Meet ‘iron lady’ Dong Mingzhu, the Chinese businesswoman behind Gree Electric
Author of the biography Regretless Pursuit, Gree Electric’s ‘air con queen’ Dong Mingzhu got rich off China’s home appliances boom – and is known for a fierce streak and a cool business head
Gree Electric is the world’s largest manufacturer of residential air conditioners. It’s only fitting that its chairwoman is known for having a cool head for business.
Known for hubristic sound bites like “I never admit mistakes and I am always correct”, it is no surprise that Dong Mingzhu has something of a reputation as an “iron lady”. That steeliness has made her the fourth most powerful woman in the Asia-Pacific region, as named by Fortune magazine in 2015.
Dong first joined Gree as a saleswoman in 1990 after becoming a widow with a son to look after. She had left her three-year-old in the care of his grandmother and quit her administrative job at a government chemistry laboratory in Nanjing to seek greener pastures in the south of China.
I believe companies cannot grow without fighting
The gamble paid off as the now-65-year-old quickly proved her worth and rose up the ranks to eventually head the company, as chairwoman.
Despite being given the poorer Anhui region as her starting point, she turned the revenue from the territory into almost a tenth of the company’s total revenue in a mere 18 months. Her talent and hard work saw her promoted to sales director by 1994.
One of the biggest wins was reversing the control that sales agents had over suppliers by not supplying them on the standard deferred payment terms. “Want goods? Money comes first,” she said. Her playing hardball worked. There was not a cent in the company’s accounts receivable by 1997.
Known for her fierce work ethic, Dong is said to have not taken a day off since joining the company. In fact, she once sent her then 12-year-old son to the airport on his own by bus because she was busy at work.
She has guided Gree well to stay on top of the market as the middle class booms in China. Air conditioning was still a relatively rare luxury in the 90s. But now, the International Energy Agency estimates there are more air conditioners in China than any other country in the world – and Gree’s products make up a significant portion of it.
In 2018, Gree’s residential air conditioner sales remained the largest in China for a 24th consecutive year, while sales for central air conditioners were the largest for the seventh year running.
At the Boao Forum for Asia in March 2019, Dong revealed that the operating revenue of Gree had reached 200 billion yuan (US$28.7 billion) last year. That is almost double its 2015 numbers.