(Business 2.0) – Unlike other televisions sold in the United States, the $149, 13-inch Haier Ribbit comes in a frog-shaped console, doubles as a night-light, and forces kids to answer math problems before switching itself on. One retailer is already asking for Ribbit variations based on popular cartoon characters--and Haier America CEO Michael Jemal says he's busy working on the licensing deals to make it happen. Then again, if retailers asked Jemal to make the Ribbit jump, he'd probably ask how high. "We're the new kid on the block, so we have to ask them what they want," Jemal says. "If we don't have it, we have to build it."

Jemal's unusually accommodating approach with retail giants like Best Buy and Wal-Mart has turned out to be a powerful weapon in taking on the marketing challenge of the millennium: launching the first Chinese consumer-product brand in America. Haier, which got its start as a communist workers' collective in 1955, has grown into one of China's most influential companies, with 30,000 employees and annual sales of more than $8 billion. In China the appliance maker enjoys enviable prestige: A 2002 survey of 5,000 "young, fashionable" Chinese ranked Haier (pronounced like "higher") as the country's third most popular brand, behind Shanghai Volkswagen and Motorola. (No. 4 was Coca-Cola.) But until recently, Haier's U.S. presence was limited to contract manufacturing under more established names. And its brand was all but unknown stateside.

Then a 29-year-old, smooth-talking entrepreneur from Brooklyn changed everything. In 1994, Jemal, who had run a small New York City electronics chain, persuaded Haier execs to make him the exclusive distributor for everything from refrigerators to air conditioners, all bearing the Haier brand. With Jemal, now 38, at the helm, Haier America will ring up more than $300 million in revenue this year. Much of that comes from sales of compact refrigerators and freestanding refrigerated wine cellars, the latter a product Jemal and Haier introduced before bigger manufacturers launched copycats. The landmark Haier Building at Broadway and 36th Street in Manhattan--the former Greenwich Savings Bank--now houses Haier-brand plasma televisions, DVD players, and cell phones that Jemal plans to sell in America in coming years. And a Haier plant in Camden, S.C., the first ever for a Chinese company in America, churns out full-size refrigerators.

That Haier's business here is being built by a native New Yorker--not a Chinese executive sent from the home office, not a third-party distributor or licensing firm--speaks volumes about how to launch a brand in the United States today. True, Sony got its start in the U.S. market by dispatching co-founder Akio Morita to pitch transistor radios to New York retailers in 1955, and Nokia built its business in the 1980s by selling mobile phones exclusively through RadioShack. But these days any company that aspires to get its products into Wal-Mart, Target, or Best Buy--all of which now carry Haier--must respond instantaneously to their wishes. Says Jemal, "It's not only about price, not only about product--it's how you service your customer." The customer he's talking about isn't you or me, but retailers whose shelf space affords Haier more valuable exposure than any amount of consumer advertising ever could.

While the Haier Building undergoes a renovation, Jemal looks over Haier's latest wares in his makeshift showroom, the bank's former gold vault. With the meter-thick steel door propped open, he points at one of the 3-foot-high wine cellars that line the wall, each with a smoky glass door and temperature controls on the top. "They loved this model," he says, "but they wanted it in stainless with different handles."

"They" are buyers who visited days earlier from Expo Design Center, the upscale home-furnishings subsidiary of Home Depot. Based on the buyers' requests, Jemal instructed his in-house designers to relay the changes to a Haier plant in China. The revised wine cooler, he says, will arrive in Expo's warehouses by the end of October.

Jemal's willingness to customize products has been the key to Haier's entree at many big retailers. Office Depot, for instance, wanted Haier compact refrigerators equipped with locks, for cubicle and dorm-room security. A buyer from Target wondered aloud if Haier could replace text descriptions on its air-conditioner packaging with easy-to-read icons. A high-end furniture retailer wanted wine cellars refitted with wood shelving. In each case, Jemal complied. As Haier VP for merchandising Shariff Kan explains, "The product is really just a tool for delivering service to retailers." Major U.S. appliance makers like Whirlpool and Maytag don't bother with that much customization; given their long-established brands and high-volume sales, they don't have to. "But with Haier," says Expo's Larry Dunst, "we can design more uniqueness into products than is generally practiced."

