Huaqiangbei's "second generation of cores" takes over: when the market is the craziest, "bet on a piece of material, and you can basically retire"

Core Phase

2024-05-16 14:57Posted in Shanghai Science and Technology Creators

The "second generation of cores" are starting to come back.

In recent years, there have been many more young people in the chip distribution market. Their WeChat avatars are young faces, slightly rusty quoting, pushing, looking for goods, and buying and selling chips. Sometimes overly polite, but full of life. In addition to the laymen who were attracted by the legend of Huaqiangbei's sudden wealth, there are also many "core second generation" whose parents are engaged in chip distribution.

Unlike most of the "self-made" generation, most of them are well-educated and have been trained in other industries.

Before, many people never thought of coming back to take over the business, and even deliberately avoided it, compared to the small counter in Huaqiangbei, the vast world outside seemed to be able to make a difference.

But eventually, they began to return.

"The return of the second generation" seems to be a happy start to Shuangwen, but the second generation of the core who returned to Huaqiangbei did not have a Shuangwen life.

01 "I never thought of returning to Huaqiangbei"

On the day Hong Xiangkai returned to Huaqiangbei, he was still wearing a shirt and leather shoes brought back from Hong Kong.

On the 6th floor of Huaqiang Plaza, in an inconspicuous corner, there are three colleagues sitting in it, the computer is a QQ chat interface, and Didi's voice sounds, this is the business he will take over.

It is impossible to say that there is no gap.

Hong Xiangkai's father came out to work early, came to Shenzhen from Shantou in the 80s of the last century, opened a garment factory, an electronics manufacturing factory, and made a supporting tool for the DVD player factory, and began to be a chip agent in the early 2000s, and it has been more than 20 years.

In his father's heart, working hard to make money is to give his children a better future. Therefore, he attaches great importance to the education of his children, and he is most proud of the fact that all three children in his family have been trained to become masters.

Hong Xiangkai lived up to his father's expectations and became a financial "elite" after graduating from the University of Hong Kong.

He works in the ICC Building, the tallest building in Hong Kong, with a beautiful sea view of Victoria Harbour outside the window, talking about tens of millions of projects every minute, and he didn't bother to look at the business of less than 10 million US dollars at that time.

After returning to Huaqiangbei, Hong Xiangkai still remembers the first time he went to deliver goods, and he was sent from Huaqiang to another market in ten minutes. When he came back, he asked his colleague, how much money could he make from that order just now?

Three bucks.

After speaking, my colleague continued with the work at hand: QQ contact demand, billing, going to the warehouse to pick up the goods, and going out to deliver the goods.

Working in the stall, it is difficult for you to tell the specific responsibilities of a colleague, a person here is an "assembly line", whoever takes the order will go to pick up the goods and then send them.

Before this, Hong Xiangkai only had a vague concept of the family's business, someone needed these "little things", they went to sell, and that's it.

This is the first time since Hong Xiangkai was born to take a closer look at his family's business, from business processes, profit margins, to management systems, everything is worse than he expected.

It is full of small family workshop-style practices, and his past experience and cognition of work are as neat as the white shirt on his body, which is out of place here.

So, why did you decide to come back?

02 "I didn't expect to make so much money"

"My hair boys make a lot of money, and I can't believe that those stocks can be multiplied so much and make so much money."

Li Xiang candidly stated the reason for this "unpretentiousness".

In 2021, starting from the outbreak of the automotive core shortage crisis, an "epic" frenzy swept the entire semiconductor industry. Almost all chip brands and all types of chips have begun to rise wildly, and even some chips were originally only sold for dozens of yuan, and the market quotation has reached thousands of yuan the next day. At that time, many people ridiculed: If you bet on a piece of material, you can basically retire.

This year, there were several more Maybachs in Huaqiangbei, which is 1.45 square kilometers, and many bosses earned several small goals in this wave of market, buying houses, cars, and offices......

The myth of Huaqiangbei getting rich may be just a distant legend for ordinary people, but for Li Xiang, it is a reality that can be brushed in the circle of friends.

