Glass King Li Xianyi: Dropped out of school to work at the age of 15 and started from scratch, earning tens of billions a year from a piece of glass

Forced to make a living, he dropped out of school to work when he was 15 years old. After saving a certain amount of savings, he went to Hong Kong alone in the early 1980s to work hard.

He first opened a very small auto parts factory in Hong Kong. He was both the boss and an employee. With his hard-working quality, he successfully developed the small auto parts factory into a comprehensive automobile service company.

Later, he saw the gap in the domestic glass processing market with his unique vision, and took advantage of the spring breeze of reform and opening up to found Xinyi Glass Co., Ltd. in Longgang, Shenzhen. After hard work, he became the third largest "glass company" in the world. Kingdom".

In this issue, Ziya Tongqu Shangjiang will lead everyone to understand the story of "Glass King" Li Xianyi, who earns 14.7 billion a year from a piece of glass.

(1)

Li Xianyi was born in 1952 in an ordinary family in Ziying Village, Yongning, Shishi City, Fujian Province. At that time, the People's Republic of China had just been founded, and the entire country was in a state of desperate need for development. Ordinary families in rural areas could barely provide for the whole family's food and clothing problems, and there was almost no extra money for their children to study.

Most rural children can only go to elementary school. It is very rare for a few to have a high school diploma, and Li Xianyi's family is no exception.

When he was 15 years old, he was still in junior high school. However, due to the difficult conditions at home, he left school and entered the society early.

Forced by the pressure of life, he had no choice but to compromise with fate, but deep down in his heart, he did not surrender to fate. He was determined to change the current situation of poverty.

After he dropped out of school, he first worked in a factory. Although I made some money, the work was tiring and I saw no future.

So in the late 1970s, he left the factory and tried to run his own transportation business. He used the money from his previous job to buy a tractor. At first he drove the tractor to transport goods. Later, he pulled some people who also did transportation and established a "Ziying Fleet".

After establishing the organization, Li Xianyi received more orders, and he also made some gains through the transportation business. However, he was not satisfied with what he got in front of him. He wanted to see a bigger world and create more wealth.

In 1980, Li Xianyi left his hometown and came to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the richest, most economically developed and highest-standard of living regions in the world. Li Xianyi wants to find his own opportunities in this highly prosperous free port.

After coming to Hong Kong, he first worked in Hong Kong. Later, because Li Xianyi knew a lot about cars, he used his savings from many years of work to open a small auto parts repair shop in Hong Kong, where land is at a premium.

The repair shop is small and Li Xianyi only employs one employee. Although he is the boss, he does the same things as the employees in the store. The two of them are busy in the store every day.

Perhaps it is because people who are determined and dare to take action are more likely to succeed than ordinary people no matter what they do. Li Xianyi had some success when he was running transportation in the past. This time, the car repair shop he opened was also well run by him.

Under his drive to win if you dare to fight, Li Xianyi’s business grew bigger and bigger. In just a few years, he developed a small auto parts factory into a comprehensive automobile service company. And accumulated a considerable amount of wealth.

(2) The spring breeze of reform incubated the glass factory

In 1985, when the business of his comprehensive automobile service company was booming, news of the spring breeze of reform came from the mainland, and my country began to implement Economic reforms are mainly implemented in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen, etc.

After learning about the reform and opening up, Li Xianyi keenly sensed the huge business opportunities hidden behind it. He briefly left Hong Kong and went to Shenzhen to investigate development prospects.

He found that Shenzhen is a city where people can show their talents. Not only is the rent low, but all costs are cheaper than in Hong Kong. National policies also strongly support Hong Kong businessmen to invest and start businesses in Shenzhen.

Shenzhen was promoted from an agricultural county to a prefecture-level city in 1979, established a special economic zone in 1980, and was upgraded to a sub-provincial city in 1981. It can be seen that Guangdong Province is very supportive of Shenzhen and its development. The potential is huge.

Seeing the broad development prospects of Shenzhen, Li Xianyi felt that his opportunity had come. He gave up his comprehensive automobile service company in Hong Kong and decided to start a new business in Shenzhen.

He began to think about what products to make. He thought that when he opened an automobile repair company before, there was not a relatively mature glass processing factory in the country, and automobile glass mainly relied on imports, either from Japanese factories or French factories.

