Slí Siar aims to build up east-west relationship

The key to breaking into China is persistence, Chris Horn tells Clifford Coonan in Beijing

The prospect of 1.3 billion consumers has proven a powerful draw for western companies since China started opening up just over a quarter century ago, and Irish companies have also been bitten by the China bug.

But China's unfamiliar business culture and a lack of knowledge about the operating environment have long made it a difficult market to break into for Irish investors.

The key to breaking into China is persistence, said Dr Chris Horn, better known to most Irish people as the co-founder of Iona Technologies, a company which has been very successful at setting and maintaining its customer base in China. With the consultancy company Slí Siar, Horn aims to capitalise on Iona's experience and network in China built up since the start of the decade.

"Our basic philosophy is a twin strand of east and west coming together. We offer consultancy to try and help Irish and other western companies who want to get into or expand in China and, on the other hand, work with high net-worth Chinese investors looking to get involved in Ireland and elsewhere," said Horn, sitting in the company's wood panelled offices in a skyscraper in Beijing's Central Business District.

"Business relationships here are a long-term thing rather than a single transaction. They are made up of multiple transactions over a lifetime," said the self-confessed Sinophile, who has been coming to the region since 1996 but first came to mainland China on a trade delegation with Mary Harney five years ago.

Horn's interest in China is clear - he founded the Ireland China Organisation in 2000 - and Slí Siar is a good way for him to keep his hand in. In 2001, Horn stepped back from Iona, the integration giant he helped to found in 1991, but came back in 2003 as acting chief executive before installing a new CEO, Peter Zotto and happily returning to a back seat role.

"Now I'm on the board of Iona as non-executive vice-chairman and spending a lot more time with my family and travelling less," he said.

His other interests include chairing the Irish Management Institute and Unicef Ireland.

He is sitting beneath shelves containing 12-year-old whiskey and fine wines, and equestrian paintings are on the walls. This is about selling the idea of Ireland as a land of tradition and luxury and Slí Siar's corporate logo is an Irish heraldic shield, with a Celtic dragon facing East intertwined with a Chinese dragon facing west, each in the shape of an "S".

Beijing's GAA team have worn the logo and it's also been on display at high-profile golf tournaments in Shanghai and Kunming in the year or so since it's been operational. It featured heavily at the St Patrick's Day Ball in Beijing this year, which the company sponsored.

To Chinese customers, the company is known as Slí Siar, or the "pathway to the west". Slí Siar is a registered trade name representing "pathway to the east", and is used for western clients.

Slí Siar extends the functions of Enterprise Ireland in China, and some of its clients, such as Eddie O'Connor's energy group Airtricity, also work with the state body. They complement each other, and Horn said that Enterprise Ireland's Asia chief Michael Garvey gave him useful advice when he was setting up.

"I asked what it would take to do more business in China and the resounding answer was to have our own staff on the ground. Some other consultancies work without a local presence from the UK or the US.

"We believe local presence is the competitive edge and we are looking at the UK opportunities, and have just hired our first US employee, in Manhattan," said Horn.

Slí Siar is run by co-founder Nicole Bernard, formerly head of Iona's China operation. She is a one-time Kodak executive with 11 years experience in China and has long experience of establishing start-ups in China.

"We founded a lifestyle consultancy and added other types of consultancy into the model. Our aim is to provide for high net-worth individuals looking for ideas about quality of life in an Irish way. Travel, personal assets or business investment focused on Ireland for high net-worth Chinese individuals," she said.

China is a buzz word in the boardrooms of many Irish companies, who increasingly feel the need to have a China strategy, which opens up a lot of opportunities for Slí Siar.

"A lot of SMEs see China as important for their future but don't know how to get started. They lack the time or they lack the capital - we can help them bring this business to China. We're more hands-on than advisory and we offer all levels of operational detail to take the pain out of doing business in China," said Bernard.

On the Chinese side, the company organises trips for high net-worth Chinese to Ireland and while they are there, they golf, visit stud farms, learn a bit about antique collecting and visit castles - the last group had dinner with Desmond Guinness.

In both Ireland and China, access is a key variable, be it to the lord of the manor or a government official.

"Things can happen very quickly here. The Chinese like to build a personal relationship before they commit. Once they have that, it's a very easy place to do business. With Iona we have a good relationship network here."

Slí Siar (www.slisiar.com) has teamed up with Adams and Butler (www.irishluxury.com) and is also hoping to look at the yachting side of things - China will take part in the Americas Cup in 2007 for the first time, which provides an enormous networking opportunity, while a production company with an Irish partner will also film the event.

"It's early days, we're off and we're running, the challenge is balancing the pipeline, generating new projects to keep the pipeline full. There is a lot of work needed to promote Ireland in China. As Irish we think we're very successful and sometimes we don't think we need to explain ourselves," said Horn.

The aim is to reach out to the Chinese business community through trade magazines and the business press and promote big Irish brand names like CRH, Kerry Foods and Ryanair and the strength of sectors like technology, pharmaceuticals and agribusiness, which are areas the Chinese would like to exploit as they try to move away from the heavy industrial model.

"Irish literature and music is well known, but the business brand is not well known. It is picking up slowly. Direct contact is very important and that requires momentum and persistence. You can't just walk away - the key is to follow through," said Horn.