Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as an important driving force for productivity and economic and social development. In view of the positive impact of entrepreneurship, many countries have regarded entrepreneurship as a basic solution to problems such as economic decline, increased unemployment, and too many college graduates. Below I will unravel the inspiring entrepreneurial history of Wenzhou people for everyone, hoping to help you.
Part 1 of the inspiring entrepreneurial history of Wenzhou people
Starting with a "one-sixth stall" and entering the US market
Jiang Guilan was born in 1963, 30 years old I was laid off soon after, so I decided to start a business. She persuaded her husband and got his support, borrowed 200,000 yuan from relatives and friends, and started a plastic processing factory in her home. At the beginning, they made simple plastic products such as washbasins and clothes hangers, which were sold in the local market.
In order to open up the market, Jiang Guilan went to Zhoushan, Yiwu and other places to promote her products alone. In 1995, Jiang Guilan rushed to the Canton Fair in search of a bigger market. At that time, only large companies participated in the Canton Fair, and small businesses had no chance to set up stalls. Jiang Guilan rushed to Guangzhou before the start of the Canton Fair and spent two or three days asking about stalls one by one. Finally, she got one-sixth of the stalls from a company at a cost of 40,000 yuan.
Although it opened up the road to foreign trade, due to the low technical content of the products and fierce competition at low prices and homogeneity, the business was once in trouble, but Jiang Guilan did not give up.
It wasn’t until the 2002 Canton Fair that Jiang Guilan finally got her chance.
At that time, a supplier of KFC in the United States approached Jiang Guilan and asked them to help produce plastic disposable tableware. Jiang Guilan's factory only had 13 machines. After the other party came to see the factory, he felt that the scale was too small and turned around and left.
Jiang Guilan said that in the plastics industry, the production of new products requires proofing, which is expensive. Generally, manufacturers have to charge proofing fees before opening molds. After negotiating with several manufacturers, the other party failed to reach an agreement due to the sampling fee, and finally found Jiang Guilan.
Jiang Guilan quickly seized this opportunity. She decided not to charge a proofing fee for now. Then, while trial-producing samples, he borrowed 3 million yuan from the bank to expand the factory, purchase machinery and equipment, and train employees in accordance with GMP standards for food production companies.
In the end, Jiang Guilan's company passed the KFC inspection and became the first Chinese company to produce tableware for the United States.
From OEM to deep market penetration, the transformation has ushered in a new leap
Following KFC, the American tableware giant SOLO also found Jiang Guilan. After that, Jiang Guilan began to segment the market. After on-site investigation, Jiang Guilan decided to specialize in the production of tableware.
By 2006, Fuling's annual export volume reached US$20 million, and it was already a decent export-oriented enterprise.
At that time, Jiang Guilan had two paths in front of her: one was to be content with the status quo and become an OEM factory and an OEM company; the other was to develop the international market on her own and establish her own brand in foreign markets, especially the United States. Sales network, build your own brand and cultural core.
Jiang Guilan knew that the latter path was full of risks and might lose all the customer resources accumulated over more than ten years, but she still firmly chose her own path to explore the international market. ?Because in my heart, I always have a dream, which is to let every end customer who has consumed our products remember that even a small straw carries Fuling's unique humanistic imprint. ?
Jiang Guilan started a new journey of the company's development with the courage of a strong man to cut off his wrist. First of all, she hired outstanding sales talents in the industry with high salaries in the United States, and successively established three sales companies. At the same time, she set up warehouses in New Jersey and Los Angeles in the United States and Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, and established a complete distribution system to enable domestically produced products. Products are sold directly to end customers.
During this process, the company's old customers left one after another, and the company encountered unprecedented difficulties, but Jiang Guilan did not take a step back. She relies on her sales team to find new customer segments.
Withstanding the pressure and insisting on himself, Fuling finally received new rewards after the pain. Fuling became a supplier to Subway 8 years ago, a supplier to Burger King 7 years ago, a supplier to Wendy's 5 years ago, and a supplier to McDonald's 4 years ago. Last year, Fuling won a KFC production order that had been lost for 10 years. So far, all five major fast food chain companies in the United States have become Fuling's customers.
Always one step faster?
Ordinary plastic raw materials have greater environmental pressure. For this reason, Fuling specially established a new materials research institute in 2010, and established an academician workstation with academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to engage in degradable materials research, and achieved a number of research results, forming its own core technology. ?Green and environmental protection are the eternal themes of social development, and they are also the ultimate direction for Fuling Bingli to move forward. Jiang Guilan said, "I think after a few years, every product produced by Fuling will be labeled as green, degradable, and zero-pollution." ?
