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Where is China headed and how to make money by getting there first? If you were to ask professional China investors, almost without exception you’ll be offered an identical vision of the China of 2020 and beyond:Â retired Chinese in their tens of millions living in assisted-living housing spending their days on their smartphones buying clothes, playing games and booking European vacations.
It follows, the pros will tell you, that the best places to put your money today are with Chinese companies building retirement and assisted living housing, mobile apps and online shopping websites. Indeed, these are the sectors getting by far the most attention and seeing the most substantial flows of new investment capital these days.
I happen to think the “smart money” is wrong and here’s why. First, in my experience across 30 years of business life, whenever you get so much agreement about where the future is headed and where money should be staked, the predictions usually prove wrong and the money usually lost.
In this case, the basic analysis is fine. Yes, China is getting older and yes it needs more places to house and care for the elderly. And, yes, Chinese will buy more stuff online since prices are often much lower than in shops. But, only a fraction of the projects now receiving funding will be successes.
The assisted living, online shopping and mobile services businesses already seem over-invested. And yet the money keeps pouring in. It reminds me very much of the last “can’t miss” investment idea in China: group shopping. Two years ago, PE and VC firms poured billions into at least a dozen different group shopping sites in China Most, if not all of that, will be lost.
There are formidable hurdles in the way of all three of the currently-favored business models. For assisted living and retirement housing, it’s not clear Chinese retirees in significant numbers will want to move into these kinds of places, even if their kids are paying. Nor is it clear how these projects will make equity investors money, since Chinese banks remain loathe to lend money to any kind of real estate project.
Online shopping? Great business, but all the companies getting investment have to compete with a few powerhouses with huge market shares. The list includes Alibaba’s Taobao business, Yihaodian (part-owned by Wal-Mart), Amazon China, 360buy.com. I see little reason to believe these newer PE-backed entrants will make any serious dent against these competitors.
As for mobile services, yes Chinese have all switched en masse to smartphones. And, yes, they use the mobiles to do lots of stuff online, including shopping, chat, games. Problem is, in the overwhelming number of cases, Chinese don’t pay for any of it. In my view, they never will. Any investment predicated on the theory that eventually Chinese will start paying fees to mobile service-providers is usually based on not much more than a hope and a prayer. Nothing solid.
So, where else to put money now to be best-positioned for the China of 2020? I can think of two places. One is organic foods and the other is health supplements and what are called “functional foods” in the US.
As of now, both are tiny industries in China, a fraction of their size in the US and Europe. My guess is that the market in China will eventually dwarf those two other places. I’ve read about a few PE investments in these industries. But, in general, the so-called “smart money” has stayed out.
So, why do I think organic, “functional foods” and supplements will become huge businesses in China? In general, the same forces will prevail in China that have propelled the growth of these industries in the US and Europe: a wealthier population, more interested in their health, more distrustful of traditional commercially-prepared foods, and also more interested to improve their health, fitness and life expectancy by exercising, eating well (including vitamins and supplements) while keeping away from doctors.
In China, this distrust of commercial foods and commitment to a more healthful lifestyle, though still in a comparatively early stage, is already strong, deep and widespread. So is the lack of trust in the quality of medical care received from doctors.
As anyone who lives in China can attest, there are very good reasons for all of this. Food scandals are common. There seems to be a lot of unhealthy and unhygienic food circulating. Doctors don’t enjoy a very high standing any longer. They are often seen as fee-grubbing predators, ever willing to make phony diagnoses as a way to put more money in their pockets from their share of fees paid for tests, medicines, surgery, hospital care.
In short, the conditions couldn’t be riper for the development of organic foods, and health supplements of all kinds. Chinese traditional medicine shares quite a few principles in common with the OTC health supplements sold in the US. Chinese, in a way Westerners generally do not, have always accepted that Western pharmaceuticals should often be taken as a last resort. They worry greatly about side effects. If there’s a more “holistic” way to treat a condition, Chinese will often prefer it.
China, as of today, has no vitamin and supplement shops like GNC in the US, nor do mainstream pharmacies give such products any shelf space. When you can find them, vitamins are sold at very high prices in China, usually at least double the US level. There are no good domestic brands, no winning products or packaging formulated specifically for Chinese consumers.
One data point: it’s more and more widely known in China that fish oil is beneficial for digestion and circulation. And yet, it’s hard to find the product anywhere in China. When you do, it is usually stuff imported from the US, in old-looking packaging, with English-language labels, and prices three to four times higher than in America.
Whether the world has enough cod livers to meet future Chinese demand for fish oil is another story. But, I’m confident the China market should eventually rival the US’s in size.
As for organic and healthy foods, China has lots of conventional supermarkets. But, so far no one has tried to follow the path blazed by Whole Foods Market in the US. Nor are there large, established organic food brands like Organic Valley, Applegate.
It will all happen. When, and which investors will make the big money is hard to say. Even now, the demand for genuine organic fruits, vegetables and dairy outstrips the available supply. There’s yet no real standard in China for what can be called organic, and so Chinese consumers often view products labeled that way with suspicion. That too represents a business opportunity in China — providing standards and credentials for the organic farming industry.
The lesson here: in China, the best business opportunities are often hiding in plain sight, often unseen by professional investors. Nowhere is contrarian investing more warranted and more potentially profitable.
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