A world away from his home in Utah, 1989 master of accountancy graduate Phillip Hutchings is climbing a ladder to global success and sharing his knowledge with Marriott School students.
While working with his U.S.-based company Fortuna Consulting in China for nearly a decade, Hutchings noticed that even the most high-end companies were still using bamboo ladders. Hutchings called his friend, the CEO of Little Giant Ladder, and suggested the company expand its efforts. After a few flights across the globe, a joint venture was formed between Fortuna Consulting; Wing Enterprises, owners of Little Giant; and a local Chinese company.
Right away, Shanghai Little Giant began seeing enormous success. “We just wanted to get the brand into China,” Hutchings says. “But we began to make inroads into other countries across Asia and the Middle East and are now in more than twenty countries.”
The only problem? Neither Hutchings nor his partner, Reed Flygare, speak a second language. They collaborate with local businesses in each new country and have learned enough Chinese to get by. However, when they realized their local employees were having a hard time closing sales, they knew they needed outside help.
“Being a Marriott School alum, I knew we could reach into BYU and find some great Chinese speakers with solid business backgrounds,” Hutchings says. He also knew that BYU students had the integrity and maturity to handle an internship in mainland China and that many returned missionaries had experiences closing sales. Shanghai Little Giant hired three BYU interns for the 2011 summer.
The results were outstanding. Hutchings soon found that the BYU interns were training local middle management and also gaining valuable international business experience. The program was so successful that Hutchings plans to expand into more countries in upcoming years.
“It was an experiment that worked very well,” he says, adding that he loves sharing the experience of working in China with students.
Hutchings and his wife, Sarah, have four children and live in St. George, Utah, although he spends about a third of his time in China. A hardcore sports fan, Hutchings has been coaching youth sports for more than twenty-five years, including his daughter’s and son’s softball and baseball teams that became some of the best in the region.
