The transformation from "Tuba Road" to entrepreneur starts with reading

On the afternoon of March 25, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Songshan Lake in Dongguan, more than 300 guests gathered to participate in the "Outsmart Future Export" jointly organized by Global Sources and its leading management media "CEConline" Forum series". Zhou Xin, general manager of Dongguan Kangyong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., told us a different entrepreneurial growth story with his own personal experience.

Dongguan Kangyong Technology is an enterprise dedicated to the research and development, production, sales and service of IPod/IPhone alarm clock audio, a variety of portable small speakers and Apple peripheral accessories. The company was established in 2001. 150 employees. From the initial OEM to today, he has a number of inventions, utility models and design patents, and his own brand "Time" speakers are well-known at home and abroad. Leading Kangyong Technology to extend to both ends of the smile curve.

Change starts with reading

When discussing how "Made in China" can be transformed into "Made in China", Zhou Xin believes: "The first thing that needs to be reformed is not equipment, It is not a professional manager, but the boss's own thinking must be changed first."

The living environment of today's foreign trade export enterprises is very different from the past, with rising labor costs, poor quality and the individual needs of the market Make it difficult for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises that lack management. The latest data from the General Administration of Customs shows that in the first quarter of 2015, my country's total import and export value was 5.54 trillion yuan, down 6% from the same period last year. "Global trade growth momentum is insufficient, demand has not improved, and export orders have decreased," said Huang Songping, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs, which is the main reason for the recent suppression of my country's exports.

In order to keep pace with the times, Zhou Xin suggested that every boss should read and study more. He said: "Change starts with reading first. Everyone needs to study more. You can buy books to expand your thinking, or you can go to study classes such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, etc. You have to take the initiative to change."

Zhou Xin shared his changes before and after reading from a friend's observation. His good friend said strangely that your speech and ideas are now different from before. Before studying, Zhou Xin was very busy. He had to manage the factory, worry about purchasing, and manage the sales team. He couldn't answer the phone all day. After reading the book, Zhou Xin understood that, as the person in charge of the enterprise, he should devote more time and energy to formulating a long-term development strategy and finding the right position. Secondly, we must pay attention to the improvement of products and services, and understand some new business models. After studying, Zhou Xin did not imitate those management theories, but kept exploring according to his own business management practices. Gradually, Zhou Xin stopped worrying about those specific affairs. After improving the system, he let professional managers manage it. He devoted himself to formulating the development strategy of the company for the next five years, and proposed the vision of building a happy enterprise, so that everyone in the company can be happy. Ability to actively participate and create value. Zhou Xin said: "Many bosses always spend their energy on customers. I think bosses should spend more money and thoughts on their employees, because these people help you make money, so that excellent talents will stay. "Recently, Mr. Zhou's good friend also went to study under the influence of him.

Building patent walls

R&D capability is the core competitiveness of an enterprise's survival and development, and investment in R&D must be increased for the longevity of the enterprise. Zhou Xin believes that the research and development must be meticulous and in-depth, and the purpose is clear. Their research and development team found that the existing bedside alarm clock speakers used in hotels, whether they are American or Japanese brands, are complicated and inconvenient to use. They spent a year developing the new product and made a lot of meticulous adjustments. The new product has only one button and is easy to set up, and the order volume has exceeded 80,000 units.

While attaching importance to research and development, patent protection is also to sharpen the knife and not to cut wood by mistake. Some bosses feel that applying for patents is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and troublesome, and that electronic products are updated quickly, so they don’t bother to apply. Zhou Xin said that before 2008, the company did not have a single patent and intellectual property rights, but has gradually applied for it in recent years. At present, it has dozens of inventions, utility models and design patents. This is something I learned only after a painful lesson.

Patents can protect the research and development achievements of enterprises and build a high firewall. There are some domestic companies with super strong copycat capabilities. They will copy the new products developed by others immediately and quickly occupy the market, causing great losses to the original companies. Kangyong Technology previously launched an external speaker B7 for Apple iPod. Because it did not apply for an appearance patent, the B7 sold more than 10 million units on Tao.bao.com, but only 1.1 million units were actually shipped by Kangyong Technology. After all the pain, Zhou Xin and his R&D team continued to increase R&D investment on the one hand, and on the other hand, they also paid attention to patent application and protection.

Quality is the lifeline

Quality is the lifeline of an enterprise. When there is a problem with product quality, Zhou Xin will personally ask and deal with it as soon as possible, because he knows that the gold cup is not as good as the silver cup. word of mouth from customers. Previously, Kangyong Technology had a vibrating speaker customized by a European customer that sold very well, but 10,000 batteries in one batch of products were faulty and could not be repaired locally. Zhou Xin asked a local logistics company to return these defective products from 11 countries. After receiving them from the factory, they reprocessed them, and then re-delivered them, which cost a total of 480,000 yuan. Not only that, Zhou Xin also personally flew to the customer to apologize, saying that we would take all the responsibilities. Their sincere attitude won the understanding of the customer, and the customer has maintained a long-term cooperation since then.

In September last year, Zhou Xin and a friend jointly opened a charger factory. In the past, the equipment of such a factory may be less than 1 million, but they invested 10 million, and 8 million invested in equipment. They asked professionals to design the assembly line by scientifically combining and connecting equipment, reducing each line from 40 to 12. Although the degree of intelligence is not high, the production efficiency has been greatly improved. In just two months, the whole process from renting workshops, buying equipment to trial production, debugging and production was completed. Since the end of last year, it has earned 1 million in three months.

Intelligent manufacturing can enable enterprises to realize small batches and multiple varieties of products, shorten the production cycle, and increase the return on investment. Now the labor cost in the Pearl River Delta is getting higher and higher, and the monthly minimum wage adjustment in Dongguan City in May this year To 1510 yuan, more and more companies are thinking about how to replace people with machines. In order to encourage enterprises to improve their intelligent production capacity, Guangdong Province has introduced measures to subsidize "machine substitution". According to the contract value of the company's purchase of robots, 10% to 20% of the payment will be denied to the company.

When Zhou Xin was asked how to choose between high quality and low price, he said: "People are choosing all their lives. Going left and going right are two different directions. I still want to take the high-quality road myself.”