Yang Zhongzhou’s personal experience

Seize the opportunity for chemical cleaning and find your first pot of gold in the boiler circle

In February 1950, Yang Zhongzhou was born into a poor peasant family in Tianmen City, Hubei Province. Shortly after Yang Zhongzhou was born, his father, who had participated in the Red Guards, died of illness, and his mother ran away from home. Yang Zhongzhou, his brother, and sister became orphans. Yang Zhongzhou spent his childhood in an orphanage. Perhaps it was this kind of life experience that tempered his perseverance and awareness of identifying opportunities to stand out. With the care and help of the local government, after graduating from junior high school, Yang Zhongzhou was assigned to work as a correspondent for the then Jingzhou Prefectural Committee. Later, Yang Zhongzhou took the initiative to ask Ying to work in an electronic instrument factory. The factory was soon in trouble because the product was wrong. In order to reduce the burden on the enterprise, Yang Zhongzhou resolutely left the factory and started his own entrepreneurial journey.

In the winter of 1986, there was a middle-aged man setting up a stall in Bianhe Department Store, known as "Shashi Hanzheng Street". After a year of working hard and working hard, Yang Zhongzhou and his wife Luo Guoping's shop finally became a popular business on the commercial street, earning more than 30,000 yuan in one year. In that era when governments at all levels vigorously commended households worth ten thousand yuan, this was considered a considerable amount of wealth. It could build a small building, purchase a set of high-end furniture and electrical appliances, and enjoy eating, drinking, playing and having fun. . But in Yang Zhongzhou's view, these are the small farmer's consciousness of being rich and contented. Those who truly achieve great things cannot be lost in the small success in front of them. Yang Zhongzhou decided to use the money he earned as a basis to start his own bigger business.

In 1989, Yang Zhongzhou conducted an extensive and in-depth inspection of economically developed coastal areas such as Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. During the inspection, he found that energy-saving products were very popular. After returning from the inspection, he spent 4,000 yuan to purchase the formula and information of an energy-saving product from the 4012 Research Institute of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, and set up the "Liaoyuan Energy-saving Product Processing Factory" in a room in Liaoyuan Neighborhood Committee, East District, Shashi. 10 people, two crushers, and several mixers, under the director Yang Zhongzhou, started a difficult business. On the basis of the formula provided by the research institute, they made improvements according to market demand, and successively produced a series of products such as boiler dust cleaner, boiler combustion aid, boiler decoking agent, etc., and won the title of "Provincial Quality Product" in one fell swoop.

In the early 1990s, the national industrial system carried out "energy saving and efficiency improvement" activities. Yang Zhongzhou received news from government departments that there are more than 400 industrial boilers in Jingzhou area alone. Due to scaling, more than 2,000 tons of raw coal are lost every year, and more than 4 million yuan is wasted. After a detailed market survey, Yang Zhongzhou learned that industrial boilers were mostly used by state-owned enterprises. At that time, state-owned enterprises were implementing the contracting system. In order to expand their profits during their tenure, operators would definitely be tempted to eliminate dirt and save energy consumption. Although it is a private enterprise, China's economy is in a transition stage at this time. Regardless of whether there is any interest exchange between operators, cooperation between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises is an inevitable trend. My own company originally produces energy-saving products, and since I have worked in a government department, I have an innate network advantage when dealing with state-owned enterprises. If you seize the opportunity at this time to lead the company to specialization, it will inevitably achieve rapid development. In 1991, Shashi Blue Star Chemical Cleaning Company was established. Due to the right direction and good management, Shashi Blue Star Chemical Cleaning Company quickly occupied the market in Jingzhou area with advanced technology, high-quality service and honest reputation.

Yang Zhongzhou’s mind is always clear. He will use this opportunity to wipe out all the chemical cleaning businesses around Jingzhou. Wuhan Iron and Steel Company, a world-famous large-scale steel conglomerate, had many large boilers and professional equipment that needed to be cleaned, but did not have enough cleaning power. Yang Zhongzhou joined forces with Wuhan Iron and Steel's new large company to open Wuhan Blue Star Chemical Cleaning Company. Obtain a license from Wuhan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. for chemical cleaning. Then, Yang Zhongzhou successively set up branches in Yueyang Baling Petrochemical Plant, Jingmen Petrochemical Plant and Henan Zhongyuan Oilfield. In the past few years, Yang Zhongzhou's Blue Star Company has undertaken thousands of chemical cleaning projects, saving the country more than 100 million yuan in equipment renewal costs and more than 150 million yuan in coal, water, electricity and other energy costs. While creating huge social and economic benefits for society, Yang Zhongzhou's Blue Star Company has achieved rapid development. By 1995, when Yang Zhongzhou's Hubei Blue Star Group Co., Ltd. was established, its assets had reached 300 million yuan, and its liquidity accounted for 57%!

