Most aspiring entrepreneurs are advised to venture into new businesses with their eyes wide open. But five young Shanghai people flouted the conventional wisdom when they decided to start an online shop selling baby products. All five of them are blind.
In the dark world they inhabit, Shen Chenxian, Zhang Ping, Chen Xiaobin, Gu Min and Wang Lin communicate with customers online by using a screen reader that converts text to conversation. Their business relies on keyboards and microphones and a lot of pluck.
"For many people struck with blindness, they just give up their dreams and stop fighting for it," said Shen. "But we see opportunity even if we can't see the world around us, and we were determined not to let our handicaps stand between us and our dreams."
"Being a team increases the chances of success"
Encouraged by their families and Luo Lan, an online shop owner herself and an instructor from Taobao.com, they decided to start their own business with 5,000 yuan (US$732) from an entrepreneur who is also a consultant in starting businesses.
They named their business Yong Xin Chuang Shi Jie, which translates as "creating a new world with a heart." It sells products such as clothes for pregnant women, diapers and nursing bottles, and is targeted at new parents.
Luo suggested the five team up and start one shop.
"Being a team increases the chances of success," Luo said. "Individuals give up more easily when things aren't going well. These five are handicapped, and they can help each other."
The team, Shen said, works well together. They take turns at manning the shop, usually in three shifts a day. Being able to work from home eliminates a lot of overheads.
Business started slowly but solidly, especially considering that they didn't spend any money on advertising to promote their shop, according to Luo who started her online shop about five years ago.
The online shopping market is popular but competitive in China. At the end of last year, between 400,000 and 500,000 online shops were offering an estimated 100 million products to consumers. Revenue from Website sales on Taobao.com in 2009 doubled from a year earlier to more than 200 billion yuan.
The baby products shop, while still in its infancy, has chalked up more than 150 sales since it opened last year, with 1,000 products sold. On February 3, more than 400 items were sold in one deal.
Shen, who spends more than 10 hours online every day, said she believes the business will be profitable in the near future.
Still, the road to success has been hard for her. A year after she lost her eyesight, Shen began to learn how to use a screen reader. It wasn't easy. The software reads faster than most people can follow so it took Shen three months to master the system.
As if that wasn't enough, Shen also took up the study of psychology, receiving a certificate in psychology consulting last year.
"... if I started my own business, I would be my own boss"
They started their shop on Taobao.com, China's largest online shopping site, last September and have already sold more than 1,000 items. They chose baby goods, Shen said, because baby goods are pretty standardized, eliminating the need to deal with visual details about style, decoration or colors.
The five university students met each other through Shen's introduction. She was a classmate of Wang when learning psychology, and then got to know Gu while taking computer classes. Later she became friends with Zhang and Chen in English classes. Naturally their dream of starting a business was born and shared.
They had no interest in pursuing massage, a traditional job for the blind, but sought instead to create a business that would provide them with income and independence.
Team leader Shen, 29, contracted an eye disease and lost her eyesight in 2003, just a year before she was to graduate as a landscape designer from an arts college. Most blind people, she said, face job discrimination when they seek work.
Each of the five has faced that frustration.
Zhang, who graduated from East China Normal University in 2008 and lost his sight when he was about seven, did an internship at an aquarium for six month but then found all his job applications rejected. People are reluctant to hire the blind, he said.
"I figured if I started my own business, I would be my own boss," said Zhang, who is the Website technician for the online shop. "That would mean fewer restrictions."
"Sometimes it's very frustrating..."
Chen, a classmate of Zhang's who was born blind, is in charge of warehousing goods the shop sells. Gu, who graduated from Shanghai Normal University in 2008 and has been blind since the age of seven or eight, collects, sorts and classifies product information and also does the bookkeeping for the shop.
And Wang, a chemistry major who became blind with glaucoma when he was 26, acts as liaison between the team and the public at large, seeking help from society groups and negotiating with suppliers.
"The hardest part of this business is that the speed of our response to clients is slow because we are unable to see and distinguish between similar products," said Shen. "Sometimes it's very frustrating, but we support each other and don't let ourselves get too discouraged."
The business model goes like this. A consumer contacts the shop online and wants to buy 100 diapers. After the screen reader translates the order through a chatting tool, they make sure that they know what products their customers want and negotiate prices. Then they give the order to their supplier who delivers the products.
When the customer received the goods, she will send a message to Alipay, an online payment platform, where the money is temporarily kept, and transfer the money to the shop's account.
In addition, the Shanghai government also encourages handicapped people to start their own businesses. If people like Shen gain a business license, they can apply for a 5,000 yuan start-up fund and receive professional training.
The five young entrepreneurs are not only working to make their business succeed, but they are also committed to helping other blind people by providing them internship opportunities to learn business skills and practices tailored to their handicaps.
Besides their own shop, they hope to provide delivery services to other owners who are busy in the daytime.
Zhang also provides technical assistance to blind people experiencing Website problems. Currently there is no help desk for problems related to screen readers, and some Websites aren't available through the screen reader. Zhang said he hopes software specialists will eventually build a barrier-free Internet.
"We would like to think, several years from now, that we can support ourselves financially and run some charity projects," said Shen.
"And we hope other blind people will take heart from our experience and realize that darkness can be overcome and people without eyesight can lead productive, happy lives," Shen said.
