Cover news reporter Shen Mengyun intern Zhang Yifan
"When I first started my business, I didn't have a clear profit model, I just thought it was a good traffic entrance, and there was no direction for how to make money..."
In 2015, in the track of smart parking, many gold diggers poured into this industry, and the Stop Ruyi Smart Parking Cloud Platform founded by Wang Xiaohua was also established in this year. Today, after the industry reshuffle, there are not many companies that still stick to this track.
From "intelligent hardware" to the field of smart parking, in 5 years, the parking business of Park Ruyi has covered Beijing, Chengdu, Kunming and other places, with nearly 1,000 cooperative parking lots and more than 130,000 parking spaces under management and operation.
At the same time, they also began to use the parking business as a traffic entrance, relying on diversion to achieve incremental operation.
Stop Ruyi founder Wang Xiaohua
Borrow money to start a business
In the past 20 years of entrepreneurship, Wang Xiaohua has become an "entrepreneurial veteran". Why embark on the field of smart parking, we must start from our previous experience.
In 1998, Wang Xiaohua, who graduated from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, entered a foreign-funded enterprise to engage in communication testing. During this period, he discovered the business opportunities in the smart hardware market, and this young man who had just entered the society resolutely decided to set his sights on entrepreneurship.
Wang Xiaohua, whose family is not rich, raised money everywhere in the early stage of entrepreneurship, collected 500,000 registered capital from three classmates, and embarked on the road of entrepreneurship as the smallest shareholder.
In 2000, Wang Xiaohua's first venture was in the field of intelligent hardware, helping the prison system and the banking system to make security facilities. Wang Xiaohua, who started his business for the first time, caught up with the development of private enterprises, repaid all the loans in just one year, and re-planned and acquired shares with the company, becoming the main controlling person of the company.
In 9 years, the company's annual sales have grown from more than 1 million to more than 90 million, and the scale has expanded nearly 100 times, Wang Xiaohua's initial entrepreneurship has undoubtedly achieved great success, and he has also accumulated entrepreneurial experience.
But the good times are not long, from 2009, as e-commerce occupies the market, smart hardware prices are gradually transparent, traditional industries are squeezed, Wang Xiaohua's company performance began to decline, and the profits obtained simply could not support the company of hundreds of people to continue to develop. Therefore, he "broke his wrist" to reduce the team's more than 100 people to only a dozen people.
At the same time, in the case of rapid changes in the market environment, the company must transform and re-find a path suitable for its own development. From 2009 to 2015, he tried paths such as energy conservation and environmental protection and industrial automation, but the transformation was not very successful.
Discover parking pain points and cut into the field of smart parking
In 2015, Wang Xiaohua, who had repeatedly failed on the road of transformation, came to Chengdu, and he suddenly found that a large number of parking lots in Chengdu still use manual parking fees, not even license plate recognition, most of which manually copy small strips or swipe IC cards to enter and exit the parking lot, and the traffic efficiency is very low.
"Why can't I introduce intelligent and information-based parking products into Chengdu?" Wang Xiaohua once again found a business opportunity. So in 2015, the Ruyi Smart Parking Cloud Platform was established.
Talking about the origin of the name "Stop Ruyi", Wang Xiaohua explained, "We are a traditional Chinese company, when we were ready to cut into the transportation industry, we wanted to solve the traditional parking difficulties, so we took a name with this meaning, and the translation of 'Stop Ruyi' into English is just Easy Parking." ”
"From 2015 to 2017, it was almost a constant 'trial and error' process.". Wang Xiaohua revealed that he knows that smart parking is a good traffic entrance, but he has not found a clear profit model. Initially, I wanted to do "B to B", upgrade the smart hardware of the parking lot, and then sell the hardware and software to customers in need. Unexpectedly, most parking lots do not have a very strong demand for renovation, so there is a lot of resistance when they first start to expand their business. In addition, at that time, various Internet parking companies in the market emerged, and due to the serious homogenization of technology and fierce competition, the company urgently needed to change its operating model.
Turn the parking business into a traffic entrance, and rely on diversion to achieve incremental operation
The attentive Wang Xiaohua observed that the parking lot under some office buildings cannot be filled at full capacity 24 hours a day, and many parking spaces are vacant after the staff return home at night.
Therefore, in 2016-2017, Wang Xiaohua started from market demand and found a transformation path suitable for the company's development in blind promotion. He decided to do the "B to B to C" business, switched the company's business to "parking lot operation", and made profits in the form of "staggered peak parking", "shared parking spaces", "traffic realization", etc., that is, free transformation of parking lots in exchange for idle time operation rights, and then profit sharing.
From 2017 to 2019, with the construction and promotion and application of the "Internet + parking lot" platform, these three business chains have promoted the rapid development of the company's business, and there are only dozens of parking lots in Chengdu from the beginning, to more than 700 parking lots operated online in the country, and the parking spaces operated by the platform management have also reached 130,000, when the traffic is driven, the company's revenue has also increased significantly, and it also provides a very convenient way for citizens to park.
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic this year has also caused a huge impact on the parking industry. Wang Xiaohua revealed that the company's business volume in February fell by 92.5% compared with January. But at the same time, they also found business opportunities again in this crisis, in fact, as early as before, they began to use traditional parking lots, smart parking transformation as traffic entrances, and then to the operation of the parking lot idle time period, online diversion operations and incremental operations to do traffic realization. After the epidemic, they have found new areas of expansion again, and are currently in the preparatory stage.
Today, the scope of operation of Shuyi is mainly in Beijing, Chengdu, Kunming and other cities, and it is expected to enter more cities next year, such as Xi'an, Wuhan, Nanjing, Chongqing and Zhengzhou.
Having sold a house to keep the company running, entrepreneurs must have a strong heart
Asked about the entrepreneurial veteran's label for himself, he looked back on his previous entrepreneurial experience, but it was difficult to find a word to describe himself, and finally sighed: "I feel that I can persist for so many years, relying on a strong heart." As an entrepreneur, if you can't get through the slightest difficulty, you are not suitable to be an entrepreneur Indeed, Wang Xiaohua also practiced this, and in 2017, when the company was in trouble, he even sold his house in Beijing to maintain the company's operation.
As an entrepreneurial veteran, Wang Xiaohua has almost tasted the bittersweet and bittersweet in entrepreneurship. He believes that for self-made private enterprises, the biggest difficulty is funds, many people are because of the shortage of funds, after taking 99 steps, fell in the last step.
Therefore, when it comes to the three major elements of entrepreneurial success, Wang Xiaohua does not hesitate to list "capital" in the first place, "capital, flexibility, integrity, I think this is a necessary element for a successful entrepreneur." In his view, first of all, we must find enough money to let the idea land; in addition, entrepreneurs must learn to be flexible and adjust their strategies according to changes in the market; the third point is that the character must be good, so that the surrounding partners will gather more and more.
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