In 2017, a TV series called "Chicken Feathers Fly to the Sky" caused a sensation across the country, causing people to fanatically pursue Zhang Yi as an actor, and he also stood out in the Magnolia Award and the Golden Eagle Award, becoming a well-deserved winner of the "Emperor of Vision" double award.
In this drama, Zhang Yi's character Chen Jianghe can be said to have become one of his masterpieces. In the play, Chen Jianghe learned how to exchange chicken feathers for candy from his father since he was a child, and this exchange skill gradually prompted him to quickly master the method of valuing and exchanging goods, so as to earn the maximum profit.
Since he was a child, Chen Jianghe has left his hometown and traveled from place to place, trekking through mountains and rivers, and almost exhausting most of China. He expanded his business to all corners of the world and eventually became a giant in the business world.
In fact, the experience of "Chen Jianghe" is not completely fictional, it has its prototype in reality - Lou Zhongping.
Lou Zhongping is known as the king of Chinese straws, not only has he been on 6 "News Network" and 2 "Focus Interviews", but even attracted the attention of ** TV station, and a documentary was specially made for him.
Lou Zhongping. Leaning on each stick, only 8 millicents (0.).0008 yuan), he amazingly climbed to the top of the world, monopolized a quarter of the global straw market, and has 2 3 patents.
In China, his market share is as high as more than 50%, which means that more than half of the straws we use every day are produced in his factory.
In 1965, Lou Zhongping was born in a poor family in Yiwu, Zhejiang.
In order to solve the problem of food and clothing, he dropped out of school at the age of 14, followed his father to leave Yiwu, and went to Yiyang, Jiangxi, to engage in a creative "chicken feathers for sugar" business.
Shaking the old rattle and carrying the heavy burden of the merchants, he walked all over the streets and alleys, exchanging small items such as brown sugar, straw paper, and buttons for waste products such as chicken feathers and animal bones in residents' homes.
The chicken feathers in better condition are processed into delicate feather dusters and other small commodities, while the poor ones are sold to purchasing stations as fertilizer, from which they can make some small profits.
Recalling those difficult years, Lou Zhongping said:
At that time, no one in our industry could afford it.
Because it is very dirty to deal with chicken feathers, I stain my hands, face and clothes all day long, and sometimes when I hand a child a piece of candy, the adults will widen their eyes and knock it off with a "snap", saying, 'How can you eat dirty things?'Let's go!’
Therefore, the drama "Chicken Feathers Fly to the Sky" beautifies the image of our porter to a certain extent, and makes us look like people. ”
At a time when he was tossing and turning and struggling to survive in this low-level society, Lou Zhongping wandered between the societies and endured various hardships and tests in life. He was Xi to dirty and hard work, and he also saw the bitterness and frustration of life.
However, the chicken feather business has a unique benefit – there are very few practitioners in this industry, and almost no one competes with it for business.
After several years of struggle, Lou Zhongping almost monopolized the local chicken feather trading market. With a sales strategy of close to zero profit, he not only solved his own food and clothing problem, but also successfully saved a considerable amount of savings.
This fact made Lou Zhongping realize a truth:
In the process of doing business, it is not necessary to pursue high-end projects. Some seemingly low-profit industries are often overlooked, but it is precisely in these industries that it is easier to make a lot of money.
Lou Zhongping when he was young.
In 1991, Lou Zhongping returned to Yiwu and rented a small stall after putting aside his past trivial business.
He began to sell small goods such as paper cups, straws, and disposable chopsticks, which were just emerging at that time, which were all cheap and cheap goods.
Although the small business does not make much money, at least it is no longer beaten by the wind and rain and has a foothold.
After two years of setting up a stall, Lou Zhongping heard that the owner of a nearby business was planning to sell an old semi-automatic straw production line.
He keenly smelled the business opportunity, so he immediately took action, took out all his savings, and then begged for money, and finally scraped together 50,000 yuan to buy the production line.
At that time, 50,000 yuan was not a small amount, but for setting up a factory, this money was not abundant.
Lou Zhongping used two houses, a machine, and a few workers to start his business.
Lou Zhongping rented two private houses as a straw factory.
Imagine that it was just a small workshop, and who would have predicted that it would become the world's largest straw company?With its own unique business model, it has written a miracle in the business world, and small profits can also create incredible brilliance.
At first, when relatives heard that Lou Zhongping had opened a factory, they were all amazed at first and came to visit. However, when they learned that the product produced by the factory turned out to be straws, they all couldn't help but laugh.
In their opinion, straws seem to be a very low-tech product, with a low threshold, low **, and even lower profits. Someone calculated an account for Lou Zhongping: the average price of each straw is 0008 yuan, according to the maximum profit margin of 10%, can only earn 00008 yuan. In other words, if you sell 10,000 straws, you can only make a profit of 8 yuan at most.
With such a meager business, with a "huge amount of money" of 50,000 yuan to invest, I am afraid that it is far away when I want to see the return of the capital.
Facing the blows of his relatives, Lou Zhongping resolutely survived. He began to run the business nationwide, actively seeking cooperation opportunities. Footprints all over the major beverage factories and food factories, he sells his straws.
At that time, straw factories were scarce in China, and many people were disdainful of entering the industry because of their meagre profits, and some large beverage factories also purchased directly from abroad.
However, the appearance of Lou Zhongping has made these big factories shine.
They were pleasantly surprised to find that the quality of Lou Zhongping's straws is not only comparable to foreign straws, but even surpassed. What's even more rare is that Lou Zhongping's straws can also save them valuable transportation time and costs. As a result, large factories have established cooperative relations with Lou Zhongping.
