Yang Hui, chairman of the China Olympic Curling Club Photo/Reporter Liang Chen
Business opportunities
On January 8, 2017, winter marched to 9, the coldest time of the year arrived as promised. Yang Hui had just buried her husband. Before the tears dried, they were like the abyss.
More than a week ago, her husband, Wei Deguang, died suddenly of acute angioma rupture, leaving behind the 3,100-square-meter China Olympic Curling Center with six professional curling tracks. Located in Beijing's Huairou District, the latter was once the largest and most extensive curling hall in Asia, as well as a training ground for the national curling team and the national wheelchair curling team.
However, the cost of building and owning this "behemoth" is heavy debt. In 2016, the 12th year that the venue was put into use, the company barely managed to climb out of the predicament of not being able to make ends meet, but the 30 million yuan loaned from the bank during the construction of the venue, the principal and interest have rolled to more than two hundred million. The year is approaching, sending away her husband, paying employees salaries and year-end bonuses, Yang Hui's account is only 10,000 yuan left.
Before selling houses and borrowing money to invest in curling halls, Wei Deguang, who studied law, maintained an undefeated record in project investment. In Yang Hui's eyes, her husband is good at finding projects and setting up projects. Whether it was bringing Red Bull Drink to China or creating reignwood Golf Club in Beijing, Wei Deguang played a key role in it, and his keen and courageous courage once earned him a huge financial return.
In the view of Wei Deguang, curling projects should be the same.
In November 1995, in Montreal, Canada, young Wei Deguang experienced curling for the first time on the ice track of a community curling hall. Bringing him was Yang Hui, a Beijing girl. Yang Hui was studying computer science in Canada at the time. Compared with Yang Hui, who is keen on sports, Wei Deguang is tall, not good at sports, and has fallen several times during the experience, but his sense of business smell has been mobilized because of this.
At that time, curling was a national sport in Canada. There are more than 1,200 curling venues across Canada, predominantly non-profit, with curling clubs in many communities. Clubs of all levels and tournaments of all levels have flourished canada's curling industry and curling culture.
The community curling hall in Montreal is a century old. The venue's lounge area displays trophies and medallions won by local clubs in national and international competitions, while the walls are covered with black-and-white and colour photographs. On the ice track, there are not only children and young people, but also middle-aged people and the elderly. Some are sliding and throwing pots, some are quickly wiping ice, and some are directing with gestures. There are almost no spectator seats in the museum, and more space is used for restaurants and bars.
In Wei Deguang's view, the culture and philosophy of curling is similar to the chess game that Chinese is good at, focusing on strategizing. At the same time, curling is not a confrontational sport, the physical requirements for participants are not as high as figure skating, ice hockey and other sports, adapt to a wide range of ages, and it is an Olympic sport. He is optimistic about the sport's market potential in China.
In 1995, curling was still an unfamiliar concept to Chinese. That year, under the impetus of the World Curling Federation, Harbin held the first curling workshop in the history of Chinese sports. It was five years later that China's first curling delegation was formed in Harbin. The untrained team quickly emerged and finished fourth in an international curling event in Japan.
In the year when the Chinese delegation rushed into the world curling circle like a "dark horse" (2000), with the support of the Beijing Sports Bureau, Wei Deguang invested 28 million yuan to buy a piece of land in Huairou, planning to build China's first curling hall in the form of a curling club and a resort.
Sleepy
Grand planning burns money far more than you think.
In 2002, when the civil foundation construction was nearing completion, due to insufficient funds for the project, the design, supervision and accounting teams all left the site. At that time, Yang Hui had left the bank to join her husband's project. In order to avoid the stagnation or even the end of the project, Yang Hui had to teach himself design and accounting and shoulder the heavy responsibility. By 2004, his own funds were hollowed out, and Wei Deguang borrowed 30 million yuan from the bank to finally complete the decoration of the venue.
In terms of project input, Yang Hui "never dragged his feet". Witnessing that her husband has operated many projects, Yang Hui knows that if any project is to succeed, it must go through the financing process. But neither husband nor wife expected that the "ice-breaking" road of the curling industry would be so difficult.
Curling halls are expensive to operate. Wei Deguang once introduced the construction process of the six curling lanes of the China Sports Olympic Curling Center to China Sports: "Each road, after laying the bottom cement, is a ground-in-place refrigeration equipment, these pipes will be S-shaped and evenly cover the entire track, and after the upper cement is formed, it will enter the stage of attacking the stronghold." Water it, but you can't wait for it to become ice, you have to measure it repeatedly before solidifying, calculate the height of the ice surface", "After the first layer of ice is formed, you must draw a line to fill the circle on it, make a standard track, and then pour the ice again after painting." In order to ensure that the ice surface is moist and delicate, it is also necessary to "walk through the water, the milk, and the high liquor again."
