Chapter 6 Chapter 4: The Eve of the Birth

In December 1993, Zhou Chengjian had a whim and used more than 160 meters of materials. It took a month to make a giant parka with a length of 4.64 meters and a bust of 5.4 meters. It was broadcast on CCTV's "Oriental Time and Space" column for 8 minutes. It was included in the "Guinness Book of the Big World" in Shanghai, and Zhou Chengjian was also known as the "King of Snow Clothes". Soon after, a specialty store opened on Wuma Street in Wenzhou, and the entire street was covered with a giant red carpet.Undoubtedly, this incident caused a sensation as usual, and the leader was Zhou Chengjian, a tailor who loves to come up with ideas.

In 1993, Wenzhou was the first to put forward the slogan of "Building a City with Quality and Prospering a Business with Famous Brands", and formulated the "358 Quality Project", that is, starting from 1993, it will take 3 years to make the quality of Wenzhou's main products reach the advanced level in the province;5 It will reach the domestic advanced level in 10 years; it will reach or approach the international level in 8 years. Quality consciousness sneaks into the corporate culture. A shirt of Youngor has to go through 72 processes, and each process has no less than 4-12 detailed rules. From the collar, pockets, sleeves, buttonholes to the placket, the symmetry is limited to Within 1-2mm.

At this point, many businesses are still growing in volume, resulting in a painful product backlog. Inspired by this, some vendors improve the quality of clothes on the one hand, and introduce fashion design concepts on the other. That year, tailors with design concepts really made their money.This approach coincided with the fashion trend at that time. Luxury, luxury, and expensive were no longer special words used to criticize Western lifestyles, and worship of famous brands became an expression of taste. On Wuma Street, a famous commercial pedestrian street in Wenzhou at that time, there was a collection of clothing styles that were popular in China at that time.On this day, Zhou Chengjian was walking on the street and suddenly discovered a fact: some clothes with poor texture and workmanship, just because of a small label on the back of the collar, the price is actually higher than the clothes that he carefully sewed with stitches. out several times.He walked the entire Wuma Street in one breath, and finally came to a conclusion: that inconspicuous little label is money.On this afternoon, he made up his mind: to create his own clothing brand.

In August 1993, Zhou Chengjian invested more than 1 million yuan to establish Wenzhou Metersbonwe Garment Co., Ltd. with his income from several years of operation, and created the Metersbonwe series of brands. At that time, most clothing enterprises in Wenzhou "loved" suits, and the market competition was very fierce.Zhou Chengjian found another way and established casual wear as the leading product. Zhou Chengjian's happiness is not his alone.In fact, at about the same time, national gestures showed appreciation for this joy. This summer, the first China International Clothing and Accessories Fair (CHIC) opened at the China International Trade Center. World-class fashion design masters Valentino, Ferré, Pierre Cardin and 400 clothing and apparel companies at home and abroad witnessed this historical moment .China International Clothing & Accessories Expo is growing with the development of China's clothing industry.Also in August, the first fashion magazine in New China - "Fashion" was launched.A year later, "China Clothing News" and "Clothing Times" came out.

While this industry brand is developing rapidly, Zhou Chengjian enjoys greater joy in the business model.His business model was later called the "asset-light model". He didn't have his own factories and workers, and all the ready-made garments were OEM (on behalf of processing) by other garment factories. The logistics also took the form of outsourcing, and his stores were mainly franchise In the form of a store, the risks in the production and sales links are transferred out. The 16-year persistence is not just the persistence and success of this "asset-light model", but also the enterprise management, upstream and downstream supply chain integration, marketing and positioning, logistics distribution, etc. behind it. There is today.

Therefore, while many people admire his "Forrest Gump Spirit", quite a few people in the clothing fabric industry can't help but sigh "he is a genius in the clothing industry". Zhou Chengjian's innovation has undoubtedly been revealed in the early stage of the company's development. The driving force comes from his strong impulse to expand the company and his keenness to the market.During the few years of working hard in the Miaoguosi market in Wenzhou, Zhou Chengjian gradually realized the importance of the brand. He realized that "clothing has no core competitiveness in technology, and the core competitiveness is the brand", which made him determined to move away from that At that time, it was the largest clothing wholesale market in China and created its own brand.

But how difficult it is to create a brand. In Zhou Chengjian's own words, "at that time, the management was backward and the capital was limited. It can be said that the heart is higher than the sky, and the hands are lower than the ground." An investigation in Guangdong gave him inspiration: Guangdong enterprises have good equipment and skilled workers because they have been doing OEM for foreign countries for a long time, but they often leave their machines idle due to insufficient orders. This is also the case in some other coastal areas.Recalling his experience of processing clothing for others in the early days of his business, Zhou Chengjian thought: Why can’t Metersbonwe let others process it?He immediately decided to adopt the method of entrusted processing, and established long-term cooperative relations with large garment processing factories with first-class production equipment in Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places to form his own "production base".

Today, although the factory in Zhongshan, Guangdong, which was the OEM for Metersbonwe, has closed down, the cooperative factories of Metersbonwe have grown to more than 250, and these enterprises have an annual production capacity of more than 20 million pieces (sets). ) production capacity, and if it relies entirely on its own investment, it will require at least a cost of more than 1 billion yuan. After finding the OEM factory, Zhou Chengjian found the familiar wholesalers and asked them to distribute the "Metersbonwe" brand. These people were the earliest Metersbonwe franchisees, and now Metersbonwe is in There are more than 1,500 specialty stores across the country, except for a small number of directly-operated stores, the rest are franchise chain stores.If so many stores are invested and operated by themselves, it will cost at least more than 500 million yuan.

