingdao Refrigerator had returned to profitability and sales growth averaged 83 percent per year. With sales of just CNY ¥3.5 million in 1984, sales rocketed to CNY ¥40.5 billion by 2000; a growth of more than 11,500 percent.
The Municipal government asked it to take over some of the city's other ailing appliance makers. In 1988, the company assumed control of Qingdao Electroplating Company (making microwaves) and in 1991 took over Qingdao Air Conditioner Plant and Qingdao Freezer.

The Haier brand
Having diversified its product line beyond refrigerators, the company adopted a new name in 1991. Borrowing from the German name of its partner, "Haier" came from the last two syllables of the Chinese transliteration of Liebherr (pronounced "Li-bo-hai-er"). Qingdao Haier Group was further simplified in 1992 to Haier Group, the company's current name.
In 1995 Haier bought out its chief rival in Qingdao, Red Star Electric Appliance Factory. In 1997, the company moved into television manufacturing with the acquisition of Huangshan Electronics Group. By the end of the 1990s, Haier was sold many products including Mobilephones and computers, and had the largest national market share in its core white goods division.
Ownership structure
Although under partial public ownership, Haier is still technically a "collective" company, meaning that it is supposed to be owned by its employees. However, its actual ownership situation is opaque; the employees receive no dividends and do not know how much they own in reality. Interference from officials is also a risk for state-owned enterprisess like Haier. Various levels of government often try to push their ailing companies upon successful ones, often resulting in failure; Haier was once talked into acquiring a pharmaceutical company, even though it had no prior experience or infrastructure in biotechnology.
As a government entity, Haier was also officially barred from entering the stock exchange early on. However, the company needed funds for its expansion and therefore sought loopholes to access private equity. In 1993, it listed a subsidiary Qingdao Haier Refrigerator Co. on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, raising CNY ¥370 million. In 2005, Haier entered the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through a "backdoor listing" by acquiring a controlling stake in a publicly listed joint venture Haier-CCT Holdings Ltd. (SEHK: 1169). Haier is also an index stock of the Dow Jones China 88 Index.

11111Based in the landmark Haier Building in midtown Manhattan, Haier America is a division of the multinational Haier Group, the world’s #1 major appliance brand as ranked by Euromonitor International 2012, and a global leader in consumer electronics. Haier employs more than 80,000 people around the world and distributes products in more than 100 countries and regions with global revenues reaching $23.3 billion in 2011. Haier is a proud supporter of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Zhang ruimin history of Career and life
(10 most powerful businesspeople in China)

10 most powerful businesspeople in China

Early life
Zhang Ruimin was born on January 5, 1949 to a working class family in Qingdao, Shandong; his parents were employed in a local garment factory. As a youth, Zhang was swept up in the Cultural Revolution and like many other students, he joined the Red Guards as the movement cascaded across the country. He visited Mao's birthplace and attended rallies in Beijing since all schools had been closed, and when the movement was finally disbanded, he was able to avoid being sent down to the countryside. Due to the widespread upheaval, Zhang was unable to attend college (most having been shut down); instead, he began his career in obscurity at a state-run construction company in Qingdao in 1968.
Despite his humble roots and abbreviated education, Zhang had a voracious appetite for learning, and between his shifts working at the factory, Zhang would bicycle back and forth to management courses; he also read extensively on his own. Slowly climbing up the hierarchy of the company, he was promoted to workshop supervisor and then deputy director of the company in 1980 after 12 years of hard work. In 1982, he was promoted to deputy manager of the "Household Appliance Division" of the Qingdao municipal government. In a twist of fate, Zhang was dragooned into taking over as general manager of the Qingdao Refrigerator Plant when the previous manager left. He was the fourth person to hold the position and by then the company was in deep financial trouble with more than $10 million in debts.
Qingdao Refrigerator Plant
Early in his tenure as general manager, Zhang traveled to Germany to visit the company's German partner, from whom they were purchasing technology and know-how. He quickly realized that the company had a serious problem in terms of reputation and quality; it also reflected poorly upon his country. To ingrain the concept of quality into his workers, Zhang decided to conduct a demonstration with some of the factory's product.
A customer had brought a faulty refrigerator back to the factory and showed it to Zhang. Zhang and the customer then went through his entire inventory of 400 refrigerators looking for a replacement. In the process he discovered that there was a 20 percent failure rate in his merchandise. To emphasize the importance of product quality, Zhang had the 76 dud refrigerators lined up on the factory floor. He then distributed sledgehammers to the employees and ordered them to destroy the refrigerators. The workers were hesitant; the cost of a refrigerator at the time was about 2 years worth of wages. When Zhang saw the distress his workers exhibited, some even to the point of tears, he exclaimed: "If we don't destroy these refrigerators today, what is to be shattered by the market in the future will be this enterprise!" The refrigerators were smashed to pieces; Zhang himself took part in the attack on poor product quality.[8] One of the hammers remains on display at company headquarters as a reminder to posterity.
The benefits of Zhang's exercise soon became clear; not only did it reinforce the concept of product quality in his own workers, it also garnered the company some much needed publicity. The next year, it's refrigerators sold well in major domestic markets such as Beijing and Tianjin. Zhang also instituted many reforms that were completely novel to the state-run Chinese economy at the time. To encourage productivity, Zhang tied employee pay scales to sales of the products which they produced. He also instituted a practice whereby a mistake by an employee would require that employee to stand before his co-workers to explain his error. Another new concept that Zhang introduced was customer feedback. After noticing that sales of his company's were poor in Sichuan province, he discovered the reason to be that villagers would use the machines to wash sweet potatoes, clogging the drains in the washers. In response, Zhang had his company redesign the product to wash produce in addition to clothing.
By 1986, Qingdao Refrigerator had returned to profitability and sales growth averaged 83 percent per year. With sales of just CNY ¥3.5 million in 1984, sales rocketed to CNY ¥40.5 billion by 2000. With the success of Qingdao's refrigerator company, the municipal government asked it to take over some of the city's other ailing appliance makers. In 1988, the company assumed control of Qingdao Electroplating Company (microwaves) and in 1991 took over Qingdao Air Conditioner Plant and Qingdao Freezer.

