Bitter and inspiring history of entrepreneurship Part I
Being clever almost lost a small business in the market.
Dwelling? 19-year-old Zhou Peng helps his sister do odd jobs in Mingxin Street vegetable market. He never imagined that 10 years later, her sister would have her own national chain brand Zhou Heiya. Recalling the tragic history of Zhou Heiya, Zhou Peng was deeply moved.
Get up in the middle of the night to marinate the duck, and pack it in the morning; Send ten eight ducks to the hotel one by one, and don't even have time to have breakfast; It's already noon after delivery. I bought ducks, slaughtered them, and checked out at the hotel at six or seven in the evening. It's time for others to eat. In retrospect, I felt hungry without even eating a meal. In the most difficult time, Zhou Peng bought two 50-cent loaves of bread and a bottle of 60-cent soda at noon as a reward. At the beginning of small business, Zhou Peng's dream was to make money to change this poor living condition.
1995, Zhou Peng started his business for the first time by setting up a stove next to the big sister's pot-stewed vegetable processing workshop, cooking sauced duck in the open air and delivering it to the hotel through different sales channels than the big sister's retail. This move is actually imitating the owner of a sauce duck shop in Wenzhou. In Zhou Peng's view, Wenzhou boss's business is super good, delivering goods to hotels and selling one or two hundred ducks a day. This is an astronomical figure compared with the business that you can only sell more than 10 salted ducks a day.
Zhou Peng knows very well that, in terms of color, taste and popularity, his own sauce duck will definitely follow? Wenzhou boss? Far from it. At this time, he was smart. It was a guess? .
It is impossible to win long-term business by cheating? Zhou Peng realized a seemingly simple truth that many people couldn't really understand. The already bad business intensified, and Zhou Peng was once in a crisis of lack of money. In order to be cheap, Zhou Peng rented a shabby room without windows next to her sister's house.
Worse things are yet to come. Zhou Peng, penniless, slept soundly that night. When he woke up in the morning, he found his clothes hanging outside by thieves. The most important thing is that he lost the BP machine that spent 1800 yuan contact business. Fall into? Economic crisis? Zhou Peng was robbed again. Desperate to go out and rob with friends? .
Lost his business, lost the BP machine that his elders shouldn't have bought, and his worried father scolded him? Black sheep? Drive my son home to find a job. A series of blows made Zhou Peng make up his mind not to go home if he didn't do well. !
Frequently went to the spice market, asked the spice boss about the taste and efficacy of aromatic substances, borrowed ancient spice books to study word by word until late at night, and bought hundreds of ducks for repeated experiments. Zhou Peng finally found an unforgettable taste after eating for several months.
1997, Zhou Peng invited her second sister from Sichuan to help her. Under the eaves of a friend's house in Bazaar, Wuhan, she set up an iron container with a glass cover to sell sauced ducks. Zhou Ji strange duck? Signboard. When it first opened, a sauced duck was sold to 22 yuan. A month later, only 132 yuan was sold on the best day of business, and only one was sold on the worst day, obviously losing money. ? I didn't earn a penny, but I was really discouraged and had the idea of backing out. Two months' rent has been paid, so I have to bite the bullet and pay for another two months? . If it weren't for just paying the rent for two months, Zhou Peng would have been forced to retire from his hometown.
Squeeze Ruyi Duck to Earn the First Bucket of Gold
The following month, business became even more difficult. On a street in the food market, three competitors followed.
Zhou Peng got the hang of it by reasonably allocating commodity prices. The ducks he bought are usually from 5 to 8 yuan, but the selling price is definitely 10 yuan. Through price adjustment, the distinct price advantage makes the business suddenly hot. A few months later, Ruyi Duck became the loser of Zhou Ji Strange Duck and closed down.
At the end of the year, Zhou Peng had more than 10,000 yuan on his books. At 1998, Zhou Peng's business was very good, because it was delicious. Even if the price was raised later, it could still sell well. When business is at its best, it sells more than 500 pieces a day. Many times it can be closed at two or three in the afternoon, which was unimaginable in the past. Business is getting better and better. Zhou Peng then opened a second stall in Dajiang Road Vegetable Market, and invited several villagers to help. According to Zhou Peng, he earned 300,000 yuan that year, and his first business trip was very rewarding. There were only a few employees in the small workshop at that time.