Shenzhen does not even have an automotive glass manufacturer. His national industrial feelings made him decide to build an automotive glass factory, and make it bigger and stronger so that China could have its own automotive glass market.

In 1989, Li Xianyi officially founded Xinyi Glass Company in Henggang Town, Longgang District, Shenzhen, and began his journey as the "King of Glass".

Henggang was the main industrial zone in Longgang. However, at that time, Henggang had bumpy roads and many barren hills and open spaces. It was difficult to have a good meal and could only be found at roadside stalls. Life was very difficult. It was inconvenient, so he could only choose the site of the factory in the slightly more prosperous Niushipu Village of Liuyue.

In 1993, Longgang District was established, and the appearance of the entire city changed greatly. Cement roads were also built in Henggang Town, making transportation more convenient and Xinyi Glass transportation costs greatly reduced.

In 1997, with the support of the government, Xinyi Glass built three factories and an office building in Henggang Industrial Zone. In 2001, a highway was built in front of Xinyi Glass Factory, making transportation more convenient.

The early factories were very small, only 30,000 to 40,000 square meters, and had only a few dozen employees. Li Xianyi started to live as both a boss and an employee again. He was too busy to eat every day, and sometimes he couldn't even sleep well.

There was no mature glass factory equipment in China, so he imported machines from Taiwan and specially sent people to Taiwan to learn the technology. The technology he learned at the beginning could still satisfy small-scale orders, but as the number of orders soared, Li Xianyi encountered technical difficulties again.

As a result, he hired glass experts at high prices and sent the company's technical staff abroad to study. In 2005, Xinyi Company independently developed the first glass processing machine to adapt to large-scale glass processing production.

Li Xianyi attaches great importance to product quality. He believes that product quality is one of the key factors in whether a company can become bigger and stronger. The heat insulation effect of glass is poor, so Xinyi Glass has greatly reduced heat transfer through research and development.

Li Xianyi has been in the mainland for a short time and has few resources. He has always promoted Xinyi Glass by placing advertisements on large screens. Due to the good quality of Xinyi Glass, there are more and more repeat customers, Xinyi Glass is getting stronger and stronger, and Li Xianyi ushered in a bumper harvest in the glass business.

(3) Dare to challenge foreign governments in times of crisis

While the glass industry was enjoying a bumper harvest, he also faced an unexpected challenge.

In February 2001, in order to suppress the development of China's glass industry, the U.S. Department of Commerce intended to increase tariffs on China's exported glass by 3% to 124% on the grounds of dumping, including Xinyi Glass.

Li Xianyi believes that in the face of anti-dumping, avoiding is equivalent to giving up the market, and he must dare to respond. He fought hard and worked hard to find a way out for himself.

After receiving Li Xianyi’s protest, officials from the U.S. Department of Commerce came to the Xinyi Glass site and strictly reviewed all the information on Xinyi Glass from the establishment of the factory to 2001. The final review result was: Xinyi Glass operates with integrity. Reliable quality, standardized accounts, and tax compliance.

Li Xianyi just won the anti-dumping victory in the United States and received an anti-dumping investigation from Canada. He established a response team and hired well-known lawyers. In 2002, Li Xianyi won the anti-dumping case.

This victory won confidence and honor for Chinese companies in anti-dumping, and Li Xianyi's business became even more popular.

Xinyi Glass Company has become the world's third largest "Glass Kingdom" in one fell swoop. Li Xianyi is also known as the "Glass King" and is worth US$10.5 billion in the 2021 Hurun Rich List, ranking 224th.

Li Xianyi used his unique Fujianese hard work to create the title of "Glass King" and turned from a junior high school dropout into a billionaire.

After creating the "Glass Empire", he was also very enthusiastic about charity, donating up to 81.11 million yuan to public welfare causes.

During the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic, Xinyi Group donated a large amount of medical supplies to the mainland, and set up the "Lok Sin Tong Mask Bank" in Hong Kong to distribute masks, hand sanitizer and other materials for free to citizens and children. Practical actions demonstrate the word "faithfulness".

What do you think of Li Xianyi’s entrepreneurial story? Welcome to leave your comments in the comment area.

If you like my article, please follow me, like and forward it. Your encouragement will be my motivation to make better articles.

—END—

Little Meow