The bitter inspirational entrepreneurial history of a
Playing smart, nearly lost the small business of vegetable farms
? snail's pace? In Wuhan Mingxin Street vegetable market to help the older sister soy sauce duck stall miscellaneous 19-year-old Zhou Peng how did not expect, more than 10 years later actually have their own national chain brand? Zhouheiduck. Recalling the Zhou Hei Duck's painful start history, Zhou Peng also felt a lot of emotion.
In the middle of the night to get up halogen duck, the morning finishing, loading halogen duck; ten, eight ducks one by one to the hotel to send, no time to eat breakfast; after the delivery has been noon, buy ducks, duck slaughter, pickling, six or seven o'clock in the evening to go to the hotel to check out, it has been the time of other people to eat dinner, looking back, I actually did not have a meal, and that's when I felt hungry. The hardest time, Zhou Peng at noon to buy 50 cents for two of the bread, plus 60 cents a bottle of soda, as a reward. Doing small business early, Zhou Peng's dream is to make money to change this poor state of life.
In 1995, Zhou Peng's first venture was in the big sister brine processing workshop next to set up a stove, open-air cooking duck sauce, and sister retail sales channel is not the same? Delivery to the hotel. This move is actually a copy of a Wenzhou soy sauce duck store owner. In Zhou Peng's view, Wenzhou boss business is superb, and to the hotel delivery, a day down to sell a couple hundred, compared to the daily only sell more than 10 soy sauce plate duck business of their own, which is an astronomical figure.
Zhou Peng is very clear, on the color, taste, popularity, they do the sauce duck certainly with? Wenzhou boss? The company's business is not as good as it used to be, but it's a good idea. At this time he played smart,? At that time belonged to the speculation?
? With the means of cheating can not win long business? Zhou Peng realized a seemingly simple but difficult for many people to really understand the truth. The original bad business has become worse, Zhou Peng once into the crisis of lack of money. For the sake of cheap, Zhou Peng in the big sister's house next to rent a broken room without windows.
The worst is yet to come. The penniless Zhou Peng slept very y that night, and woke up in the morning to find that the clothes were thieves fishing outside, the most important thing is to contact the business specially spent 1,800 yuan to buy the beeper is also lost. Caught in the? Economic crisis? Zhou Peng and suffered this robbery, ? The first time I saw this, I had to go out with my friends to rob the place.
The loss of the business and the loss of the elders should not have bought the beeper, anxious father scolded? The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a new one, and you'll be able to do it. The first time I saw this, I had to go back to my house and get a new one. A series of blows made Zhou Peng secretly determined: "I will not go home until I can make the sauce duck. The company's newest product is a new product, which will be released in the next few months.
Frequent runs to the spice market, looking for spice bosses to ask about the flavor and efficacy of aromatherapy materials, borrowed the spice of the ancient book word-by-word research late into the night, to buy hundreds of ducks to repeat the test, Zhou Peng spent a few months to finally find a way to let the people eat the taste of the unforgettable.
In 1997, Zhou Peng to the second sister from Sichuan to help, in Wuhan, under the eaves of a friend of the bazaar to support a tin container with a glass cover to sell soy sauce duck, the glass cover is affixed to the? Zhou Ji strange duck? The signboard. Just opened, a soy sauce duck sold 22 yuan. A month down, the best day of business only sold 132 dollars, the worst day only sold one, obviously losing money. Did not earn a penny, really discouraged, there is the idea of retreat. The rent for two months has been paid, so I can only hold out for another two months. If not just paid two months rent, Zhou Peng was forced to withdraw back home.
Squeeze out the Ruyi duck earned the first bucket of gold
The next month, the business is more difficult to do, the food court on a street surprisingly came one after another three competitors.
By rationally allocating the price of goods, Zhou Peng found the trick. He bought back the duck generally 5 to 8 dollars a, but the price of selling out is certainly 10 dollars. Through price adjustment, the distinct price advantage makes business suddenly become hot. A few months later, Ruyi Duck became Zhouji strange duck under the defeat, to close the end.
At the end of the year settlement, Zhou Peng accounted for more than ten thousand dollars. By 1998, Zhou Peng's business is super good, because the flavor is very good, even if the price is later adjusted upward still sell well. Business is the best when the day sold more than 500, many times sold to two or three o'clock in the afternoon to close the stall, which in the past is unimaginable. Business is doing better and better, Zhou Peng then opened a second stall in the Dajiang Road market, but also invited a few old folks to help. According to Zhou Peng, he earned 300,000 yuan that year, and for the first time he felt a sense of accomplishment in business. At that time, there were only a few employees in the small workshop.
