The SARS epidemic has all but paralyzed much of the Asian economy by threatening the health of all traders, buyers, and sellers that come in contact with that part of the world or anyone who has been there. The Asian continent has literally been cut off and quarantined from the rest of the world. This epidemic should prove to be a major headache for every decision-making, top-management official whose company is based in Asia.
Li & Fung, one of the worlds largest garment traders, has been around for almost one hundred years and has survived through wars, riots, financial panics, and far worse epidemics than SARS. Due to SARS they are now being forced to rethink the way they do business to soften the financial blow as much as possible. They have moved half of their top-management teams to the U.S. and Europe to continue to conduct business with clients who are too frighten to travel to Asia in fear of coming in contact with the air-borne epidemic. They have also divided their work among several Chinese factories in case one of them has to be shut down. But that's the thing, Li & Fung are a big enough company to make these strategic moves in order to ride out the storm while thousands of other companies are not and will most likely go under.
Trade is the backbone of the Asian economy and it is done on a personal, face to face basis and can't be done over the phone because it requires one to be able to make judgments and look at the other person's body language in order to correctly read that person. Many companies are going to have to change the way they do business and make trade if this epidemic drags on for a few more months; otherwise the financial impact will most likely prove to be too much for them and they will be forced to close or file for bankruptcy. This is going to be a challenge for the owners and decision-making managers but lucky for them this is 2003 and they can take advantage of all of the high-tech interactive video conferencing and other communication devises.