Li Xuehai: Chinese Businessmen In The United States Make Fashion Brands And Trade Magnates.

"I have done business in some areas, but far from success."

This is what Li Xuehai, chairman of the Witt group, often said when interviewed by reporters.

It is the businessman who thinks he is "not successful" and builds his own in the most famous fashion street in America.

In 35 years, he still stands tall; he also has the largest warehouse in the United States, with an annual turnover of more than 5 billion dollars, and his investment in China in recent years has also come to life.

It can be said that in every field involved, Li Xuehai is almost the best leader.

And when listening to his thorough study of the industry, it is not difficult to find out the secrets behind the business giant's understanding of the needs of the Chinese market and the deep understanding of the Chinese market.

Understand the industry and build Chinese brand

Manhattan, New York, is one of the most prosperous and expensive sections in the world.

There are many tall buildings in it. One of the western buildings is Li Xuehai, a Chinese master.

More than 30 years ago, his career started here, and now he owns his own fashion.

Room and Exhibition Center.

"We've been here for 35 years."

Li Xuehai said.

Over the past decades, the fashion exhibition hall around the world has been switched on and off, and the clothing traders have been coming and going. But he has never changed the signs. "As we insist on doing, it is really not too much."

At present, the Chinese businessman, who is famous for his "fashion giant", is wearing a red T-shirt and a black leisure suit. The collocation is simple. It seems to have nothing to do with the word "fashion" in two words.

"I usually wear such a common dress."

Li Xuehai jokes that he is not interested in dressing. However, he talks about the process and design concept of clothes making. He has a head and shoulders in mind: "to make high-end clothing, every two or three weeks will get a new series. The width of the plate is wide or narrow, and the collar is two inches, 75 or three inches and half. These are the trends.

From a young worker in the Hongkong clothing factory to an evergreen tree in New York fashion street, Li Xuehai's metamorphosis is legendary.

In his view, success has no special experience, which is to think about the industry.

In 1981, 6 years after working in Chinatown, New York, Li Xuehai pulled out all his savings and set up his own fashion company.

At first, he sold the shirt with the simplest design, altogether in three colors, light blue, white and green.

"Sold to department stores at that time, each shirt can only be sold for 2 dollars, very low end."

Li Xuehai knows that this is not what he wants. What he wants to do is to create his own brand.

The design of a fashion brand is undoubtedly crucial.

Although the company has a special designer, Li Xuehai still works hard and insists on meeting with designers everyday.

As he said, "in a movie, actors are important, and directors are more important."

As the head of the company, he must be able to control the positioning and design direction of the brand.

As a result, the man who used to know little about fashion design began to buy all kinds of fashion magazines crazily.

"I am not only American, but also fashion magazines all over the world."

For a long time, Li Xuehai's desk was packed with magazines.

When he saw the good design, he tore it down and put it on the wall of the office.

Not only from fashion magazines, but also Li Xuehai, who is interested in going to all the fashion capital of the world, visits "stealing teachers".

"No joke, every street in Paris and Milan has gone through countless times, and I have seen every shop."

Li Xuehai said that in order to keep up with fashion trends, he often went to Europe's major cities with company designers, and lived there for a month, walking around the streets every day and visiting house boutiques from door to door.

"Many European boutiques are family owned shops with decades or even hundreds of years of history. Handmade products often have many good ideas."

Li Xuehai looked and studied, looked at the style, looked at the material, and then carefully thought about how to combine Chinese material with western style design.

Today, he founded a fashion company in the United States with an annual turnover of 40 million dollars, not only set up its own brand, but also become NBA, MLB and many other well-known American clothing brand authorized agents.

To satisfy customers and build "logistics kingdom"

What do customers want? They have been doing business for many years, which is Li Xuehai's thinking almost every day.

When it comes to the success of an outsider's astonishing career, he laughs lightly, "sometimes there is not necessarily a special eye, that is what the client is forcing you to do."

Li Xuehai said that his warehousing and logistics business is just like this.

In the early 90s of last century, the real estate industry in the United States fell to a low level. Li Xuehai bought a warehouse in New Jersey to store clothing for import and export.

"In fact, it wasn't for investment, but for customers to ask me to help them with supply chain distribution. I need to find places to store thousands of containers shipped every day."

Li Xuehai said, at first, this is not a profitable business. Transporting containers is very hard, and it can't earn much money.

