Jan. 21, 2008 — In late 2004, a 24-year-old Rhodes scholar and Internet maven took his already successful Internet marketing business and began implementing some new strategies. Almost overnight, his business grew by a reported 300 percent.
Niuniu Ji — who recently made St. Thomas his home — and his staff of 25 had a four-by-six inch post office box. Suddenly they were receiving so much mail their local Florida post office had to start dumping it into crates, according to Dale Baker, president of Ji's company, World Avenue USA.
Ji's baptism by fire into the arena of global commerce ultimately sparked a civil lawsuit against World Avenue by the Florida Attorney General's Office, as complaints began mounting that gifts promised to consumers weren't forthcoming.
Last week the AG's office announced that the case against Ji's World Avenue had been settled with no finding of fault. That decision helps clear the way as Ji seeks Economic Development Commission status for a new business venture, separate from World Avenue, and as he seeks to continue building his fortune with an eye toward philanthropy. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is Ji's role model.
World Avenue operates out of Florida as an umbrella organization for Ji's estimated 150 Internet marketing websites. The sites are designed to draw consumers in with enticements of substantial gifts such as laptops, videogame devices, cellphones, Gucci handbags and much more in return for the purchase of promotional items and the completion of survey information.
Ji is also chief operating officer of Intrepid Investments, based at Nisky Center. Within three months he hopes to transfer Intrepid's operations to 9,000 square feet of space at Yacht Haven Grande. The vast shell of a room on the second floor of the Yacht Haven complex has yet to be built out and is reminiscent of a skating rink. But soon, said Baker, who also serves as president of Intrepid, it will be transformed into multiple offices with 35 cubicles and plenty of computers.
Keeping His Cards Close to His Vest
Intrepid is banking on receiving beneficial EDC tax credits as it forges ahead with Internet-based entrepreneurial ventures, which prompt Ji to smile when pressed for details. He politely declines to divulge much, explaining that at his level of competition the likes of Google and other Internet giants might gobble up his ideas and implement them first.
What is for public consumption is the fact that Intrepid is a private-equity company that deals in the development of technology used in the Internet advertising market. It has two subsidiaries: Warwick Interactive and Bristol Interactive. All three company names were chosen by Ji because they derive from England, where he spent two very happy years, 2001-03, studying at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He was among 32 Americans selected in 2001 from a pool of 950 applicants.
"I was fortunate," he explains.
Fortunate, maybe. Smart, definitely.
Born in China and the son of two Ph.Ds, Ji grew up in Cleveland, where his family heads the Li and Ji Family Foundation. It reportedly has assets in the millions that it uses to support educational scholarships in the U.S. and China. Ji attended his father's alma mater, Case Western Reserve University, where he earned a degree in systems engineering and where he received the Case Western Presidential Scholarship, an undergraduate fellowship in systems engineering; the Outstanding Sophomore and Junior awards from the engineering school; and an All-USA College Academic Second Team award.
"He's extremely intelligent," said Majorie Roberts, who has known him for more than two years as his local legal counsel. "He's one of the smartest people I've ever met."
Ji came to St. Thomas in the spring of 2007, a few months before the August filing of a civil suit by the Florida attorney general alleging that World Avenue was deceiving consumers. The complaints centered around consumers not receiving the promised "free" gift upon completion of the required surveys and promotional product applications.
"The primary concern was that the terms and conditions under which the items would be provided free of charge were not disclosed to consumers," explained Sandi Copes, press secretary for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. "So we worked with them to change that so consumers would understand what they would have to do to get their free item."
She referenced the recent settlement.
"This isn’t a finding of fault," Copes said. "This is an agreement which resolved the allegations which we were investigating.”
Under the "cooperative agreement," Ji's World Avenue has agreed to pay $1 million to enable the Florida attorney general to continue establishing high standards of practice for the Internet marketing industry and to reimburse the cost of the state's investigation.
"It's absolutely not a penalty or a fine," said Baker, who added that World Avenue wants to take a "leadership position" in establishing standards for good practice on the Internet, which regulators say is still uncharted territory.
Airing Grievances
While 400 people filed complaints about World Avenue websites with the Florida AG's office, only about 20 bothered to file an affidavit, or sworn statement usable in court, according to Copes. Those numbers, Baker said, beg comparison with the estimated five to seven million hits World Avenue sites receive each month.
"Any time you touch that many consumers a month, you're going to have complaints," Baker said.
Try doing an Internet search of some of World Avenue's websites and you'll see plenty of them on sites like ripoffreport.com, lashback.comand complaints.com.
"Any way you look at it they cheat everybody who uses their webb site and i hope they burn in hell," said one person named Brad (typos his) in November 2004.
Another person identified as "Sleeve" offered this reply to Brad: "I review commercial lease agreements for a living and I've learned you always want to read the fine print. It's actually very empowering after you do so …. The terms and conditions for these guys lay out the requirements in black and white."
Baker would not divulge exactly how many gifts World Avenue has doled out since its founding in 2003, but he did say, "The number is over 10,000, and the dollar value is well over $10 million worth of gifts."
He did insist that complaints against the company are negligible. "We track complaints filed against our company. It's a major business factor," Baker explained. "I came in January '06, and at that time we were averaging 24 to 50 complaints per month. In October '07, we had two — compared to five to seven million hits."
Ji defended his style of marketing, saying it offers consumers a chance to earn a gift: "Instead of Netflix paying $80 to acquire a new customer by advertising on CNN, for instance, they take that and award consumers through participating in offers. That's the basic model."
Ji started in the Internet business in 1999 from his dorm room, where he launched a for-profit website called freedonation.com. Somehow he managed to spend 80 hours a week building the business while scoring grades that earned him a Rhodes Scholarship. He did, however, get booted off the tennis team for missing practices.
Freedonation.com, which was rated among the top 100 Internet sites by Yahoo Internet Life magazine soon after its launch, enabled visitors to the site to click on a charity. Each click prompted the appearance of an advertisement, and that advertiser would donate a half cent to the selected charity. By 2002, when the
dot-com bubble burst and advertising revenues dropped, the site lost steam. But not before some $35,000 was directed to dozens of non-profits, according to Ji. He claims to have personally earned a total of $2,100 from the venture.
Living Large
Since then, Ji has clearly learned to manipulate the Internet to a greater advantage. At age 28 he's the owner of a seven-figure home on St. Thomas and holds a five-year lease on prime commercial property at Yacht Haven. "I've done well," is all he'll say when asked about his wealth.
In 2001, an article out of Cleveland quoted Ji as saying, "I want to build something that's lasting, that really adds value to society."
Asked whether World Avenue or Intrepid Investments answered that call, he explained, "I want to do something similar to what Bill Gates is doing right now because of his success in business."
Gates, whose personal fortune is estimated at $59 billion, according to Wikipedia, is the founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives away extraordinary sums each year to charities. "I want to be in a position to make a real change in the world," Ji said.
As for changes he might consider making in the Virgin Islands, his eye is on education: "Maybe work in partnership with the school system and start by giving them 100 laptops a year. It's not huge. But it's a first step."
In addition, he would like to help schools focus their teaching on relevant skills like business by helping them establish curricula that hone entrepreneurial instincts in students.
"Perhaps we could work with schools to bring in speakers or create a master class where students are given an overview of what entrepreneurial opportunities are out there," the Rhodes scholar said. "I believe that education is a key to the success of individuals, and is also the foundation of a prosperous society."
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