Changes with times, strategic transformation of innovative industries

While Yang Zhongzhou made his first pot of gold in the field of chemical cleaning, his Blue Star Company also achieved rapid development. But he knows better than anyone else that Blue Star's industrial cleaning business, which is a production service business, is only catching up with the last train of development of state-owned enterprises. The situation of state-owned enterprises has taken a turn for the worse: the country has implemented industrial restructuring, and the textile, chemical and other industries have become increasingly sluggish. , a large number of companies began to close down and merge one after another, and Blue Star Company has pinned all its wealth and life on the already precarious state-owned enterprises. Yang Zhongzhou gradually felt an existential crisis approaching from all sides.

“We must quickly find new projects before we get the last piece of the industrial cleaning industry.” Yang Zhongzhou, like other companies, began to constantly look for projects that could be “once and for all.”

He has made several decisions, but he found that he who rarely made mistakes in the past has been making a lot of mistakes recently. He failed to enter the taxi industry, failed to run a travel agency, and failed to enter the real estate industry. In the end, Yang Zhongzhou discovered that the reason was that his family's big business had too many obstacles and it was difficult to turn the ship around; besides, the above small projects did not arouse much interest in him. Yang Zhongzhou realized that large companies must invest in big projects to carry out strategic transformation, otherwise they will inevitably fail, because once the source of profit cannot be transferred, it means that there is no transformation and all problems will not be solved.

“Why was it in trouble at that time?” Yang Zhongzhou analyzed to the reporter of “Business Experts” many years later, “It failed to grasp the characteristics of Jingzhou’s local economy, failed to make good use of the production factors of the government and policies, and did not have its own Brand products, or brand carriers that can reflect their own intangible assets, have not established a direct supply and demand relationship with the market terminal (consumers). For so many years, I have been floating in the air without a basis. In a word, my. There are fundamental problems in the choice of strategic path for enterprises. "Facing hundreds of pairs of employees' eyes, Yang Zhongzhou was worried.

Jingzhou has been prosperous since ancient times, with merchants gathered there. The golden waterway of the Yangtze River runs through the entire territory. National Highway 207 and National Highway 318 intersect here, and land and water transportation is quite developed. Due to specific geographical and historical factors, Jingzhou has always been a traditional market for building materials products and an important material distribution center in Sichuan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Henan and other provinces. The tradition of commercial ports continued into the 1990s. As real estate heated up, Jiefang Road in Jingzhou City gradually formed a building materials road market. However, the fragmentation, fragmentation and chaos of the old market not only seriously blocked traffic, but also hindered the further development of the market. At this time, the Jingzhou Municipal Government proposed the economic development strategy of "retreating from secondary (industry) to tertiary (industry) and revitalizing the city through commerce" and strengthening urban planning and construction. Yang Zhongzhou has a keen eye for business opportunities, and he finally found a gap for industrial breakthrough: "Transform the local characteristic economy into its own market advantage, and find a convergence between government problems and economic development!" Yang Zhongzhou made up his mind to transform the road market into a large-scale Building Materials Trade City. What Yang Zhongzhou considers is that the practical benefits of building a modern professional market are to eliminate the road market and solve and optimize the traffic environment; the high-end modern trade city will become part of the municipal construction and become a symbol of Jingzhou's local economy and a window for Jingzhou City; The Three Gorges Project has been launched, and immigration to the reservoir area is in full swing. The construction of the Trade City will promote the real estate market in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, which is still in its embryonic stage, and truly form a large circulation pattern of building materials in the southwest and central-south regions; solve a large number of employment problems; and generate substantial revenue for local finance.

In 1996, Yang Zhongzhou used the method of purchasing land use rights to buy out 100 acres of land that had been idle for a long time by the original Shashi Component Company for a one-time sum of 30 million yuan, and established a large professional building materials market - Hubei Blue. Star Trade City. The completion of Blue Star Trade City has played a leading role in the market planning and construction of Jingzhou City. The government has provided many preferential policies in terms of regulating the market and reducing taxes and fees.

The construction of Blue Star Trade City has achieved unprecedented success. In two years, the trade city’s turnover exceeded 1.5 billion yuan. In 1998, Yang Zhongzhou leased another 100 acres of land in Jingjiang Village and built Blue Star Ceramics City.

Yang Zhongzhou finally successfully achieved strategic transformation. He built the third largest building materials wholesale market in China. Within three years, the annual transaction volume exceeded 2 billion yuan. Its scale was large enough for the entire Hubei Blue Star Group to settle down. In 2002, Yang Zhongzhou invested heavily in building a modern home furnishing mall - Blue Star International Home Furnishing City, with a full European style, full frame, and transparent structure, with a total construction area of ??70,000 square meters and a business area of ??50,000 square meters. So far, Yang Zhongzhou's Decorative Materials City, Ceramic Building Materials City and International Furniture City have initially formed a unique and integrated market cluster, and its business has covered seven provinces and cities including Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou, Henan and Shaanxi. In 2005, the transaction volume of the three major building materials markets owned by Hubei Lante Group Co., Ltd. (renamed from "Blue Star" to "Lante" in April 2004) reached 3 billion yuan, and the company's assets have reached 740 million yuan.