To support high costs, there must be a thriving market. After the completion of the venue, the curling hall did not open immediately, and Wei Deguang was waiting for an opportunity.
In 2005, the Pan Pacific Curling Junior Championship was held in Beijing. With the encouragement of the Curling Association, Wei Deguang took over the tournament. The subsidy was limited, and in order to make up for the event, Wei Deguang and Yang Hui sold the last apartment in the family. The children were left to their parents to help take care of, and the couple moved to the venue to live, cleaning up the office room into a bedroom. The winter night is cold, reluctant to turn on the central air conditioning, the two rely on electric heaters and electric blankets for heating.
Before the completion of the China Olympic Curling Center, curling teams could only borrow the skating training hall in Harbin for training, and usually did not have the opportunity to go to ice until after 10 p.m. when the speed skating and figure skating teams had finished training. Since the end of 2005, the Chinese Olympic Games have become the official "home" of the curling national team. Wang Bingyu, former world curling champion and director of curling events in the Sports Department of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, was one of the first team members to settle in.
In the stadium designed and built by themselves, Wei Deguang and Yang Hui witnessed the rapid growth of the "children". In 2009, the Chinese women's curling team stood at the top of history, defeating the Winter Olympic champion Sweden at the World Women's Curling Championship and winning the world curling championship for the first time.
Behind the remarkable achievements, the Chinese Sports Olympic Games have been unable to make ends meet for many years. The summer electricity cost of the venue alone is close to 100,000 yuan in a single day. At that time, curling, as an "unpopular" project, had limited funds. When she won the World Championships in 2009, the monthly salary of the national curling women's team members was only about 1600 yuan. For venues, it is difficult to cover daily operations with intermittent electricity subsidies alone.
In order to alleviate the financial pressure, the China Sports Olympic Curling Sports Center was officially opened to the public in 2007. Allowing more people to approach curling is Wei Deguang's original intention to create the Sino-Olympic Gymnasium, but unfortunately, the improvement of national awareness of curling is far less than expected.
In the second half of 2010, after the curling national team, which had been training in Huairou Hall for more than four years, moved to the newly built curling rink of the Harbin Sports Bureau, Wei Deguang faced more urgent market development pressure. In addition to doing some team business, they began to experiment with the combination of sports and education. The initial order came from Huairou District, which was subsidized by the Education Commission. Tens of thousands of students from more than a dozen primary and secondary schools in Huairou District have received curling training here, including Han Yu, the captain of the Chinese women's curling team at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
However, the low-price strategy adopted in order to cultivate the market still fails to solve the problem of profitability. The bustle of welcoming customers every day sets off the bitterness of loss-making operations. Under heavy pressure, Wei Deguang often smoked four boxes of cigarettes a day.
The meaning of persistence
After Wei Deguang's death, his relatives and friends around him almost one-sidedly persuaded Yang Hui to give up. Witnessing the difficult operation of the curling hall for more than ten years, it is difficult for others to understand the meaning of continuing to persist. Waking up from a brief dazedness, Yang Hui decided to "fight for breath", "At this age, it is better to have another one, it is better to change your thinking and continue to do the unfinished business." ”
The first four months, such as surviving in the cracks.
Sorrow and joy are not connected, and the comfort of others seems weak. During that time, she no longer took the initiative to contact any friends, just buried her head in work. After moving back to his parents' house from the curling hall, in order to save on fuel costs, Yang Hui commuted to public transportation. Once the armor of the work is removed, the pain and pressure are stitched. On the bus and subway, Yang Hui was left in tears. Sleep became a luxury. Melatonin can only last for two or three hours. When she couldn't sleep, she was praying. Only prayer can help her calm her heart and sort out her thoughts.
Previously, Yang Hui was responsible for the company's internal management, including finance, procurement and maintenance. Nowadays, to support the company, the most important thing is to pave the market. In addition to continuing to receive training from the Beijing Wheelchair Curling Team and the National Wheelchair Curling Training Team, Yang Hui has successfully expanded the curling training business of primary and secondary schools in Beijing to five districts and further promoted it to university campuses. In addition to training, she also actively explores diversified profit directions, such as venue construction and maintenance, curling equipment and derivatives agency, translation and introduction of basic training materials, etc., and strengthens the connection with international curling clubs.
In addition to market development, another key shift is in business strategy. Yang Hui is deeply aware that in the past few years, "I have not made any money at a loss", which proves that low prices alone cannot drive the market. On the basis of returning pricing to basic business logic, she turned to "project-based projects", enhancing the consumer experience through additional products or services, and thus enriching the commercial added value of curling halls.
During that time, because of how profitable it was to open his mouth and shut his mouth, Yang Hui was teased and "became tacky". But she didn't think so, doing business should be pragmatic, no profit, talk about the vision. In May 2017, four months after taking over the company, Yang Hui came out of the storm and led the company to achieve profitability.
