Kenneth Madsen, president of Pandora Jewelry Asia-Pacific, calls himself an "entrepreneur at heart" with a passion for the commercial aspects of running a company."You could never put me in a business that has been running for 30 years, growing 2 percent each year and optimizing on cost. That's not me. I love to grow a business and explore new cultures, new countries as well as new markets," he tells China Daily.Though born and raised in Denmark, Madsen has been living out of the country for years, having spent a long time in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.He joined Pandora in 2009 as managing director for Central and Eastern Europe in Warsaw, Poland, where he built up the brand as a new startup from zero within four years. With two or three people in his team, Madsen made business plans in Starbucks at the very beginning. The company quickly expanded with the joint efforts, taking root in Poland and having found distributors in Russia. Next, it went to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and opened stores there.Madsen moved to Hong Kong five years ago to take over the nascent business here."We had to set up a new team and close down some stores that were not working. But, this kind of resetting and then building up the business is definitely where I get my energy from."Before Madsen's venture into the jewelry business, he had been associated mainly with sales and marketing. The industries involved ranged from Danish beer brewer Carlsberg and music publishing company EMI to footwear retailer Ecco."I had been with Ecco shoes for six years when I decided to change. Part of it was because I was familiar with Pandora from back home in Denmark," he says. "The work I did for Ecco shoes before has helped me put more life into a jewelry store. We try to modernize a little bit in how to operate as a jewelry business."According to Madsen, the jewelry business is quite old-fashioned. Back in the old days, normally there were two collections per year, spring-summer and autumn-winter. People would visit a traditional jewelry store once or twice a year, depending on their consumption levels.His early career equipped him with the ability to combine the fast fashion trend with traditional business, making it possible there's always something new at Pandora's stores."We have seven launches every year. It's relatively affordable to buy one charm and build a little bit on the bracelet," Madsen says."What we're trying to do at Pandora is actually adding innovation to the traditional business and that's a big part of our success." custom silicone wristbands uk24 wristbandschildren in need wristbandcustom rubber braceletsglow wristbandsjordan wristbandmotivational bracelets for athletesmake your own rubber braceletcheap custom wristbands
Teams have spent the past year rigorously checking implementation of environmental regulations, as Hou Liqiang reports.In his 10 years as an environmental law enforcement officer, Yin Wei has never known his schedule to be as tight as when he was sent to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster as part of a yearlong program to monitor air pollution control.During the three weeks he spent in Handan, Hebei province, Yin got up at 6 am but didn't get to bed before midnight. He spent his days inspecting companies, either openly or covertly, and looking for any violations of pollution regulations. We only had half an hour for lunch, he said, referring to the hectic schedule.The native of Lyuliang, Shanxi province, and his colleagues would arrive back at their hotel at about 7 pm every evening, and then rush to send details of violations or illegal behavior to the Ministry of Environmental Protection by 9 pm. After that, they scoured complaints submitted to local authorities, looking for clues to potential irregularities, and then selected the companies they would inspect the following day.Every company may be inspected several times and the inspection records will be handed on to successive teams, he said.Yin, whose four-strong team was among the first to be dispatched, is one of 5,600 officers taking part in the largest-ever air pollution control operation in North China. The assignment started on April 5, although most of the teams only take part in the inspection for two weeks at a time.Even though the inspection has made progress and air quality in the cluster has been improved, work to control air pollution in the region will be intensified. Meanwhile, as the inspection draws to a close, the authorities have been drafting a new three-year operation dubbed a blue sky protection campaign. As a follow-up measure, a number of leading experts will work to draft air pollution measures tailored to the situations in each of the 28 major cities in the cluster, according to officials.