His only thought at that time was to satisfy the needs of customers.

What Li Xuehai did not expect was that after a few years, the US land price rose and the purchased warehouse became a great asset.

And his warehousing and logistics business is growing bigger and bigger. Until now, he has a huge "logistics kingdom" that makes people envious, and thus gets another praise beyond the "fashion giant".

Also because of customers, Li Xuehai made a bold decision 10 years ago to buy a computer company.

"Doing warehouses, logistics business, to do computer software development, which was very rare at that time."

Li Xuehai admitted that at the very beginning, he was almost "zero foundation" in the computer field, and the reason why he took the courage to take this step was precisely because he once again acutely captured the new needs of customers.

With the expansion of the warehouse business, Li Xuehai found that in the busy months of the business, orders were too large to be used by hand, but in boxes.

How to complete the product logistics and distribution of customer value tens of billions of dollars every day has become the first problem before Li Xuehai.

At the same time, with the advent of the Internet era, many department stores have closed their distribution centers and started using computer operations, which makes Li Xuehai even more aware of the urgency of networking with customers as soon as possible.

"I want to build a platform to provide customers with complete supply chain services such as shipment, delivery, money collection and pfer through the network."

Starting from the beginning, constantly revising and updating software, for Li Xuehai, who is over 50 years old, this is not a small workload, but also a huge challenge.

But he chose to face difficulties, because in his view, "keeping up with customer needs and satisfying customers is the first priority."

It is this network platform that allows Li Xuehai to upgrade the supply chain service and expand the logistics business to the field of e-commerce.

Years later, looking back at the choices I made for my clients, Li Xuehai sighed, "if I hadn't done that, maybe I wouldn't have one of the most modern warehouses and logistics companies in the United States today."

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Understand China and grasp the biggest business opportunities

During the conversation, Li Xuehai talked most about China in addition to the industry he had been careful to manage and the clients he had been dealing with for many years.

In his view, the success of his career is closely related to the development of his ancestral home.

Whether it is preferential policies for foreign investors in the early stage of reform and opening up, or the increasing consumption capacity in China, or the rising international status of China, Li Xuehai has gained valuable business opportunities and self-confidence based on overseas.

The picture shows Li Xuehai (right) interviewed by reporters.

"The Chinese market has many opportunities to do a lot of things."

Now, Li Xuehai spent half his time in China, and his investment plan was full. His unique investment vision was admirable and admirable.

A few years ago, Li Xuehai invested in a Florence town full of Italy in Wuqing, Tianjin, and built it into a large high-end brand discount center and leisure culture center.

When he first came here, it was just a piece of farmland, sparsely populated, and only more than 300 people came in and out of the nearby station every day.

"At that time, from the leadership of the government to our customers, and even the media, there was no possibility of building a business here.

But Li Xuehai insisted on choosing the site.

Today, over the past 5 years, the town, which combines shopping and tourism, has welcomed tens of millions of tourists. Its sales in 2015 alone exceeded 2 billion 700 million yuan.

"Maybe there's some luck."

Talking about why we dare to go against the trend at the beginning, Li Xuehai laughed.

The real reason is more than that.

Li Xuehai's courage comes from his understanding of China: "Wuqing is at the junction of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei provinces. Under the strategic background of coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, it will develop into a new satellite city with good geographical location."

Surprisingly, though living in the United States for many years, Li Xuehai knows all about China's major development strategies.

He said that any opportunity to understand China's policies and develop the situation will not be missed, because "China is the largest market and has the most opportunities", and to find real business opportunities, we must aim at market demand, and closely follow the trend and strategy of national economic development.

Recently, Li Xuehai is busy designing and planning a shopping mall with "one belt and one road" as the theme, integrating the imported products and famous landscapes along the "one belt and one road" country.

"One belt and one road" is a strategy with unlimited potential. I believe this will be a very prosperous project.

Li Xuehai said with confidence.

Now, while China is actively developing its layout, Li Xuehai will also put a great deal of energy into cultivating successors.

To cultivate the next generation's understanding of China is still his top priority.

As a co chair of the "100 person" Greater China region of the US Chinese elite organization, Li Xuehai has actively promoted the Youth Leadership Project and has participated many times in the organization of Chinese American youth to China.

"These young people may become leaders of foreign enterprises in the future. I hope they can learn more about China, and maybe they will also invest in China in the future."

Li Xuehai said.