How to Get Ahead in China

Shanghai is a long way from Tyrone, Georgia, where Free grew up. Tyrone is 25 miles southwest of Atlanta on I-85, also known in some parts as the Alan Jackson Highway, for the country singer. Though it's now considered part of the Atlanta metro area, Tyrone was a town of 160 when Free was a boy. As a small-town kid, he helped haul trash for his father's construction company. Free's dad took only one three-day vacation a year, usually taking the family to Florida. While growing up, Free never traveled outside those two states.

By the time he was 20, it was looking as if he never would. He dropped out of college after six weeks. The math courses threw too much homework at him too quickly, he says, and he was embarrassed to be taking remedial English. He enrolled at Griffin Technical College to take a one-year machine shop course, and in 1982, he got a job as a machinist. Three months later, just after his 20th birthday, he married his high school girlfriend. (They later divorced.) His initial job was running a stamping machine that pressed out the metal window lining for Ford Aerostar vans. He pressed a button six to 10 times a minute, 360 to 600 times an hour, 10 hours Monday through Friday and eight hours on Saturday. One day, his boss asked who on the floor knew about computer-aided design and manufacturing, otherwise known as CAD/CAM systems. Free's hand shot up. In fact, he didn't know a thing about them, but he did know he was meant for more than life on the plant floor.

After studying some technical manuals, Free, who has a knack for all things mechanical, started working on digitizing his employer's manufacturing systems. In 1988, Northwest Airlines (NYSE:NWA) poached him to work on its CAD/CAM manufacturing projects. He rose to become a fleet manager there, then the director of technical operations. In 1998, he left the airline to start a company that distributes CAD/CAM systems, 3Datum. He soon noticed all his clients were complaining about how difficult it was to find suppliers. That's when he hit on the idea for MFG.com, which he started in 2000, after selling 3Datum for $1.2 million. He bootstrapped the company, pouring all his energy into it. "When you have everything tied up in the business, you focus like a freaking laser," he says. In 2005, when a publicly traded French software company came sniffing, Free agreed to be acquired for about $25 million.

But three weeks before the deal was set to close, Free received a call from Seattle. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, wanted to meet. Bezos had heard about MFG.com from engineers at his rocket start-up, Blue Origin, which used the service to source components. Free flew to Amazon's headquarters, where Bezos argued that if MFG.com was acquired, it would never live up to its potential. Instead, Bezos offered to become an investor himself. Free backed out of his agreement with the French, and Bezos's personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions, bought a minority stake for about $14 million -- which included $2.1 million in cash for Free. In January of this year, MFG.com's prospects got a boost when a pair of Fidelity VC funds kicked in $25 million. Free sold a big chunk of stock with that round, and his stake dropped from 51.2 percent to about 24 percent. About 20 percent of MFG.com's shares have been awarded to employees in the form of stock options.

Free's a rich guy now. He has a condo in Montreal and a house and a condo in Atlanta. He buys bright Nodus shirts from Paris and just shelled out $140,000 for a 2008 Maserati GranTurismo. He also has a latecomer's enthusiasm for travel. Free had never traveled abroad until 1988, when he visited Germany for a Northwest training seminar, and then with embarrassing results: His Georgia accent was so thick that the German instructor didn't know Free was speaking English. "That trip to Germany was shocking, that my English was that poor," he says. "I think people perceived me coming across dumb." He returned home, hired a linguistics coach, and bought audiotapes to help him soften his accent. When Northwest posted him to Montreal, in 1995, he met his second wife, Debbie, and they started to travel together.

Free encourages a similarly cosmopolitan attitude at his company. When he opened the China office, he held seminars in Atlanta, bringing in Emory University professors to talk about international business, currency, religion, and cultural issues. He also offers $750 and an extra two days' vacation for any Atlanta employee who agrees to vacation outside the United States.

On a tuesday morning in Shanghai, which is 13 hours ahead of Atlanta, Free wakes up at 4:30 a.m. for calls with the Atlanta office, goes to the hotel gym to log some time on the stationary bike, sends a bunch of e-mails, and finally climbs into a van heading west of Shanghai. He's off to visit a supplier MFG.com has recently signed up. The trip is part of Free's effort to build guanxi, a Chinese concept of doing business based on networks and relationships. The windows are fogging from all the quiet talking in the car. Free takes a call from an American applying for the post of chief technology officer back in Atlanta. The three Chinese marketing employees who have arranged this field trip, all women in their 20s and 30s, are exchanging cell-phone photos of their boyfriends and dogs with Lindsay Bradshaw, MFG.com's Atlanta-based PR manager. As the van advances along the six-lane A9 highway toward Hongqiao, sprawling growth is everywhere. Billboards abound for McMansion-type housing developments and "golf estates" on gleaming ponds, advertised in both Mandarin and English. Then the van turns into the Qingpu Industrial Zone, and apartment buildings give way to one factory after another lining both sides of the road. For the next half hour it's an uninterrupted stream of factories with names like Every Joy (Kunshan) Holding, Kunshan Leadlong Knitting, and Kunshan Lily Textile. These are the companies Free wants to sign up as clients. The goal is to have 20,000 onboard by 2011.