Chan Kwok Man

Biography

Chan Kwok Man was born in 1950 in Hong Kong and was also educated locally. After graduating from secondary school in 1972, he joined the electrical industry, initially working in the installment payment department of an appliances company. In 1975, Chan Kwok Man set up a joint venture family-style business with his relatives and friends in To Kwa Wan. The partners subsequently used the light well of one of the residential buildings where one of them lived as a plant for producing electric water heaters. During the enterprise’s early days, Chan Kwok Man was responsible for planning marketing, visiting electrical shops and department stores all over Hong Kong to sell his and his partners’ products. With the business expanding, 1976 saw him and his partners move their plant to a factory building in Chi Kiang Street. At around this time, Chan Kwok Man began importing heating tubes, thermostat buttons and other raw materials from Germany. He also began to learn essential application technologies from suppliers. Breaking away to start up his own company in 1982, Chan Kwok Man founded German Pool (Hong Kong) Limited (‘German Pool’) and began co-operating with European suppliers in the manufacture of German Pool-branded home appliances. Initially, the company’s plant was located in Kwai Chung while its head office was in Ma Tau Kok Road in To Kwa Wan. While production lines were eventually relocated to the mainland in the late 1980s following the setting up of factories in Zhuhai and then Shunde, German Pool’s office remains in To Kwa Wan to this day.