This is Metersbonwe's famous "virtual management" model in the clothing industry. Metersbonwe relies on virtual management to save funds for enterprise expansion, and invests a lot in business management, clothing design, brand promotion, etc. . However, Zhou Chengjian's approach is not original, and Nike is a typical representative in this regard. If Zhou Chengjian unconsciously used the "OEM" and "franchise chain" methods that conformed to the times at the beginning, now he is actively following and learning from the experience of the industry and other companies. The example he often cites is "goods turnover rate" , 50 days in foreign countries, 180 days in China, and 80 days in Metersbonwe.

Thanks to the IT system he invested in very early on, production and sales became socially collaborative. Metersbonwe invested 100 million yuan in the logistics information platform.It integrates management, production and sales, and is composed of manufacturer resource management system, group internal resource management system and agent resource management system.Through it, it is possible to grasp the purchase, sale and storage status of each specialty store in real time, and to change production orders at any time according to these figures. These are things for later.This approach, known as "supply chain management", is speculated to have been inspired by Zhou Chengjian's later EMBA studies at Zhejiang University and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.Zhou Chengjian said that his classmates at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business include Niu Gensheng, chairman of Mengniu, and Jiang Jiangnan, chairman of Focus Group, and he learned a lot from them.

Not taking the usual path is what makes Zhou Chengjian most excited about these consistent studies. From the day of its birth, Smith Barney has brought the uniqueness and courage unique to the big era. After founding Meibang, Zhou Chengjian did not allocate a piece of land, build a factory, import a batch of machines, recruit a group of workers like traditional clothing companies, and did not produce a single garment. All of them were OEM (OEM) by more than 200 domestic garment factories. ); Metersbonwe does not sell clothes, but is sold by more than 1,200 franchise stores scattered across the country. Even though Zhou Chengjian was not the first to create such novel techniques as OEM and virtual management, it is no exaggeration to say that Metersbonwe is China's first generation light company.This seemingly deviant approach is destined to infiltrate the bone marrow of the enterprise. Smith Barney's team designs and sells brand clothing, while the production link is through the form of OEM.This virtual operating model seems to be tricky, but in essence it throws itself into a more unknown and risky situation.In constant exploration, Zhou Chengjian is like the master of a kingdom, constantly revising his ideals. Dominated by his ideals, Smith Barney abruptly organized an open value network, enabling partners with varying levels of management to have a common rhythm with them. This is the biggest sign of Smith Barney's "unconventional path". "Virtual operation" caused a great sensation at the beginning, and it was spread all over the streets and alleys as an innovative business model.Jiang Hengjie, executive vice president of the China Garment Association, commented on Zhou Chengjian, "He cleverly used the characteristics of Chinese garment manufacturing to avoid the uncertainty of production and sales." However, in the early days of the business, the business model of Smith Barney caused great controversy in Wenzhou, and Zhou Chengjian himself was also praised and criticized.Everyone thinks that Smith Barney's model is a leather bag company, but in Zhou Chengjian's view, even if you build this factory yourself, if the products cannot be sold, isn't it still useless? "At that time, everyone said that this approach was wrong, but this is my opportunity." In the "outsourcing" link of Smith Barney, franchise sales and garment production are 100% outsourced. There are two types of sales outlets, one is direct-sale stores and the other is franchise stores. As of the first quarter of this year, Smith Barney has a total of 2,211 direct-sale stores and franchise stores nationwide, of which 1,927 are franchise stores and only 284 are direct-sale stores. Home.After joining, the goods are provided by Metersbonwe, 25% of the sales income goes to the franchisee, and the rest of the income goes to Metersbonwe. Zhou Chengjian also outsourced the logistics to a limited extent to the logistics company, and the entire deployment data was controlled by the company itself.Zhou Chengjian believes that the current core competitiveness is not how many resources are in hand, but how much ability to integrate resources. In Zhou Chengjian's own opinion, Smith Barney, who has just stepped onto the stage of history, seems to bring more doubts to himself because of his position of "not taking the usual path". "Metersbonwe has been an outstanding and controversial enterprise in Wenzhou since its inception. I, Zhou Chengjian, am also a person with mixed opinions and fierce debates in Wenzhou. Everyone thinks that our model is a leather bag company. All There are no entities, everything is social, if they don’t help you process, don’t help you open a store, isn’t Metersbonwe not?” To this day, Zhou Chengjian has long lost the grudges he had at the beginning. For him, thinking is important, but the implementation after the goal is determined is even more valuable.The later Smith Barney story also supports this argument.As a result, Zhou Chengjian became plausible, and gradually moved from behind the scenes to the front stage, expressing his views through the media: "Even if you build this factory by yourself, if your products can't be sold, isn't it still useless? The principle is the same. So at the time everyone said that this approach was wrong, and that was my chance. Today I Believe me, no one thinks that Metersbonwe can’t do it. And this kind of virtual business model is not limited to clothing brands, let alone Metersbonwe. Everyone knows Boeing, even though it is an American Boeing company, but many of its parts are made in China, and it is also scattered all over the world for processing and then assembled in the United States.” Zhou Chengjian's statement seemed eloquent and reasonable. This handsome boss affected his company, and the company reshaped the boss in turn. This unusual color became the keynote for Zhou Chengjian and his clothing empire to start.How far can an unconventional enterprise go in breaking through the shackles of the old system?On the one hand, it depends on the degree of change in the general environment, and on the other hand, it depends on the judgment of the leader of the enterprise. Zhou Chengjian, who lived in Wenzhou in 1986, founded such an enterprise in the next eight years, and led his own brand from the 1980s when there was nothing to the turbulent 1990s.