UPS has a history of 107 years and was founded in Seattle, Washington, USA. At the beginning, UPS's situation was similar to that of some domestic express delivery companies, and its scale was not large. Jim Casey and Claude Ryan, the founders of UPS, started their own business on bicycles in a small city after borrowing $100. But in the express delivery industry in the United States, UPS is the earliest one. The main form of transportation at that time was cars, and UPS first used cars for delivery.
In the past 106 years, UPS has also experienced many setbacks in its development process. Economic crisis is an unavoidable phenomenon in the economic operation cycle. Especially in the context of globalization, the cycle of economic crisis is getting shorter and shorter. Moreover, after an economic crisis occurs, its storm will often hit the world and it is difficult to escape. This is even more obvious for UPS, which operates in more than 200 countries around the world. When an economic crisis occurs, the networks affected should be everywhere in the world. Despite this, UPS has successfully overcome many previous crises. UPS has gradually expanded its product and service scope from its initial package delivery, and has become the world's leading overall supply chain provider.
UPS’s business development in China has also experienced highs and lows. At the very beginning, in 1988, we cooperated with large Chinese companies and established our own offices. In 2005, after China joined the WTO, the express delivery market began to be officially opened to the outside world. Foreign-funded companies entered China one after another to fully carry out international express delivery business, and UPS also became fully operational in China. In 2008, UPS became the logistics and express delivery sponsor of the Beijing Olympic Games, which makes us proud. Subsequently, UPS made two major investments in the Chinese market. One was to invest in the construction of the Shanghai International Transshipment Center, and the other was to invest in the construction of the Shenzhen Asia-Pacific Transshipment Center. Both of these transshipment centers have been put into operation. Moreover, the business of Shanghai International Transshipment Center has covered major regions in China.
We are very proud of our past achievements. The reason why UPS can reach today and achieve today's success is probably due to three key factors: the first is corporate culture, the second is corporate execution, and the third is continuous change.
The development of UPS can be described as "seeking victory through change". In fact, there are four cores of change. The first is how to attract and cultivate a team that is skilled in business and has diversified businesses. At UPS, everyone shares the same values ??and works hard for the same company goals. The second is to provide high value-added services, and we strive to develop into a solution leader. The third one involves our corporate culture, which is to be customer-centric, continuously pay attention to customer needs, and provide customers with foreseeable and distinctive solutions. Fourth, advocate on a global scale and continue to pursue excellence and innovation to accelerate our reform process.
Speaking specifically of UPS's strategies to deal with the crisis, it can be said that companies will have different response strategies for different periods.
In the short term, the main thing is to save costs. In fact, all companies may have such a natural reaction when a crisis strikes. However, even in a crisis situation, everyone should also look at the medium and long term. In the middle of the crisis, we must continue to adjust our business model and continue to increase our turnover.
After World War II and in the early 1950s, cars began to become popular in the United States, and American society entered a stage of suburbanization. Before this, UPS mainly delivered packages to customers' homes for department stores. However, when people had cars, they no longer needed corporate delivery. At this time, UPS encountered a crisis. At that time, what UPS thought of was to develop new customers. In today's concept, it is to develop the B2B market. In 1954, UPS's expansion began to achieve significant results, and it gained more than 600 wholesaler customers. By 1956, B2B business was on par with B2C business.
In response to the financial crisis, what UPS did was to comprehensively optimize its operating network. We found that when the crisis came, customer demands also diversified. Generally, the demand for high-end services decreased significantly because everyone had to deal with cost pressures and often lowered time limits. What we do during this period is to strengthen services. And from a long-term perspective, we still need to stick to the original investment plan and invest in building a global transportation network. In addition, UPS also insists on developing and applying the most advanced IT technology. Through such investment and optimization, we can ensure our ability to respond to crises in the future and maintain long-term development.
IT technology plays an important role in the development of express delivery companies, and UPS has always attached great importance to investment in IT technology. UPS's inquiry network has covered 104 countries, and it can receive 1.85 million online inquiries every working day to inquire about the location of packages, thereby improving its supply chain management capabilities.
In May 2001, UPS announced its cooperation with Alibaba, a well-known Chinese e-commerce company, and formally formed a strategic alliance with Alibaba's online wholesale e-commerce platform "AliExpress". UPS will serve as " The preferred logistics provider for the AliExpress platform.
AliExpress buyers and sellers can enjoy the key benefits of managing shipments online and tracking online, including printing UPS shipping labels, requesting UPS door-to-door pickup, and more. The benefits are clear and can greatly improve the customer experience. China's e-commerce is developing rapidly, which has also brought greater development space for express delivery.