In recent years, although wages have increased by double digits every year, Fuling's labor costs have continued to decline. Fuling has established its own automation research institute to develop highly automated production lines based on the company's production processes, minimizing the number of workers on the production line and reducing labor costs.
90% of Fuling's products are sold to the US market, and transportation costs are a huge burden. For this reason, Fuling selected straws with high transportation costs to be produced in the United States, and also selected highly automated machines independently developed.
To sum up her entrepreneurial journey, Jiang Guilan said that she took one step faster than others. When others are doing domestic sales, she has already done export sales through a foreign trade company; when others have done export sales through a foreign trade company, she has established a sales company abroad; when others have established a sales company abroad, she has already built a factory abroad?
On November 4, 2015, Fuling was listed on NASDAQ in the United States. Jiang Guilan said that this is an important milestone in the company's development history, marking a gratifying step for the company to take advantage of the international capital market. She will seize the opportunity of the company's listing to lay out the global market, expand Fuling's territory, and welcome a new round of Transcend and soar.
Currently, Taizhou Fuling Plastic Co., Ltd. has 4 production bases, 1 production base under construction, 2 American branches, and 1 R&D center. It has been the export leader in Taizhou’s plastics industry for 12 consecutive years. enterprise, ranking among the top three among 9,162 peer enterprises nationwide. The company has successively won honors such as National High-tech Enterprise, National Contract-abiding and Credit-worthy Enterprise, and Zhejiang Province Green Enterprise. We cannot predict the future, but we always follow the pulse of the times, set our direction from the rhythm of challenges, and look for encounters with chance. ?Jiang Guilan said.
Part Two of the Inspiring Entrepreneurship History of Wenzhou People
In March 2011, the 6th China Youth Entrepreneurship Award was grandly presented in Beijing. Wang Xianjun, a 36-year-old Wenzhou boy, became the winner of the Zhejiang Youth Entrepreneurship Award. The only winner in the province. At this time, it was only 8 years since he resigned from his position as a senior executive in a public institution and chose to start his own business independently.
For Wang Xianjun, these 8 years were the 8 years when he truly let go of his youthful ideals. In his words, they were also 8 years of "pain and happiness"! Surrounded by flowers and applause Next, Wang Xianjun smiled and said frankly that in fact it is not difficult to start a business. What is difficult is that if you are determined, you must persist to the end and never change your heart. Just like falling in love, can a person who is always in a hurry get true love?
Can Wenzhou people do high technology?
In this magical land of Wenzhou, the hard-working and intelligent Wenzhou people have created amazing achievements, and many entrepreneurs have taken the initiative to The fighting spirit is vividly demonstrated. However, whether they are hardworking or smart, in the eyes of ordinary Chinese people, at least, before the appearance of Wang Xianjun, who single-handedly founded Wenzhou Weirikang Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and launched its products, Wenzhou businessmen were nothing more than impressive. Two major "representative works": one is the shoe, hat and clothing manufacturing industry at home and abroad; the other is the capital operation symbolized by "real estate speculation" everywhere. As for any high-tech products, I seem to have never heard of them.
History gave Wang Xianjun an opportunity to change Wenzhou's traditional industrial model.
Wang Xianjun was born in June 1975 and was born and raised in Wenzhou. Perhaps he had been exposed to the idea of ??doctors treating illnesses and saving lives since he was a child. In 1994, when filling out his application form for the college entrance examination, Wang Xianjun chose the path of studying medicine without hesitation. In 1998 Graduated from Nanjing Medical University majoring in molecular biology. As soon as he stepped out of college, he was hired by a large domestic biotechnology company. Wang Xianjun also won trust with his accumulated knowledge and hard-working character, and soon became the company's deputy general manager.
The future is bright and the spring breeze is full of joy, but Wang Xianjun inadvertently fell into pain and couldn't extricate himself.
It was while working for the company that he learned about the global biological market and saw the unlimited business opportunities in the biotechnology industry. In my country's pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology was once considered the industry closest to international advanced technology. ?, and the field of diagnostic reagents, as a part of it, is still in its infancy in China. The demand for in vitro diagnostic reagents and instruments in the United States, which has the largest pharmaceutical market, increases by about 20% every year. However, 90% of the domestic in vitro diagnostic reagent industry market is monopolized by famous large foreign companies such as Bayer and Roche. Not only are the products low-end, but their market share only accounts for a negligible 10%.
