A Tailor With A Price Of Ten Billion Is Not Good Enough.

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At the ceremony of listing shares, Zhou Chengjian, a tailor, presented a gold plated sewing machine to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. He said, "I was the tailor of a village, and now I am lucky enough to be a Chinese tailor. I hope to become a global tailor."

It is just that the expensive tailor, who has been worth billions of dollars, has achieved remarkable achievements through numerous challenges, but now he meets a chasm which seems to have crossed the gap.

Same with

The big guys in business, Zara in Spain and the owner of UNIQLO in Japan have become the richest man in the country, but Zhou Chengjian is not familiar with China, though his brand name, mus, has been popular among young people for many years.

Like all Zhejiang businessmen, Zhou Chengjian is a smart and practical entrepreneur.

But the brand he created is just like other local clothing brands, and has encountered the "bottleneck" in development. Why can't he be a foreign brand?

When he was 17 years old, he moved from a peasant worker to a tailor, relying on intelligence and courageous. When he was 28 years old, he made his own clothing business, relying on his vision and diligence. When he was 43 years old, his business went public on marketing and management. Now, he immediately greeted him at the age of 48, but his high-end brand ME&CITY was almost occupied. What's wrong with it?

Frustrated ME&CITY's senior tailor

On the commercial street in Xidan, Beijing, there are two large clothing brand shops on both sides of the apple store. One is the world-famous clothing giant Zara, which is known as the plagiarism, and the other is Zhou Chengjian's newly created ME&CITY.

Both of them are brand direct shops. They have done enough work on site selection, decoration, display and shopping guide, but there is a lot of traffic.

In the minds of most young people, Zara has become a synonym for fashion, but most of their understanding of ME&CITY is in Metersbonwe's high-end brand, though Zhou Chengjian does not want to be familiar with the public.

A pure English brand name (even Metersbonwe is also an exotic name), "jailbreak" starring Wentworth Miller's endorsement, fashion youth design style, the direct location of the golden section of big cities, and 18 billion 300 million yuan worth, all of which are difficult to connect with a Wenzhou farmer 30 years ago.

In 1982, it was only 17 years old.

In Zhejiang, Wenzhou, Qingtian, a garment processing plant has been set up, or a tailor shop is more appropriate.

A workshop, several sewing machines, to greet a few tailor friends together, is the entire processing plant.

At that time, there were no garment factories in a few kilometers around the neighborhood. The small garment factory was "rare and expensive". During the peak season, several people needed to work overtime to make clothes under the kerosene lamp.

At that time, Zhou Chengjian was a boss, a tailor and a salesman. When he was not rushing to make clothes, he went to all over the country to pull orders.

4 years later, Zhou Chengjian had 9000 yuan in cash assets, and 300 thousand of his debts due to failure in business.

In 1986, Zhou Chengjian came to the Miao fruit temple in Wenzhou, which later came out of numerous clothing merchants.

At that time, the Miao fruit temple in Wenzhou was a place where merchants gathered in the north and south of the river. It was a trade market specially designated by the government for self-employed individuals.

At that time, when the temple of Miao fruit was not yet bright, many merchants from all over the country would gather at the gate, while the Miao fruit temple had a shop operator, often running a processing factory at home, selling the styles in the daytime, working overtime at night, and selling them again on the second day.

Zhou Chengjian, like them, invited several tailors from his hometown to sell his clothes during the day and to make clothes at night.

After 8 years of hard work and hard work, Zhou Chengjian founded the "Metersbonwe" brand and invested 4 million in establishing the Metersbonwe limited company in Wenzhou.

In another 14 years, A shares of American bond (002269, stock bar) were listed, and Zhou Chengjian's assets exceeded 10 billion.

This seemingly inspiring entrepreneurial story seems perfect, but the growth history of Zhou Chengjian, a businessman in Wenzhou, has not stopped.

If you advocate cheap Chengdu snacks, one day you want to be a high-end restaurant in the south of the Yangtze River, will you accept it? This may not be as good as the announcement of a convenient fast food chain in South America.

Not only is the catering brand, including clothing brands, there are few precedents for the development of low-end brands to high-end brands.

