Ambassador of Design
Nancy Weinstein enjoys watching the faces, the expressions, of the Chinese walking through the three-bedroom condominium model she recently decorated in Shanghai.
“Most of them have never been in something this luxurious before,” Weinstein said, referring to the American traditional interiors she filled with Queen Anne-style furniture and English country prints.
Now the Long Beach interior designer and businesswoman hopes they will want something similar in their own homes, for, as American Consul General Robert Griffith put it during the ribbon-cutting ceremony in September, Weinstein is on the verge of becoming the Martha Stewart of China.
“I haven’t seen any other people like her,” said Shanjun Xiong, chief executive of Sunrise Net, an El Segundo-based export company that helped furnish the model condo. “Nancy is dedicated to introducing the American living style and interior design to China. In that sense, she is the pioneer.”
Weinstein, who took her first trip to China in 1994, recently finished taping the initial installments of “Nancy Designs,” a weekly half-hour show for the Shanghai Educational Television channel. Even though the show won’t debut until January, the largest TV station in this industrial center of 13 million people now wants her to do a similar series. And, in partnership with two Chinese real-estate development companies, Weinstein plans to open Nancy Designs stores in Shanghai and Beijing by March so viewers can buy the American furnishings they have seen.
She also continues to take on commercial projects, such as a Turkish hotel she is completing, and handle sales, marketing, product development and design for some U.S. furniture manufacturers making their first forays into China.
Weinstein, who said she works “18 hours a day, seven days a week,” makes at least five business trips a year to Shanghai and Beijing, where she typically stays two to three weeks. “Even five years ago, you would never see a total American house in China,” she said. But “the Chinese have a real desire to be part of our American dream and our American lifestyle. They think of us having luxurious things and they want that.”
In a nation of 1.2 billion people, China’s consumer market still is relatively small, and the days of long lines and ration coupons still a sharp memory. But with the country’s pending entry into the World Trade Organization, the world’s largest and most influential trade group, the roughly $90 billion in trade now done annually between the U.S. and China is expected to increase exponentially.
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Weinstein traveled to China in 1994 because California had gone into a recessionary tailspin, taking with it much of the high-end residential business she had developed since entering the field in 1972. She had been hearing Asia described as the hot spot for business opportunities and wanted to see for herself. So the Kentucky native, who had been widowed, flew to Hong Kong and Beijing with her daughter, Jennifer, then 16.
“Everywhere you looked there were offices, hotels and apartment buildings being built,” she recalled. “It was like, ‘Wow! All these projects need furniture and all these projects need a designer.’ I just decided then that there were such tremendous opportunities in China.”
But meeting the people in charge was difficult, she said, “especially when you don’t know anyone. So what I did was I just checked into the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong for 10 days and opened the phone book and started calling local designers. I said, ‘I’m a designer from California and I’ve brought along some catalogs of companies I buy from. Would you be interested in taking a look at American products?’ ” They were.
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Since then, she has made more than 30 business trips to China and started the Beijing chapter of the International Furnishings and Design Assn., the same trade group that recently had her moderate a panel on “Keys to Doing Business With the Pacific Rim.”
Weinstein says the primary key is personal relationships--and acquiring them takes time. “Without the contacts, trust and connections, it really doesn’t matter how good your product is or what you have or the price,” she said.
Weinstein, who does not speak Chinese, uses translators to get around the language barrier. And she says she hasn’t had problems with what many might assume is another barrier: China’s traditional, male-dominated society. “I’d say it’s been really easy and very pleasant,” she said. “Do I dare say this? There are no male chauvinists; there’s no good old boys club. I understand 10 years ago this would be a different story, but Chinese men very much respect American women doing business.”
Weinstein also has the respect of her design peers.
“I think she’s quite remarkable,” said Judy Rigby, an Atlanta-based interior designer who was co-chairwoman of the design association symposium where Weinstein spoke.
“She went over there well before some of these manufacturers even went over there to pursue what kind of design work might be available in that market,” Rigby said. “Certainly from a design perspective, she truly pioneered the market over there. And it took a lot. Here’s a woman, No. 1, with no [command of the] language, and she has been able to create a wonderful, loyal niche in the Chinese market--no small feat.”
Single-family homes are a rarity in China’s large cities, so Weinstein’s work has focused on the “thousands and thousands” of condominiums and rental apartments. She has designed interiors for a dozen models in Shanghai and Beijing, and, just like in Southern California, she said, “the pastime on weekends is to drive around and look at models.”
The 10,000 units in the Shanghai condo project that features Weinstein’s model design sell for about $50,000 each, and, to encourage such purchases, the Chinese government is providing 30-year home loans with small down payments. But “when you buy any kind of place there--whether it’s $50,000 or $200,000--it’s just an empty shell,” Weinstein said. “It’s just cement floors and cement walls; it’s not even drywall. So you have to put in kitchen cabinets, toilets, sinks. They spend another $15,000 to $20,000 to get the inside done.”
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Typical Chinese interiors feature locally made furniture that “all looks the same: plain, straight design with a honey-color finish,” Weinstein said. “Their places are just dark, gloomy and gray. That’s what I find exciting as a designer, to bring so much color into their lives with fabrics, pictures and accessories. They’ve just never seen anything like this.”
The bright, cheerful colors she selected for the Shanghai model’s interior--mauve, greens and yellows--went over big.
“They were new colors for them,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein hopes that same kind of excitement and interest in all things Western will translate into lots of viewers for “Nancy Designs.” (Her voice will be dubbed into Chinese.)
She plans to shoot “Nancy Designs” on various U.S. locations, such as Colonial Williamsburg, where she’ll explain America’s colonial history and how the Virginia settlement inspired the Lane Co. of Altavista, Va., to create its Williamsburg furniture and furnishings collection. “I can even go to Napa Valley and talk about our California wines,” she said.
Weinstein has an initial 52-week commitment from the educational channel, and, in her role as producer, is continuing to line up American and Chinese sponsors for the series. “I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have a television show that people could turn on and learn how to decorate their home,” as well as “the design aspects of fine living and lifestyle,” she said.
“I feel really honored that they’ve asked me to do it,” she said. “It means a lot to me too because I’ve seen how [China] is growing. So it’s fun to be part of that and to know you can still be a pioneer in today’s world, in the year 2000.”
Dennis McLellan can be reached by e-mail at dennis.mclellan@latimes.com.