With a foothold at America's biggest retail chains, Jemal has also relied on Haier's Chinese engineers to introduce products that are innovative in their own right. At a 2001 gathering of Haier's global management team in Qingdao, China, Jemal scribbled a new product idea--a chest freezer with a sliding drawer--on a napkin and passed it to his colleagues. Seventeen hours later, Haier's engineers delivered a working prototype. Called the Access Plus, it's expected to sell 45,000 units in the United States this year. (In China, Haier has dubbed the model the "Michael Freezer" in Jemal's honor.) Until Haier came along, wine cellars were all built into kitchen cabinetry. In 2001, Sam's Club agreed to test-market one of the freestanding models Jemal introduced; the Wal-Mart discount subsidiary sold 5,000 in the first week of a promotion.

Offering unique products, not just unusually attentive service, helps immunize Haier from new-brand disease--competing solely on price. Haier products don't qualify as high-end, but they're not dirt-cheap, either. At Best Buy, a 14.3-cubic-foot Haier refrigerator retails for $333, while a slightly bigger Whirlpool model runs just $50 more.

Pricing its products close to the dominant U.S. brands is all the more surprising when you consider that Haier spends so little on consumer advertising. Eighty percent of Haier's $7.5 million U.S. marketing budget goes toward retailer-directed campaigns, such as ads in appliance trade magazines. Its only consistent consumer-directed advertising has appeared on luggage carts at airports in New York and Miami, though even those sites were chosen to hit peripatetic retail buyers. Jemal didn't buy his first U.S. billboard until 2000. One of the first went up in a highly strategic locale--near Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

Haier's focus on retailers, of course, is partly out of necessity; the company lacks the resources to go head-to-head with the likes of Whirlpool, which spends an estimated 60 to 70 percent of its $171 billion marketing budget on consumer advertising. But it also stems from the marketing savvy Jemal picked up as an electronics seller. At 19, he opened a record store called Discount House of Sounds in Brooklyn. By the early 1990s, he was running 10 music and electronics stores throughout New York City. In 1994, hearing that Welbilt, his refrigerator supplier, was having financial trouble, Jemal gathered investors and bought the company. On a trip a few months later to Qingdao, seeking manufacturers to contract under the Welbilt name, he saw a Haier billboard and drove straight to the company's headquarters. Arriving unannounced, he was so taken with the quality of Haier's products that he requested face time with an exec--and got it. In a series of meetings with Haier vice president Wu Kesong, Jemal proposed selling Haier-branded compact refrigerators in the United States. Says Jemal, "The deal was, if I could sell 150,000 units, we were in business."

Working through Welbilt's U.S. network of distributors, Jemal sold 165,000 refrigerators in 12 months. Then, in 1999, his investor group and Haier formed the joint venture Haier America. (Jemal won't disclose the ownership split but says Haier is the majority shareholder.) About the same time, Wal-Mart called to say that an air-conditioner supplier wasn't cutting it and invited Jemal to Bentonville. After inspecting Haier's 2-million-unit-capacity plant in China, Wal-Mart ordered 50,000 units. Last year, according to Jemal, Wal-Mart sold 400,000 Haier air conditioners.

Of course, if Jemal is to take Haier beyond the niches it has already conquered, he may eventually have to start advertising on American TV, right alongside Sony and Nokia. He may also have to start saying no to customization if he's going to compete on a full range of products. "We have 26 compact refrigerators today," he says. "We probably only need 12." Freeing up resources will help Jemal do what he does best--launch Haier products in market niches that the bigger, older brands have overlooked. One of his next targets? Microwave ovens, another ossified retail category. "The price keeps falling," Jemal explains. "They're like paper." To Haier's fall lineup, Jemal has just added a microwave that replaces the standard "done" beep with ditties such as "Oh! Susanna," "Do Re Mi," and "Auld Lang Syne."

If you're a retail buyer with different musical tastes, Jemal will, of course, change his tune. "Britney, whatever," he says. "You name it, we'll do it." --ANDY RASKIN