Four years ago, Canadian entrepreneur Gervais Lavoie watched in horror as his once-profitable Chinese joint venture was folded by Canadian owners who had lost faith in the China market.
Mr. Lavoie, a former Maoist ethnologist from Montreal who has devoted most of his life to China, took a sabbatical from business and went camping in Tibet for four months of soul-searching to ponder his life. Then he returned to Beijing, determined to prove that his Canadian partners had been wrong about China.
Today, he has gotten his revenge. His latest venture, the China franchise of the Canadian body care company Fruits & Passion Boutiques Inc., is racking up profit much faster than anyone expected. With eight boutiques and 80 employees in China, and with four more boutiques opening by December, his new business is growing at an extraordinary pace.
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