In October 1993, Li Xiang's parents brought their son, who had just been born three months earlier, from Wenzhou to Hangzhou, where the Hangzhou electronics market opened and they were the first merchants, and people there also regarded Li Xiang as the first child in the market.

Li Xiang and his hair boys grew up in the electronics market, and in his eyes, buying and selling components was a traditional business run by older uncles and aunts, and it was not attractive to him.

Li Xiang has loved racing since he was a child, and his first job when he grew up, he went to do car modification. As a descendant of Wen Shang, Li Xiang has an active brain, pulls customers into group activities, creates demand when there is no demand, and helps the boss earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in more than a year.

He found that I seemed to have some ability to do business.

After two years, Hangzhou began to strictly control car modification, and Li Xiang at that time also longed for the feeling of wearing a suit to work in an office building, and wanted to go to a large company to hone it, so he entered Lierda.

In Lierda, Li Xiang is responsible for linking sales and R&D, collecting customer needs, assisting in building architecture models, sorting out business, etc., and has also met many end customers.

From 2017 to 2018, passive devices brought a wave of market in those two years, and some of Li Xiang's resistors suddenly made a lot of money. That was the first time Li Xiang realized that these "waste" like components could make so much money.

In 2021, the epic market is coming.

"I couldn't believe that the price could rise so high, the inventory could be doubled, so multiplied, and I had to grab it!"

The people around Li Xiang began to change cars and houses, and the "myth" of getting rich was constantly staged around him, and Li Xiang was moved.

When Li Xiang saw that the older generation of chip sellers were still sitting in the market, guarding the stalls and waiting for end customers to come to find goods.

Li Xiang thought: As long as I am a little innovative, I can do better than them.

In the second half of 2021, Li Xiang decided to enter the game.

In the same year, the real estate thunderstorm, Hong Xiangkai, who was in the financial industry, did not have a good time.

The worse the market, the more involved the workers are, knowing that the project cannot be successful, but also looking for data to make PPT for it, the office atmosphere has become complex and depressing, and Hong Xiangkai began to feel tired.

In 2023, Hong Kong will be cleared. On the Qingming Festival in April, Hong Xiangkai finally returned to the mainland after two years and returned to his hometown in Shantou to sweep the tomb.

After a long absence, I got together with the people in my family, many of them are not those "high" industries, but they are all doing well, and the world outside finance began to open up to Hong Xiangkai. At that time, his father told him that he was old and wanted to retire.

What happens to your business after you retire? Is the precipitation of more than ten years transferred to others like this?

Hong Xiangkai has heard his father say since he was a child, "I'd rather sleep on the floor than be a boss", and he has always had an entrepreneurial dream in his heart.

He thought maybe he could try to take over his father's business.

03 Core second-generation succession: just catching it is not enough

Said to take over, but how?

Understanding an industry is what Hong Xiangkai is best at as a former financier.

He spent 1 or 2 months reading all kinds of research reports, manufacturers' annual reports, prospectuses and other materials in the semiconductor industry, and he already had a good understanding of the general situation of the entire chip industry, and even caught up with his father, who has been in the industry for more than ten years.

"When my father was in business, he probably didn't know what products these chips ended up in, but he just knew the model and price."

But Hong Xiangkai knows who the product is going to sell to and where to find buyers.

I understand the truth and ideas, but it's not so easy to make an order.

Hong Xiangkai found that many of the bigger traders had more than one product line, but like Wal-Mart, they wanted what they wanted, so he had to find more channels for complementary products.

But Hong Xiangkai went to talk to the original factory and found that many original factories looked down on him.

For OEMs, they want agents to bring products directly to the terminal, rather than to unstable traders. Most of Hong Xiangkai's previous customers were traders, and it was difficult for him to help the original factory to "press the goods", after all, no one wanted to sell it and smash it in their hands.

Hong Xiangkai finally realized in the continuous exploration:

No matter how big you want to be, you have to hug the thighs of the terminal so that you can make money.

