Kurt Salmon adds Asian expertise

Retailers and suppliers who already operate in China or are looking to expand there may want to contact Kurt Salmon following several key hires by the consulting company.



The management consulting firm’s Retail and Consumer Products Group in China said it hired Hao Li and Ke Chen as partners.



Li is a consumer products expert with more than 18 years of corporate strategy, governance and operations experience, according to Kurt Salmon. He has served numerous multinational and domestic Chinese companies in the consumer goods, retail, industrial goods and financial service industries and possesses expertise in a wide range of areas and has published a book about doing business in China.



Li previously worked for McKinsey, Accenture and BCG in China and earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University.



Ke Chen is a retail expert with more than 15 years of experience serving leading global and local Chinese retailers across multiple sectors and formats, both as a consultant and as a retail executive, according to Kurt Salmon. He specializes in merchandising and supply chain improvement, operations strategy, IT architecture/applications, and large transformation projects.



Chen previously worked for Accenture and IBM GBS in China, where he developed services for leading retail accounts to improve their business performance and develop their expansion programs in China. Chen was also on the business development and operations team at Walmart and earned an MBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a bachelor of materials science and engineering from Nanjing University of Technology in China.