The restless little girl discovered that there are unlimited business opportunities in traditional cloth shoes
In 1996, Guo Li, who graduated from university, was assigned to be a politics teacher in a middle school in Jilin City. Within a month, this promising politics teacher resolutely resigned. She first worked in a real estate company. Due to low wages, she quit her job to help a relative collect grain. But because she had no experience, the grain she harvested had a lot of impurities and moisture, and she lost tens of thousands of yuan!
After that, she successively opened a hotel, a beauty salon, and a trading company. After two or three years of hard work, Still ended up losing money.
In the summer of 1999, a relative of Guo Li’s in Hong Kong came to Jilin to visit relatives. Before returning to Hong Kong, she said to Guo Li's mother and Guo Li: "I want to buy a pair of hand-made embroidered cloth shoes with soles made by rural women in the past. They are comfortable and elegant to wear, and light and comfortable for the feet." But I ran around in the store for several days and still couldn't find anything I was satisfied with.
Either it looks ugly or the workmanship is too rough. Is this a regret for my visit this time? Guo Li thought to herself: Hong Kong people like ancient cloth shoes and embroidered shoes, so wouldn’t those overseas Chinese, those foreigners, those Chinese who like nostalgia also like cloth shoes? There must be one here Huge market! Why don’t I set up a cloth shoe factory? She visited more than 20 cloth shoe stores in Changchun, Beijing, Shanghai and other shopping malls, and found that cloth shoes are not only popular, but also expensive!
In early 2000, Guo Li rented a house on Puyang Street. While she was purchasing various equipment and materials to prepare to establish a company producing cloth shoes, she also went to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau to register the trademark "Purple Jade Mulan". In March 2000, Purple Jade Mulan Craft Co., Ltd. was officially established. Then she recruited a dozen women who made cloth shoes in the countryside of Da'an County and started making cloth shoes.
It took more than two months of busy work to make more than 200 pairs of cloth shoes, but after putting them on the market, not a single pair was sold! When searching for the reason, Guo Li discovered: some of the uppers of these shoes go in and out, and some of the uppers go in and out. The soles of the shoes are uneven, some shoe openings are as winding and undulating as the coastline, and some shoe openings are bulging like a bun? Who would buy such shoes?
Guo Li sat down to find faults with everyone, and finally determined four rectification plans: First, new process procedures must be adopted to change traditional farm practices; second, high-quality materials must be selected that are both wear-resistant and have a good feel. Wait for good fabrics and good yarn; third, we must increase the variety of colors and colors to meet the needs of people of all ages and classes; fourth, we must pay attention to shape and style.
Guo Li bought about 50 kinds of various shoe styles online. She disassembled all these shoes bit by bit, from the inside to the outside, from the style to the materials used, and the workers. They carefully study other people's processes, workmanship, styles, decorations, flowers, etc. In order to master the new technology as quickly as possible, she hired a 60-year-old retired shoemaker from the former Changchun Cloth Shoe Factory to serve as the company's technical guide and train the workers step by step. Later, she went to Beijing to find the Neiliansheng Cloth Shoe Factory and sought advice from the old artists there.
After returning, Guo Li traveled day and night to Shenyang, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Shijiazhuang and other places to purchase various high-quality fabrics, yarns, shoe lasts and other raw materials. For more than 40 consecutive days, Guo Li was traveling to and from Between other places and Changchun. Two months later, 300 pairs of beautiful and novel "Purple Jade Mulan" brand cloth shoes were finally produced!
With the product in hand, it was time to find a market, so Guo Li decided to go to Guangzhou to sell it first. From Guangzhou, she carried a pile of shoes on her back to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang and other big cities. Go into one store after another, say nice words one by one, and sell sales one by one.
They really sold a lot, which made her feel a little relieved. After returning to Changchun, she went to major shopping malls to find sales, but unexpectedly she repeatedly ran into obstacles. Guo Li didn't believe that the cloth shoes that had a market in Guangzhou would not work in Changchun! In October of that year, she opened a specialty store in Changchun's highest-end shopping malls, Eurasian Mall and Zhuozhan Mall. Soon, some middle-aged and elderly women came to buy. The local media also reported on this new thing, which served as an invisible advertisement for "Purple Jade Mulan" cloth shoes, making the sales of cloth shoes promising.
The little girl wore small cloth shoes and entered the international market
In the summer of 2001, Guo Li took her products to the China Folk Art Expo held in Changchun. "Purple Jade Magnolia" is very popular, and people from Beijing, Nanjing, Fujian and other places have placed orders. This made her feel more confident: there is a huge market for cloth shoes! But at the same time, she also knew that based on the current staff and production scale, it would definitely not be possible to produce so many cloth shoes, and production must be scaled up and expanded. So, she decisively decided to build a new factory and increase personnel and equipment.
In April 2003, Guo Li participated in the Guangzhou China Export Commodity Fair with more than a dozen products. Since it was her first time to participate in the Canton Fair, she did not understand the rules and did not reserve a booth, so she begged others to place more than 30 pairs of shoes next to other people's booths.
On the third day, a Canadian lady in her 60s saw her embroidered cloth shoes. She picked them up and looked at them for a long time, and said repeatedly: OK! OK! Then she offered to order 150 pairs for her. Shoes, the price is US$4.50 for a pair of shoes, the total is less than US$700.
Although she didn’t make much money, this was Guo Li’s first foreign order and the first foreign exchange she earned! She hurriedly called the workers to inform the workers to rush into production overnight and it took more than ten days. The shoes will then be sent to Canada. A few months later, Guo Li got feedback from this old lady from abroad. To put it bluntly, everyone thought it was very good, comfortable and beautiful? This is a story for another day.
