Chapter 30 Accept Familiar Faces Pass

People in Wenzhou are famous for their love of making friends, they make friends first, and they do business wherever they go.However, many people do not agree with Wenzhou people's habit of making friends. A Shanghai native gave an example: "A Wenzhou native once said to me: 'I can tell you are a reliable person, I trust you, and I think we can be friends.' Then the topic of our conversation revolved around Talking about business, about how we can help each other. This makes me very boring, because friend is a very sacred word, and I am very upset that there are no Wenzhou people who use each other to make friends."

The Shanghainese's statement reflects at least some people's views.Indeed, people in many areas now have resistance to Wenzhou people.In addition, since 2001, Wenzhou real estate speculators have indirectly driven up housing prices, and there are more and more negative voices about Wenzhou people. If Wenzhou people want to talk to others and make friends, they will be affected to some extent. Relying on the kind of friendships forged from strangers to ensure success in business doesn't seem to be as easy as it used to be. Even so, Wenzhou people will not panic. Relying on casual acquaintances to expand their business has never been the first choice of Wenzhou people.Their first choice is those who have life-long acquaintances. These people are usually familiar faces, including relatives, fellow countrymen, friends, and finally those who can use strangers.

Family business is a unique model of Wenzhou people, so family members are the preferred partners of Wenzhou people.Anyone who understands the characteristics of enterprises in Wenzhou knows that there are many family-owned enterprises in Wenzhou.In the initial start-up stage of the enterprise, the whole family contributes together and participates in the management and operation of the enterprise.This not only helps to ensure the stability of employees, but also contributes jointly, and the loyalty to the enterprise is relatively high, which is easy to generate strong cohesion within the enterprise.Even if difficulties are encountered, all family members will work hard to solve the problems with a high sense of responsibility, thus improving the company's durability and ability to resist risks.

Nan Cunhui, chairman and president of Chint Group Co., Ltd., raised the required capital in this way when he founded Chint Group. Nan Cunhui started as a shoe repairer, and later opened a low-voltage electrical appliance factory in partnership with his elementary school classmate Hu Chengzhong, called "Qiujing Switch Factory".A few years later, as the business grew bigger and bigger, Nan Cunhui and Hu Chengzhong had more and more differences on some major issues, and finally had to separate.Qiujing Switch Factory was divided into two, and each party got 1 million yuan, and at the same time, they each shared a debt.

Nan Cunhui after the "separation" faced with the old machinery and equipment and operation methods, although he had more say, but at the same time he was under greater pressure. After all, the previous Qiujing switch factory had already made After achieving a certain amount of achievements, now dividing one part into two will undoubtedly weaken one's own strength.If you want to make your business bigger on the original basis, you need to find more capital. In 1991, Nan Cunhui found his brother-in-law Huang Liyi in the United States, obtained financing of 150,000 US dollars from him, and established a Sino-US joint venture Wenzhou Chint Electric Co., Ltd.Later, Nan Cunhui brought his younger brother Nan Cunfei, nephew Zhu Xinmin, brother-in-law Wu Bingchi and another distant relative Lin Liming to Chint Company, and used their funds to further expand the investment.In this way, Chint Company has become a typical family business. Although Nan Cunhui's personal shares have been diluted from 100% to 60%, Chint Company has more development funds and relatives' investment, which has completed Chint Company's most important business. For Nan Cunhui, the key infrastructure construction has far greater strategic significance than financing in the general sense.

It is precisely because of this life-saving financing that Chint has entered an era of rapid expansion, and since then Nan Cunhui has the capital to keep improving Chint's quality requirements.A few years later, when the low-voltage electrical appliance market fell into a trough due to quality problems, Chint Electric received support from the government due to its strong capital and excellent quality. Since then, Chint Electric has sold well all over the country. Later, when people mentioned family-owned enterprises in Wenzhou, they often used Nan Cunhui's Chint Company as a model to prove the important role of family-owned enterprises in the initial stage.

Orientals pay more attention to blood relationship and family ethics, which is said to be "blood is thicker than water".Therefore, when family members are in danger, family members will lend a helping hand out of ethics, and even redouble their efforts to maintain the honor of the entire family, forming "pro-friends" and "pro-connected relatives".Otherwise, they will be ridiculed by people and it will be difficult to gain a foothold in society. Therefore, when raising funds, the first thing Wenzhou people think of is the familiar face of their relatives, because social ethics and morality are much more effective than ordinary systems for people.Although many modern economists do not approve of family-owned enterprises in Wenzhou, such as low management level and difficulty in breaking through, etc., it is undeniable that family-owned enterprises in Wenzhou still have some Strong viability and competitiveness, after all, the cohesion rate produced by the combination of relatives is far greater than the combination of other social members.

