How did Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi succeed?

Lenovo's head office is located in Beijing, the People's Republic of China and carries out production. The main business centers of the other management of the Lenovo brand are; It is located in the USA and Singapore.

When was Lenovo founded?

It was founded in Beijing, China in 1984 by Liu Chuanzi and a team of 11 engineers.

In 2004, it became the market leader in China. By 2005, it bought IBM's computer division for approximately 1.75 billion dollars. In 2009, HP became the world's 4th largest computer manufacturer with a 28.6% market share after Dell and Acer.

Founder's story

The biggest share in Lenovo's becoming one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world, which was founded in 1984 at a time when China was going through very difficult economic times, undoubtedly belongs to the founder of the company, Liu Chuanzhi.

Many of the most well-known Chinese businessmen in China today come from ordinary families. Liu Chuanzhi is a little different. Liu Chunazhi's father has been an active member of the Chinese Communist Party for many years. This may have made it easier for Liu Chuanzhi, but Lenovo's success is all about Liu Chuanzhi's determination and not giving up in the face of difficulties.

Family structure

Liu Chuanzhi was born in 1944 in Zhenjiang city of Jiangsu province in eastern China. At that time, his father was both working at the Bank of China, one of China's largest state banks, and secretly holding various positions in the Chinese Communist Party.

Until 1949, their life continued in this way. After the victory of the Chinese Communist Party and the official establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the family moved to the capital, Beijing.

In Beijing, Liu Chuanzhi's father continued his main job, banking. He officially joined the Chinese Communist Party and started to pursue two separate jobs.

Meeting Computers

Liu Chuanzhi took the exams to become a military pilot after high school in 1962, But he was not accepted to be a pilot. Even his father's position in the party was not enough to change the outcome.

Thereupon, Liu Chuanzhi enrolled in what is now known as Xidian University, where he began studying radars. Liu Chuanzhi was first introduced to computers during this training.

Years of Exile and Last Job of Career

Powered by his father's position in the state, Liu Chuanzhi argued that the cultural revolution in China in 1966 was a bad idea. This idea started Liu Chuanzhi's four-year exile.

Liu was exiled first to a state-owned farm in the Macao Special Administrative Region, and then to Hunan Province to do hard labor.

After exile ended in 1970, Liu Chuanzhi returned to Beijing. Here he started working at a computer institute and developed several computers.

Liu Chuanzhi and his family in the 70s

A few years later, he moved to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, known as CAS for short. He continued to work here until he founded the Legend company, which he founded in 1984, later known as Lenovo.

Lenovo's Early Times

Liu Chuanzhi founded his company Legend in 1984 with a budget of 200,000 yuan. The firm's headquarters was a 17-square-meter office located in Beijing. Several of Liu Chuanzhi's engineer friends were also on the founding team of Legend.

According to Liu Chuanzhi, it was very difficult to start a business as a scientist in China in those years. The Chinese economy was very introverted and its economic policies were very strict.

In an interview years later, Liu Chuanzhi said the following about those times: “We were immersed in a planned and unalterable economic system. The money we invested in this work was not much. But in order to be successful, we had to control our own corporate economy and create our own human resources.”

The very few people who had real knowledge of economics in those years made it very difficult for Liu Chuanzhi. The Chinese government's adoption of an anti-capitalist communist economy also made success almost impossible.

The 80s were not easy in China. In addition to the fact that the country was in a very difficult economic situation, the fact that the majority of the people who invested in the country in those years were low-qualified, dishonest businessmen caused a lack of trust in the private sector.

Legend tried to import televisions in the first years after it was founded. After this first attempt failed, it started providing quality control services to new computer users.

A few years later, IBM developed circuit boards that allowed computers to work with Chinese characters. In 1990, the first computer named Legend brand was built.

Legend tried to appear in the digital watch industry, which was the fashion of the 1990s; but after the disappointment, he withdrew from this sector.

A New Beginning in Hong Kong

Liu Chuanzhi and the 5 employees with him obtained government permission for another company they wanted to establish in Hong Kong, affiliated with the company they founded. This caused Liu to move to Hong Kong in 1988.

This company also faced serious financial difficulties in Hong Kong in the first years. This forced Liu to keep costs to a minimum. Company meetings were held in hotel rooms instead of offices. Even the money spent on public transportation was cut and even taking public transportation was banned for places that could be reached on foot.

Legend's making its name known to the world as Lenovo started as a result of a very good management of several difficult years in Hong Kong. In 1994, Lenovo became a company in Hong Kong with an annual turnover of 30 million dollars. It was offered to the public in Hong Kong the same year.

In 2014, Lenovo acquired IBM's computer hardware businesses and related services for $2.3 billion. This made Liu Chuanzhi go down in history as the first Chinese CEO to buy part of the business of an American company worldwide.

On the other hand, Lenovo bought Motorola's smartphone division a few years ago from Google for $2.9 billion.

Today, Lenovo is one of the world's best-selling computer companies. The annual turnover of the company, which employs more than 50,000 people, is around 50 billion dollars.