Around 2000, business ushered in another bleak period, except as everyone knows? Sars? In addition to the influence, there is also an important reason, which is the influence of fake and shoddy smelly ducks everywhere. Zhou Peng has developed a simple awareness of brand protection.
The stall business is declining, and the production workshop is extremely unstable. He moved three times a year, and finally spent more than 400 thousand to buy a piece of land next to Hankou Railway Station and build a four-story building. At that time, there were thirty or forty people in small workshops, which were divided into simple raw food and cooked food.
300 thousand? Open a franchise store? course
In 2004, Vince longed to be the Great Zhou Heiya again. Only then did he know that there was a pot-stewed food restaurant in Chongqing? Bang bang chicken? There are already dozens of stores, and this store has a feature: it is only directly operated and refuses to join. Can a pot-stewed dish be this big? ! Zhou Peng was suddenly full of confidence in the Zhou Heiya brand.
Opening franchise stores is one of the ways for enterprises to expand rapidly. Zhou Peng saw a colleague open 34 franchise stores. Our taste is better than theirs, and the quality is higher than theirs. Many relatives want to join us. ? In 2006, confident Zhou Peng opened a 1 1 franchise store in Nanchang, and soon earned more than 200,000 yuan.
Fakes are flying all over the sky, and the quality of franchise stores is difficult to control, even if relatives manage the stores. ? This is the bitter fruit of blindly opening a shop. Zhou Peng acted immediately, severely punished the problem stores, and spent hundreds of thousands of yuan to recycle the remaining stores. ? The biggest risk in our industry is the food safety crisis, so it is difficult to control the quality after joining? This is the lesson that Vince bought for 300 thousand.
Small workshops have completed the transformation.
In 2008, the company entered a year of rapid development. The number of employees has rapidly expanded from more than 60 to more than 400, and the number of stores has increased from 8 to more than 50, with sales exceeding 100 million. ? Is this the result of modern management? Zhou Peng tasted the sweetness of doing business.
I think Zhou Heiya can go from a workshop to a brand because he has a dream. It may be purely for making money at first. Now, the dream is to set an industry benchmark and lead the industry to change. Although it has not yet been realized, we have been working hard in this direction. Our goal is to be a century-old shop. ?
Bitter and inspirational history of entrepreneurship Part II
Se printed this sentence on the back of the business card. Who is he? After 80? Rural background, graduated from Peking University, typical? North drift? Youth. In the bustling city, most people like him have the experience of renting a house, so it is not easy to find a place to live.
Luo Yi walked out of the campus and became a pawn? Second landlord? Now his entrepreneurial project is also related to this, providing high-quality long-term rental apartments for urban white-collar workers. What is his brand name? Moral? .
Professional second landlord
I've been doing it for over seven years? Second landlord? . I graduated from Peking University Russian Department in July 2007. I didn't find a job, so I thought about starting my own business. But there is no direction at all. I wanted to find a place to live first, so I rented a bungalow near Tsinghua. There are three huts in that small yard, one of which is more than 20 square meters. I rented one of them for 4 square meters, and the other two have never been rented. I think it's a pity. It is difficult to find a house near Tsinghua. Later, I rented two other rooms with bunk beds, and then posted on the Shui Mu Tsinghua Forum to rent out the house. The tenant paid a deposit, and I bought a second-hand washing machine and air conditioner with the deposit, so I started to be a second landlord.
These two cottages can collect 1900 yuan rent every month, which solves my livelihood problem. In August, I found a two-story basement and a dozen small rooms in the south gate of Tsinghua, and rented them to students who took the postgraduate entrance examination. Basements around such schools are in short supply. At the same time, there is a three-room bungalow at the east gate of Peking University, which I also rented and can hold more than 20 beds. These two projects have a profit of six or seven thousand yuan a month. I feel that the business of the second landlord is a bit interesting and the cash flow is very good.
In the winter of 2007, I found various relationships with teachers, classmates and friends, borrowed more than 1 1000 yuan, and rented a big bungalow outside the west gate of Tsinghua, 58 of which were built by local farmers themselves. The previous landlord didn't know how to operate, so many houses couldn't be rented out. They rented me 400 yuan for a room, and I invested 200 yuan in each room to buy basic daily necessities such as beds, bookcases, sheets, trash cans and curtains, all of which were second-hand. At that time, I had a very good cost control. Five trash cans and ten curtains were all very cheap inputs. 650 yuan can rent a simple room. I posted on several school forums and rented it out in a month.