The so-called in vitro diagnostic reagents, in layman’s terms, are products that can provide early warning of a disease before it occurs or diagnose the disease in its early stages and provide timely and effective treatment. This in vitro diagnostic reagent can provide accurate detection and early diagnosis of a variety of high-risk diseases and infectious diseases such as coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, tumors, liver disease, renal and lung diseases, and HIV antigens, which will undoubtedly help reduce the number of patients. , making significant contributions to preventive health care.
Wang Xianjun is confident that he has a reserve of theoretical knowledge in this area. In those days when he did not think about food or food, there was an ideal fire in his chest to serve the country with industry and realize the value of his life. . He felt this was what he wanted to do. However, his idea first encountered opposition from his parents and friends. The reasons for opposition are very good and practical. The biological industry is a high-risk, high-investment, and technically demanding industry. You have no capital, no network resources, and no proprietary technology. You just have enthusiasm. Why do you want to run this high-tech company? You simply don’t know the heights of the world.
Wang Xianjun still doesn’t know the heights of the world. In 2003, Wang Xianjun, who had made up his mind, quietly resigned from his well-paid vice president position, poured out all his income of about 2 million yuan over the years, and registered and founded Wenzhou Weirikang Biotechnology. Ltd. With only 2 million yuan in start-up capital, four employees, and a rented simple space in the Wenzhou International Student Pioneer Park, Wang Xianjun's company quietly opened in an atmosphere of suspicion and opposition.
Problems arose as soon as the business license was obtained. 2 million was like a joke for the operation of a biological company. It was only enough to purchase a must-have fully automatic biochemical analyzer at that time. What else? What about the company's operations, the purchase and sale of raw materials, personnel wages and other auxiliary equipment. What should he do? Wang Xianjun, who was worried to death, never asked his family for financial support. He couldn't afford a fully automatic biochemical analyzer, so he bought a semi-automatic one. Although it would take three times as long as the former, it could still save more than half of the money; When he temporarily had no money to pay his salary, he asked friends to borrow money, or borrowed money from his entrepreneurial partners. The key was to make products as soon as possible. This is the foundation of the company!
That paragraph At that time, Wang Xianjun appointed himself as the company's CEO and director of the R&D center. He plunged into the laboratory with a few pieces of bread and a few bottles of mineral water. Day and night, sunset and sunrise were gone. He forgot all about sleep and food to the point of being almost obsessed with every piece and every moment. Links, repeated improvements, repeated verification?
This kind of dark and dark days lasted for half a year. Hard work paid off, and Wang Xianjun led his R&D team to finally trial-produce the first product.
The product is available, but how to sell it has become a problem that Wang Xianjun thinks about day and night. You can't go to each hospital one by one to lobby for your own reagents. Besides, why would regular large hospitals easily believe your lobbying? This is often a matter of life and death, and it's not a child's play. Out of desperation, Wang Xianjun suddenly had inspiration and decided to take the product to some authoritative institutions such as Shanghai Medical University and ask professors there to try it out and help make an evaluation. If they can get their appraisal, it will be convenient for the product to be sold in medical institutions. Much faster.
Thoughts are beautiful. But when they arrived in Shanghai, people heard that he was from Wenzhou and that he developed and produced the product himself. Those senior professors didn't believe it at all: How could Wenzhou, which makes shoes and clothes, develop in vitro diagnostic reagents? What a joke. For this kind of project, the raw materials and technology are monopolized by Japan, and there is currently no localization at all. Besides, we can’t find any domestically produced reagents for comparison. ?
I have been rejected many times and dismissed several times, but this has aroused Wang Xianjun’s stubborn temper. Doesn’t it mean that I can’t find domestic reagents for comparison? Well, I will buy Japanese reagents for them to compare. .
I don't believe that my reagents are not good, and one day I will ask the Japanese to buy my reagents and earn back the money I earned! Wang Xianjun is not willing to give up, waiting for them to get off work at the professor's door every day, this kind of? Persistence? It has simply become a scenery in front of the professor's building. Finally, to keep him away, an old professor agreed to try out his product. Wang Xianjun was worried that it was just a perfunctory attempt, so after handing over the reagents, he continued to wait for the results at the door. The stability test of the reagent takes at least seven days. It is summer, and Wang Xianjun will never forget the feeling of waiting. On the tenth day, the old professor walked out of the building. He grabbed Wang Xianjun's hand and told Wang Xianjun very excitedly: Oh, young man, your product is very good! Quick, please come into the office?
