China 2006

This is York Du of Original, which makes "CD players and only CD players."

York is holding his 1959 Tecsun Hi-Fi Sound tube radio, having seen in the blog that I was interested in classic radios.

York got an EE, wrote software in the Army, and, from 1984–1992, developed software for IBM. In 1993, he began writing software code for DVD players, then a few years later, moved on to VCD software. In 1999, hw started writing CD code. "From DVD to VCD to CD, each step meant fewer unit sales," Du said. "We sold 60,000 DVD players per year, but in Original's entire lifetime, we've only sold about 20,000 players."

In 1999, he founded Original with only five employees. For the first few years, Original only sold a few hundred pieces, but Du is proud that he developed the first Chinese from-the-ground-up player.

Now Original has 30 employees and 50 dealers throughout China. "We sell players in the US, but our real market is here. That makes us different."