Hu Fei’s entrepreneurial journey

Family poverty gave him a strong dream of making money since he was a child

Hu Fei was born in a rural area in Jiujiang County, Jiangxi Province. His family was very poor when he was a child, and his parents were also farmers who faced the loess and turned their backs to the sky. Life was hard. "When we were young, we ate meat three times a year, on Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Spring Festival." Hu Fei also told us a story about eating meat when he was a child.

Once the family invited a tailor to make clothes at home, and the family bought some meat to entertain. A bowl of stir-fried meat with pickles and vegetables was brought out from the kitchen. Hu Fei, who usually rarely saw meat, was greedy, so he secretly picked up a piece with chopsticks when everyone was not paying attention. Unexpectedly, his father discovered it and was beaten severely. . "At that time, I really wanted to make money and change my life." It can be said that Hu Fei had the dream of making money when he was a child.

Hu Fei told reporters that he has four brothers and sisters in his family. He is the eldest. His sister was called back to do farm work just after her first half of school. His brothers are only in junior high school. He is the only college student in the family. . But almost all of his tuition fees were earned by himself. In order to earn tuition fees, he even went to the construction site to carry bricks and earn a few dollars a day. But in the end he persisted and admitted himself to Nanchang University. Hu Fei said frankly that at that time he just wanted to change his destiny and did not want to stay in the countryside all his life. The dream of going out of the mountains was also a factor that drove him to success.

Going to college with a debt of 20,000 yuan

After being admitted to college, Hu Fei had a debt of nearly 20,000 yuan because he had no money to pay tuition and fees. During the four years of college, Hu Fei did not ask for a penny from his family. He earned all his expenses by working part-time.

In 1997, Hu Fei graduated from university with a major in advertising and found a public institution. Although his usual work was very leisurely, Hu Fei was not content with the status quo. After working for less than a year, he made a decision made the decision to resign. At the beginning, he worked as an art artist in an advertising company, with a monthly salary of 290 yuan. Excluding the room fee, it was difficult to maintain basic living. So he resigned and went south to work in Shenzhen. In Shenzhen, due to his outstanding work performance, it only took him half a year to pay off the debt he owed for school.

But Hu Fei was not content with living a working life. In order to pursue his childhood dream, at the end of 1997, Hu Fei resigned and returned to Nanchang. He used his savings to open a gift shop with his friends. The space for opening a store was limited. A year later, he sold the store and opened a celebration company of his own. Although it is a company, there are only a few employees in the company, and Hu Fei has to go out to run business every day like the employees.

The 1 million he earned from selling balloons went up in smoke

Hu Fei’s celebration company mainly helps with packaging for corporate events, which actually means tying colorful strips and balloons at the venue. Hu Fei did everything personally. Hu Fei saw in a magazine that someone was selling a special kind of balloon on the streets of Shenzhen. A large balloon was filled with various special things, such as small heart-shaped balloons, roses, and small dolls. They were very popular, which also made him He saw a business opportunity. "At that time, Nanchang didn't have any, so I bought the goods from Shenzhen and sold them on the streets of Nanchang. At the most, I sold 10,000 yuan in one day on National Day." Speaking of the situation of selling balloons that year, Hu Fei was still a little proud, " When we saw a couple, we went up to sell them. I can say that I learned a lot at that time." In just one year, Hu Fei accumulated his first pot of 1 million.

After receiving these funds, Hu Fei began to look for new ways to start a business. He heard from his friends that the wine business was easy to do, so he invested almost all his money in it. He contacted manufacturers and designed the packaging of wine. Box, but not long after, the business collapsed due to lack of follow-up funds, and the company collapsed in less than a year. By 2005, he even returned to the predicament he was in when he started his business. "My home in Jiujiang is still full of wine produced at that time. My father has always said that I should throw it away, but I don't agree." Every time he goes home, Hu Fei will go to the warehouse to look at the wine, which reminds him of himself. The failure at that time can also bear in mind the lessons he learned in that failure. After this experience, Hu Fei said that even if he returns to the starting point again, he can get through it because what he experienced has made him Strong enough.

The class reunion led to the establishment of Zhuangdian.com

After returning to the starting point, Hu Fei did not recover and started working again. He contacted Baidu and started working as a Baidu advertising agency. Hu Fei said frankly that his time as an agent on Baidu was where he really started. He began to truly understand the Internet. On this platform, the corporate culture Hu Fei came into contact with provided experience for his future corporate management. Moreover, the customers he met also provided resources for his subsequent entrepreneurship.