For Wenzhou people, the Xiangdang is the most reliable person when there is no relatives to help, or when the power of relatives has been exhausted.This point is especially reliable for Wenzhou people who are away from home, and fellow villagers are their most trusted "outsiders". As the saying goes: "When a fellow countryman sees a fellow countryman, his eyes are full of tears." Wenzhou people can best understand the emotions contained in it.Therefore, the first thing for every Wenzhou person who is new to other places is to look for fellow villagers, not only to fully familiarize themselves with the market situation through fellow villagers, but also to see if they can help each other.

For ordinary people, the biggest difficulty in investing is lack of funds, but this difficulty is nothing to Wenzhou people. Chairman Zheng from Wenzhou City, Chifeng City said: “There is a popular saying among Wenzhou people: ‘Fellowship is wealth’. As long as someone has a good investment project, financing is not a problem. There will definitely be rich fellow villagers to help solve the problem, and they There is no need to sign any contract at all for the financing, just a verbal agreement is enough. So as long as there is a chance to make a lot of money, several Wenzhou fellow villagers will join together to pool the money and form large and small shareholders respectively, and everyone will work together to buy the needed projects. "

The kind of financing mentioned by Chairman Zheng is a manifestation of the grouping of Wenzhou people. As long as there is a common interest, Wenzhou fellow villagers will form this kind of "group".As mentioned above, Nan Cunhui and Hu Chengzhong's partnership to set up a factory is actually this way of raising money.Because we are fellow villagers and acquaintances, we will trust each other unconditionally. If anyone does something that violates morality, then this person will never have a foothold in the circle of Wenzhou people. Financing at the Chamber of Commerce is also the most common financing method for Wenzhou people.The Wenzhou fellows who participated in the chamber of commerce may not have known each other before, but as long as they show their identities and participate in the "chamber of chambers of commerce", when someone has difficulties, everyone will provide help.If someone wants to borrow a large sum of money, everyone will calculate how much help each person needs on average.Those who are unable to help, even if they go home to borrow money, they must help the needy.This kind of help is not utilitarian, and there is no need to pay interest or sign a contract.Through this traditional way of folk gatherings, many Wenzhou people have the capital to become a boss, and when the boss has money, he will also provide help without hesitation when the newcomers need to raise money.This method of raising funds has been passed down from generation to generation, and Wenzhou people have formed a living network of relatives, friends, and fellow villagers. Therefore, Wenzhou people are not afraid to travel all over the world.

Although Wenzhou people are now more famous and the banking policy is much looser, most Wenzhou people still use the strength of the chamber of commerce to raise initial capital at the initial stage of starting a business.Financing from fellow villagers at the Chamber of Commerce is one of the most practical and reliable ways for Wenzhou people. The most fundamental reason why I choose my fellow countrymen is still trust.Wenzhou people have established a very tacit relationship with each other through the Chamber of Commerce. They know that those who owe money will pay back, and they also know that they can raise money when they need it.Therefore, whether it is doing business in a foreign country or investing in a remote corner, Wenzhou people can always find an alliance, which reduces the pressure and risks faced by living in a different place and promotes the development of each other. Apart from relatives and fellow countrymen, the third person one can rely on is one's own friends.We have already talked about this a lot before, so I won’t repeat it here. In short, Wenzhou people's investment is inseparable from their own social network, and in their network, the most important and familiar groups are family relatives, neighbors, and friends.Compared with other groups of people, these three kinds of people are relatively the most familiar and trustworthy people, and they are also the first three kinds of people they can get help when they encounter difficulties. By the way, a phenomenon.According to statistics, Zhejiang and Shanghai are the two areas with the highest contract performance rates, because there are more people from Wenzhou in this area.Consistent with this phenomenon, Wenzhou's underground banks have a very low bad debt rate, which is much lower than that of state-owned banks. Seeing this phenomenon, some people will say that Wenzhou people are more trustworthy.But why not say they trust each other?Because most of the partners they cooperate with are reliable acquaintances, they can raise capital and get help even without contracts. This is a major characteristic of Wenzhou people in business.