Inspirational! The entrepreneurial story of Wenzhou businesswoman Jiang Guilan

Inspiring! The entrepreneurial story of Wenzhou businesswoman Jiang Guilan

Introduction: 53-year-old Jiang Guilan has been in business for 25 years and has successively won the title of "National March 8th Red Flag Bearer", "National Outstanding Entrepreneurial Woman", "Outstanding Communist Party Member of Zhejiang Province", "Zhejiang Province" Honors such as the second Top Ten Female Outstanding Women of the Province and the first Charming Female Zhejiang Merchants of Zhejiang Province. Let’s take a look at the entrepreneurial story of this Wenzhou businesswoman.

Started as a "one-sixth stall" and entered the US market

Jiang Guilan was born in 1963 and was laid off before the age of 30, so Decided to start a business. She persuaded her husband and got his support, borrowed 200,000 yuan from relatives and friends, and started a plastic processing factory in her home. At the beginning, they made simple plastic products such as washbasins and clothes hangers, which were sold in the local market.

In order to open up the market, Jiang Guilan went to Zhoushan, Yiwu and other places to promote her products alone. In 1995, Jiang Guilan rushed to the Canton Fair in search of a bigger market. At that time, only large companies participated in the Canton Fair, and small businesses had no chance to set up stalls. Jiang Guilan rushed to Guangzhou before the start of the Canton Fair and spent two or three days asking about stalls one by one. Finally, she got one-sixth of the stalls from a company at a cost of 40,000 yuan.

Although it opened up the road to foreign trade, due to the low technical content of the products and fierce competition at low prices and homogeneity, the business was once in trouble, but Jiang Guilan did not give up.

It wasn’t until the 2002 Canton Fair that Jiang Guilan finally got her chance.

At that time, a supplier of KFC in the United States approached Jiang Guilan and asked them to help produce plastic disposable tableware. Jiang Guilan's factory only had 13 machines. After the other party came to see the factory, he felt that the scale was too small and turned around and left.

Jiang Guilan said that in the plastics industry, the production of new products requires proofing, which is expensive. Generally, manufacturers have to charge proofing fees before opening molds. After negotiating with several manufacturers, the other party failed to reach an agreement due to the sampling fee, and finally found Jiang Guilan.

Jiang Guilan quickly seized this opportunity. She decided not to charge a proofing fee for now. Then, while trial-producing samples, he borrowed 3 million yuan from the bank to expand the factory, purchase machinery and equipment, and train employees in accordance with GMP standards for food production companies.

In the end, Jiang Guilan's company passed the KFC inspection and became the first Chinese company to produce tableware for the United States.

From OEM to deep market penetration, the transformation has ushered in a new leap

Following KFC, the American tableware giant SOLO also found Jiang Guilan. After that, Jiang Guilan began to segment the market. After on-site investigation, Jiang Guilan decided to specialize in the production of tableware.

By 2006, Fuling's annual export volume reached 20 million US dollars, and it was already a decent export-oriented enterprise.

At that time, Jiang Guilan had two paths in front of her: one was to be content with the status quo and become an OEM factory and an OEM company; the other was to develop the international market on her own and establish her own brand in foreign markets, especially the United States. Sales network, build your own brand and cultural core.

Jiang Guilan knew that the latter path was full of risks and might lose all the customer resources accumulated over more than ten years, but she still firmly chose her own path to explore the international market. ?Because in my heart, I always have a dream, which is to let every end customer who has consumed our products remember that even a small straw carries Fuling’s unique humanistic imprint. ?

Jiang Guilan started a new journey of the company's development with the courage of a strong man to cut off his wrist. First of all, she hired outstanding sales talents in the industry with high salaries in the United States, and successively set up three sales companies. At the same time, she set up warehouses in New Jersey and Los Angeles in the United States and Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, and established a complete distribution system to enable domestically produced products. Products are sold directly to end customers.

During this process, the company's old customers left one after another, and the company encountered unprecedented difficulties, but Jiang Guilan did not take a step back. She relies on her sales team to find new customer segments.

Withstanding the pressure and insisting on himself, Fuling finally received new rewards after the pain. Fuling became a supplier to Subway 8 years ago, a supplier to Burger King 7 years ago, a supplier to Wendy's 5 years ago, and a supplier to McDonald's 4 years ago. Last year, Fuling won a KFC production order that had been lost for 10 years. So far, all five major fast food chains in the United States have become Fuling's customers.

?Always one step faster?

Ordinary plastic raw materials have greater environmental pressure. For this reason, Fuling specially established a new materials research institute in 2010, and worked with academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Together they established an academician workstation to engage in research on degradable materials, and achieved a number of research results, forming their own core technology. ?Green and environmental protection are the eternal themes of social development, and they are also the ultimate direction for Fuling Bingli to move forward.

Jiang Guilan said, "I think after a few years, every product produced by Fuling will be labeled as green, degradable, and zero-pollution." ?

In recent years, although wages have increased by double digits every year, Fuling's labor costs have continued to decline. Fuling has established its own automation research institute to develop highly automated production lines based on the company's production processes, minimizing the number of workers on the production line and reducing labor costs.

90% of Fuling’s products are sold to the US market, and transportation costs are a huge burden. For this reason, Fuling selected straws with high transportation costs to be produced in the United States, and also selected highly automated machines independently developed.

Summarizing her entrepreneurial journey, Jiang Guilan said that she took one step faster than others. When others do domestic sales, she has already done export sales through a foreign trade company; when others have done export sales through a foreign trade company, she has established a sales company abroad; when others have established a sales company abroad, she has built a factory abroad?

On November 4, 2015, Fuling was listed on NASDAQ in the United States. Jiang Guilan said that this is an important milestone in the company's development history, marking a gratifying step for the company to take advantage of the international capital market. She will seize the opportunity of the company's listing to lay out the global market, expand Fuling's territory, and welcome a new round of Transcend and soar.

Currently, Taizhou Fuling Plastic Co., Ltd. has 4 production bases, 1 production base under construction, 2 American branches, and 1 R&D center. It has been the export leader in Taizhou’s plastics industry for 12 consecutive years. enterprise, ranking among the top three among 9,162 peer enterprises nationwide. The company has successively won honors such as National High-tech Enterprise, National Contract-abiding and Credit-worthy Enterprise, and Zhejiang Province Green Enterprise.

? We cannot predict the future, but we always follow the pulse of the times, set our direction from the rhythm of challenges, and look for encounters with chance. ?Jiang Guilan said.

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