But Zhou Chengjian did not retreat, because he believed that love would win, and his success over the past 30 years also showed this. So Metersbonwe had a brother, ME&CITY.

However, this lucky god did not care about Zhou Chengjian.

In 2009, the sales target of ME&CITY was 2 billion yuan, but in the end it only sold 350 million yuan. In 2010 and 2011, the performance was also a continuous loss.

Usually, the incubation period of a new brand is 3 years, and the performance of 3 years is not improving. Zhou Chengjian is also unable to sit still.

Now, the ME&CITY flagship store in Nanjing has been empty. Zhou Chengjian also openly admitted in the media that he made a wrong decision in his development.

However, Zhou Chengjian believes that the failure of the new brand is mainly due to the implementation of management problems.

At a high-level meeting, Zhou Chengjian angrily criticized his subordinates' work style as "three eggs and one not", that is, asshole, bastard, nonsense and inaction.

Zhou Chengjian's employees call him a "tyrant" in private.

The wisdom and solitude of tyrants

Zhou Chengjian's intelligence is universally acknowledged.

At the age of 8, Zhou Chengjian was always relatively active because of his thinking problems. He arranged his family's grocery store according to his father's arrangement.

This kid's business is doing very well, earning thousands of yuan a year, which is quite rich in China's rural areas in 1970s.

Until graduating from junior high school, Zhou Chengjian has been doing this little grocery store owner, without any changes, he is not satisfied with the status quo, he asked his father to learn skills.

The father sent Zhou Chengjian to a local famous tailor through the relationship. At that time, Zhou Chengjian's talent was completely revealed. After a few years, he could only be sent to school by Zhou Chengjian. He could follow the master's door to make clothes for him in a month.

The 40 years after that were Zhou Chengjian's time in the fashion industry.

On one occasion, Zhou Chengjian suddenly whimsy, the jacket sleeves shortened to a jacket, the result was a great success, he began to pform the leisure clothing.

Later, a group of businessmen from Fujian stone lions made their snowsuits and jackets, and began to enjoy a nationwide popularity in the early 1990s. On this basis, Zhou Chengjian improved his leisure clothes and sold them again.

In only one year, Zhou Chengjian made about 4000000.

However, Zhou Chengjian is short of everything because he is passionate and rude, because he is smart and conceited, because he listens to success.

He believes that in Metersbonwe's enterprise development and operation management, "do not allow others to have ideas, only allow me to implement."

A manager of Metersbonwe once proposed a different idea from Zhou Chengjian. Zhou Chengjian almost picked up the glass and hit him. The man soon left the company.

Zhou Chengjian's bad temper may be one of the main reasons for his personnel changes. Zhou Chengjian, who was the boss, was willing to work on Saturday and Sunday. He was willing to leave his hometown and go to Shanghai to develop, but his employees might not be willing to.

In the meantime, many employees began to run away, and Metersbonwe had 6 personnel concussion. Many employees reflected that "Zhou's temper is not very good and a little irritable."

Zhou Chengjian, who was "rude", soon became a loner.

Zhou Chengjian's character is inherited from his father. In Zhou Chengjian's eyes, his father is no less than a tyrant. From small to large, whenever he makes a mistake, it is a simple and rude fight.

Zhou Chengjian once said that he most hated his bad temper. "He was so angry that he was like a tyrant several years ago. He often scolded everyone for no reason."

After the listing of Smith Barney clothing, Zhou Chengjian holding 70% of Shanghai's Chinese clothing investment holds 80.6% stake in listed companies, which does not include his daughter's shareholding.

Every day the stock price fluctuates by 10 Fen, and Zhou Chengjian's fortune will change dramatically.

The pressure that keeps assets up and down is likely to have the power to distort human nature.

Besides, what Zhou Chengjian wants is not only beneficial, but also famous.

One of Metersbonwe's departing executives believes that some of Zhou Chengjian's big but wrong decisions are largely divorced from basic business considerations. Compared to how much money he can earn or how much money he earns, he cares more about whether the project is enough to win the face.

Fame and wealth are all human desires.

Zhou Chengjian's fame and fortune, like Metersbonwe's slogan, does not take the unusual path.

Like most of the Miao merchants at that time, Zhou Chengjian began his clothing business as a Western-style clothes.

