試水緬甸的香港家族企業 From Hong Kong to Myanmar
Before his death in 1996, the Hong Kong textile tycoon Law Ting-pong handwrote a letter of wishes in which he expressed the hope that “those who are careful at the beginning would also be careful to the end”.
在1996年去世之前，香港紡織業大亨羅定邦(Law Ting-pong)手寫了一封意願書，他在裏面表達了一種願望：“慎始者必慎於終”。
Unfortunately, the lack of careful wording in the informal will sparked a court battle between his six children over his HK$1bn estate that dragged on until 2011.
不幸的是，由於這份非正式遺囑的措辭不嚴謹，他的6位子女圍繞他留下的10億港元財產打起了官司，一直折騰到2011年。
Now, with the row settled, his 37-year-old grandson Bosco Law is trying to live out the exhortation to cautious living in his role as chief executive of Lawsgroup, the family’s mini-conglomerate, which spans clothes manufacturing, retail and property.
如今，官司已了結，他的37歲孫子羅正傑(Bosco Law,上圖)作爲家族所有的小型企業集團、業務涵蓋服裝製造、零售和房地產的羅氏集團(Lawsgroup)的行政總裁，正試圖踐行上述關於謹慎爲人處世的箴言。
“My grandfather had a saying that we should be very conservative but also aggressive,” says Mr Law, speaking at the company’s headquarters in a busy commercial area of the Kowloon district in Hong Kong.
羅正傑在羅氏集團位於香港繁忙的商業區九龍的總部表示：“我的祖父曾說過，我們應該既保守又大膽。”
He explains the apparent conflict: the phrase means eschewing complicated financial products such as currency derivatives but taking an adventurous approach to expanding the core business of sewing T-shirts and knitting sweatshirts for retail customers including Gap, JC Penney and Uniqlo. “The manufacturing environment is ever changing so you always have to have a changing mindset to survive,” he says.
他解釋這種明顯的矛盾說：這句話的意思是迴避匯率衍生品等複雜的金融產品，但大膽開拓核心業務：爲Gap、JC Penney和優衣庫(Uniqlo)等零售客戶生產T恤和針織運動衫。他表示：“製造業環境不斷變化，你必須擁有一種隨時應變的心態才能存活。”
He declines to release any figures indicating the size of the company but as evidence of its ambitions, cites its recent expansion into Myanmar, which has attracted much attention but where few investors are willing to take the plunge.
他拒絕公佈任何表明該公司規模的數據，但作爲該公司雄心的證據，他談到了最近羅氏集團向緬甸擴張；緬甸吸引了大量關注，但幾乎沒有投資者願意冒險。
Always searching for cheaper labour, Lawsgroup opened its first factory there last year and employs more than 2,000 people making T-shirts two hours’ drive north of Yangon, the commercial capital. “Opening a new factory is always tough,” says Mr Law. “Everything is new in Myanmar. Even if you talk to the [government’s] commerce department, they don’t really know the policy.. is a guess, everything is grey.”
始終在尋找更廉價勞動力的羅氏集團，去年在緬甸商業之都仰光以北兩小時車程外的地方開設了第一家緬甸工廠，僱用了2000多人生產T恤。“開辦新廠總是很難的，”羅正傑表示，“在緬甸，一切都是新的。即便你與（緬甸政府）商務部洽談，他們也並不真正瞭解政策……一切都靠猜測，一切都是灰色的。”
Politics is a further uncertainty, with talks about forming a new government taking place between opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling military after her party won November’s election. “Who knows what will happen? But still, if we have a 70 per cent chance [of success] we will go for it.”
政治加劇了不確定性，在反對黨領導人昂山素季(Aung San Suu Kyi)領導的政黨贏得11月選舉後，昂山素季正與執政的軍政府商談成立一個新政府。“誰知道會發生什麼呢？但如果我們有70%的（成功）機率，我們就會全力以赴。”
While the business is much smaller than the conglomerates built by Hong Kong tycoons such as Li Ka-shing and Lee Shau-kee, Lawsgroup’s combination of entrepreneurial endeavour and conservatism is typical of the approach that built the city’s dominant family businesses. Many started with humdrum businesses such as small-scale factories or retail stores before parlaying profits and connections into diversified business empires.