The products are very promising and the reviews are very strong, because these professors have high authority in the medical field. Their recognition and reviews have enabled Wang Xianjun’s products to quickly enter many hospitals, taking the first step towards successful entrepreneurship. step.
When starting a business, you must never change your mind and persevere!
The first product developed by Wang Xianjun? The low-density lipoprotein cholesterol detection kit filled a gap in the domestic market, and he also explored it. Got the first pot of gold. He did not dare to take a breath at all, and immediately moved forward with the victory, and immediately upgraded his company's overall layout, starting from R&D, technology, management, production, sales and other levels, and began to promote the overall situation in a three-dimensional manner. A series of new products, including biochemical testing reagents, immune serology testing reagents and genetic diagnostic reagents, have successively entered the research and development stage. Production, marketing and technical consulting services have gradually been strengthened and expanded. The company is like a jointed bamboo shoot, rising straight up a high pole, and has finally begun to attract the attention of local governments and Relevant agencies attach great importance to it. In July of that year, the company was recognized by relevant parties as a "key technological innovation enterprise in high-tech industries in Zhejiang Province". This also meant that Wang Xianjun would not be short of money from now on and could obtain scientific and technological support from all parties. As for those investors who were eager to wait for Wang Xianjun's lion's mouth to open their mouths, they began to stare at Wang Xianjun's every move with big eyes and small eyes. As long as Wang Xianjun raised his arms, they would join him immediately.
But Wang Xianjun is very clear-headed. He knows that what he is doing is not an ordinary traditional enterprise, nor is it a short-term and quick one-shot deal. Since it is high-tech, it is the only pillar for the enterprise to stand firm and stay at the forefront of the market. , is its own technical core competitiveness. Without this, everything will cease to exist. Therefore, his main focus is still on product research and development as always, and the director of the R&D center seems like he will continue to do so. He led his R&D team to avoid the key points of foreign patented technologies in the project, integrated the key points of self-developed technologies, and quickly applied for invention patents for its core parts. Later practice proved that this move fully demonstrated Wang Xianjun's forward vision and wisdom. Perhaps this is what makes a Wenzhou native unique.
Sure enough, just when Wang Xianjun had gone through the initial difficulties and started to make great progress in the business world, suddenly the weather was uncertain and the wind direction changed. According to the latest spirit of the national medical system reform, in vitro Diagnostic reagents are classified as medical devices, and all products must be registered before they can be sold. This is tantamount to saying that all the previous efforts of Wang Xianjun and his company have come to naught, and they have to start over from scratch to build a company according to the new system requirements.
Check the path of reform and opening up after entering the market economy. Almost every major reform launched by the country means a reshuffle, which means a new round of breakthroughs or the elimination of a group of people. Short-lived vested interests may give rise to a number of more standardized and viable companies. Fortunately, Wang Xianjun fell into the latter category without any danger. The reason lies in his technical advantages, as well as in the series of countermeasures he has taken in advance, including applying for patents for his products, establishing close ties with the government and authoritative institutions and gaining recognition, etc. Of course, What’s more, he is able to continuously launch new research and development products in a short period of time, while also practicing hard on his internal skills, so that his company can develop healthily and steadily at the same time. In early 2004, the company fulfilled its wish and became the 1543rd company in the country approved to produce Class III medical devices. Since then, it has successively obtained more than 30 national food, drug and device registration certificates.
Wang Xianjun turned a "test" into a turning point in the company's development. Since then, under the banner of more standardization, the company has been reborn from the ashes like a phoenix from nirvana, reshaping its soul and becoming more vigorous. The momentum is ready to fly straight into the sky!
Starting a business is difficult and full of challenges.
