Ma Weizhong: The First Generation Of Gold Diggers In China'S Children'S Clothing City

At 48 year old Ma Weizhong, everything was forced by the market.

In the Zhili town of Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, Ma Weizhong has worked for 20 years.

After 20 years of dealing with him, he knows that it has a changeable temperament.

In the contest between them, Ma Weizhong was in the passive position.

What he can do is to constantly touch the lifeline of the market, and try to figure out how to deal with it.

In the 90s of last century, the children's clothing industry in Zhili was just beginning. It was also a seller's market. Ma Weizhong "recruits the army", mass production and accumulating capital.

Later, the market was saturated and too many similar products. In order to enhance competitiveness, he began to pay attention to design and build brands, and now he opened up cloud sales through e-commerce.

He said: "if the environment changes, we will not change. Sooner or later, we will die."

Traditional industries retain roots while removing foliage that is not suitable for current development.

In August 9th, Ma Weizhong accepted an exclusive interview with CNR.

The opportunity to make money in a hot skirt

Ma Weizhong rooted for 20 years.

It is located in Zhili Town, a famous town for children's wear in China.

Nowadays, there are more than 13000 children's clothing enterprises registered, accounting for 90% of the total number of enterprises in the town.

In 2017,

The output is 1 billion 300 million pieces (sets), with sales amounting to 45 billion yuan.

In the early 80s of last century, the private and private economy was not widespread. But the weaving people made sewing and embroidery products at home with bedspreads, pillowcases, and so on, and began to accumulate capital and explore the market by selling a bag of two poles and running around the river.

In 90s, Zhili people concentrated on children's clothing industry.

Now, depending on the children's clothing store and its industrial chain growing up behind the streets and lanes, the gross domestic product of Zhili town has increased from about 100 million yuan in 1993 to 21 billion yuan in 2017.

The streets of the town are spacious, shops are lined, and tall buildings erected show the rapid pace of urbanization in Zhili.

In this town, hospitals, schools, shopping malls, cinemas and other public services are relatively complete, supporting facilities almost to the general level of the county seat.

Today's weaving is a livable small town

As the first batch of children's clothing operators in Zhili town after reform and opening up, Ma Weizhong witnessed the urbanization of the Zhili, but also witnessed every stage of the development of the children's clothing industry in the town.

In 1998, Ma Weizhong, 28, heard that the whole fabric was selling a small skirt and sold well.

Living in downtown Huzhou, he ran to a friend's home in the town and found that the other person could sell more than 500 items in a day, which was in short supply.

Ma Weizhong, who had been working everywhere but was unable to make ends meet, was very excited. He saw the opportunity to make money and wanted to give it a try.

After borrowing 20 thousand yuan and selling a motorcycle, Ma Weizhong raised a venture fund.

After renting a facade in Zhili town and buying 5 second-hand sewing machines, he and his wife began to tailor their sewing according to the style of the hot skirt.

In those days, the conditions were simple, and a table board was placed in the shop.

When the guest enters the shop, he will buy it as soon as he fits the price.

At first, the sales of small skirts were good, and the production could not meet the needs of the market.

They employed 5 workers, sewing machines kept running, and clothes under the needle went through one after another.

An endless stream of guests came in and out, and bought the clothes on the table and "just out of the oven", leaving a piece of Renminbi for Ma Wei Zhong's pocket.

In the first year, the couple earned 50 thousand yuan.

This is almost ten times the income they had worked for a year.

Gold is everywhere.

"Weaving was like little Hongkong at that time, and everywhere it was gold.

As long as you eat bitterness and add a certain way, you can make money. "

Ma Weizhong knew very well that this was the opportunity that the times gave the generation.

From January 18, 1992 to February 21st, after inspecting Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai, Deng Xiaoping put forward the requirement of "seize the opportune moment, speed up the pace of reform and opening up, and strive for a better new stage of the national economy", laying the ideological foundation for China to embark on the road of developing a socialistic market economy with Chinese characteristics.

Before long, the whirlwind of Deng Xiaoping's South inspection swept across China and set off another wave of reform and opening up.

In the spring breeze of reform, the Huzhou municipal government approved the establishment of the Zhili economic open area in August 1992, giving it a wide range of development autonomy.

In 1995, Zhili was approved by the 11 national ministries and commissions as the "national comprehensive reform pilot unit for small towns".

These two reforms allow local people to see opportunities for development. Since the early 80s, the Zhili people began to go home and start their own businesses in the late 90s.

Ma Weizhong came to Zhili in this golden period.

He also recalled that at that time, household production and processing households of children's clothing increased significantly, forming the industry situation of "producing in one household, scale in thousands of households".

"The open market is free, and gradually brings customers and suppliers from all over the country into an industrial chain."

In 1997, Zhili people traded children's clothing in shabby greenhouses.

In 1999, he moved the store to the three storey building of the commercial street, sold on the first floor, produced on the two floor, and the third floor was the staff quarters.

This is the production mode of "front shop and back factory" that was generally formed in Zhili.

Here, Ma Weizhong and his wife are busy getting busy and working day and night.