He invited several tailors from his hometown to sell clothes during the day and dress at night.

Once, Zhou Chengjian shortened the length of his suit sleeves. It was this accidental mistake that made him whimsy. He changed the sleeves of his suit into jacket sleeves, and the hem of his clothes changed to the same coloured fabric as the sleeves.

Zhou Chengjian also opened up a pioneering undertaking in Wenzhou's retail industry: open the cost price openly.

In 1994, the price of all costumes in Zhou Chengjian's open shop, including fabrics, buttons, electricity charges, taxes and so on, was priced on the day of the opening of the new stores.

The extent of the scene can be imagined, "too crazy, originally only a door shop, had to open the back door, the media also scrambled to report, all the clothes are sold!"

In April 1995, the first Metersbonwe store was about to open in Wenzhou's five Horse Street. Zhou Chengjian also thought of some "crooked ideas". On the day of the opening, Wenzhou's five Horse Street was paved with red carpet through the Metersbonwe store. 30 attendants were recruited to make candidates, so that consumers could choose the right attendants, and consumers could get 30 percent off of the sales price.

On the day of the opening ceremony, "Metersbonwe" became famous.

Unlike most of the owners of garment enterprises, Zhou Chengjian is not satisfied with being a good boss instead of a processing plant, but upgrading the industry step by step.

At that time, the fixed mode of Wenzhou Miao fruit Temple clothing merchants was to build factories with money first, no matter how many profits, they could always make profits in the end.

Such a train of thought is not wrong in the age when the "brand" is not the focus of clothing competition.

But Zhou Chengjian felt that if he went along this way, he would have to spend a lot of money to expand the factory to meet the rapid growth of the market.

However, the clothing processing industry has no core technology at all. The important reason for the foreign clothing market is the brand and marketing cycle.

In view of this, Zhou Chengjian boldly envisaged the outsourcing of production and marketing to other enterprises, leaving only the core part, including brand, design, promotion and so on.

At that time, few people were optimistic about Zhou Chengjian's business model. His colleagues joked that Metersbonwe was a "bag company". Some even claimed that his business could only last for 3 years.

Time has proved that Zhou Chengjian is ahead of this point.

In Stan Shih's "smile curve", design and sales are at the two ends of the curve, which is a link with higher economic value added, while production and processing is in the middle of the curve, which is the lowest link of economic value added.

In the concept of "virtual operation", American scholar Roger Nagel also referred to "business activities through outsourcing and franchising".

Although Zhou Chengjian did not have the concept of "Smiling Curve" and "virtual operation" in his mind at that time, Zhou Chengjian made the right choice with his businessman's intuition.

In today's business school MBA textbook, NIKE is a living case of this concept, while the domestic business case is Metersbonwe.

At present, the only foreign director with the position of director in the United States is the French design director of "Qi" brand, which is not a success, but he is not a management member.

At present, the management of the enterprise is basically the senior staff of Metersbonwe.

This group of people has more loyalty, but the motive force for self innovation is obviously insufficient.

Metersbonwe was once regarded as China's closest Zara company.

In order to understand the operation mode of Zara, Zhou Chengjian also gave some orders to Zara's foundry in China. He also went to these factories to understand the whole operation process in detail.

But after learning the operation experience, the most critical data -- sales speed has become Zhou Chengjian's biggest problem.

Why do consumers want to buy you? Brand is weaker than competitors, fame starts from scratch, prices and workmanship are not stronger than rivals, and there is a big difference in design: ME&CITY's defeat is almost final.

A United States employee who is often around Zhou Chengjian said: "he is worried, worried about whether the brand has improved, and whether the management system has been improved."

Now, the middle-aged man, less than 50 years old, is very clear that if Metersbonwe's brand and management are still not improved, Metersbonwe will be marginalized by multinational companies in the first tier cities.

"Just as he had knocked down Giordano, someone would have knocked him down."

Zhou Chengjian's personal charisma has led Metersbonwe to go out of the first casual wear brand in the early days of Metersbonwe. However, when a brand wants to achieve long-term sustainable development and its foundation is evergreen, it is not yet known whether the personality of Zhou Chengjian can solve all kinds of crises in the future.