A Millionaire Squeezed Out Of Mud

The world's most worthless, everywhere yellow mud, and the world's most humble species of small insects, perhaps they are alone, will not attract attention, and will not associate them with wealth.

However, an ordinary farmer pinched together the two people with a unique vision and created a great myth.

Natural hobbies become rich tools.

There is only one difference between Jilin's Da Kou Qin town and other places. The Loess here is much more sticky and much more dense than anywhere else. But before Wang Zhengang, no one ever thought about anything, and still lived their poor year after year.

Wang Zhengang liked painting since he was young, and he studied painting with four or five teachers.

When he graduated from high school, his basic knowledge of painting and painting techniques such as ink painting, watercolor and sketching had a certain level.

At that time, anyone who made furniture in the village asked him to draw some flowers, birds, fish, fish and festive designs on the glass doors of the furniture. He earned three thousand or four thousand yuan on this income every year, which was not a small number in the early 80s.

But by the end of the 80s, less and less furniture was made in the countryside, and the glass paintings on which Wang Zhengang lived were becoming less popular.

How many nights at night, Wang Zhengang looked at the stars in the sky and fell into a deep reflection: in such an era when a person wants to start a business and become rich, he has already gone one step ahead. When this step reaches a dead end, it is certain that it will not work if you are complacent and conservative. How should you start again? And what direction do you want to take?

People carved white mud, I carved yellow mud.

One day in August 1990, several of Wang Zhengang's art students came to his house to get together.

A classmate chatted about some people making money with white clay sculptures and animals.

The speaker had no intention. The listener was interested in Wang Zhengang's inspiration. I used yellow mud instead of white mud. The sticky yellow mud was a permanent material. I had fine art foundation, and I was good at painting small animals. This is the advantage that no one else had. Why didn't he try to do it himself?

After a while, a lifelike yellow mud insect was lying in front of people.

We can not help but praise: "like the real, exactly like the real!" "do it, it must be popular!" a business classmate said at that time, let Wang Zhengang do a dozen pieces of fine products, until the October Canton Fair to take his work to see if there is a sale.

For the next two months, Wang Zhengang was always in an exciting state of creation: conception, design, drawing, kneading, installation of legs, feet, hair, color and air drying.

Smart Wang Zhengang soon explored a whole process of making yellow mud insects, and made ten popular insect pests: beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, ants, bees, butterflies, grasshoppers...

The reason why he chose insects instead of other animals is his unique view: "insects are the smallest animals in the world, and are the animals that people at least look at and know least. Because of curiosity and strangeness, people are willing to buy it, and insects are small and well molded, and can be made in one to one ratio, which increases the sense of reality."

{page_break}

On the afternoon of October 20th, Wang Zhengang's classmate in Guangzhou called and told him that the 16 yellow mud insects you had taken were ordered 45 thousand, and they were all exported through foreign trade.

Wang Zhengang was wild with joy. A work of 1.2 yuan, a total of 50 thousand yuan! What a concept it is! He is happy for the second choice of his life.

At the end of November, with the help of the local government, led by the District Civil Affairs Bureau, a handicraft factory was set up by Wang Zhengang as technician. Wang Zhengang was responsible for making the model, and the workers were working on the model again.

After three months' work, the task was finally finished.

But the factory opened it for Wang Zhengang.

After the shooting of yellow mud insect crafts, at the spring fair in 1992, their products were still in short supply, and 300 thousand pieces were ordered at once.

At this time, for various reasons, Wang Zhengang went home and set up his own handicraft factory to find his own market again.

He began to think about opening up the domestic market. In the first few years, he almost ran across the famous small wholesales in the country.

Product quality is the foundation of getting rich.

In the spring of 1994, the welfare factory in the district was disbanded because of poor management.

In this way, the work of foreign trade fell to Wang Zhengang's head. He was determined to make a big effort. This is a small incident which made him have a new understanding of the quality of the product and greatly improved his business philosophy.

It was April 1994, when they suddenly received nearly 300 returns.

It's never been a thing. Their products have always been smart.

A look, all of which are lacquer, crickets, grasshoppers, etc. originally these products were accidentally broken in the loading.