Around 2000, the business ushered in a dismal period, in addition to the well-known ? The SARS outbreak was a major factor in the decline. In addition to the impact of SARS, there is an important reason is the impact of counterfeit duck everywhere. Zhou Peng sprouted a simple sense of brand protection.
The stall business went straight downhill, the production workshop is also extremely unstable, he moved three times a year, and then finally spent more than 400,000 yuan in the Hankou Railway Station next to buy a piece of land, the construction of a four-story building. At that time, the small workshop has thirty or forty people scale, small workshop has a raw food, cooked food simple division.
300,000 yuan to buy? Open a franchise? Lessons
In 2004, Zhou Peng has once again to do the big Zhouheiduck willingness, when he learned that Chongqing has a family to do brine? The chicken stick? There have been dozens of stores, this store has a characteristic: only do direct operation, refused to join. Marinated vegetables can actually do so big? Zhou Peng suddenly Zhouheiduck brand has full confidence.
Opening a franchise is one of the paths of rapid expansion of enterprises. Zhou Peng saw a peer opened 34 franchises, ? Our flavor is better than them, the quality is higher than them, and there are many relatives want to join. In 2006, confident Zhou Peng opened 11 franchises in Nanchang at once, quickly earned more than 200,000 yuan.
? Fake goods all over the world, the quality of the franchise is difficult to control, although they are relatives to manage the store. ? This is blindly open store to eat the bitter fruit. Zhou Peng immediately took action to severely punish the problem stores, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to the rest of the store high price recovery up.? Our industry's biggest risk is the food safety crisis, do join difficult to control the quality? , which is Zhou Peng spent 300,000 yuan to buy back the lesson.
Small workshop to complete the metamorphosis
2008, the company entered a year of rapid development, the staff size from more than 60 people to more than 400 people, the store also grew from 8 to more than 50, sales also exceeded 100 million yuan. This is the effect of modern management? Zhou Peng tasted the sweetness of doing business.
? I think Zhou Heidi duck can go from workshop to brand, all because there is a dream. The beginning may be purely to make money, and now the dream is to set the industry benchmark, leading the industry change, although not yet realized, but we have been trying to go in this direction. Our goal is to do a hundred years old.
The bitter inspirational entrepreneurial history of the second
Luo Yi printed this sentence on the back of his business card. He is the "80s". He was born in a rural area, graduated from Peking University, and is a typical "80s" entrepreneur. The first time I saw this was when I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night. The young man is a young man who has been in the world for a long time. In the bustling city, most people like him have experienced the life of renting a room, and it is not easy to find an ideal place to live.
Luo Yi out of the campus as a?
Luo Yi out of the campus as a second landlord?
Louis vuitton handbags outlet, the first time I've seen this, I've seen a lot of it. The company provides quality long term rental apartments for white-collar workers in the city. His brand is called "Residence". The brand is called "Apartment See".
Professional second homeowner
I've been a?
I've been a professional landlord for more than seven years. In July 2007, I graduated from Peking University with a degree in Russian, and I didn't look for a job, so I thought I would start my own business. But I had no direction at all, and wanted to find a place to live first, so I rented a bungalow near Tsinghua. There were three cottages in that small courtyard, one **** more than 20 square meters, I rented one of them 4 square meters, there are two rooms have not been rented, I think it's a pity, it's hard to find a house near Tsinghua. Later, I rented the other two rooms, put a bunk bed inside, and then posted on the Shui Mu Qing Hua forum to rent out the house. The tenant paid a deposit, I took the deposit to buy a second-hand washing machine and air-conditioning with, and so began to be the second landlord.
The two huts can collect 1,900 yuan in rent every month, which solves my livelihood problem. 8 months I found a two-story basement in the south gate of Tsinghua University, a dozen small rooms, rented to the students who are studying for the exams. This kind of basement is in short supply around the school. At the same time, I also rented a three-room bungalow at the east gate of Peking University, which can accommodate more than 20 beds. These two projects have six or seven thousand dollars a month profit, I feel that the second landlord this trade is a bit interesting, cash flow is very good.
In the winter of 2007, I was determined to find my teachers, classmates and friends, and borrowed more than 110,000 yuan to rent a very large bungalow outside the west gate of Tsinghua University, 58 houses, all built by local farmers. The previous landlords didn't know how to run the business, and many of the houses were left empty and could not be rented out. They rented them to me for 400 yuan a room, and I invested another 200 yuan in each room to buy beds, bookcases, sheets, garbage cans, curtains, and other basic necessities, all of which were second-hand. At that time my cost control was particularly good, the garbage can was five dollars, curtains ten dollars, all very cheap inputs. The room can be rented for six hundred and fifty dollars if it is simply furnished, and I posted it on several school forums, and rented it out in a month's time.
