Bjqsi

BJQSI is founded in early 2010 by a visionary Bard College drop-out, whose prior connections in Europe and the Middle East contributed to the paths that the company later pursued. The letter Q in the company acronym, which stands for the character "strong" and is also the initial of the legendary Bardian's given name, symbolizes prosperity and commemorates its founder. By June 2010, an acquaintance from college joined the nascent company as executive assistant, and that period marked an era of quick expansion and multi-disciplinary business development in the company history. To categorize BJQSI as an ordinary start-up is, in many aspects, inconclusive. The company, although autonomous in legal sense, enjoys almost unconditional capital injections from a giant conglomerate in China, whose owner is connected to the founder by kinship. Other forms of benefits by informally associating with the conglomerate includes political imposition and impunity of unconventional practices. In this period, BJQSI secured a supplier of wild sturgeon caviar, harvested and processed in one of the countries neighboring the Caspian Sea. A successful marketing campaign, coupled with its state-backed monopolistic distribution license in China, led to a frenzy of imported caviar in the upper elite class. To capture the vast and profitable market of duty clearance, BJQSI constructed a duty-free zone, and it was promoted by the Beijing municipal government as a pioneer in innovative business.