Made in Taiwan
OUTLINE
John takes advantage of his country's economic boom to launch his first company at age 24.
John came back from a trip to the US in 1980 with a Sony Walkman and came up with the idea of creating a generic version. As it would have been impossible to sell in the US or most of the Western world, John found a weak spot: The Eastern Bloc, with whom Taiwan's diplomatic relations were officially null since 1949 but following the reestablishment of relations between the US and The People's Republic of China in 1979, Taiwan's newly nominated President (an old army friend of John's father, Ao-nan) informed John of the possibility of trading with the Soviet Union. Eager to take advantage of this opportunity, John learned basic Russian through Ipat'evna Vakhreva, the new President's wife, and then ventured on a tour of the Eastern Bloc to find potential customers. He came back with orders for 10,000 units, enough to launch production.