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My veterinary journey
Tony Beck (1998 BVetMed)
In 2004, I wrote a business plan to raise $20 million and open clinics in China mainland, but I didn’t envisage the road of personal and professional
learning I would embark on. In April 2006, working as a consultant to Beijing’s quarantine bureau, I opened an autonomous clinic within China’s largest hospital, where I met my future business partner Yi Bing Shi – Shi meaning stone, who was Assistant Clinical Director.
At that time veterinary care in China mainland was definitely stuck in the 1950’s, even though the beating heart
of the Chinese profession longed for change, for training, for access to foreign equipment and supplies.
In 2009, Dr Stone and I opened Doctors Beck and Stone (DrB&S), a premier group focused on treating the pets
of ex-pats and the burgeoning China elite pet owners. Combining western treatment approaches with the Chinese industry norm had been a challenge as
a consultant. Discussions as to whether we would have a Chinese department
focused on the middle classes
lasted several months, however the management team agreement led to a strong multicultural veterinary team.
As DrB&S led from the front with ten shiny, spotless, glass, welfare-maintaining and professional hospitals spanning
from Beijing to Shenzhen; the rest of the profession chased our premier standard. In 2018, Ruipeng, China’s largest group, which had expanded from 35 hospitals to 1,200 since 2004, bought DrB&S (China).
During those ten years, I learnt business in arguably one of the most aggressive business environments, reading and re-reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War! I also had the professional latitude, as one of China’s most experienced vets, to take on a raft of surgical procedures, performing Chinaâ