The Hays business that just got bigger and bigger
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by MARY RIDGWAY
nly 0.3 percent of the Kansas population starts a new business. Applying the national average, only 25 percent of those will be women, and startups led by Asians is 11 percent. Of all new businesses nationally, only 80 percent survive to the second year and only 56 percent last five years. Shirley Liu ’05, ’07 has kicked all the odds to the curb by creating a new business called CloudStorage LLC. Liu, president and owner, is a young Chinese woman whose humble presence disguises her tenacity, dedication, rigor and resilience. She is an innovator who started with an idea that now provides for her family and other people in Hays and abroad.
photography by KELSEY STREMEL
Her journey to Hays started in China at SIAS University, where she earned a dual-degree in business administration from both SIAS and Fort Hays State University. The two universities have partnered to provide American education in China for almost 20 years. Liu worked very hard on her dual degrees and graduated at the top of her class. For her achievement, she was awarded full tuition at Fort Hays State University to earn her graduate degree. She completed her master’s degree in communication studies in 2007. After graduating, she and her husband returned to Zhengzhou (pronounced Jung Jo), in the Hunan Province, where she taught marketing, ROAR
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international trade, and business management for four years at SIAS. But, after a while, Liu became restless. She was growing tired of teaching the same thing year after year and needed a new challenge. She and her husband decided they wanted to move back to Hays. On arriving, she was a little nervous because she didn’t have a job and was finding it difficult to enter the local workforce. Ultimately, she had to make some choices to put food on the table. Liu was always interested in starting a small business and decided to start selling on eBay out of her home. With one shelf of products and a small business loan, CloudStorage was born, and the entrepreneurial venture began
