Originally published in Cherenkov, V., & Gladkikh, I. (2013). Chinese "Goliath" and Russian "David", or Alliance Ltd. (St. Petersburg, Russia) fighting for its place in the distribution channel on the international BTB market. St. Petersburg, Russia: Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.

Leonid Dzurich, Director General of the trade/manufacturing company Alliance, Ltd., was sitting next to his consultant from the Graduate School of Management (GSOM) under Saint Petersburg State University in a new American long-range wide-body twin-engine plane Boeing-777 that belonged to the Air China, China's only national flag carrier and a Star Alliance member. They were coming back from Beijing to St. Petersburg via Moscow and seemed to be satisfied with the results of the negotiations and the terms of the international distributor agreement they had just signed. According to the agreement, Alliance Ltd. became exclusive distributor of the large Chinese state company Advanced Technologies & Materials (AT&M) in the Northwestern region of Russia. It took four months of scrupulous work to prepare the agreement. They spent all week in Beijing meeting relevant authorities and line managers of AT&M. In the first place they discussed the delivery of welding wire for gun-type welders (including those carried on the back or shoulder). Looking through pages of the book by A. Sherman, Leonid compared his company with David, the Bible protagonist, who had to stand against Goliath. About 1,000 people worked in the central AT&M office only (among them two members of Chinese Academy of Sciences and 130 PhD holders). Total assets estimated in June 30, 2007 were {dollar}425 bln, and the net income was {dollar}6,68 bln. Whereas in Leonid's company there were only seven permanent employees and the turnover during the first six months of 2007 was only {dollar}0.35 bln. There was a thousand times difference between their "weight" categories.

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