Background
Li Rucheng was born in 1951, Li suffered hardships in his youth, including the imprisonment of his father and a mother who became insane. During the difficult years of 1959–61, Li lost four family members, including his mother.
如成 李
Li Rucheng was born in 1951, Li suffered hardships in his youth, including the imprisonment of his father and a mother who became insane. During the difficult years of 1959–61, Li lost four family members, including his mother.
But neither these personal difficulties nor his limited seven years of schooling kept him from gaining economic independence through hard work. Li found this willingness to endure arduous work valuable when Chinese economic reforms offered him the opportunity to escape farming and join the garment industry.
Pioneering the idea that China must develop a unique management style, rather than copy one from more developed countries, Li has directed Youngor Group Co. Ltd through numerous industry changes to its current position in the top 100 private enterprises in Zhejiang Province. The rapid growth of Youngor took flight under Li’s leadership in 1994, when it obtained a license for import and export. The company quickly grew to become one of the top 1000 large and midsize Chinese companies in 1997. Youngor debuted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on 19 November 1998. By 2001, Youngor shirts held a 15 percent market share in China, and were ranked first in the industry for seven consecutive years. That same year, Youngor’s Western-style clothes obtained an impressive 12.61 percent market share and had been ranked first in the industry for two consecutive years. When Li signed the 2005 garment development deal with Japan’s Itochu and Italy’s Marzotto, he brought the Youngor Group to truly global proportions, noting: ‘Our business will expand (after the deal) to cover more than 150 countries and regions . . . making us the biggest textile and garment manufacturing and exporting alliance in the world’ (AFX-Asia, 2005). As board chairman and president of Youngor Group, Li oversees the nearly 22 000 employees of Youngor Group Co. Ltd, whose 2007 revenues are estimated to be between US$750 million and 1 billion.