By the end of 2018, the company's business had been largely straightened out and new projects were on the agenda. That Year's Spring Festival, Yang Hui and his son spent in San Francisco. One ordinary night, both mother and son dreamed of Wei Deguang.
In Yang Hui's dream, her husband's face was calm, no longer the look of near collapse due to the pressure of funds and debt, as if he had returned to the appearance of the two when they first fell in love. Yang Hui wrapped his arms around her husband's neck and wouldn't let him go, and wanted to take him around the company. She whispered to her husband in her dream, "You see, now that the company has made money, I have a way to solve the problem of debt." The conditions of our family are also better, I have bought a house again, and we have our own home again. You come back..." After quietly following Yang Hui around, Wei Deguang didn't say a word and disappeared into the dream.
It was the first time Yang Hui had dreamed of him in the two years since her husband's death. After this "farewell", she felt that she could finally "let go".
At the beginning of 2019, because it could not find a suitable development partner, the Zhongtiao Curling Center in Huairou was forced to put on a public auction due to debt problems. A year later, the transfer was completed, and more than ten years of ups and downs came to an end.
However, the "curling fire" bred by the Chinese Sports Olympics was preserved. At the end of 2018, the new China Olympic Curling Sports Center was inaugurated at the Ditan Gymnasium in Dongcheng District, with three curling tracks that meet Olympic standards and a total area of 1,600 square meters. After the closure of the Huairou Pavilion, the related business continued on the new ice track.
The new building is located underground. On both sides of the staircase leading to the venue, dozens of tan wooden framed photographs are posted on the walls, documenting the moments of the team's training and competition. Faces that are either focused or smiling are reminiscent of the young man who fell to the ground many times but looked up and smiled at the cozy community curling hall in Montreal more than two decades ago.
"You say his career didn't work out?" Yang Hui sat in the office of the Chinese Sports Olympic Games, his eyes were crystal clear, his eyes were determined, "I said it, and it is very brilliant, it is his sincere efforts to promote the national curling team to the Olympic podium." Human achievements are not only reflected in money. ”
Yang Hui's son Wei Mingchen is one of the coaches of the China Olympic Curling Club Photo/Reporter Liang Chen
Wait for spring
The entrepreneurial ups and downs that Yang Hui's family has gone through are the epitome of the development of curling in the domestic market. Since curling was introduced to China in the 1990s, China's performance in international competitions has fluctuated, but the curling industry has never been able to get rid of its weak development.
"For normal training, an ice track (Note: 44.5 meters long and 4.32 meters wide) can only accommodate eight people, and the characteristics of the project determine that it cannot do mass market. Although snooker has successfully taken to the streets in China, the ice rink and the table are still very different. In Yang Hui's view, the high operating costs of private curling halls and the failure to find a breakthrough point in market development are the root causes of the dilemma.
The past few years have been an important period of opportunity for the development of ice and snow sports in China. On July 31, 2015, Beijing and Zhangjiakou won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Positive market expectations once drove the investment boom in the ice and snow industry. Yang Hui still remembers the lively scene of financing the ice and snow industry around 2016. However, if the industry wants to make great progress through the outlet, it must have sustained profitability, otherwise capital will come and go quickly.
Yang Hui believes that most of the ice and snow projects that are relatively leading in industrialization and commercialization have found a breakthrough point in market development. Ice hockey and figure skating are competitive and ornamental, while enjoying the pull of celebrity or championship effects. The ski project is included in the concept of big cultural tourism, which is deeply integrated with the tourism and real estate industries. Taking the Taiwu Ski Town, which was selected as the reception office of the Winter Olympics, as an example, the report of Global Travel News shows that in 2021, the Taiwu Ski Town will open 6 hotels, of which ski revenue accounts for 40%, hotel revenue accounts for 40%, and the remaining 20% is catering revenue.
However, at present, many domestic ice and snow projects are still in the early stage of development, on the one hand, they have not yet achieved stable profitability and need continuous cost investment; on the other hand, the "cake" has not become larger, and there has been vicious competition and other internal consumption phenomena in the industry. In particular, the outbreak and recurrence of the epidemic have also trapped the ice and snow industry in the stage of industrial climbing, and faced the challenge of upstream and downstream business contraction.
In Yang Hui's view, with the approaching of the Winter Olympics, the last round of policy cycle has entered the end, ice and snow projects, especially niche directions, while trying to explore the individual customer market, their survival and development still depend on the continuous guidance and support of policies. She has always maintained a cautious optimism about the future.
On February 4, 2022, Chinese athletes will welcome the home of the Winter Olympics for the first time. Yang Hui looks forward to witnessing the team she has accompanied and watched for many years at the event site to move towards more and more enthusiastic eyes, "We have been waiting for a spring, and hope that this spring can come." ”