儘管羅氏集團的規模遠遠不及李嘉誠(Li Ka-shing)和李兆基(Lee Shau-kee)等香港大亨創建的綜合企業，但該集團結合了企業家精神和保守主義，這是打造香港占主導地位的家族企業的典型方式。很多家族企業從沉悶單調的業務起步，例如小工廠和零售店，然後藉助利潤和人脈，打造起多元化業務的商業帝國。
Lawsgroup, which employs about 20,000 people in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Myanmar and Vietnam, was founded as a textile manufacturer by Law Ting-pong in 1975 in the heyday of the “made in Hong Kong” boom. Like other Hong Kong clothes makers, it soon moved into the mainland to take advantage of low wages, a huge workforce and the opening-up of China from the late 1970s.
1975年，在“香港製造”熱潮的最鼎盛時期，羅定邦創建了一家紡織工廠。如今，羅氏集團在孟加拉國、中國內地、香港、緬甸和越南僱用逾2萬名員工。與其他香港服裝生產商一樣，當年該集團在成立後不久進軍中國內地，以利用內地的各種優勢：薪資低廉、勞動力衆多、中國從上世紀70年代末開始實行改革開放。
Its expansion there took off only after 2005, when quotas on imported textiles in Canada, the EU and the US finally ended. That year, Mr Law joined the family business after studying architecture in Toronto and working for an architects’ firm and a bank.
羅氏集團的真正擴張是在2005年之後纔開始的，當時加拿大、歐盟(EU)和美國的紡織品進口額度最終取消。也正是在那一年，羅正傑加盟家族企業，此前他曾在多倫多學習建築，並曾供職於一家建築師事務所和一家銀行。
Lawsgroup was listed in Hong Kong in 1987 and a separate property and retail arm spun off into their own listings before the main holding group was taken private in 1998.
羅氏集團曾於1987年在香港上市，後來旗下房地產和零售部門分拆上市，成爲一個獨立實體，而主要控股集團在1998年被收歸私有。
Mr Law, who describes his management style as “firefighting” when necessary, rather than micromanaging, says his main interest is fashion. That much is clear from his quirky outfit of flowery sneakers, grey trousers and a green blazer with a robot-shaped brooch.
羅正傑形容自己的管理風格是在必要時“救火”，而不是事事都要過問的微觀管理。他表示，他的主要興趣是時裝。這從他標新立異的裝束上就能明顯看出：花帆布鞋、灰色褲子、一件綠色西裝，上面彆着一枚機器人形狀的胸針。
A laid-back figure who rarely gives interviews, Mr Law insists he was not parachuted into his job by dint of some family succession plan but he notes that running a family-owned company has advantages.
神色悠閒的他很少接受採訪，他堅稱，他不是憑藉某個家族接班計劃“空降”到這個職位的，但他指出，打理一家家族企業具備幾個優勢。
“You can make your decisions faster and you can follow your will and passion, but you have to take full responsibility because it’s also your money.” Yet, pushed on whether he feels pressure to maintain and enhance a rich legacy, as in many Chinese family-owned companies, he brushes off the question. “I run the business just like a hobby,” he says. “I’m pushing my vision and I like doing branding and marketing.”
“你可以更快做出決定，你可以追隨自己的意願和激情，但你必須承擔全責，因爲這也是你的錢。”然而，在被問到在保持和增強豐富精神遺產（就像很多中國家族企業那樣）方面是否感受到壓力時，他沒有理會這個問題。“我經營這家企業就像是一份自己的愛好，”他表示，“我在推動我的願景，我喜歡做品牌推廣和營銷。”
Perhaps he does not feel the weight of family expectations so heavily because his father’s siblings run their own businesses, from Crystal Group, a leading clothing manufacturer, to the Park Hotel group and Bossini, the low-cost clothing retailer that made his grandfather famous in Hong Kong.
