Jiang Jiaping was born in the home of a private teacher in rural Yixing. Because he only relied on his father's meager salary to support the livelihood of a family of six, he never had a dime of pocket money to spend. Every time when I go to school and pass by the fruit shop of the supply and marketing cooperative in the town, I can only smell and sigh at the sweet smell of apples with their rotten flesh removed. Once, Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who was diligent in his studies and always had top grades, was taken home to "start a small stove" by a teacher who liked him. The teacher stuffed a piece of the town's specialty - halva into his mouth, which Mr. Jiang Jiaping ate at that time. The most delicious candy I have ever tasted. The refreshing sweetness I still can’t forget.
In order to get rid of family poverty, in the traditional thinking of Mr. Jiang Jiaping’s father, only by studying hard and passing the exams to become a national breadwinner can he be considered successful. In the early 1980s, Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who was deeply aware of the pressure of his father to run the household, gave up the opportunity to be admitted to a key high school and followed his father's long-cherished wish for him to be admitted to a technical secondary school. On the day of the high school entrance examination, his father, who never spent extravagantly, bought him a large watermelon for the first time in order to ensure that Mr. Jiang Jiaping performed well in the exam. This was the first time in Mr. Jiang Jiaping's memory that he had tasted fruit in his life. taste.
Like almost all entrepreneurs, Mr. Jiang Jiaping, chairman of Jiangsu Tiandilong Group, is not satisfied with the "imperial food" rice that middle school Chinese teachers eat, which is "not enough compared to the top, but more than enough". With the simple idea of ??"wanting to make more money and make his life better", he began to start a business without doing his job. He wanted to resign and go to sea several times, but gave up because of his father's fierce opposition. After his father passed away due to illness in 1990, no one was able to stop his choice. In the summer of 1992, the information revealed by Deng Xiaoping during his southern tour speech made Mr. Jiang Jiaping realize that this was another excellent opportunity to start a business and he could no longer hesitate. Therefore, Mr. Jiang Jiaping did not hesitate to resist the dissuasion of all his relatives and friends, resolutely left his "iron rice bowl" as a teacher and joined the ranks of "those who went to sea".
Mr. Jiang Jiaping knows that starting a business requires the support of capital, technology and market. As a middle school teacher who has only taught for 7 years, he has little accumulation and can only choose the "shallow water area" of "little trouble". ". With 500 yuan from selling his wedding ring, he teamed up with a distant cousin to borrow two old printing machines to make envelopes, notes and various forms used in the workplace. This year he made 20,000 yuan. Diversified business. Although I didn't make more money, I still learned a little bit about business operations.
The "small-time" printing workshop made Mr. Jiang Jiaping see that there was no added value. Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who wanted to make a career, became obsessed with the printing of laser anti-counterfeiting trademarks under the guidance of a teacher in his university. This project has high technical requirements and requires a large investment. For Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who is new to "sea water", it is undoubtedly a "deep water area". Unexpectedly, this project is not as simple as imagined, as technology exploration and market cultivation require considerable costs. In 1993, there was only continuous investment but no output, which shook the confidence of the partners. Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who firmly believed that this project would be successful, could not bear to give up halfway, and unknowingly borrowed hundreds of thousands of yuan in debt. By the end of the year, the company had lost more than 300,000 yuan. For Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who started with 500 yuan and had never had such a large risk investment experience, it was undoubtedly an astronomical number. He did not expect that he would be "choked" as soon as he took a step from the "shallow water area" to the "deep water area". A big mouthful. The partners couldn't bear it and proposed to withdraw. Mr. Jiang Jiaping thought: I took over this matter, so he distributed all the assets and equipment in the factory to him, allowing the partners to withdraw easily, but he took the initiative to bear all the debts.
Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who is already burdened with hundreds of thousands of yuan in debt, continues to carry his briefcase and travel to and from all over the country, day and night. Many of his relatives who lent him money couldn't bear to see him working so hard and advised him: "Don't do it. We'll deal with the debt later." However, Mr. Jiang Jiaping said: "Success often lies in persisting in your efforts. If At the end of this, the debt of hundreds of thousands of yuan may never be repaid in a lifetime." He saw the "anti-counterfeiting" business opportunities from the "Quality Journey" campaign that was being vigorously carried out across the country to crack down on counterfeiting and punish inferior products. There were numerous articles about fakes in newspapers. Reports on the wine case prompted him to run anti-counterfeiting wine label business for the university’s printing shop. The wine label business has not yet taken off, but unexpectedly it has won a large amount of business in making laser anti-counterfeiting trademark hangtags from a sweater factory in Jiaxing, Zhejiang.
From then on, Mr. Jiang Jiaping, who was already empty-handed, began his journey of repaying debts as a "sales representative" of the university printing factory.
