Li Shufu's car-making life

At the age of 17, Li Shufu's greatest wish is to own a bicycle. At the age of 34, he started the Geely Automobile Company and built his own cars.

Before, he has successfully built refrigerators, magnesium-aluminum panels, motorcycles, and it seems a bit risky to enter the capital-intensive and technically difficult automotive industry. In particular, private enterprises have made little achievements in this field, but he entered it voluntarily.

To this day, Li Shufu has handed in a satisfactory answer sheet. He led Geely Auto's share of the domestic auto market rose to 5.25% and maintained a growth rate of 40%. In the first half of 2006, Geely achieved a good result with a net profit of HK$290 million.

Looking back, his entrepreneurial journey has not been smooth sailing, and even encountered strong opposition from relatives at the very beginning. How did he persevere? This also starts with his entrepreneurial beliefs.

Winning by product

Li Shufu's entrepreneurial belief is to build the cheapest car in China and a car that the Chinese people can afford. He said: "It is indeed difficult for a Chinese private enterprise to build a car, but there is also hope. Building a car is a marathon with no end. I am proud to enter the auto industry, and even if it is difficult, I will strive for it for the rest of my life."

"Successful entrepreneurship A business owner sticks to the product and makes sure that customers love his product,” says entrepreneurial guru Larry C. Farrell. Li Shufu is the practitioner of this creed.

It turns out he was right. The 40,000-yuan Geely Pride went off the assembly line, and the 70,000-yuan Geely Freeboat sold well, creating the fastest domestic sales record of 100,000 1.3-liter four-cylinder sedan. With its self-innovative vehicle development platform and cost-effective products, Geely is already on a par with Chery and Xiali in the field of economical cars.

Dedicated, high-quality execution

Successful entrepreneurs with different styles, such as Bill Gates and Soichiro Honda, have one thing in common: love for their work, and dedication to their work.

Li Shufu is no exception. When he founded Geely, he was obsessed with automobiles and devoted himself to the automobile business. He leads by example, attracts talents, inspires his employees with professionalism, and achieves the automobile business together.

Li Shufu invested in a refrigerator factory in his early years. Later, he also successfully invested in industries such as aluminum-magnesium panels, motorcycles, and real estate. In 1997, he wanted to enter the automotive industry and resolutely invested the accumulated 500 million capital into the automotive industry. He said: "What I did in the past was to build cars, and in the future we will all withdraw from other industries. Geely wants to build a century-old car company."

Geely's starting point is low, but Li Shufu believes that as long as there is determination, we can build our own. Intellectual property cars are feasible. He invited Shen Fengxie, president of the Automotive Engineering Association from South Korea, to preside over the development of "Freedom Ship" and other products, and initially established a development process in line with international standards, that is, using computer virtualization design, parallel development mode, design and development with complete Models of digital drawings.

Geely's gearbox project is also a typical example of making the impossible possible. In 2002, Li Shufu found Xu Binkuan, the former head of the national automatic transmission research group, and invited him to join Geely to start the transmission project.

Xu Binkuan said that there was only 20% certainty at that time, because at that time, the development of gearbox projects was monopolized by large foreign companies for a long time, and hundreds of millions of funds were invested in the development, and there was no related parts supporting system in China. Li Shufu's answer was, "Geely will bear all development risks."

By May 2005, Geely's self-developed automatic transmission achieved industrial production, producing the only automatic transmission with independent intellectual property rights in China. And the price is only half of imported products.

It was also this year that Geely's self-developed VVT engine and automatic transmission were installed on the Liberty Ship, and Geely's dream of a low-cost, high-performance sedan was realized.

Continuous pursuit of higher goals

Although Geely started with economical cars, it has not stayed at this level and is now fully entering the field of mid-to-high-end cars. Li Shufu said: "One is to change the corporate image in making medium and high-end cars, and the other is the need for sustainable development of the enterprise."

Geely's corporate goals have undergone four changes since its founding. Cars that the common people can afford" changed to "build a good car that the common people can afford", and then experienced "Geely travels all over China and builds a good car that the common people can afford", until recently it changed to "Geely travels all over the world" , to build a good car that the common people can afford." The continuous improvement of the goal not only brings challenges to the employees, but also gives them the motivation to move forward.

The author is an associate editor of the CEConline website.