I'd rather be a chicken head than a phoenix tail!
Making money does not necessarily have to pursue those "tall" industries, small industries also have big business, selling squeezed vegetables, spicy strips can be listed, it can be seen that in the small industry to be a "chicken head" to occupy the mountain, but it is easier to become a winner in life!
And Chen Huxiong is such an entrepreneur, relying on "Chenguang Stationery" to support tens of billions of dollars.
Chenguang stationery, presumably everyone is not unfamiliar, it is called "hidden champion". Whether it is paper, pen, eraser, or ruler, compass, etc., any stationery product can find this brand.
But what you can't imagine is that Chenguang, which sells 2 yuan a piece, can earn more than 13 billion yuan a year, and the market value is as high as 84.5 billion yuan.
What kind of business experience does M&G have behind its 84.5 billion? Who is Chen Huxiong?
one
A "small" business that sells pens and sells money can also make a rich man.
Chenguang Stationery's operating income in 2020 was 13.138 billion yuan, an increase of 17.92% year-on-year; net profit was 1.255 billion yuan, an increase of 18.43% year-on-year.
The helmsman of Chenguang Stationery is the three sisters and brothers from Chaoshan Province, from stationery agents to independent production, they have gradually achieved the stationery business to the north and south of the river.
Since 2020, the share price of M&G Stationery has almost doubled, and as of May 20, 2021, its market value was 84.58 billion yuan.
The three sisters and brothers also changed from the nameless Chaoshan "poor children" to the richest man in the stationery industry with a net worth of more than 50 billion.
Among the three sisters and brothers, the first to contact the stationery industry is Chen Huxiong, he and Chen Huwen are twins, and the two also have a sister Chen Xueling. And the development of Chenguang should start from the story of Chen Huxiong!
Chen Huxiong, formerly known as Chen Shengming, was born in 1970 in Chaoyang Valley, Shantou, Guangdong Province, and his family was particularly poor when he was a child. In Chen Huxiong's impression, in the era of many people and little land, a family of five often did not have enough to eat.
Even if the family is not well off, but Chen Huxiong's mind is not in learning, others are listening carefully to the lessons, and he secretly watches the "Legend of the Archery Hero" below, and the results of primary school and junior high school are at the bottom of the class.
In 1987, Chen Huxiong, who took the college entrance examination for 3 consecutive years, his results were worse and worse again, and after despair, he embarked on the road of part-time work, but he worked for two years without a degree and no way but still achieved nothing;
In 1989, just as he was about to give up and go home, he was attracted by the long queue in front of a stationery factory, and he finally stood out from more than 200 people and became a salesman in the stationery factory.
Chen Huxiong knew in his heart that this might be the last stop in his struggle outside, so he worked extra hard!
Get up at 5 o'clock every morning, wait at 10 o'clock in the evening at the door of the guest's house, a set of stationery in your hand will not leave your hand, do not miss any opportunity to sell stationery.
two
In the process of being a salesman, Chen Huxiong found that the stationery industry is relatively stable and just needed. On the one hand, it is the needs of students, on the other hand, it is the needs of the office, and it does not deteriorate and does not rot, it has been focused on this industry, and the first bucket of gold can also be said to have started from Xinhua Bookstore.
Cultivate your own new harvest!
An old lady saw that Chen Huxiong was real, so she bought 20 ballpoint pens and 50 erasers as a New Year gift for her grandson.
This gave Chen Huxiong enough confidence, and since then he has been unable to receive anything, and his sales performance has risen steadily.
So from 1989, he plunged into the stationery industry, a person to bear 40% of the total sales of the factory, from the salesman to the stationery sales agent, as well as the national general agent of the stationery brand, agent some stationery in South Korea and Taiwan, in the stationery factory for 8 consecutive years won the sales champion, probably achieved an annual trade volume of two or three hundred million.
Also, at that time, students had a great demand for stationery, and there was also a large market for office supplies.
Compared with flower food, stationery does not deteriorate and does not rot, in case it cannot be sold, there will not be much loss in the hand. At that time, Xinhua Bookstore was mainly engaged in books and teaching aids, and audio-visual products and stationery were the tertiary industry. Imported stationery materials are relatively scarce, mainly based on domestic stationery.
Therefore, Chen Huxiong decided to act as an agent for stationery products in South Korea and Taiwan, and then wholesale the stationery to Xinhua bookstores across the country, thus earning the first pot of gold.
In 1997, Chen Huxiong ushered in a turning point in his life: due to the Asian financial crisis, many factories of foreign stationery suppliers have closed down, and McMeco, the most influential of his agency brands, has not been able to escape the fate of bankruptcy.
The failure of the upstream made Chen Huxiong have to think: if he is still in this line, he can only go upstream to open a factory, or he can open a retail store downstream.
After weighing it over and over again, he decided to set up a pen-making factory in Shanghai, named Chenguang, starting from the birthplace of old pens such as Shanghai, Hero, and Immortality.
three
In July 1999, Chen Huxiong rented 6 acres of land in Fengxian, Shanghai, built a factory, and Chenguang Stationery was born.