In the mid-1990s, various printing plants still followed the traditional passive business model of processing samples, and the very popular dogma of "customers' requirements are our requirements" style slogan, Mr. Jiang Jiaping found many unsatisfactory qualities in the samples sent for processing from many wineries, so he thought about the positioning of high-end, mid-range and low-end products of each winery, and the different markets in the east, west, north and south. The distribution is analyzed to make the design more in line with the characteristics of different consumption levels and cultural differences in different regions, and can reflect different cultural connotations and brand characteristics, which can expand the market and increase sales of wineries and enhance their competitiveness. Therefore, Mr. Jiang Jiaping recruited a group of creative designers and designed a batch of packaging that was more popular with the market than the samples sent by the winery. After that, Mr. Jiang Jiaping based on the same carton packaging and glass packaging on the market. Due to the homogenization of bottle filling, the unique tin box packaging and clay pot packaging were ingeniously designed, which caused the value of a batch of famous wines to increase sharply and sales to soar. Not only did they quickly capture a large amount of packaging business, but also It has also been roped in as the largest private shareholder of China’s famous liquor company “Kouzijiao” for close collaboration. This initiative to enhance the competitiveness of the brand in the market for customers has suddenly enabled Mr. Jiang Jiaping's printing company to climb to the level of 100 million yuan in sales. "Kouzijiao" sells well in the market, and "Heaven and Earth Dragon" plays an important role.
Enter the new century, the wine packaging industry of "Tiandilong" has reached the saturation point of industry scale of several hundred million, and the capital accumulated over the years has new impulses. Mr. Jiang Jiaping thought that the packaging industry was restricted by the upstream wine industry. If the wine industry did not develop, the packaging industry would not be able to develop either. If we want to find a way out for capital and further expand "Heaven and Earth Dragon", we must find another way and develop across industries.
After visiting all the large copper markets in China, Jiang Jiaping knew that the national copper industry has a scale of 300-500 billion. The step-by-step casting and rolling process of local enterprises is backward, and the smelting of low-quality raw material copper consumes The cost of electricity is 100-200 yuan per ton higher than that of large enterprises. It is difficult to withdraw funds and almost unprofitable. Should we do it or not and how can we make huge profits? Mr. Jiang Jiaping decided to go to Shanghai Cable Research Institute for advice.
When I arrived at the Shanghai Cable and Cable Institute, I asked several departments in succession. None of the people I talked to were in the technical business. I couldn’t explain why. Just when I walked into the elevator and prepared to go home, Tianci happened to meet a A fellow from Yixing, after exchanging pleasantries, I learned that this fellow is actually a technical authority and project innovation leader in China’s copper smelting industry. The fellow immediately took Mr. Jiang Jiaping to his office. The fellow told him: "It is necessary to adopt the internationally advanced continuous casting and rolling process. Currently, there are only two domestic companies that have initially succeeded, but the operating technology is still unstable. Once the technology matures, there will be very generous profits, and the production capacity will be 10 times that of the traditional process. times, the furnace can produce 200 tons, and the value added is 8,000 yuan per ton. It uses gas as fuel and is a green production process. "Mr. Jiang Jiaping thought: If it can be done in China, I can do it as well, as long as all the conditions are met. After that, this fellow from Yixing took Mr. Jiang Jiaping to inspect two successful companies in the country. With the help of this fellow engineer, Mr. Jiang Jiaping started work. On January 18, 2004, "Tiandilong" successfully started the furnace in one go using mature domestic technology, completing the cross-industry "jump" from light industry to copper materials. ". In order to prevent one after another from following up and triggering a rush and vicious competition, Mr. Jiang Jiaping has invested more than 300 million yuan in recent years to establish copper rod factories in Shandong, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu, taking the lead in occupying various regions. market.
The year before last, a 30-year-old employee of Tiandilong Group from Shandong suffered an accidental stroke in his dormitory. After two days of rescue at the local people's hospital, he was basically sentenced to death by the doctor. After Jiang Jiaping heard the news, he immediately went to the local people's hospital for treatment. I went to the hospital to visit, and then I went to the attending doctor and asked, "Is there any hope?" "If you want to be saved, pay 50,000 yuan and have surgery immediately, otherwise there will be no hope at all." Without saying a word, Mr. Jiang Jiaping immediately helped the employee. Go through the surgical procedures. Half a month after the operation, the sick employee recovered and was discharged. This incident caused a great "sustenance" effect throughout the group. All employees feel from the bottom of their hearts that by following Mr. Jiang Jiaping and working hard, they will have a strong support for emergencies that cannot be borne by the employees themselves.
In Jiang Jiaping's view, no matter how big a company develops, if it cannot well assume its social responsibilities, it will still be unable to get rid of the word "small".
As a successful entrepreneur, he is always actively involved in charity and has advocated for charity on many occasions. According to statistics, in the past five years alone, Jiang Jiaping has invested more than 30 million yuan in various charities.
At the beginning of 2008, he came into contact with the Democratic Progressive Party, learned about the Democratic Progressive Party, and developed a huge value recognition for the Democratic Progressive Party’s purpose of establishing an association for the public and participating in politics for the people. He feels that by working hard to run a good business and actively investing in charity, he is benefiting the people; by participating in government affairs and serving the society, he is also benefiting the people. In January, he submitted an application for membership to the Yixing Municipal Committee of the Wuxi Democratic Progressive Party and regarded joining the Democratic Progressive Organization as his firm political pursuit.