"We can't just do me-too products," says Jemal.

Forty-year-old Jemal Mohammed owns a five-acre, hillside farm outside the tiny hamlet of Fontanina in the Welo region of Ethiopia's northern highlands.

To reach his goal of $1 billion in sales by 2005, Haier's sales manager in America Michael Jemal says, "we need core products to attain mass retail presence."