Chen Ailian
With the development of society, the workplace elite is no longer exclusive to men, and more and more female entrepreneurs have also occupied a place in the business field. Well-known are Huawei Vice Chairman Meng Wanzhou, as well as electrical appliance giant Dong Mingzhu.
In the 1970s, a little girl named Chen Ailian "bang box" drove a tractor, but in the next few decades with a motorcycle tire, established her own business empire.
This has to make people wonder how a woman with such a beautiful name has become such a strong business woman.
Female tractor driver in 1976
Chen Ailian was born in Xinchang, Zhejiang Province, to a father of a veteran and a mother of a women cadre.
Perhaps looking at the image of her father's soldiers since childhood, and the idea that women in that era could stand up to half the sky, Chen Ailian has implemented the performance that women in a new era should have since childhood.
In addition to her, there are four sisters in the family. While the other sisters jumped on the leather bands and flipped the rope, she was like a boy, climbing high and low, going up the tree to pick peaches.
And her parents are always troubled by her tossing nature, and always feel that she is a boy's heart. However, she said with a straight face: "Now the state pays attention to equality between men and women, and I am only actively practicing it."
Although her personality is bold and active, her grades are always excellent. In 1975, Chen Ailian graduated from high school, and for some reasons did not go to college, so she had to go home to work as a farmer.
Her character, no matter what she does, as long as she does it, she must do her best. In the production team, she does not feel that she is inferior to men, works seriously, and bears hardships and stands hard work.
She also often unites the masses and helps the members of the society, and everyone likes her. A year later, because of her outstanding performance, she was elected commander of the militia company.
By 1976, in order to reduce the burden on the peasants and improve labor efficiency, the state allocated tractors to each commune. At that time, Chen Ailian's commune was also allocated a car, and when she knew it, she immediately said that she wanted to be a trailer driver.
At that time, there were few cars in a county, and the tractors in every village were protected like treasures, and the tractor driver was a glorious and rare post.
After she returned home, she happily told her parents that she was going to drive a tractor, and her father was very angry when he heard it, he thought that Chen Ailian was usually naughty, but this was related to future development.
The behemoth of the tractor, where she can drive a girl, and he has always wanted Chen Ailian to work at the supply and marketing agency.
Chen Ailian did not give up because of her father's persuasion, she said that she moved her mother to help persuade her father, saying that now is an era when everyone is equal, and women can stand up to half the sky.
The anger on his father's face gradually disappeared, but he did not let go, he felt that Chen Ailian might come back on his own after suffering a little.
Unexpectedly, Chen Ailian was not afraid of suffering at all. After applying for a name, Chen Ailian came to the training site early the next morning, looking at this big guy, she liked it very much in her heart and made up her mind to drive it.
During the training, she was studious, bold and careful, and practiced when she had time. Others think that women have little strength, it will be difficult to operate, and it is very hard to drive in the wind and sun.
Chen Ailian did not listen to these, every day on time to study, and soon can get started, open better than men, everyone has put aside their prejudices, and admired her in their hearts.
After the training, Chen Ailian undoubtedly won the first place, but the quota was finally given to a veteran.
This made Chen Ailian very unconvinced, she found the person in charge, wanted to fight for herself again. The head of the commune saw her coming over angrily, and without waiting for her to speak, he took out a document from the drawer.
It turned out that the tractor driver had already selected a person before the training, but the leader saw that she was doing well and also left a seat for her in the county.
Hearing this news, Chen Ailian became down-to-earth. She took the document home to show her parents, and these days her father also saw Chen Ailian's determination and efforts, and he also felt in his heart that his daughter did not lose any man.
Seeing Chen Ailian's happy face, he patted her on the shoulder and encouraged her to work well. So Chen Ailian happily drove every day through the rural fields of Xinchang County.
Boldly transform textile mills
Times were moving so fast that by 1986, the tractors that had been loved for her were phased out, and she could no longer drive tractors.
Later, Chen Ailian was introduced to work in xinchang new textile equipment factory, where she also met her husband Wu Liangding, who was the director of the factory at the time.
Chen Ailian is extremely willing to endure hardships in her work, and she can speak eloquently and drive. Wu Liangding originally just wanted to take more care of her in her career and promote her, and Chen Ailian also lived up to her expectations and became a logistics director and workshop director.
However, the two slowly developed feelings in getting along, so under the blessing of relatives and friends of both sides, the two got married as they wished.
At that time, Chen Ailian's family was happy and prosperous, and she did not have to work hard anymore. But Chen Ailian did not want to live such a plain and stable life, she preferred to create a vast career of her own.
