Bright lights, big city, small businesses, happy owners

Compared with Ke, the transition for Chen Yanping seems more challenging.

After managing her own company in the IT industry for 10 years, she created a design brand called "Pusu", referring to plain unpolished jade, with her partner Chen Yanfei, who was art director for Elle Decoration and has been studying the furniture of the Song (960-1279), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties for more than 10 years.

"Western style furniture and dcor has dominated the Chinese market for years, ever since we adopted the modern concept of interior dcor. But more people are interested in the traditional Chinese style nowadays," Chen Yanping said.

In their shop, located on tranquil Changshu road, in the heart of Shanghai, they display how they work the ancient elements of China's traditional furniture into modern living. All of the furniture pieces are put together with Chinese traditional mortise and tenon joints, rather than nails. The original color and texture of the wood is kept. Painting and glues are avoided.

Pusu's shop has become a club for lovers of traditional Chinese culture. As well as selling furniture they also hold lectures and salon talks, which Chen called "a pivotal measure to nurture the market".

In less than one year after they opened the shop, Pusu has already started making a profit. They opened a new department called Space Design, which is attracting more and more business including residential space, business space, entertaining and resort space design.

"I believe the right direction is more important than anything," said Zhou Xinhua, co-founder of a website called China 30s, which aims to gather people born around 1980 who are now struggling to support their own families as well as their parents.

"Many of us want to open our own shops based on our own ideas," Zhou said. But the precondition is that you must have a clear and specific market niche, possess a unique resource in this field and can financially support yourself, she said.

"In the last four years, most of what I did looks like wasting time. But you never know which of it may work. It seems I have rich resources now, but you won't believe how much effort I put into it and how many times I failed," said Xue Shuai, chief executive officer of renwutaowang.com, who set up a transaction platform for household services this year.

xieyu@chinadaily.com.cn