Chief Executive Officer / China
The decisions behind the finished work
- Company revenue
- RMB168m
- 2025; corporate production and localisation services
- Colleagues
- 380
- Company workforce at June 2026
- Enterprise clients
- 58
- Distinct clients served during 2025
Decisions & consequences
01Keeping a commercial boundary with our largest client
In 2022 our largest client accounted for RMB33.6 million of Shenruvian’s RMB120 million revenue. The relationship provided a substantial stream of corporate film and localisation work, and several teams knew the client well. During a discussion about future commissions, the proposed terms extended reuse of material beyond the scope on which we had previously priced and arranged production. The account team wanted to preserve the volume. Production and legal colleagues needed a clearer account of what the wider promise would involve.
I treated this as a company decision rather than leaving the account producer to negotiate around it. We explored a narrower scope and a separately priced arrangement for additional uses, with the relevant specialists reviewing the permissions. We could not agree the full proposal. We retained an agreed portion of the relationship and accepted that some work would move elsewhere. The choice reduced an immediate commercial dependency only by creating another challenge: colleagues had to develop business with other customers, without assuming that new commissions would arrive on the same schedule.
By 2025 the client contributed RMB28.56 million within total company revenue of RMB168 million. Its share was therefore 17%, compared with 28% in 2022, but the absolute reduction of RMB5.04 million was equally relevant. I kept both figures in the board account. Describing only the percentage would have made a commercially costly boundary look like a simple diversification achievement.
The decision did not end the relationship or prove that every wider-use proposal is unattractive. It established that the company would examine the scope, contributor arrangements and economics before accepting such a promise. My responsibility was to make that boundary credible, including when it affected a valuable customer. The account and production teams then needed support to deliver the work we had retained and to pursue other relationships on terms they could explain.
Paying for a correction that erased the project margin
A 2023 enterprise commission comprised ninety-six films with captions. After delivery, the client identified mistakes in names and specialist terminology. A review found that twenty-four films required correction. The material had passed our own acceptance process, so the problem was not simply that a customer had changed its preference after approval. We had failed to deliver part of the meaning accurately.
I asked the team to establish the full extent of the correction before promising another date. We agreed a remediation plan with the customer and funded the work ourselves. Account and production leaders stayed responsible for delivery, while I reviewed the commercial consequence and the changes to the acceptance process. The corrected set arrived forty-five days after the original delivery. That delay remained in our account of the outcome; the fact that the files were eventually corrected did not restore the customer’s original schedule.
The project fee was RMB1.6 million and original direct cost was RMB1.38 million. Remediation added RMB480,000, bringing total direct cost to RMB1.86 million and producing a RMB260,000 loss before central overhead. I did not spread that cost across unrelated work to preserve the appearance of a successful commission. Finance and the account team needed the same view of what had happened.
Our subsequent review separated checking that captions existed from checking that they conveyed the right meaning. We brought client terminology and named reviewers into the production discussion earlier, while retaining our responsibility for the delivered work. We did not claim an immediate error-rate improvement from that procedural change: the evidence in this case is the corrected set, the delay, the remediation spend and the project result. I want colleagues to know that acknowledging a failure can lead to a better decision without removing the need to examine how it occurred. The CEO’s role was to fund the response and maintain that distinction, rather than assign the entire failure to the editor nearest to the final file.
Keeping the original studio assumptions beside the actual result
We approved RMB9.2 million for a recording facility that opened in June 2024. The investment promised more reliable access to rooms and equipment for commissioned work, with less dependence on outside booking availability. It also carried a commercial assumption: paid utilisation of 84% of available studio time in its first full operating year. I supported the proposal because the production argument and the expected use appeared to fit the company’s direction.
During 2025 the facility was often active, but paid utilisation was only 54%. Internal preparation, practice and provisional bookings made the calendar look fuller than the revenue-generating work justified. The operating result for the year was a RMB1.1 million loss including depreciation. Those figures did not establish that the facility had no value, but they did contradict a central assumption behind the investment.
I asked the board review to show the original proposal alongside the actual result, using the same definition of available time. We separated confirmed paid bookings from other activity and examined which customer work could realistically use the facility. I postponed a proposed further expansion and retained the existing studio while account and production leaders tested a more modest operating plan. We did not treat the sunk investment as a reason to spend more, or book an assumed recovery as if it had already occurred.
The decision involved a trade-off. Closing immediately would have removed a capability that several productions used, while continuing required the company to carry a loss and justify the next period of operation. I chose continued operation with a narrower spending commitment and clearer review points. As of June 2026 I would not describe that choice as a completed turnaround. The case illustrates how I want to lead after an investment disappoints: preserve the useful production facts, admit the commercial shortfall and make the next decision on evidence that can be compared with the original promise.