For the entrepreneur himself, any entrepreneurial venture is a process of constantly challenging himself again and again, a process of continuous learning and summarizing and improving. The most important thing is to be "unswerving". Just as Wang Xianjun said, being unswerving means not changing your heart. When you are in love, you should never change your heart. When you start a business, you must never change your heart. Perseverance to the end is victory! What Wang Xianjun is engaged in In the biological industry, domestic reagents have weak independent innovation capabilities, unstable quality, and large batch-to-batch differences, which have always been a warning line in his mind. This prompted him to not dare to slack off at all, and to do everything possible to break through domestic technical bottlenecks and let Domestic reagents survive in this market-oriented environment. To this end, he can only adhere to the quality concept of "high standards, refinement, and zero defects", follow the principle that only products without substandard products can enter the market, rigorous process, continuously improve the success rate of innovation, and vigorously develop new products and new products. services and new breakthroughs. In 2008, under the general environment of the international financial crisis, the global economy was in a sluggish state. Faced with such a harsh economic environment, the company achieved a 45% performance growth through technological upgrading and product innovation, exceeding the 20% target set at the beginning of the year. growth ratio.
Wang Xianjun believes that when developing new products, we must always seize the opportunity. If others already have the project, we can only start with the leftovers from the market. He uses troponin detection reagents For example, there are currently only two units in China that can produce boxes?, and Wang Xianjun is one of them. The product market prospects are quite broad. It gave Wang Xianjun deep inspiration and thinking, and also made him more determined to always pay attention to looking for projects that have not been paid attention to or promoted now, but will be popular in the future in product research and development. This is a favorable guarantee for the smooth and rapid development of the company.
Faced with the changing market, Wang Xianjun promptly adjusted his strategic decision-making after the company had successfully expanded, and injected more than 10 million yuan into its wholly-owned subsidiary Wenzhou Wikinocom Biotechnology Co., Ltd. In the development of industrial air, fruit and vegetable residue pesticide detection reagents, using advanced technology for the preparation of in vitro diagnostic reagents and rigorous process requirements and concepts to produce industrial air, food detection reagents, etc., this will once again seize market opportunities for the diagnostic reagent industry.
Success belongs to determined entrepreneurs. After 8 years of development, Wang Xianjun’s company built the Weirikang Biotechnology Park with a total construction area of ??more than 27,000 square meters in Wenzhou Louqiao Industrial Park. It has successively undertaken a number of national Ministry of Science and Technology fund projects, national planning projects, and national key projects. The research and development work of the new product planning project was named the "Core Unit of the Wenzhou High-tech Park Postdoctoral Research Workstation" by the National Ministry of Personnel. He has personally obtained 6 invention patents and published 16 papers in national publications. Several new products developed by him have filled the gaps in the domestic market. Among them, he presided over the successful development of the "serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol detection reagent", which won the second prize of the National Patent and Invention Award, and was included in the National Torch Plan project by the Ministry of Science and Technology; the genetic diagnostic reagent series cooperated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and became The Biochip Experimental Promotion and Demonstration Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences? The development of total bile acid enzyme cycle rate method detection reagent? and many other high-tech projects have been listed as the Science and Technology Small and Medium Enterprises Innovation Fund Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Key New Product Plan Project, National high-tech industrialization projects, etc., the company ranks among Zhejiang Province's "five batches of enterprises", provincial high-tech enterprises, provincial high-tech research and development centers, and provincial small and medium-sized enterprise entrepreneurial stars.
Wenzhou people can finally make high-tech products! Faced with the impressive performance, Wang Xianjun said modestly: The biopharmaceutical industry is as vast as the sea. I have just walked to the seaside, and the road ahead is heavy. Daoyuan?
Part 3 of the inspiring entrepreneurial history of Wenzhou people
Wang Zhentao, chairman and president of Wenzhou Aokang Group, has been a carpenter for three years and a salesman for five years. In 1988, he started with 30,000 yuan and founded the Yongjia Aolin Shoe Factory, the predecessor of Aokang Group. After 17 years of hard work, he developed a small family workshop into one of China's top 100 private enterprises with annual sales revenue of more than 1.8 billion yuan. In 1999, Wang Zhentao started a fire and burned thousands of pairs of inferior leather shoes confiscated from all over the country that were produced and sold by illegal manufacturers from other places counterfeiting the Aokang brand, thus rectifying the name of Wenzhou leather shoes.
Aokang Group is currently one of the largest companies in the domestic shoemaking industry. It has 5 overseas branches and has joined hands with Bishan County, Chongqing City to create the "Western Shoe Capital".
Wang Zhentao cares about charity. He has donated hundreds of millions of yuan to society and has the reputation of "China Charity Ambassador".
In 2005, he invested 20 million yuan to establish a national personal charity foundation, the Wang Zhentao Charitable Foundation. This is the first personal non-public charity foundation among Chinese private entrepreneurs and the largest in the country.