Li & Fung - History

History

The company was co-founded in 1906 by Fung Pak-liu (d. 1943), a school teacher using capital saved from his job teaching English, and partner Li To-ming, local merchant who's family owned a porcelain shop. Li eventually sold his share in 1946 and would remain in the hands of the Li family.

Based in Guangzhou (Canton), it was then an export trading operation, dealing in porcelain, fireworks, jade handicrafts and silk, mainly to the United States.

In 1937 the firm incorporated in Hong Kong by Fung's son Fung Hon-chu to take advantage of the British colony's oceangoing ships. After World War II, China closed for international business and the company refocused as an exporter of Hong Kong manufactured goods. It was now led by Fung Hon-chu, son of the founder and father of the present controlling brothers, William and Victor. Li & Fung became a big exporter of garments, toys, wigs and plastic flowers.

William and Victor Fung were educated in the US and followed business careers there, before returning to join the family business in the early 1970s, as Li & Fung's broker role was being squeezed by both manufacturers and importers. They remade the company to provide value-added services in manufacturing, sourcing throughout Asia, including going back into re-emergent China.

Later, sources from countries closer to target markets were sought out: Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, for the US; Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia for Europe.

Li & Fung Ltd. went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1992. Then the firm nearly tripled its size with the HK$475 million acquisition of Inchcape Buying Services (formerly known as Dodwell & Co.) in 1995. It was part of Inchcape plc, a British trading company with a network of offices in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The acquisition of Inchcape Buying Services, with its European customer base and sourcing points across the Indian subcontinent, balanced Li & Fung's American customer base and East Asian sourcing network..