Zhou Chengjian Does Not Take The Unusual Road Metersbonwe Brand.

"No ordinary way" is a well-known slogan of Metersbonwe.

From tailoring to creating a big brand, from a series of hype to blending virtual and reality...

"Do not take the unusual road" has always been accompanied by enterprises going forward.

Zhou Chengjian summed up the company with this concise and comprehensive statement.

If we follow the usual path, now Zhou Chengjian may be the tailor of Drum Tower Street in Wenzhou. Even further, it will be difficult to become the leader of the sportswear empire.

With a rejection of the concept of "ordinary", he constantly chooses the inherent path, and ultimately makes him the same as all the Wenzhou people who are worthy of remembrance in the wave of reform, and let "ordinary" become the "if" in life.

And to open up a new territory to the front of his expectations.

Zhou Chengjian said that the unusual road at his feet can not be divorced from the background of this era. He can be compatible with the environment and benefit from the reform and opening up to the liberation of productive forces and people themselves.

Looking for inflection points

In early March, we interviewed Zhou Chengjian in his company's headquarters park in Nanhui District, Shanghai.

Before we talk, let's first visit Metersbonwe's clothing Museum.

There, in line with the costumes of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there was a giant snowsuit made by Zhou Chengjian, who had a sensational effect when he was hanging on the streets of Wenzhou.

This yellowish snow coat contrasts sharply with the black scene, which is against the bitter rain and wind that Zhou Chengjian faced at the beginning.

Like many private entrepreneurs in Wenzhou who have no background, Zhou Chengjian today is the result of his struggle against survival.

In 1986, Zhou Chengjian, 20, took up about 200000 yuan in debt and left Wenzhou for land.

At that time, the most popular clothing market in Wenzhou, the Miao fruit temple, made clothes in the evening, sold clothes during the day, worked for more than 16 hours a day, and did dirty work, hard work and heavy work.

Once, he made a mistake in cutting off a suit of suit sleeves.

This mistake almost brought him back to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

But he would make a mistake, changing the sleeves of his suit into jacket sleeves and wearing a casual style suit, which became a good seller in the market.

It is precisely this mistake that has created Zhou Chengjian's first challenge to the traditional clothing market in Wenzhou.

Since then, he has been famous in the Miao fruit temple. In the traditional management field of the former shop, he started his initial stage of entrepreneurship without brand and channel through sewing skills and marketing consciousness.

In this period, Zhou Chengjian's way is not to play cards by cards, and to achieve the desired result at a low cost.

When the clothing processing market was filled with the voice of bargaining, Zhou Chengjian accidentally hit the slogan "I gave the cost price, you just add some money and clothes to take away". The slogan of the $800 small advertisement made a stir. When the bus was only accepted as a vehicle, Zhou Chengjian accidentally advertised his advertisement with a double decker bus, which led him to win the first pot of gold from the windbreaker production.

In 1995, Zhou Chengjian made an unexpected decision again: withdraw from the competition of mainstream suit, attack the casual clothes that others haven't done yet, and quit the Miao fruit temple to create the "Metersbonwe" brand.

After that, Zhou Chengjian even started his own business mode of "production outsourcing, direct operation and joining together" from the disapproval of "no factory" operation, and gave up the existing brand and moved to Shanghai when his brand dominated Wenzhou leisure clothes.

Now, it seems that many of his turning points on the road of reform are quite risky at that time.

As for the questions about risks, Zhou Chengjian replied: "immobility does not necessarily mean that there is no risk.

Just like a person running all the time, you can see how you digest and avoid risks when you meet a stone.

False and real mystery

At the beginning of brand creation, capital was needed.

Zhou Chengjian faced the same problem as all entrepreneurs, but he created a successful example of China's clothing industry -- "production outsourcing, direct operation and joining simultaneously" business model.

Strictly speaking, the business model of Metersbonwe is not different from that of Nike's top sports brand operators.

But in China in 1995, it was innovation for the owners of private enterprises, including Zhou Chengjian himself.

An idle Guangdong business has stimulated his nerves.

