Softhousing.com
 
While still in Beijing in 1999, I have made a decision to dedicate my future to website design - a very profound and influential decision to my following 4 years or so.
 
In the early 2000 and 2001, I held the same stand. So was the name of the company I was going to promote, and all other things around it.
 
Softhousing or housing with software is understood as building houses on the Internet. Simply put, the business was oriented at website design and related services. We will talk later.
 
The chinese name of Softhousing pronounces similar to the famous web portal - sohu.com - to make it easier for people to remember.
 
To register a domain name and buy a hosting space of 100 MB took me about 500 yuan annually. To run it however, coasted me hundreds times more. Since its first operation in early March, numerous versions were designed.
 

The first version was a simple introduction of the owner, the business and contact information.

Then introductory information such as web page design, databases, programming, image processing were also added.

Somewhere in August 2000 the website became very big with more than 600 pages. It once became of the most comprehensive websites with detailed information about all web functions and industry solutions, web tools and Internet resources. The website drew attention from competitors and clients as well.
 
In June came the first call from a client - a S. Korean trader living in the Hongqiao district. After the first face-to-face meeting we signed a contract - a small one (RMB 14000) - for the design of a 30 static + 80 dynamic pages website (www.cash-facai.com). It took me one month and a half to finish the job, alone. I used all Microsoft technologies for that web applications - SQL Server 7.0 database server, ASP scripting, Windows operation systems of course, and Frontpage editor for HTML pages. The website was hosted in a local IPP, a bad one indeed, as they could not open the account within three days as they committed. Mr King, the Korean has already registered a domain name in another company, therefore you need to transfer the resolution of domain address to domain name service from the old server to the new one.
 

In August 2000 came a large order. A Beijing company called Taike Engineering asked me to design a large web portal for the beverage industry. For the negotiation I traveled to Beijing by train, and he paid me all the traveling expenses, incl. the lodging in the Guoji Hotel's Sister Building. He paid me the first part of the services - the overall structural design of the website. And then I spent a month to design the whole structure of the website. In addition, I also made a business plan for his project.

Taike was an engineering company in the beverage industry. It provided design, installation and engineering for production lines of beer producers. The web portals was aimed at providing an online business platform for buyers and suppliers, distributors for the beverage, esp. the beer industry. All e-business functions were planned, incl. supplier evaluation, auction, inquiry, tendering, order notification, online negotiations, dealerships and distributorships processing. The purpose was to maximize the profit and minimize the purchase cost for beer producers.

At the same time I helped him to work out a profit-making strategies. According to our plan, revenues could be generated by advertisement services, trade commissions and memberships.

In mid September however, he didn't inform me of any further progress of the project. The RMB 600 000 contract became a paperwork only. And I could not sue him for his breaching our contract because the name I used for signing contract was not a legally registered business entity, therefore I could get no protection from the government.
 
After this accident, I kept waiting for other chances. I made also sales efforts in various forms - going to fairs and exhibitions, making annoying phone calls, sending mostly spamming emails, and working with others, all but failed.
 
I've tried to form a strategic alliance with a small IPP, an one-man company too. He has a little client resources from his domain registration and hosting services, he knew a little web design but he was lack of sophisticated, database-backed web pages. However, this alliance was one-sided, and he was not very enthusiastic. Nothing came out.
 
Then my colleague introduced me a young man at 26 who was the husband of a lady working at the same company as my colleague. This man was ambitious to enter into the IT industry and he was of origin of the Zhejiang province, the same province as me, so we have something in common. We met once in my little room in Tianlin Village and we discussed with full hope and confidence of the bright future in the IT industry - in fact, the IT industry was already collapsing. I paid a good dinner for four of us and we departed just for nothing.
 
Several months later, I met the man in his company when I was presenting myself to this company, located in a nice looking office building at Xujiahui, a busy commercial hub in southwest of Shanghai. After that unexpected meeting, we met several times in his office, but there was still no chance to form a productive alliance.
 
 
Several months elapsed since the last contract, but there was still no signs of winning further more. i realized I was not competitive enough in the web business. Competing against me were giants like Sohu.com, China.com and young computer software students - they don't have my background but to make simple web design they are more than enough.
 
Possibly my language skills and my background in working with multinational companies can help me make a future among the foreign companies.
 
Thus thought, I removed all the previous, information-rich website and redesigned one with four languages - Chinese, English, German and French. I have collected German companies in China, particularly in Shanghai and sent out many hundreds of emails to them. Only two responded, one in Nanjing and another in Shanghai. No serious talks were conducted.
 
Another four months were gone, I realized it was impossible to earn a living with web design, my saving was diminishing, and my parents were ageing quickly, so I decided to leave Shanghai for Hangzhou where I can do exactly the same business at lower cost, while I will be able to take care of my parents.