The program has been operating for five years, with a net profit of more than ten thousand dollars a month. The rental of single and small couples, I do not have to bunk beds, are one meter two double beds. I found that as long as the interior environment is slightly better than other group rentals, business will be very good.
Another lesson learned is that the rooms should be as centralized as possible to make it easier to manage. I've done this before. In April 2008, I took over a dozen rooms on Zhichun Road, and I've been doing it for more than a year, but I haven't made any money. Nearly twenty houses are distributed in several neighborhoods, a room in a dozen people, and even a three-bedroom living more than 30 people, the management is particularly troublesome, not only security issues, but also the management of water and electricity maintenance and other chores, rent collection also have to run around.
In the end, I sold these houses to a high school friend.
Failure to do catering
The 2008 Beijing Olympics greatly raised expectations for the rental market, and I found that I couldn't get any properties, and all the houses were priced sky-high. I did some careful calculations, first of all, with the money in my hand can not get a good house, and secondly, I judged that this time the rental market is in a high-risk operation stage, or you have to lose money. So in 2008, in addition to retaining the project near Tsinghua, I did not expand the rental business, and went to do the restaurant.
I found a partner Yu Hongyin is also a high school classmate, he is one year younger than me, graduated from Jilin University in 2008, see me in Beijing as a landlord is quite comfortable, so come over to prepare to do together. We had been running around looking for a house for a while, and we happened to see a restaurant on the side of the road called Du's Hot and Sour Noodles. Du's Hot and Sour Noodles? It was a very simple snack. We tasted, the flavor is good, we said why don't we do this. The first thing you need to do is to get a good deal on the first day of the month, and then you'll be able to get a good deal on the second day of the month.
We went to the owner of this hot and sour noodles to talk about joining. Later the fact proved that catering is not so good to do, we think a lot of things are simple. At that time, we opened two stores, one in a private school, and one in a secondary school. I came from a school and always wanted to do business around the campus. The way we estimate customer traffic is to count the dormitories, how many dormitories you know how many people, the place where there are more people must have business.
But we are wrong in this judgment, in fact, the secondary schools are not enough to recruit students, and many dormitory buildings are empty. In addition, most of the local students in Beijing's junior colleges and private colleges and universities go home on weekends. A store earns five or six thousand dollars a month for a small profit, so it makes little sense to do this.
I and Mr. Yu are both from Sichuan, and have been eating Chongqing noodles since we were kids, and although I didn't make any money doing hot and sour noodles, it prompted me to think about using a similar standardized approach to making noodles. 2010, we created a brand of noodles called "Noodle Talk Shancheng", which is the most popular brand in China. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.
Mr. Yu and I found nine college friends, put together more than 400,000 yuan, one after another, opened three directly-managed stores, and a dozen franchises. In March, 2012, we closed all three stores, this venture was declared a failure.
The reason for the failure is that the positioning is wrong. We want to do to small noodles as the core of the theme restaurant, 8 dollars a bowl of noodles, and then do some supporting other products. But in fact, it is very difficult to form a series of Chongqing noodles, the average person to come in and eat a bowl of noodles, he can not come every day to eat noodles. 8 dollars is the price of low-end snacks, I and Mr. Yu are rural children, want to be affordable and tasty, but our restaurant decoration is better than the roadside stalls, so the pricing is not possible to do in Beijing.
If it's like Master Kong's Private Beef Noodles, a bowl of noodles costs about 28 dollars to have a chance.
These are the lessons of entrepreneurship. In March 2012, Mr. Yu and I shut down the company and sold the brand for 50,000 yuan to the owner of the hot and sour noodles. During that time, I locked myself in a room every night and drank Coke, smoked cigarettes one after another, and my head was full of problems, but I couldn't solve them.
Serviced Apartments
I decided to go back to my old job, and in 2012, an old hotel in Laiguangying on the 5th Ring Road was remodeled, with 123 rooms, and converted into rental apartments. The owner has finished the basic renovation, and I seized the opportunity to invest half a million dollars and contracted the building.
I invested more than two million dollars in interior remodeling, and then rented out more than 100 rooms in a month. This old house has a lot of problems, water and electricity leakage, cracked walls, etc. The cost of operation and maintenance is very high, and the experience of tenants living in it is not good. I realized it was a bottomless pit, so I resold it again.