At this Canton Fair, foreigners were particularly interested in "Purple Jade Mulan" cloth shoes. Merchants from some countries with a large number of overseas Chinese stayed around the counter, haggling repeatedly and insisting on signing an order with Guo Li. goods contract. This made Guo Li both excited and worried, because these foreign merchants wanted many styles, large quantities, and tight schedules. Her own production scale was small and her products were few. How could she dare to sign a contract with them? So she had to say that she could not produce so much, leaving I downloaded the other person’s phone number and will contact him again later.
After returning to Changchun, Guo Li was always thinking about how to expand production, receive more orders, and create greater benefits. One day, Guo Li suddenly remembered that many women in rural areas can make cloth shoes. Why not adopt the production model of company farmers? That is to train some women in rural areas who have the foundation of making shoes and divide them into several groups. Each group is responsible for a process. Such as making soles, making uppers, patterning, embroidering, etc., and then assembling them in the company.
We implement unified processes, unified standards, unified purchase of materials, unified distribution, unified recycling, unified acceptance, and payment on a piece-by-piece basis. This temporarily eliminates the need to expand factories and recruit personnel, reducing expenses, but not only increases the company's efficiency, but also solves the problem of rural surplus labor.
Guo Li immediately trained a group of technicians, and then asked them to go to Da'an, Nong'an, Jiutai and other places to find women with experience in making shoes, teach techniques, set standards, and negotiate prices.
Soon, more than 1,000 rural women became her non-working "employees". With this company-farmer production model, Guo Li dared to accept large orders, and the number of shoemaking products quickly doubled.
Since then, Guo Li, who has tasted the benefits of the Canton Fair, has participated in the Canton Fair for four consecutive years from 2004 to 2007, and signed orders one after another, making Purple Jade Mulan cloth shoes We have visited more than 40 provinces and cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Fujian, and Hebei, as well as 16 countries including the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and have established long-term relationships with them all. Trade partnership.
Innovating and bringing forth the new in the combination of traditional Chinese elements and modern fashion
Guo Li pays great attention to carefully listening to the opinions of customers from all walks of life. Every time a new variety is released, she will try it on for employees, relatives and friends to let them experience and promote the new cloth shoes. Guo Li knows very well that no matter how good a product is, it cannot always be invincible and needs constant innovation. Therefore, whenever she went to a meeting, she would go to the local shopping mall to take a look. If there were new styles of cloth shoes produced by other companies, she would buy them and come back for research, reference and development, striving to continuously improve the varieties and styles. and innovation.
In 2005, she developed the "Thousand-Year Ancient Charm" series of products, including more than a dozen kinds of cloth shoes represented by "Three-Inch Golden Lotus", "Two Dragons Playing with Pearls", and "Flowers Blooming for Fortune". Various colors such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, as well as various patterns such as dragons and phoenixes, mandarin ducks, plum blossoms, orchids, bamboos, chrysanthemums, peonies, and butterflies, vividly express Chinese elements.
In 2007, based on the current hot tourism situation, she boldly entered into tourism products based on Guandong folk culture. She hired five experts from the provincial folk literature and art association as development consultants and successively developed It has produced a series of products such as "Profound Folk", "Changbai Style", "Charming Changbai", and "Mysterious Changbai" with strong Northeastern style and Guandong cultural characteristics, totaling more than 60 varieties.
As soon as it appeared at the Shenzhen Folk Art Expo, an order of 100,000 yuan was signed! And series of products such as "Thousand-Year Ancient Rhythm", "Deep Folk", "Mysterious Changbai" because of their unique Chinese characteristics With cultural connotation, it has become a handicraft specially purchased by foreign friends. Her products not only include traditional "thousand-layer soles", but also include festive shoes, fashion shoes, mesh shoes, cloth slippers, sandals, boots and other cloth shoe products. Their styles are more popular and fashionable, and have been sold in Changchun, Beijing, Purple Jade Mulan product stores have been set up in Guangzhou and other places.
At the end of 2007, Guo Li was named "Entrepreneurship Pioneer" in Jilin Province by the Propaganda Department of the Jilin Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial Federation of Trade Unions and other relevant departments.
Today, Purple Jade Mulan is the only manufacturer in the Northeast specializing in the production of cloth shoes. Its products have been exported to more than a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and North America, with annual sales of 30 million yuan and annual exports. Earned foreign exchange of US$3 million. The young Guo Li also successfully completed the transformation from a teacher to a working girl, and from a working girl to a private entrepreneur with assets of nearly 10 million! Her success tells people that entrepreneurship requires not only passion, but also the spirit of hard work and struggle. What is more needed is a kind of great wisdom! This kind of great wisdom is to have a calm and clear understanding of oneself, to find the most suitable entrepreneurial project for oneself, and to find the best market for this project.
What is valuable is that Guo Li, who has successfully become rich, always remembers that she was a poor child who grew up wearing cloth shoes, and does not forget to help those in need. Her company has now employed more than 1,300 rural surplus laborers and laid-off workers. An employee's father was hospitalized due to illness, and Guo Li immediately donated 3,000 yuan.
A worker’s son who lives in a rural area was admitted to a junior college. He scraped together and was still short of 5,000 yuan. Guo Li handed it over to him without hesitation; a young man always held a book and read it after working. Guo Li learned that he had no money to go to college, so she paid for him to go to college. Employees needed to buy fertilizer and seeds for spring sowing, but she always paid two months' wages one month in advance. She also actively participated in social welfare undertakings. Over the past few years, A total of more than 300,000 yuan has been donated to poor students, nursing homes, disaster areas, etc.