This project has been in operation for five years, with a monthly net profit of more than 10,000 yuan. There are singles and couples renting houses, so I don't have to go to bunk beds. Both are1.2m double beds. I found that as long as the indoor environment is slightly better than other group rentals, business will be very good.
Another experience is that rooms should be as centralized as possible for easy management. I have also done group rent. In April 2008, I rented more than a dozen rooms in Zhichun Road, and worked for more than a year without making any money. Nearly 20 houses are distributed in several communities, with more than a dozen people living in one suite and even more than 30 people living in a three-bedroom apartment. Management is particularly troublesome, not only because of safety issues, but also because of trivial matters such as water and electricity maintenance and rent collection.
Finally, I transferred these houses to a high school classmate.
Cooking food and drinks failed.
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games greatly raised people's expectations for the rental market. I found that I couldn't get the housing, and the houses were sky-high. I calculated an account carefully. First of all, I can't buy a good house with my money. Secondly, I judge that the rental market is in a high-risk operation stage at this time and may lose money. Therefore, in 2008, in addition to retaining projects near Tsinghua, we did not expand the rental business and turned to catering.
Yu, the partner I found, is also a high school classmate. He is one year younger than me. He graduated from Jilin University in 2008. Seeing that I am the second landlord in Beijing, I came to prepare to work together. For a time, we ran around the street looking for a house every day and happened to see a restaurant on the roadside that was particularly hot. Duchenne hot and sour powder? Very simple snacks. Let's have a taste, it tastes good, that's all. Renting a house and making snacks seem to us to be almost the same business.
Let's talk to the boss of this hot and sour powder about joining. Later, I found that catering was not so easy to do, and many things were simple to us. At that time, we opened two stores, one in a private school and the other in a technical secondary school. I come from school and have always wanted to do business around the campus. The way we estimate the passenger flow is to count the dormitories, and you will know how many people there are. There must be business in a crowded place.
However, our judgment method is wrong. In fact, the secondary school is not satisfied with the students, and many dormitory buildings have been built, all of which are empty. In addition, most of the technical secondary schools and private colleges in Beijing are local students and go home on weekends. A store earns a meager profit of five or six thousand yuan a month, which is of little significance.
Manager Yu and I are both from Sichuan. We have been eating Chongqing noodles since childhood. Although we didn't make any money making hot and sour noodles, it prompted me to think about using similar standardized methods to make noodles. 20 10 to create a small noodle brand? Say mountain city to your face? .
Manager Yu and I found nine college students, raised more than 400,000 yuan, and successively opened three direct stores and a dozen franchise stores. By March of 20 12, we closed all three stores, and this venture failed again.
The reason for the failure lies in the wrong positioning. We want to make a theme restaurant with small noodles as the core, 8 yuan for a bowl of noodles, plus some other supporting products. In fact, it is difficult for Chongqing noodles to form a series of products. Most people come in to eat noodles and leave. He can't eat noodles every day. 8 yuan is the pricing of low-end snacks. Teacher Yu and I are both rural children, and we want to make affordable and delicious food, but the decoration of our restaurant is better than that of roadside stalls. Such pricing is impossible in Beijing.
If you are like Master Kong's beef noodles, a bowl of noodles will have a chance around 28 yuan.
These are the lessons of entrepreneurship. On March 20 12, General Manager Yu and I closed the company and sold this brand for 50,000 yuan to the boss who made hot and sour powder. During that time, I locked myself in my room every night, drinking coke and smoking one cigarette after another. My mind is full of problems, but I can't solve them.
Service apartment
People still have to do what they are familiar with, so I decided to go back to my old job. In 20 12, an old hotel with room 123 was transformed into a rented room in Laiguangying, North Fifth Ring Road. The owner basically finished the decoration, so I seized the opportunity to invest 500,000 yuan and contracted the building.
I invested more than 2 million yuan in indoor environment renovation, and then rented out 100 in one month. This old house has many problems, such as water leakage, wall cracking and so on. The later operation and maintenance costs are high, and the tenants living in it have a bad experience. I found it was a bottomless pit and sold it again.