If you want to attract end customers, you need real industry precipitation, and you also need a wider range of contacts and recommendations. Hong Xiangkai began to actively participate in various industry conferences and activities, looking for opportunities to ask people to introduce. At the same time, he also began to upgrade his company's image, moving the store from the 6th floor of Xinhuaqiang to the brand area on the 1st floor, renting a new office in the Hanguo Center, which is the favorite of chip "upstarts", and at the same time began to roll out marketing on the website.

In terms of business, he has also made adjustments, originally focusing on diodes, but now it is more direct to the terminal, close to customers, and find ways to meet the supporting requirements of customers.

As the "successor", in terms of the company's internal management, Hong Xiangkai also carried out a good "rectification" to make the company's operation return to his familiar appearance. Now every employee has a clearer job responsibilities and their work is organized.

In 2023, the chip market will be in a cold winter, but Hong Xiangkai's company will still achieve revenue growth. On the day they moved into the new office, the team, which had been depressed about business, seemed to regain their spirits and saw hope that the company would continue to grow.

This year, Hong Xiangkai, his father and his friends also jointly established a new company called Shenzhen Changhe Semiconductor Co., Ltd. He hopes that the company can be like the long river, the water flow converges, absorbs resources, and "does not waste the river through the ages", and can continue to operate for a long time after experiencing the ups and downs of the industry.

Li Xiang chose to seize the difference.

Now, the most important information gap in chip distribution is getting smaller and smaller, and the chip price advantage is becoming less and less obvious, but Li Xiang decided to take advantage of this in turn, so that he can find good channels more efficiently and find customers more efficiently than traditional methods.

Channels and resources may be the most prominent advantages of the "second generation of chips" as a new distributor.

Li Xiang combed through all the channel resources around him, and found that the elders in the family each family are holding one or two agents, and some may have more than a dozen agents, they specialize in their own agency brands to do some head customers, but lack of mining of small and medium-sized customers, and these customers are likely to become a dark horse.

He confirmed their willingness to cooperate one by one, became their "supernumerary" sales, and then connected with customers in need through the introduction of friends, which greatly improved the efficiency of ordering.

Li Xiang also decided to turn to the terminal, "I'll go to the service terminal, so that the ceiling is high enough." It is possible that I can do 5 million for one customer, and tens of millions for 10 customers. ”

In this mode, Li Xiang took a month or two to run through the first order.

In less than a year, Li Xiang has added 8 new terminals, of which 2 will exceed 10 million in revenue this year, and one will exceed 20 million.

04 Towards a turning point

In November last year, the Hangzhou Electronics Market held its 30th anniversary celebration. Hangzhou Electronics Market, Beijing Zhongguancun and Shenzhen SEG were once listed as the three major electronic markets in the country, and today, these markets have pressed the deceleration button after decades of rapid development.

Li Xiang hasn't been to the market for a long time, and most of his work can now be done on his phone.

At first, Li Xiang's parents couldn't understand, "How can looking at the mobile phone be doing business?" But the business is just done, and the goods are sent out in batches, and after Li Xiang and his parents explained it seriously, they didn't say more.

Times have changed. This has been especially evident in recent years for chip distribution.

After 2015, the emergence of the cloud price platform has exposed everyone to a greater amount of information, the original factory, distributors, terminals, the era of making money in a stable way has gradually gone, the profit margins in each link are being compressed, and everyone is looking for new ways to make money. The original factory began to get closer to the terminal by itself, the agents and spot dealers connected more through the e-commerce platform to connect with customers, and the hoarders began to contact the domestic and foreign terminals by themselves.

In the wave of market in 2021, the industry has poured into many newcomers to bring new ways to play, and the old people who made money in this opportunity have also begun to think about transformation, coupled with the rise of the new trend of domestic substitution, chip distribution has reached a turning point.

is also the second generation of chips, some of them have come back to do business after graduating from high school, mainly engaged in imported chips, and have earned hundreds of millions in the past few years, while Hong Xiangkai, who only came back last year, had to face the cold market after the frenzy ebbed.

But they don't regret it.

The turning point is both turbulence and opportunity, the second generation of the core is using a new perspective, new methods to change the industry, in Hong Xiangkai's view, with the old way to continue to do business, the share will be eaten away step by step, how to seize the opportunity at this turning point of drastic change is the key at the moment.