Looking back on the experience of the "OEM" OEM process, Zhou Chengjian did the opposite. He commissioned the processing method to establish a long-term cooperative relationship with the large garment processing plants with first-class production facilities in Guangdong and Jiangsu, so that they could become a "production base" of Wenzhou garment enterprises, thus gathering about 10000000 powerful production capacity of the annual leisure wear series for their own licensed production.

Subsequently, Zhou Chengjian copied the same idea into the field of sales, and adopted a franchise chain strategy to expand Metersbonwe's territory quickly.

This "Karate" has been questioned in the underestimation of Wenzhou's corporate reputation and even suspected of being a distortion of the bag company.

But Zhou Chengjian, by virtue of "virtual", actually saved at least more than a billion yuan investment cost, and effectively pferred his energy to Metersbonwe's brand management.

"China's retail enterprises have no mature routes at the beginning, no mature cases, no system management, no system management knowledge and values platform, they are crossing the river by feeling the stones, and Wenzhou is also the first market and then the system."

Zhou Chengjian admitted that abandoning the idea of "big and all" was a successful pformation at that time, but he stressed that this preemptive advantage that could easily be copied was no longer available after 2000.

"The division of social resources needs to focus on one area and maximize the marginal benefit. We integrate 300 factories and 2000 agents. This kind of focus achieves the maximum benefit.

But the so-called virtual is just a business model, not a core element.

Zhou Chengjian once again made an adjustment to the mode of "production outsourcing, direct operation and joining together". From the business mode to the innovation of management mode, Metersbonwe plans to open 100 direct flagship stores before 2010, and plan to directly control 20% of the shops and production capacity.

Cut the dress according to one's figure

"Everything that has been done in the past may not be as clear as it is today, but it will have an impact on the future development.

Although lack of knowledge, experience and vision, let's change more passion. "

Zhou Chengjian used his concept of "embrace change" to easily sum up his way. In his view, not taking the unusual road is a kind of persistence to his brand.

Up to now, he also regards himself as a tailor, but his understanding of tailors is essentially different.

"Tailors should not only be on the technical level, brand is not only the symbol of production, but also the marking of lifestyle services.

The tailor that Chinese understand is cash, and Western tailors are tailored for luxury, the standard of life and service in the world.

Tailoring for people is a tailor. It is a manager who tailors the business and the brand. He is an entrepreneur for tailoring the constantly changing and changing market.

Zhou Chengjian created his own brand in 1992.

At that time, the snow coat and jacket of Shishi from Fujian were popular in Wenzhou. Zhou Chengjian kept up with the market situation and immediately hired the hat factory in Wenzhou, and hired workers to produce in quantity, and set up a foreign name for their own workshop, the Kay Lisa garment factory, and the registered trademark "bang Wei".

This humble little label comes from the naive discovery of the value of goods behind intuition: the same clothes, different trademarks, and different prices, he decides that he needs a trademark of his own.

How to give this brand the value of its brand?

In April 22, 1995, he opened the first "mate bond" brand store in the Wenzhou liberation theater. In the same year, he changed the name of the factory to the mate Clothing Co., Ltd. and the brand chain monopoly.

When he opened the shop, Wenzhou's five Horse Street was covered with red carpet. He called it the "thousand store project".

A clothing company in Wenzhou is going to set up thousands of brand chain stores in the whole country. This slogan, like its huge snowsuit and body advertisement, starts to implant the consumers' minds from the eyeballs.

Then, he signed a lot of money to sign stars such as Aaron Kwok, Jay Chou, Willber Pan, Angela Chang and so on. This brand of Wenzhou has quickly stabilized the domestic line in just a few years.

As of September 30, 2007, Metersbonwe has 19 sales branches, 2006 stores and Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, and has been among the top 100 Chinese apparel enterprises for 8 consecutive years.

The next road can be seen in its costume museum.

"The past fashions came from Europe, and we hope that the future fashions will come from Asia and China."

Zhou Chengjian, dressed in elegance in office, said slowly: "the pursuit of material motivation is only phased, and we must pursue the values of Wenzhou enterprises.

Concentrating on perseverance is insisting that there are many opportunities to invest in speculation in the past 30 years.

So, if we don't take the unusual road, we will do what we do not want to do, but it is just one thing. "