In 2006, Hu Fei attended a class reunion. Most of the classmates at the gathering were women. Hu Fei heard that many female classmates were chatting about shopping, and they bought the most. I only have cosmetics and clothes, but since I am just an ordinary white-collar worker and my economic conditions are limited, I can’t afford to buy them in brand stores, and I don’t have much time to go shopping, so I have been thinking about buying cheap and high-quality cosmetics online. and clothes.

Hu Fei, who heard these conversations beside him, couldn't sit still. The shopping needs of female classmates instantly inspired him to establish a women's website. That night, Hu Fei found two other classmates who were interested in starting a business and held a crazy "shareholders" meeting. For a whole night, they worked on almost every aspect, from raising funds and finding product channels to building a website and promoting the business. Thinking of it, everyone was still in a state of excitement until dawn.

The long conversation that day made Hu Fei firm up his determination to start online shopping for women's products. At that time, there were not many companies in China with this online shopping model. Only Dangdang and Excellence, which mainly made books, had done it. At a certain scale, there are no companies that are doing well in the female products market segment. Since the integrity mechanism of online sales at that time caused customers' distrust in online sales, Hu Fei realized that the first thing to solve in establishing such a company was how to ensure product quality and how to ensure safe payment. He chose the safe payment method of cash on delivery, allowing customers to truly feel that online shopping is risk-free.

In February 2006, Hu Fei took out his last savings, a deposit of 60,000 yuan, and rented a two-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. People lived in it and worked outside. The environment was very simple. At that time, the entire team There are only three people. Except for Hu Fei, the other two partners have never been exposed to the Internet, and they don’t know how to build a website. They can only go online to find people who understand Internet technology for advice. At that time, in order to reduce operating costs, Hu Fei recruited two college students who had just graduated. One was responsible for page art and the other was responsible for technology. Hu Fei was responsible for planning the website structure and content. Half a year later, "Zhuangdian.com" was finally launched without them. It was born after hard work day and night.

It only took one year to go from 580 yuan to 100 million yuan

“Our first income was three days after the website was launched, when we sold a product for 580 yuan. Sales continued to grow in the next month. At the end of the month, apart from costs and advertising fees, we made a net profit of 30,000 yuan. Our partners were very happy that day. After all, this was a project that made us money in the first month. That night We went to a restaurant to celebrate." When Hu Fei talked about his first business, his joy was palpable.

However, this joy did not last long. Two months later, although the monthly sales reached more than 50,000 yuan, due to the increase in personnel and advertising costs, the company ended up losing 20,000 yuan, and the business fell into trouble. Dilemma. Hu Fei also felt tortured in his heart. At that time, he remembered what Jack Ma, who had a profound influence on his entrepreneurship, said, ‘Never never never give up’, which also convinced Hu Fei that he must endure the difficulties.

At the beginning of starting makeup, Hu Fei gave himself a vaccination and was prepared to lose money for at least half a year. Although he was mentally prepared, the reality made him hesitate and he could not even pay his salary. It's hard to hold on. In order to solve the predicament at that time, one day in 2006, Hu Fei secretly borrowed 100,000 yuan in loan sharks, because he was afraid that his teammates would bear this heavy burden. Just tell them that I borrowed it from a friend. With this money, Hu Fei began to expand his product line and also increased the promotion of Baidu bidding ads. With the gradual improvement of the product line and Baidu's targeted promotion, the conversion rate and order volume began to increase significantly.

During the sales process, Hu Fei discovered that the content that users paid attention to on Zhuangdian.com was closely related to consumption. In order to distinguish it from other pure e-commerce, Hu Fei positioned the website as an "interactive portal for fashionable women's consumption." The so-called "interaction" is a combination of website content and mall sales, that is, guiding users to consume through website information. After changing the sales model, sales grew very rapidly, from more than 30,000 yuan in the first month to more than 5 million yuan in the sixth month. In 2008, the annual sales of cosmetics exceeded 1 billion yuan.

In 2009, Hu Fei began multi-brand expansion and successively launched "Camp; T Guti" fashion women's bag brand, "Taotao.com" Jingdezhen Ceramics online mall, "Art Circle" and other e-commerce brand. In 2011, he ranked 49th in Jiangxi's wealth rankings with a net worth of 700 million.