Haier Group

Haier Building in Manhattan
In 1991, Qingdao Refrigerator was renamed Qingdao Haier Group, borrowing and transliterating the last syllable of its German partner, Firmengruppe Liebherr. Zhang Ruimin stayed on as general manager, but he concurrently enrolled himself at the University of Science and Technology of China to study towards a master's degree in business administration; he graduated in 1994. He was named the chief executive officer of Haier Group (the company had dropped "Qingdao" from the name) in 1993.
Zhang began a concerted effort to expand Haier's presence abroad, beginning in Europe, where Haier already had connections thanks to its partnership with Liebherr. In 1993, the company also began shipping its products to the Middle East and Africa, and also entered South East Asia in 1996. To break into the American market dominated by the likes of GE and Whirlpool however, Zhang realized that Haier would need to elbow its way in through under-served niche markets such as wine coolers and mini-refrigerators, popular with hotels and college dormitories. The strategy worked splendidly and by the turn of the century Haier claimed up to 60 percent of the electric wine cooler market. To further increase its visibility in the United States, Zhang also had Haier open a manufacturing plant in Camden, South Carolina that produced full-sized refrigerators. Factories were also opened in Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Jordan. By 2005, revenues at Haier had surpassed $12 billion and the company employed over 30,000 people; the Financial Times recognized Zhang Ruimin as one of the "50 most respected business leaders in the world."
Politics
Zhang Ruimin joined the Communist Youth League in the 1970s, when the organization was resuscitated after being shut down during the Cultural Revolution. He went on to obtain membership in the Communist Party in 1975, a move that gave him access to valuable connections within the local government.
As a collective enterprise, Haier is technically owned by its workers under the supervision of the government. However, it is markedly different from Chinese state-owned enterprises and Zhang has asserted that he runs Haier like a private company. Nevertheless, after having successfully turned around Haier, Zhang occasionally comes under pressure from government officials to take over other struggling enterprises. Once, he agreed to take on a pharmaceutical manufacturer, despite a dearth of experience or distribution network; the merger was less than successful. In another instance, he was urged to take on a bicycle maker, however in this case Zhang was able to resist.
In 2002, Zhang was appointed to the 16th CPC Central Committee's alternate committee, a position that does not hold any real power or responsibility. He was reappointed to the alternate committee for the 17th CPC Central Committee in 2007.
Personal
Zhang Ruimin is married and has one son. His wife keeps a low profile and previously worked as a party secretary at a textile factory in Qingdao. His son studied business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Zhang is known to abstain from drinking alcohol.
Honors
* 1997: "Entrepreneur of the Year," Asia Weekly * 1999: "Global 30 Most Respected Entrepreneurs (26th)," Financial Times * 2002: "Businessman of the Year (2001) in China," CCTV * 2002: "Global Business Leader and an Outstanding Donor," United Way International * 2004: "Asia’s 25 Most Influential Business Figures (6th)," Fortune Magazine * 2005: "World’s 50 Most Respected Business Leaders (26th)," Financial Times * 2009: "China's Most Powerful People," BusinessWeek * 2011: " Inspired Leadership Award" (6th)

(in America)

Business negotiation

Class number: International trade 1101 Student name: Munkh-Erdene Galbadrakh /………………………………………………………………………/