In the winter of 20 12, I began to seriously reflect and think about several issues. First, in the first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the demand of the rental market is far from being met, and there must be a lot of room for improvement. Second, the products currently provided by this industry are still very rough, and there is no user experience of renting a house in Beijing. The third is the chaotic market order. The reputation of the intermediary and the second landlord is not good, and there are many disputes arising from renting a house. To sum up these points, I think the market gap between rental houses and express hotels is still very large. A long-term rental apartment with certain hardware quality, standardized management and relatively affordable price for white-collar workers.
20 13 teacher Yu and I spent several months doing market research. When we were planning this matter, other commercial organizations had targeted this market and developed products first. Chain home? Feel at home? The first shop has already opened. Let's go and have a look. This is what we want to do! This shop has made 165 rooms, all of which are small-sized and finely decorated, and the lobby on the first floor has made a large public area.
The market response of this project was very good, and the chain accelerated the opening of the store.
I felt the urgency and strengthened my confidence: the leasing market is huge and can accommodate many different companies. The products I want to make gradually have an outline: small apartment, standardized decoration, chain format, and the lease period for mainstream customers should be more than one year. I have been a second landlord for many years and know that renting a house is the most important thing. Only stability can dilute costs.
I have optimized some functions of the products of Chain Home, such as increasing the storage space of wardrobe and balcony, because you have to hang clothes at home, which is the difference between an apartment and a hotel.
For example, the interior decoration of Jade's first store is a small and fresh literary style, but they later found that the real literary youth are not mainstream customers, because the price of chain home is still high.
For example, the second and third stores in Ruyu began to consciously use dark interior design, emphasizing business sense, but everyone engaged in leasing business knows that there are many beautiful but impractical designs in that room, which squeezed the storage space. I want to give young people a feeling of home. Home life should be practical and comfortable, and use space as much as possible.
20 13 10 month, our? Moral? The project was officially launched. Manager Yu and another partner and I each took out 6,543,800 yuan to start this work. We looked at a lot of real estate, and finally decided to live in a commercial and residential building in the Asian Games Village, with two floors and 77 rooms.
If it is a hotel, the location requires convenient transportation and close to the business center, but I want to do it? Home? You don't need such a bustling area, it's better to be relatively quiet and have complete living facilities around you. The hardware requirements are kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room and small balcony, which basically meet the standards of home inns. In terms of service, I certainly hope to create a community atmosphere, but I must grasp a degree. Too many activities such as dinner and mountain climbing will also destroy it? Home? This feeling. We provide tenants with free indoor cleaning twice a week and free moving service; There is a small public area on the floor. If you have nothing to do, you can invite friends to have a cup of coffee and chat. The drinks are free.
My promotion channel is still the internet, posting in 58 cities and the market, and now more than 90% of the rooms are rented out. The total investment of this project is nearly 4 million, and decoration accounts for most of it. Our mainstream apartment is a one-bedroom apartment of about 35 square meters, with a monthly rent of about 4,500 yuan, which is better than living at home.
In addition to Home Inn, there are other competitive brands in the market, such as Rubik's Cube City Apartment, Pulemen and New Apartment. Rubik's cube city is the largest, and Huaping investment was introduced from Nanjing. Now there are dozens of stores and about 6000 suites in China.
What is my position for Yu Jian? Economical serviced apartment? . We are a small start-up company, and there are only five people in the team: Mr. Yu and I, two shop assistants and a cleaner.
These people can manage dozens of rooms and serve all tenants, and their labor costs are much lower than those of other big companies.
I'm mainly considering two things now: First, I'm looking for investment and I'm already in contact with some investment institutions. If I can get around10 million, I can open three or five more stores.
To do this industry, we must have scale effect and brand. The second is that I want to introduce crowdfunding model to attract some individuals to make small investments. The house itself is an asset appreciation tool. My cash flow is good and my income is expected. This business is steady and steady. Maybe you are my tenant, and I hope to provide you with a temporary home in the city; Maybe you can become my shareholder, which means your money can be regenerated.
Bitter and inspirational entrepreneurial history Chapter III
In his early years, due to his poor family, Wang Yongqing couldn't afford to study, so he had to go into business. Wang Yongqing, 16 years old, came to Kaimi store in Chiayi from her hometown. At that time, there were nearly 30 rice shops in the small Chiayi, and the competition was fierce. At that time, Wang Yongqing, who had only 200 yuan's money, had to rent a small pavement in a remote alley. His rice shop is the latest and smallest, not to mention its popularity and no advantage. In the new opening day, business is deserted and there is no door.