In the winter of 2012, I began to seriously reflect on the situation, and figured out a few things. First, in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the demand in the rental market is still far from being met, and there must be a lot of room for growth. Secondly, the products offered by this industry are still very rough, and there is no user experience to speak of when renting an apartment in Beijing. Thirdly, the market order is chaotic, both agents and second landlords have a bad reputation, and there are many disputes arising from renting. Summarizing these points, I think there is still a big gap in the market between rental houses and express hotels. For the white-collar class, with a certain hardware quality, standardized management and relatively affordable price of long-term rental apartments.
In 2013, Mr. Yu and I spent several months doing market research. While we were planning this, other commercial organizations had already targeted this market and developed products ahead of others. Chain Home's? Ziyu Apartment? had opened its first store, and we went there and saw that this was what we wanted to do! This store has 165 rooms, all of which are small and well-decorated, with a large public **** area in the first floor lobby.
The market response to this project was very good, and ChainLink accelerated the pace of store openings.
I felt the urgency and confidence: the rental market is huge, and there is still room for many different forms of companies. The product I want to make gradually has an outline: small households, standardized decoration, chain business, the mainstream customers should be more than one year rental period. I've been a second landlord for many years, and I know that stability is the most important thing in this business of renting, and only stability can dilute the cost.
I did some function optimization for the chain's products, such as increasing the closet storage space and balcony, because you need to dry your clothes when you are living at home, which is the difference between an apartment and a hotel.
The first store of Zuyue Apartment's interior decoration is a small fresh artistic model, but they later found that the real artistic youth is not the mainstream customers, because the chain's pricing is still high.
The second and third stores of Zuoyu began to consciously use dark interior design to emphasize the sense of business, but those who are engaged in the operation of rental housing know that there are a lot of good-looking but impractical design in that room, which squeezes the storage space. And I want to give young people a sense of home, living in a home should be practical, comfortable, as much as possible use of space.
In October 2013, our ? Residence? The project was officially launched. Mr. Yu and I, together with another partner, each put up 1 million yuan to start this project. We looked at a lot of properties and finally settled on two floors of a residential and commercial building in the Asian Games Village, with one ****77 rooms.
If you're doing a hotel, the location requires convenient transportation and close proximity to commercial centers, but I'm going to do it? The company's website is a good source of information about the company's business.
If you're looking for a hotel that's conveniently located near a commercial center, but I'm going to make a home, I don't need such a busy location. The hardware requirements are kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, small balcony must have, basically to reach the standard of fast hotels such as Ruijia. Service, of course, I hope to create a community atmosphere, but to grasp a degree, if too many activities such as dinners, hiking and so on, will also destroy the? Home? The feeling of home. We provide tenants with free indoor cleaning twice a week, as well as free moving services; there is a not too large public **** area on the floor, nothing to do can ask friends to drink a cup of coffee and chat, drinks are also free.
My promotion channel is still the network, in the 58 City, Catch.com posting, now more than 90% of the rooms are rented out. The total **** investment in this project is nearly four million dollars, and the renovation accounts for most of it. Our mainstream type is about 35 square meters of one-bedroom, the monthly rent of about 4500 yuan, better than the cost-effective Ziru apartment.
In addition to the Self-Residence, there are other competing brands in the market of the same type as us, such as Rubik's City Apartments, Pleasant Gate, and Xinpai Apartments, etc. Rubik's City Apartments is the largest, and it is the largest in terms of size. Magic City is the largest, starting from Nanjing and introducing Huaping's investment, and now there are dozens of stores and about 6,000 suites across the country.
My positioning for Apartment City is called ? The economic serviced apartments? We are a small startup, with a team of one **** only five people: myself and Mr. Yu, two store assistants, and a cleaning lady.
These few people are perfectly capable of managing dozens of rooms and servicing all the tenants, and the labor costs are much lower than other big companies.
I'm thinking about two things: one is to look for investment, and I'm already in contact with some investment organizations. If I can get about 10 million dollars in, I can open three to five more stores.
To do this industry must have a scale effect, to play the brand. The second is that I want to introduce a crowdfunding model to attract some small personal investment. The house itself is an asset appreciation tool, my cash flow is very good, and there is a clear expectation of income, this business is steady. Maybe you're my tenant, and the apartment provides you with a temporary home in the city; maybe you can also be my shareholder, and the apartment can make your money regenerate money.