It is with this partnership that Lou Zhongping has opened up sales channels. The factory ramped up its production capacity and went all out to produce straws. In just one year, Lou Zhongping returned to his roots.
When Lou Zhongping began to make money, the people around him began to be envious.
Seeing his success, some people have followed suit and set up factories to set up straw production lines, and straw factories have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, hoping to get a share of the pie in this industry.
Lou Zhongping's business is facing huge challenges.
To make matters worse, the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 led to a sharp increase in the number of raw materials needed to produce straws.
In these turbulent times, some straw factories have begun to think crookedly and try to cope with the difficult situation by cutting corners.
Obviously, 200 straws are marked on the packaging bag, but in fact, only about 100 straws are put in, and the quality is getting worse and worse, and the ** is getting lower and lower.
In the face of vicious competition among peers, Lou Zhongping did not choose to go along with them.
He insists on operating with integrity, using high-quality raw materials to make straws, and the number of straws in each pack is always just right, no more, no less. In addition, he also invested 2,000 yuan to register the "Shuangtong" brand trademark.
"Double Child" trademark.
At that time, many enterprises did not realize the importance of trademarks, but Lou Zhongping was the first to smell the potential of trademarks. His "Shuangtong" brand quickly became the 17th trademark of Yiwu, which won him a huge advantage.
With the brand effect and excellent product quality, Lou Zhongping gradually distanced himself from his competitors. Those rivals were gradually eliminated, while Lou Zhongping's business was booming.
He took advantage of market trends and bought more than a dozen straw factories that were on the verge of closure. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, orders poured in like snowflakes. Gradually, the "Shuangtong" brand monopolized the market in the straw business in Yiwu and even the entire Zhejiang Province.
Since then, Lou Zhongping has become a generation of "straw kings", which has laid the foundation of his career.
Lou's ambitions are not limited to rapid expansion at home, his ambitions extend to the international stage.
Surprisingly, however, when he first set foot overseas, he suffered a major failure.
In 2003, a businessman from Japan came to the factory for an inspection. He frowned after going to the bathroom, and then left without even entering the door of the workshop.
The interpreter told Lou Zhongping about the situation, and the merchant said, "Your bathroom is too dirty, so I'm not interested in going to the workshop." ”
After several communications and explanations, an order was finally signed.
However, six containers of straws arrived in Japan by sea, but the customer complained that a hair was found in one of the straws. As a result, the purchaser demanded that all batches of straws be fully inspected.
The full inspection is very time-consuming and laborious, and the cost is even more expensive than the straw itself. Lou Zhongping had no choice but to destroy all the straws in Japan and pay as much as 1$70,000 in cost of destruction.
Lou Zhongping was so angry that he had the two containers that had not yet left the port shipped back to the factory and burned them all in front of all the employees.
This costly lesson made Lou Zhongping understand that products should not only use real and reliable materials, but also that if they want to be truly bigger and stronger, they must not let go of even the subtle details of a hair.
Since then, he has strictly controlled the quality, and has never received any quality complaints for overseas orders.
With the dual blessing of quality and reputation, Lou Zhongping has successfully snatched a large number of orders in overseas markets. The impressive list of customers includes Walmart, Tesco (one of the world's top three retail giants) and Dollar Tree (the largest discount retail giant in North America), and these orders have even reached 1 billion units.
Such an achievement, even in any factory, is enough to attract attention.
However, Lou Zhongping was not carried away by these huge orders, on the contrary, he saw the hidden problems in them.
He keenly found that these large foreign factories are very demanding, and with the advantage of order volume, they often "bully the store" and ruthlessly squeeze the profits of Shuangtong.
More worryingly, these orders take up most of Shuangtong's production capacity, making it impossible for them to serve other customers. Once these big customers stop cooperating, it will be a fatal blow to Shuangtong. However, Lou Zhongping found a solution to the problem.
After a long period of deliberation, Lou Zhongping came up with a creative business principle known as the "Small Customer Principle". According to this principle, the maximum customer order cannot exceed 3% of the output of the double childhood. If this percentage is exceeded, it is better to give up and not do it.
His thinking is simple but wise: "If one big customer is putting pressure on us, then why not look for ten small customers?"They have the final say for big customers, and we can negotiate with small customers. ”
This "small customer principle" allows Lou Zhongping to calmly face bullying and provocation from large foreign manufacturers, and regain the marketing initiative firmly in his own hands. This not only enhances the enterprise's ability to resist risks, but also greatly improves the operating efficiency.
This theory has now been included in the textbooks of many well-known universities in China, and has become one of the classic cases in MBA textbooks.
Today, Lou Zhongping's Shuangtong company has secured the first place in the global straw industry, and they have created an annual income of 2An astonishing achievement of 400 million.
In addition to meeting market demand, Lou Zhongping has always been concerned about the environmental protection of plastic straws.
He personally set up a team focused on the research and development of green products, committed to the development of innovative products such as PLA biodegradable straws and edible starch straws, and they have more than 100 patents.
Lou Zhongping's Shuangtong Company has not only achieved great commercial success, but also played an active role in environmental protection. Their technological innovations not only bring new solutions to the industry, but also make an important contribution to global sustainable development.
When asked about the secret of success, Lou Zhongping responded with four concise words:"Grow big with a small amount".
From the early years of chicken feathers for sugar, to the later straw entrepreneurship, every important choice in Lou Zhongping's life is closely related to these four words.
The accumulation of steps into thousands of miles, dripping water into rivers and seas.
This wisdom of "sweeping the world with meager profits" is worth pondering and learning from.