More than a dozen sewing machines have been spinning around the clock, and the workers who have doubled their income have been working in the early hours.

This year he earned another 100 thousand yuan, double the number in the first year.

At the same time, with the gradual influx of entrepreneurs, the children's clothing industry in Zhili showed a trend of explosive development, and the gross domestic product increased from 500 million yuan in 1998 to 1 billion 500 million yuan in 1999.

This attracted foreign immigrants from Henan, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces, and some even set up their own businesses here.

Nowadays, about 300000 of the population of Zhili town is about 300000.

In Ma Weizhong's eyes, the weaving space was changing rapidly, and more and more people were building.

With the opportunities for development, people's motivation is also sufficient.

Seller's market changing to buyer's market needs pformation urgently

At that time, most people in the market were all bulk goods, so long as the other party looked at a certain children's clothing, they sold it for money.

Ma Weizhong didn't want to go all the way in the wholesale market because it means making money forever.

As the volume of customers increases, products are in short supply. He intends to train a group of customers who are trustworthy and loyal.

At that time, the productivity of the workshop was only enough for one family, but he chose to split the customer into 5.

"This operation can make the off-season not light, and maintain 5 customers in the busy season, both sides benefit."

The number of children's clothing enterprises accounts for about 90% of the number of enterprises in Zhili.

To maintain a certain degree of sensitivity to the market and have the courage to be courageous is the most distinctive feature of Ma Weizhong.

In the early days of the business, as long as everyone was using bicycles to pport goods, he realized that he had to change the means of pport. In the face of doubts, he bought a car with two rows of seats in 1999 to pport materials and finished products.

This improves his productivity and reduces pportation costs.

Throughout Ma Weizhong's 20 years of entrepreneurship, we can see that this trait is consistent with him, especially after the pformation of the whole industry in 2003.

At that time, weaving

It has gone through the budding of 80s and the golden break of 90s.

After the millennium, the whole industry began to adjust and upgrade, while the growth curve of Zhili town was slightly lower than before.

In 2003, although Ma Weizhong had finished the production mode of "front shop and back factory" as well as most enterprises, and owned new large factory buildings and nearly 100 sewing workers, he realized that after ten years of explosive development, the supply of children's clothing in Zhili was oversold, and the seller's market in the past had become a buyer's market.

The pformation of the market has increased the number of products that customers can choose, and the rate of remittance of goods has also slowed down. From the previous money exchange, it has become a single hand delivery, or even the delivery of goods.

The capital flow of enterprises was affected, and Ma Weizhong was worried.

At that time, if he did not borrow money, I would not be able to pay wages to the workers.

In order to stand out from the blooming children's clothing industry and gain more initiative and maintain customers, Ma Weizhong decided to adjust the sales way instead of simple wholesale, but began to register the brand and sell his children's clothing products in the form of monopoly.

Over the past 15 years, he has run more than 200 stores in more than 20 cities across the country.

"They were forced to solve these problems.

It used to be gold everywhere. When we came, we picked it up. Seven points, three points, wisdom.

Later, after picking up more people, we would have to spend our minds in Amoy, and became seven points and worked hard three times.

Weakening production links, focusing on design and sales

Behind the pformation of sales mode is the pformation and upgrading of the entire enterprise.

Before abandoning the pattern of "eyebrows and beards", Ma Weizhong weakened the low profit production links and focused on the front-end development and backend sales with high added value.

From a factory to a consumer's hand, a piece of children's clothing should be developed through research and design, tailoring, sewing, packaging and sales.

Ma Weizhong outsourced more than 85% of the intermediate links to factories in nearby provinces such as Henan, Anhui and Jiangxi.

He himself is responsible for the first and the end, the more than 300 hands of the enterprise, retaining only 30 front-line workers, the remaining 90% of the staff are mainly responsible for product design, brand building and sales expansion.

Ma Weizhong's businesses now retain only 30 front-line workers.

In terms of design, he no longer imitated the children's clothing styles of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Korea, Japan and other places as before, but captured popular elements through the exchange learning and introduction of design talents, and developed products with their own brands.

In 2009, in order to clean up inventory, open the cloud sales, Ma Weizhong test the water e-commerce.

Today, sales of the network platform account for about 30% of its total sales.

Like him, turning the enterprise from labor intensive to technology flow has become the development direction of the entire children's clothing industry in Zhili.

At present, the town has built a children's wear Industrial Park and guided the deep pformation of the industry.

According to statistics, there are about 2000 children's wear designers in Zhili, and more than 3700 of the children's clothing business operators in 2014, and online sales account for 11% of total sales.

"Adapting to the market and survival of the fittest".

If the environment changes, we will not change. Sooner or later, we will die.

How many times have we changed from selling clothes on the table to hanging up and selling, and then starting the piecework production order system, and then entering e-commerce, or even doing cross-border electric business? Since the end of the market, under the pressure of the market, we are constantly changing ourselves and constantly adapting to it.

In Ma Weizhong's view, in the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the rapid development of Zhili town and its children's wear industry has not only supported the policy, but also can't get away from the inner spiritual code, adjusting and innovating.