by Ian Marshall, ITTF Publications Editor

Now in 2017 the company’s name is synonymous with the ITTF World Tour and has provided assistance to the ITTF Hopes Programme. They are initiatives with very different goals but with one common factor, the heart and soul of Frank Ji.

A table tennis aficionado, his apartment in Shanghai is an Aladdin’s Cave; starting some five years ago he has collected a wealth of memorabilia, carefully arranged in his state-of-the-art designed apartment in Shanghai.

Most importantly there are table tennis tables in the premises and just to make sure that the best possible conditions are available, there is a deep red court mat which adds to the modern image.

Table tennis player, collector, enthusiast but also visionary; thinking differently, looking for way to commercialise table tennis in order to raise its marketing appeal. Creating stars by introducing new ideas that will increase the appeal of the sport to television and thus to the commercial world is very much at the forefront of his thinking.

Also he appreciates the fact that table tennis must move with the times if it is to attract young people. In modern parlance table tennis must be “cool”.

It is with those two concepts in mind that Frank Ji is promoting the T2 Asia-Pacific initiative and TTX; the former to increase the commercial value of table tennis, the second to make the sport that everyone has played and everyone can play even more popular.

Promotion, innovation, forward thinking is his portfolio but without forgetting the principles of the sport; think out of the box but maintain a way of live, the table tennis lifestyle.