2010-07-28 15:48

BEIJING - Facing an increasingly competitive employment market upon graduation, many Chinese university students are starting to hone their entrepreneurial skills while still on campus.

One is Xie Li, a postgraduate student in administrative management at Wuhan University of Science and Technology in central China's Hubei province.

The latest "Entrepreneurs Weekly" supplement in the China Youth Daily newspaper recounted how Xie successfully started an e-commerce business selling cold-weather clothing.

He registered his company in July 2009. But he did not open his online shop immediately. Instead, he conducted market research on the different shops at taobao.com.

He found that cold-weather clothes sold well online, but that the online market for them was not well developed.

With the help of his father working in the textile industry, Xie reached an agreement with the Yuzhaolin cold-weather clothes company to sell the company's clothes online. Last September, Xie's shop opened on taobao.com with 100,000 yuan in start-up funds.

Business was good initially, thanks to the detailed and professional description of products, fast responses to customer inquiries and a simple but artistic shop design. Monthly sales hit one million yuan.

But then problems emerged.

As winter approached, the number of customers soared dramatically, and delays in delivery became common, as did customer complaints. A lack of staff and an inefficient management style caused the problems.

Xie closed his shop for three days to adjust the shop's management style. Previously, one employee had handled the whole business for each order, from receiving and examining it to packaging and delivering it.

To make the whole process more efficient, Xie asked each employee to be responsible for only step. Then he reopened the shop and compensated customers whose goods were delivered late.

Though he suffered some losses for a period, his business later boomed again. With 29 employees, total sales reached 5.9 million yuan in six months. And his shop has started to sell other types of clothing, too.

While Xie sold clothes, other students did business by providing a place for others to cook.

Wang Mengmeng, Xiao Shan, Xia Meng and Zhang Tian are students at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in east China's Jiangsu province. They opened a DIY (do it yourself) kitchen near their university.

The kitchen provides cooking utensils, a variety of flavorings and a venue for holding small parties. Customers can bring their own vegetables, meat and fish to the kitchen and cook for themselves and their friends after paying a 10 yuan per person charge.

"You don't need to worry whether the food was made with gutter oil or dirty ingredients when you cook by yourself. More importantly, the kitchen is a good place to spend leisure time," the "Entrepreneurial Weekly" quoted a customer at the DIY kitchen as saying.

With 30,000 yuan of start-up funds, the kitchen did not get much attention at beginning, but it gradually became popular with university students and turned in a monthly profit of 2,000 yuan.

"Actually, not many university students choose to start their own business, and only a handful of those that do make it a success. Most university students still prefer to find a job once they graduate," said Xu Ge, editor of the "Entrepreneurs Weekly", on Tuesday.

But she thinks university students' entrepreneurial spirit should be fostered.

She said some students start their own business because they are not optimistic about their employment situation while others do it purely because they enjoy running their own business.

Still, while some experts encourage university students to start their own business before graduation, others question it.

Wang Li, deputy director of the employment guidance center at Northwestern Polytechnical University, said university students should focus on their studies and start their own business once they have graduated.