或許他不覺得家族期望的負擔很重，因爲他父親的兄弟姐妹們在經營着自己的企業，從領先服裝製造商晶苑集團(Crystal Group)到百樂酒店(Park Hotel)以及當年讓他的祖父在香港聲名鵲起的低成本服裝零售商堡獅龍(Bossini)。
Mr Law’s focus is on managing Laws-group’s moves into new markets. With factory workers in the manufacturing heartland of Guangdong taking home more than $500 a month, Lawsgroup is expanding in countries where wages are less than half the cost, such as Myanmar, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
羅正傑的焦點是管理羅氏集團進軍新市場的項目。鑑於製造業腹地廣東的工廠員工現在每月收入超過500美元，羅氏集團正在擴張進入薪資水平不到中國一半的國家，如緬甸、越南和孟加拉國。
The death of basic manufacturing in China has long been prophesied, but Mr Law believes big producers will keep a presence there because of the scale and infrastructure advantages, as well as technical expertise.
多年來一直有人預測中國內地基礎製造業的末日將要來臨，但羅正傑認爲，大型廠商將繼續在那裏保留一部分業務，原因在於規模效益、基礎設施優勢和技術專長。
“Most of our research and development is in China, where we do our industrial engineering and have developed our own IT system for quality control,” he says. “We do our factory line planning and training videos in China and then have the whole package sent overseas for them to follow.”
“我們的大部分研發位於中國內地，我們在那裏開展工業工程並開發我們自己的質量控制IT系統，”他表示，“我們在內地製作生產線計劃和培訓視頻，然後把整套體系搬到海外讓它們效仿。”
Mr Law’s responses are sometimes so relaxed it is hard to tell if he is blasé, unflappable or evasive.
羅正傑的回答有時如此放鬆，以至於很難辨別他是不感興趣、冷靜還是在迴避問題。
Asked if he worries about his safety after his cousin Queenie Law was kidnapped for ransom last year, he says “it’s just a single case”. Is he concerned about the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers whose store sold works critical of China’s top leaders? “It’s just a single case”.
在被問及在他的胞妹羅君兒(Queenie Law)去年被綁架後，他是否擔心自己的安全時，他表示：“那只是個案”。他是否擔心5名香港書商消失事件？（這些書商所在的書店銷售批評中國高層領導人的圖書。）他的回答是“那只是個案”。
Like most Hong Kong businessmen with interests in mainland China, he is reluctant to be drawn into discussions about politics but his attitude might also point to a deeper self-confidence. Free from the vicissitudes and pressures of equity markets, conservative family companies such as his find it easier to endure difficult times.
與多數在中國內地有生意的香港商人一樣，他不願捲入有關政治的討論，但他的態度可能還表明他有着更深層次的自信。羅氏集團這樣的保守型家族企業不受時代變遷和股市壓力影響，往往更容易挺過艱難時期。
On the day of the interview, Chinese stock and currency markets were again ridden with turbulence, and global investors were jittery about the prospects for the world’s second-biggest economy. Unlike some other manufacturers, Lawsgroup has not taken out hedges against renminbi volatility but Mr Law prefers to concentrate on the fundamental business.
在採訪當天，中國內地股市和匯市再次陷入動盪，全球投資者對世界第二大經濟體的前景感到緊張。與其他一些製造商不同，羅氏集團沒有針對人民幣匯率波動進行對衝操作，羅正傑更喜歡關注基礎業務。
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years. It’s a downtrend right now so we have to buckle up. I’m still confident about Hong Kong and China in the long term.”
“我們已經做了40年。現在處於下行趨勢，因此我們必須繫好安全帶。長期而言，我仍對香港和中國內地有信心。”