The other side said, it is not that we are unreasonable, but we feel that your products should make some efforts and improvements in preventing the fall.

Wang Zhengang immediately realized that this kind of handicraft should be not only beautiful and ingenious, but also should be stronger to a certain extent.

After searching the data and asking the relevant departments of science and technology, he finally discovered two reasons for the fragility of the products: first, because the viscosity of the local yellow mud had declined in the past two years; two, because the drying of yellow mud was too fast in the process of drying, it produced fissure.

The problem was found. He immediately decided to add a certain proportion of glue to the yellow mud so that its viscosity increased greatly, and the drying method did not need to be dried in the future.

The problem was solved at once, and there was no such phenomenon ever since.

Half a month later, Wang Zhengang called the customer and said, "we sincerely thank you. You have made our product quality up to a higher level. We have returned the original goods to you. Today we send you these 300 crafts to you. Please give more comments and cooperation."

Receiving the award, Wang Zhengang, the customer said with emotion, "no, he is no ordinary businessman. He will not be king in the market."

Technological improvement made him successful.

Wang Zhengang was a person who drew inferences from other people. In the process of production, he found a new problem: on the broken craftwork, as long as the paint was dropped, the yellow mud inside was bare.

So he consulted a lot of friends and teachers who drew pictures and took some methods of adding some kind of pigment to keep the yellow mud in the same color as the insect's body.

So even if there is an occasional broken place, it doesn't seem too ugly.

{page_break}

Quality is improving and sales are increasing. His product has rapidly entered more than 50 countries and regions except a dozen provinces and cities in China.

With the improvement of people's understanding and appreciation of yellow clay craftwork, the demands of customers on products are also increasing. This will prompt Wang Zhengang to increase the level of production technology and raise the level.

At first, although the insects they made were very real, they still belonged to "pictographic" works, but today more customers demand products called "simulation class".

This kind of imitation handicraft requires that the volume, color, shape and so on must be exactly the same as the real insects. Even the insect's antennae, hair, lines and texture are absolutely realistic.

This technology is not very difficult for Wang Zhengang, but it takes more time to produce pictographs.

To this end, Wang Zhengang asked the workers to do less but also to ensure quality.

At the same time, in order to make the work more vivid and more likable, he studied more than 20 books on insects, such as "Kunming studies", "water edge insects", Taiwan's "butterfly appreciation of Taiwan", "Taiwan insect notes" and so on, and wrote a lot of reading notes. All of these laid the most solid foundation for making insect crafts. In December 1999, a Japanese customer ordered 150 thousand beetles (a beetle in Japan), but required the green metallic luster on the product to be exactly the same as the real scarab.

This is very difficult, Wang Zhengang.

He tried to use more than 10 colors, and could not reach the glittering and plucent light.

He has spent more than 10 sleepless nights to overcome this difficulty.

One morning, he went to Jilin to work. In the street, she accidentally saw a young woman's nail polish on her fingernail, which was very close to the luster she wanted. He hurried up.

Under the guidance of the young woman, he bought the nail polish and went home for a trial. The bright luster was very similar to that of the scarab. At that time, the money put forward by employees to buy nail polish can buy hundreds of times of ordinary pigments, which is not cost-effective.

But Wang Zhengang said: "quality and credibility are the key, and the pay is definitely rewarded!" the Japanese guests were very satisfied, and soon ordered a shipment of 200 thousand pieces.

Today, Wang Zhengang's yellow mud insect handicraft has been exported to more than 100 overseas countries and has gone through seven continents and four oceans.

What is more inspiring to him is that his yellow mud insects are favored by some archaeologists.

In recent years, Wang Zhengang has produced more than 40 yellow mud insect specimens for the Japanese Museum of Tokyo, the Taiwan Provincial Museum and the Jilin Provincial Museum.

In the 15 years from 1990 to now, there were more than 2700 species of yellow mud insects produced by Wang Zhengang, with an average annual export volume of 1 million. The export volume of the yellow mud was as high as about 2000000 per year in 2001-2004 years, which not only made a lot of foreign exchange for the country, but also made it a veritable millionaire.