How to open the market? Wang Yongqing remembered an old saying his father used to say: People who spare no effort are loved and those who spare no effort are respected. ? He has no money, and the only thing he can do is to save time and effort.
At first, Wang Yongqing knocked on doors with rice on his back. At the end of the day, people are not only exhausted, but also the effect is not very good Who will buy rice sold by vendors? But how can we open the market? Wang Yongqing decided to break through every grain of rice. At that time, in Taiwan Province Province, farmers were still working by hand. Due to the backward technology of rice harvesting and processing, many pebbles and other sundries are easily mixed into rice. It is inconvenient for people to wash rice several times before cooking. But everyone is used to it, used to it.
Wang Yongqing found a breakthrough from this cliche. He and his two younger brothers started work together, picking up the chaff, gravel and other sundries mixed in rice bit by bit, and then selling them. At that time, the housewives in the town said that the rice sold in Wang Yongqing was of good quality, which saved the trouble of washing rice. In this way, the business of the rice shop is booming day by day.
Wang Yongqing is not satisfied with this. He still has to work hard on rice. At that time, customers came to buy rice and shipped it home by themselves. This is nothing to young people, but it is a great inconvenience to some old people. Young people, on the other hand, have no time to do housework, and the customers who buy rice are mostly elderly people. Wang Yongqing noticed this detail and took the initiative to deliver the rice to the door. This humanized service measure is also very popular. Not yet? Home delivery? On the one hand, adding this service project is tantamount to a pioneering work.
One night, it was raining cats and dogs, and Wang Yongqing was busy working in the shop. It's already midnight. He went to bed and lay down. Hardly had he fallen asleep when he was awakened by a quick knock at the door. When I opened the door, it turned out to be the chef of an inn opposite Chiayi Railway Station. The chef said that several guests had come to the inn and had not eaten yet. It happened that there was no rice in the kitchen. Ask Wang Yongqing to help deliver a bucket of rice. At that time, the profit from selling rice was extremely meager, and a barrel of rice could only earn a penny. Emotionally, Wang Yongqing didn't want to risk such a heavy rain to earn this penny, but in order to maintain his usual credit, he measured a bucket of rice without saying anything, put on a sack as rain gear, and sent the rice to the inn. When I came back, I was soaked to the skin.
Wang Yongqing didn't send the rice to the customer's door, but also poured it into the rice jar. If there is old rice in the rice jar, he will dump the old rice, clean the rice jar, pour the new rice in, and then put the old rice back upstairs, so that old rice will not deteriorate because it has been stored for too long. Wang Yongqing's excellent service deeply touched customers and won many customers.
If you send rice to a new customer, Wang Yongqing will carefully write down the capacity of this family's rice jar, and ask how many people in the family eat, and how many adults and children eat, and estimate the approximate time for this family to buy rice next time, and write it down in a notebook. At that time, he will take the initiative to send the corresponding amount of rice to the customer's home without waiting for the customer to come to the door.
Every time he sends a meal to a new customer, Wang Yongqing asks how many people in this family eat and how much each person eats. Based on this, he estimated the approximate time for the family to buy rice next time and recorded it in the book. At that time, he will take the initiative to deliver the meal without waiting for the customer to come to the door.
However, because most families in Chiayi work for a living, their income is meager and they have almost no spare money. If they take the initiative to deliver rice to the door, if they collect money immediately, they will be embarrassed when customers are short of money. Therefore, Wang Yongqing is in no hurry to collect money every time he delivers meals. He classified and registered all the customers according to the date of payment, and when the customers paid their wages, they collected rice money one by one, which went smoothly every time and never defaulted.
Wang Yongqing's meticulous and pragmatic service lets Chiayi people know that there is a well-selling Wang Yongqing in the alley at the end of Mishi Road, which is delivered to your door. With the increasing popularity, Wang Yongqing's business is more prosperous. In this way, after more than a year of capital and customer accumulation, Wang Yongqing set up a rice mill, rented a house several times larger than the original in the busiest street, paved the street, and built a rice mill in the back.
In this way, Wang Yongqing started his career as the richest man in Taiwan Province from Xiaomi Store.