So the husband and wife worked together to develop their own factory, and later after Chen Ailian's market investigation and visit, it was found that the textile industry has been saturated after years of development.
Although the textile industry will not be eliminated, only some enterprises can develop into large-scale enterprises.
Their factory did not have a big advantage in the same industry, and with the change of time, her and Wu Liangding's factory may not be able to survive, and she does not just want the factory to operate normally. What she hopes is: "Since you do it, you will become bigger and stronger." ”
In order to make the factory better developed, in 1992, they changed the textile factory to "Zhongbao Industry". At the same time, she is also pursuing multifaceted development.
Because of her love for machinery since childhood, she has different feelings for cars, and has become proficient in driving many types of cars, so she was recommended by the board of directors to become the director of an aluminum alloy pipe factory.
At that time, Chen Ailian could not take care of the two factories at the same time, so Wu Liangding handed over the factory to a manager to manage, but due to improper management, the company's capital chain had serious problems.
Of course, Chen Ailian can not sit idly by, she dealt with the relevant personnel, and communicated with her husband how to completely transform the textile factory.
She has been the director of the aluminum alloy pipe factory for a while, and with a keen business acumen, she perceives that aluminum alloy has great prospects in the wheel industry, so she decided to change the factory to an aluminum alloy factory.
Because the funds of the textile factory were broken, and neither of them had any money in their hands, Chen Ailian went to the bank to borrow 500,000 yuan, rented a dilapidated and abandoned factory building, and began to develop their products.
So in 1994 they founded Wanfeng Aote Holding Group. In the early days of entrepreneurship, she was exposed to a new industry, and Chen Ailian and her team were all groping forward.
However, after successfully developing their own products, Chen Ailian and her husband have signed a large number of orders with the contacts accumulated over the years.
However, in 1995, the factory found a batch of products worth more than 600,000 yuan defective, and Chen Ailian recalled the problem products at the first time and remade them.
This was a big loss at the stage when they were just operating, but their dedication also allowed Wanfeng Group to gain the trust of consumers.
In just five years, Wanfeng brand has won the first place in four indicators such as "market share, quality satisfaction rate, purchase rate and comprehensive competitiveness".
Chen Ailian was not satisfied with the domestic market, and she began to expand the company.
The sale of low-priced auto parts has attracted many foreign enterprises to cooperate, because the product quality is excellent, and there is a very good reputation in China, so it has also successfully opened up the foreign market.
During this period, with the rapid development of China's economy, the automotive industry also entered a period of rapid development, and from 1994 to 2006, Chen Ailian acquired twelve consecutive enterprises.
And led Wanfeng Group to achieve capital, management, talent, technology, brand five aspects of internationalization, its Wanfeng Aowei Steam Wheel Co., Ltd. was also successfully listed, they are also the first domestic aluminum wheel industry listed enterprises.
Soon, Chen Ailian was successfully elected as one of the sixth female masters in 2007 at the Top Ten Outstanding Women's Congress of China held every two years.
Chen Ailian also knows that the achievements of the enterprise can have as it is now, which is the joint efforts of all employees. So in order to thank the employees for their efforts, she ordered a hundred BMW to reward the backbone of the team who worked tirelessly and hard in their posts.
And this move has also made the local people talk about whether they should buy a BMW and give it to employees as a reward. In addition to the discussion, they all marveled at the size of the boss's hand.
Expansion of the business landscape
Chen Ailian began to continue to realize the optimization and transformation of the company when the company was on the right track.
In 2012, Wanfeng Aote was already the world's largest production base for automotive aluminum alloy wheels, and was already the leader in this industry in terms of scale, technology and market share.
However, in her opinion, Wanfeng can still do better, so they set foot and looked for companies worth acquiring for better development for the company to merge.
They adhere to three principles in M&A:
The first is to "do something, do not do something", insist on only doing what you are good at;
Second, the M&A target is a high-quality asset of more than 2 billion yuan, which must be a global leader in the industry and have the core technology of the industry;
Third, the M&A target must be reasonably priced and be able to achieve a win-win situation.
Chen Ailian later said: "As long as the timing is right, we will continue to consolidate our overseas territory in the form of mergers and acquisitions in the future." ”
Through multi-channel investigation, it was finally decided to acquire Canadian magnesium retin, which coincided with the difficulties in operation and had a very strong willingness to sell.
In the bidding, only 3 domestic companies participated, but in the end, Wanfeng's strength signed a contract to acquire magnesium redding for 1.53 billion yuan.
The acquisition is not optimistic about the industry, but Chen Meilian does not think so, and she has more expectations for magnesium.