The bitter inspirational entrepreneurial history of the third
Wang Yongqing early years due to poverty can not afford to read, had to go to business. 16-year-old Wang Yongqing from his hometown to Chiayi to open a rice store. At that time, there were nearly 30 rice stores in Chiayi, and the competition was very fierce. At that time only 200 yuan of capital Wang Yongqing, can only be in a remote alley to rent a very small store. His rice store was the latest and the smallest, not to mention the popularity, without any advantage. In the newly opened in the days, business is cold and quiet, the door can be sparrow.
How to open the sales? Wang Yongqing remembered his father often said an old adage: ? The money is not spared someone love, not spared someone respect. He has no money, the only thing he can do is not to spare time and effort.
In the beginning, Wang Yongqing had carried rice door to door to sell, a day down, people not only tired enough, the effect is not good. Who would buy a peddler door-to-door sales of rice? But how to open up sales? Wang Yongqing decided to open a breakthrough from each grain of rice. At that time in Taiwan, farmers were still in the state of manual work, due to the backward technology of rice harvesting and processing, a lot of small stones and other debris can easily be mixed in the rice. Before cooking, people had to pan the rice several times, which was very inconvenient. But we have seen it all, and we are used to it.
Wang Yongqing, however, found a point of entry in this commonplace. He and his two younger brothers together, little by little, will be mixed in the rice chaff, gravel and other debris to pick out, and then sold. For a while, the housewives in the town said that the rice sold by Wang Yongqing was of good quality and saved the trouble of panning. In this way, a pass ten, ten pass a hundred, the business of the rice store is getting more and more prosperous.
Wang Yongqing is not satisfied. He had to work hard on the rice. At that time, customers are door to door to buy rice, their own transportation home. This is nothing for young people, but for some older people, it is a big inconvenience. And since young people had no time to take care of their household chores, most of the customers who bought rice were elderly. Wang Yongqing noticed this detail and took the initiative to deliver rice to the door. This customer-friendly service measure was equally popular. At that time there was no? Home delivery? A word, the addition of this service program is an innovation.
One night, it was pouring rain, Wang Yongqing busy store work, it was late at night. He went to bed and lay down, confused and just fell asleep, was awakened by a sharp knock on the door. Opened the door and saw that it was the chef of an inn opposite Chiayi Railway Station. The cook said that the inn had a few guests who hadn't eaten yet, and it so happened that the kitchen was out of rice, so he asked Y.C. Wang to help him send a bucket of rice over. At that time, the profit from selling rice was extremely thin, and a bucket of rice could only earn a penny. In terms of mood, Wang Yongqing did not want to brave the rain to earn this penny, but in order to maintain the usual credit, he did not say a word, measured a bucket of rice, put on a sack as a rain gear, and sent the rice to the inn. When he came back, he was soaked to the skin.
Wang Yongqing send rice, not to the customer's doorstep, but also to pour the rice into the rice tank. If there is still old rice in the tank, he will pour out the old rice, wipe the tank clean, and then pour the new rice in, and then put the old rice back to the top, so that the old rice will not be stored for too long and spoiled. Wang Yongqing this fine service to customers y moved, won a lot of customers.
If you send rice to a new customer, Wang Yongqing carefully note down the capacity of the family's rice bowl, and ask how many people at home to eat, a few adults, a few children, each person's meal, according to this estimate of the family's next purchase of rice about the time to write down in this book. When the time comes, without waiting for the customer to come to the door, he took the initiative to send the corresponding amount of rice to the customer's home.
Every time a new customer to send rice, Wang Yongqing have to inquire about how many people in this family to eat, how much rice per person, according to this estimate of the family's next purchase of rice in the approximate time, written in the book. When the time comes, do not wait for the customer door, he took the initiative to send the rice over.
However, because most families in Jiayi rely on labor to earn a living, income is meager, less money, take the initiative to send rice to the door, if the immediate receipt of money, and customers are tight, it will make both sides are very embarrassed. Therefore, every time you send rice, Wang Yongqing is not in a hurry to collect money. He put all the customers according to the date of payroll categories, registered in the register, and so customers received a paycheck, and then go to a set of children a set of children to collect the rice, each time very smoothly, from the phenomenon of delinquency.
Wang Yongqing fine, pragmatic service, so that the people of Chiayi know in the rice market in the alley at the end of the road, there is a sell good rice and home delivery Wang Yongqing. With the popularity, Wang Yongqing's business is more prosperous. In this way, after more than a year of capital accumulation and customer accumulation, Wang Yongqing will run their own rice mill, in the most prosperous and bustling street rented a house several times larger than the original, the street to do store, in the room to do the rice mill.
In this way, Y.K. Wang started his career as the richest man in Taiwan from a small rice store.