Jimmy Lai - Transition To Publishing

Transition To Publishing

Lai has been an unrelenting advocate of democracy and high-profile critic of the People's Republic of China government. Moved by the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Lai distributed Giordano T-shirts with portraits of student leaders and began publishing Next Magazine, which combined tabloid sensationalism with hard-hitting political and business reporting. Despite Hong Kong's crowded and highly competitive market for publications, the magazine found almost instant success. He went on to found other magazines, including Sudden Weekly(忽然一週), Eat & Travel Weekly(飲食男女), Trading Express/Auto Express (交易通/搵車快線) and the youth-oriented Easy Finder (壹本便利).

In 1995, as the Hong Kong handover approached, Lai founded Apple Daily, a newspaper start-up that he was forced to finance with $100 million of his own money due to investor fear of association with a prominent critic of the Beijing government. With a circulation rising quickly to 400,000 copies by 1997, the newspaper had the territory's second largest circulation, despite fierce competition against 60 other newspapers.

Sudden Weekly and Next Magazine rank first and second in circulation for Hong Kong’s magazine market while Apple Daily is the No. 2 newspaper in Hong Kong.

Lai encourages a company culture of transparency and creativity without hierarchy. Employees are encouraged to tackle challenges through trial and error while assuming responsibility for their actions and sharing in profits from successful ventures.

In a 1994 newspaper column, he told Premier of the PRC Li Peng to "drop dead," and called the Communist Party of China, "a monopoly that charges a premium for lousy service". As a result, most of his publications remain banned in mainland China. China's government retaliated against Lai by starting a shut-down of Giordano shops, prompting him to sell out of the company he founded in order to save it.

Ahead of the record-breaking pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong of July 2003 that brought half a million people onto the streets, the cover of Next Magazine featured a photo-montage of the territory's embattled chief executive, Tung Chee-Hwa taking a pie in the face. The magazine urged readers to take to the streets while Apple Daily distributed stickers calling for Tung to resign.

In addition to promoting democracy, Lai's publication often ruffle feathers of fellow Hong Kong tycoons by exposing their personal foibles and relations with local government. Lai has frequently faced hostility from the many Beijing-backed tycoons, including attempts to force supplier boycotts of his companies and a lengthy battle to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that he sidestepped through a backdoor listing. Lai managed to list the company in 1999 by acquiring Paramount Publishing Group in October of that year.

Neither Bank of China nor any state-owned enterprise from mainland places ads in Next Media publications, while major Hong Kong property developers and a range of other top-line companies advertise only in competing publications. The offices of his publications have been vandalised and his house was firebombed in 1993. It was at this time he converted to the Catholic faith, which has a long history in China.

Lai pioneered a reader-centric philosophy with paparazzi journalism in Hong Kong based on publications such as USA Today and The Sun. His best-selling Next Magazine and Apple Daily newspaper, feature a mix of racy tabloid material and news items oriented to the mass market with plenty of colour and graphics that attracts a wide range of readers, some of whom are also critics of Lai and his ideology.