She values more than just temporary interests, she pays attention to the value of the company, and magnesium redding has a market share of more than 65% in North America for automotive magnesium alloy parts.
Magnesium Retin has maintained long-term cooperative relations with Tesla, Porsche, Audi and other high-end cars in the world. Its commercial value is far undervalued by the market.
The acquisition also once again proved Chen Ailian's business vision, less than a year after the acquisition, the profitability of magnesium reding highlighted, its profitability and operating indicators far exceeded expectations, in 2015 profitability has increased by nearly 10 times.
It is also because of the extreme success of this acquisition that Wanfeng Aote sees the development prospects of the industry farther. Previously, robots have been a hot topic of public discussion, and Chen Ailian naturally watched the continuous rise of the robot industry.
After a period of research, in March 2016, it spent $302 million to acquire paslin, the global leader in welding robots.
With the expansion of the scale of enterprises and the penetration of enterprises into the industry field, Chen Ailian has not been limited to research and development on the ground. She has been in the aerospace sector since 2015, developing light aircraft for leisure and business travel.
From 2015 to 2017, Wanfeng successively acquired DFC Aviation School of Canada, Czech DF/FM aircraft, and canada, Austrian diamond aircraft and other well-known overseas general aviation enterprises.
Through cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Wanfeng has cooperated with international high-end aircraft companies to establish a whole industry chain platform with aircraft manufacturing as the core, covering airport construction, general aviation operations, etc., and producing the "Diamond" series of light sports aircraft with Wanfeng's independent intellectual property rights among the world's top three.
Soon after, a 5.5 square kilometer "characteristic aviation town" was built in Zhejiang Province, and it was included in the first batch of "national general aviation industry comprehensive demonstration zone", becoming a leader in the field of domestic general aviation.
At the 12th China International Space Expo, Wanfeng Group participated in the exhibition with 9 aircraft, and successfully signed more than 500 intentional orders with its professional flight capabilities and safety guarantees.
Through her understanding in recent years, Chen Ailian sees that there is still a lot of space and development in the domestic aviation market, and has always said that she is looking forward to competing with the top international aircraft industry.
At present, China has less than 3,000 general aviation aircraft, which is a big gap with the 220,000 in the United States. In the eyes of Wanfeng people, the gap is also an opportunity.
Chen Ailian said: "With the continuous opening of low-altitude airspace, this industry will fully erupt, we adhere to the large transportation field, the development of aviation high-end manufacturing industry, which not only responds to the call of the country to vigorously develop the general aviation industry, but also in line with the internal logic of Wanfeng Group's own transformation and upgrading." ”
Wanfeng people's public welfare and undertakings have developed in an all-round way
Chen Ailian started from scratch at the beginning and now has six subordinate companies, becoming a big boss worth hundreds of billions. She knows that it is not easy to operate the enterprise, and she also cherishes the various experiences that have developed along the way.
In the face of the reporter's interview, she looked exquisitely dressed in red, sat on a chair and smiled, saying: "My personal fate and the fate of the country are inseparable. Without the reform and opening up of the motherland, there would be no Wanfeng present. ”
Therefore, she took it as her duty to strengthen the country and enrich the people, and implemented social actions. In order to help the special action of "100 enterprises and 100 villages and eliminate weak villages", Wanfeng Group, as a local enterprise, became one of the first enterprises to participate in the "village-enterprise pairing".
In 2011, Chen Ailian personally invested 5 million yuan to create the province's first "Beautiful Countryside Construction Fund".
For the elderly over 60 years old in the twin village, kindergarten children, students admitted to university, and couples who are happily married, the "longevity gold", "excellent study gold" and "happiness gold" are provided every year.
In 2016, Chen Ailian took the lead in donating 10 million yuan for the "five-water co-governance" in Xinchang, Zhejiang. In recent years, Wanfeng has invested more than 100 million yuan in supporting new rural construction, education, sports, cultural undertakings and other aspects. Won the honor of "Institutional Donation Award" of the 5th Zhejiang Charity Award.
The girl who came from the countryside experienced the ups and downs along the way. Now she has become a female entrepreneur who can stand alone and is worth hundreds of billions.
As a teenager, she always had an inexhaustible enthusiasm and vitality, stretching out her arms to provide shelter for others as far as she could.
Resources
[1] Qianjiang Evening News, November 28, 2018, "Chen Ailian: Do a good job in manufacturing, technology is the core"
[2] Zhejiang Daily, December 26, 2018, "Chen Ailian, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Wanfeng Group: Without Reform and Opening Up, There Would Be No Wanfeng"
[3] Philanthropy Times, March 12, 2021, "Chen Ailian's Rural Revitalization Complex"