The Asianist

Earlier I wrote about Singapore.

Now Todd Crowell at Asia Cable writes:

Wrigley’s is slowly working its way back into Singapore after having been shut out, along with every other gum maker after the island country famously banned the import and sale of chewing gum for sanitary reasons in 1992. The company was deeply involved in the negotiations leading to the 2003 Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Two issues dominated the negotiations: Singapore’s participation in the Iraq War coalition and chewing gum. Of the two, gum was by far the stickiest.

Somewhat grudgingly, Singapore compromised, agreeing to allow the importation and sale of what it called “therapeutic” gum. “They were tough,” said former Rep. Philip Crane ® of Illinois, who was involved in the negotiations. This opened the way for sales of Wrigley’s Orbit brand of sugar-free gum, which contains calcium lactate intended to strengthen tooth enamel. Another beneficiary of the deal is Pfizer, which makes Nicorette, a nicotine gum meant to help smokers kick the habit.

At the moment, Wrigley’s gum can only be obtained through a licensed pharmacist, and the buyer must provide his name and identity card number. In Singapore, chewing gum is still very much a controlled substance.

The rest of the article, by the way, is about how Wrigley's is dominating the China market unlike some Western firms struggling there:

Almost unnoticed, the Chicago-based Wrigley’s, the world’s largest maker and marketer of chewing gum, has built a dominating presence in China. With 60 per cent of the market and a million retail sales outlets, Wrigley’s has probably come closer than any other American company to fulfilling the century-old mythic dream: “If every one of China’s one billion people bought just one …”

In five years Wrigley’s has built an awesome distribution network, making sure that the little green packages of Doublemint gum are available in almost every corner of the country. The company is said to have the widest distribution and sales network of any food manufacturing and consumer packaging company in China, foreign or domestic, a staggering one million outlets, 30,000 in Shanghai alone.

No foreign or domestic gum company comes close to Wrigley’s market share or sales volume. Indeed, the domestic Guangdong Fanyu Candy Co., the once prosperous and well-known maker of Yiqing chewing gum and Dada bubble gum, had to fold its operations in 2002. It could not compete. The only significant competitors left are the South Korean Lotte and the Italian Perfetti Van Melle.

Since 1999, China has become the second-largest market for Wrigley’s, behind only the U.S. “I don’t think people know how global [Wrigley’s] is,” fund manager Rose Papp told Forbes.com. Wrigley’s now counts 14 percent of its sales in Asia, up from 3.3 percent in the year 2000. Industry analysts estimate that the Chinese chewing gum market is worth about $250 million now and may reach more than $800 million by 2008.

Yes, you can make money in China and, yes, you can dominate the local market despite all the obstacles of conducting business in a byzantine "communist" quasi-capitalist dictatorship.