At that time, the production of ballpoint pens is not a simple matter, to know that a small pen to go through more than 40 processes to make, although there are many years of sales experience in the stationery factory, but Chen Huxiong for stationery production is still only a layman.
Chen Huxiong hired several experts from the Shanghai Pen Factory as executives at that time, and he himself learned to do it.
At the beginning of the business, due to lack of experience, Chenguang's first batch of 10,000 sets of pens worth 300,000 yuan had the problem of loose pen heads, Chen Huxiong did not say that he destroyed them on the spot, and at the same time lost the other party 300,000 yuan in liquidated damages. After that, Chen Huxiong and the experts stayed up three nights, and finally conquered the key technology of the pen head and delivered the product on schedule.
Later, in order to overcome a technical problem, it was necessary to invite a retired technical teacher, Chen Huxiong did not hesitate to go to the teacher's house to work as a maid, and finally moved the teacher Fu and decided to assist Chen Huxiong.
The technical problems have been solved, and after mass production, Chen Huxiong is best at sales! At the beginning, Chen Huxiong mainly played the low-priced brand - "the price is only 1/3 of the peer", but he did not expect that the effect was not good, and the factory could only barely maintain it after two years.
Chen Huxiong felt that this would not work, so he resolutely adjusted his strategy, on the one hand, he adjusted the leadership team, and he personally went into battle, on the other hand, he expanded the land and used large-scale production to increase production. After the adjustment, the company sold more than 2 million sets of products a year, and M&G began to occupy a place in the stationery industry.
In this process, Chen Huxiong is bigger and stronger with the brand name of "Sino-Korean Chenguang".
At that time, the young generation was immersed in the atmosphere of Hahan-Ha-Ri, and Chen Huxiong used the word "Korea" to rub the edge of the ball to attract students. It was not until later, when HaHan's aura gradually receded, that the word "Hahan" was removed and became today's morning light.
shop
All along, "Morning Light" has quietly lurked around the school, streets and alleys, community supermarkets and other inconspicuous places, muffled and made a fortune. In China, it is difficult to find a post-90s and post-00s who have not used M&G stationery.
As the business became bigger and bigger, Chen Huxiong also pulled his twin brothers and sisters in, expanded the factory area for large-scale production, and grasped the output and quality at the same time, not forgetting the importance of word of mouth.
Since then, Chen Huxiong has made products dead and deeply cultivated channels, allowing M&G stationery to create a "M&G miracle" in the industry with an annual growth rate of more than 40%; reflected in the capital market, M&G has been given the significance of crossing the economic cycle and resisting market fluctuations.
Since its listing in 2015, Chenguang Stationery's stock price has soared at a doubling rate every year, with a cumulative increase of more than 1154%, and the latest market value is 84.581 billion yuan, and Chen Huxiong has also become a "stationery king" worth tens of billions.
After more than 20 years of development, M&G has now become the largest manufacturer of neutral pens in Asia, with an annual output of more than 5 billion light neutral pens, ranking first in the Chinese stationery market.
However, unlike the capital market's pursuit of M&G stationery, consumers have directly "scolded" M&G stationery on the hot search due to product quality problems.
Behind the richest man in stationery, on the one hand, there is a growing business, and on the other hand, there are more and more bad reviews.
A typical example is that Chenguang was "scolded" on the Zhihu hot search list before. In the answer of the highest vote, netizens used Chenguang's quick-drying neutral pen to write on the paper that Chenguang claimed to be "not easy to seep ink on the back", and the result was that the ink on the back of the paper was obvious.
"Only increase the price, do not improve the quality", has become the point where netizens complain about Chenguang stationery.
Relying on a strong marketing system and product design capabilities, the three sisters and brothers of the Chen family sold M&G stationery all over the country, and their commercial success was beyond doubt.
But in the long run, product quality is the cornerstone of enterprise development. More than 80 billion m&G stationery should also listen to the voice of consumers while running forward.
Small business, can also make a lot of money, rather than in the tall "phoenix tail" industry squeezed a crushed bone, it is better to be down-to-earth in the "chicken head" industry, to do small things to the extreme, as well as to win the grand slam of life!
In a secular sense, M&G Stationery is undoubtedly successful, but in the present and future of Generation Z, this is far from enough.
Even if the mass market is thoroughly eaten, if you can't grasp the more personalized high-end market, under the background of the not very impressive growth rate of the new population, the long-term plan of M&G Stationery is likely to fall into embarrassment.
Resources:
Municipal boundaries "Chaoshan three sisters and brothers sold ballpoint pens to earn 50 billion",
Financial materials "Chen Huxiong, Chen Guang Stationery: Make a Good Pen Chinese Yourself",
36Kr Pro "There are 79 billion business experiences hidden in the commissary, and the muffler of chenguang stationery makes a fortune",
Financial sharp eye "M&G stationery market value of 65 billion: is it the light of domestic goods, or the plagiarism giant? 》、
Feng LunFeng Ma Niu"Chen Huxiong, Chen Guang Stationery: To achieve 10,000 meters deep in the industry field of one meter wide",
Today's business opportunity hui "he failed the college entrance examination 3 times, began to work as a salesman at the age of 19, and now relies on stationery to sell 6.3 billion yuan a year"