Richardson Richardson's blog : People's Daily Focuses on the Economic Development of Yucheng County in Henan Province: a Small Steel Tape Measures a Big Market
Original Title: People's Daily Focuses on the Economic Development of Yucheng
County in Henan Province: a Small Steel Tape Measures a Big Market [Editor's
Note] The palm-sized steel tape is a common measuring tool in life. The annual
production and sales volume of steel tape in Yucheng County accounts for more
than 85% of the country's total, and the export volume accounts for more than
60% of the country's total. It is exported to more than 70 countries and
regions, with more than 100,000 employees. It has been awarded the title of
"China Steel Tape City" by China Metrology Association. How does this happen in
a traditional wheat-producing region? Recently, a reporter from People's Daily
walked into Yucheng County, Henan Province, to interpret the legendary hardware
products. The following is the full report: The largest direct selling point of
production and sales in China has been built abroad. Measuring the World with a
Tape Measure in Yucheng (People's Eye · County Brand Economy) Newspaper reporter
Wu Jing Gong Jinxing Li Xiang Li Linbao A ruler in Yucheng measures all over the
world. Henan Yucheng has an annual output of 1.5 billion steel tapes, more than
one for each Chinese person. Each tape is connected by 5 meters, with a total
length of 190 circles around the earth. Its production and sales account for
more than 85% of the national market, and its export volume accounts for more
than 60% of the national total, which are exported to more than 70 countries and
regions in Europe, America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It has an annual
output of 150 million hardware measuring tools and 100,000 tons of steel belts.
Yucheng's "China Steel Tape City" is located at the border of the old Yellow
River and the junction of Henan, Shandong and Anhui. A state-level
poverty-stricken county has written a legend of hardware products. The Kingdom
of Steel Ruler "Amoyed" from Waste Products It is hard to imagine that Yucheng,
the "kingdom of steel tape", is "washed out" from waste products. In the 1980s,
Nanzhuang Village in Shaogang Town was very poor. Because there is no industry,
life depends almost entirely on government relief. There is a popular saying in
the local area: "It is better to eat pickle dregs than to marry a few people."
Poverty leads to change, and change leads to success. Six farmers in the village
were the first to eat crabs. The scrap ruler strips purchased from the
state-owned tape factory were cut off and sold to students and rural
construction workers in the surrounding villages, and the business was very
prosperous. Several forerunners soon became well-known ten thousand yuan
households. Villagers in the vicinity came to the door one after another and ate
the "metering meal" together. Expand the full text For a time, steel tape
workshops sprang up throughout the county. In 1992, Yucheng Zhongzhou Tape
Factory, the first steel tape factory in Yucheng County, was born. A group of
talented people in the countryside also took the lead in setting up factories,
realizing the transformation from courtyard workshops to mechanized
manufacturing. The rudiment of "Steel Tape Kingdom" is beginning to show. The
market is changing and the road ahead is full of ups and downs. Low-grade
assembly, while gradually becoming large-scale from small to large, has also
encountered practical bottlenecks. First, the cost is high. The ruler strip, the
ruler shell, the ruler belt, the nail, the spring and the like all need to be
purchased from other places, which is time-consuming, laborious and low in
profit; and secondly, the quality is low. The problem of inaccurate scale has
not been thoroughly solved. Third, the market is narrow. With the improvement of
consumer quality requirements and brand awareness, by the end of the 1990s, the
original best-selling products had become unsalable products. There is no famous
brand, poor quality, backward technology and vicious competition. Steel Tape
Kingdom "Where to Go?"? People's Daily (June 09, 2017, 16 edition) Yucheng sized
up the situation, met the challenges, prescribed the right medicine and turned
around with difficulty. Dance the dragon head. It is difficult to upgrade in a
small way, and only by strengthening the "dragon head" can we achieve great
success. With the support of the county, leading enterprises such as Yadong,
Jianghua, Huaxin, Dongfang and Changhong have achieved large-scale production
and high-level products, which sell well all over the country and abroad. Swing
the "dragon body". Supporting leading enterprises, the county promotes the
establishment of assembly specialized households and villages, encourages "big
with small, old with new, twinning", and makes "leading" and "dragon body"
cooperate. Pull the dragon's tail. The county encourages the development of
steel belts, paints,custom tape
measure, plastics, moulds, hardware and other related industries to form a
relatively complete industrial chain, which drives tens of thousands of people
to engage in processing, sales and transportation around steel tapes. From
scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong, the "steel tape kingdom"
began to transform into a butterfly. Up to now, there are nearly 2000 steel tape
enterprises in Yucheng, with an annual output value of more than 7 billion yuan
and an annual export earning of more than 40 million US dollars. In hundreds of
large and medium-sized cities and some countries, there are direct sales points
of Yucheng steel tape. From the sole efforts of individual households to the
establishment of industrial bases under the guidance of the government; from
low-end products with pure handwork to high-end new products with chip voice
systems; from OEM to independent brands; from single physical stores to
multi-form, multi-channel and all-round marketing of physical and e-commerce;
from extensive development to intelligent and intensive development; from
domestic sales to export sales.. A small tape measure can make a big market and
find a way to get rid of poverty and become rich. In 2016, the added value of
Yucheng steel tape industry accounted for about 8% of the county's GDP, with
more than 100,000 employees. Let more products go to the world, from the
original measurement of the earth to tailor-made, customized global. Zhu Dongya,
Secretary of Yucheng County Party Committee, said that next step, the county
will highlight innovation-driven,large
print tape measure, intelligent transformation and green development, build
"China Hardware Tools City" and let Yucheng's hardware tools industry go to the
world. R & D investment brings "money makes money" "Magnets weighing 2 grams
bring benefits of 5 million yuan." On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2016,
Zhang Yadong, general manager of Shangqiu Yadong Measuring Tools Company, was
excited to receive a call from Peter, a German orderer. Peter wanted to renew
the purchase contract of at least 5 million yuan magnet tape with the company,
and he was anxious to rush to the company for an interview. Can a small magnet
have such a big benefit? Since this small magnet is installed on the steel tape
head, the work of two workers in the construction industry can be reduced to
one. The 2-gram magnet not only increased the company's orders by at least 5
million yuan, but also won overseas markets such as Germany and Poland. Is the
cost of research and development very high? Someone asked Zhang Yadong. Zhang
Yadong calculated an account with a smile. For example, in the screw assembly
workshop, only the automatic thread feeding machine has been developed for more
than two years, with an investment of 700000 to 800000 yuan; after operation,
more than 200 people have been saved. If the monthly salary of each person is
2500 yuan, the monthly labor cost will be saved by nearly 6 million yuan, and
the inventory will be reduced by nearly 50%! The investment in R & D and
automatic equipment is high, but the production cost and defective rate are
greatly reduced, and the popularity of products is greatly improved. Innovation
opens up the market, and innovation is the benefit. Zhang Yadong said: "Our
Yadong measuring tools are the first enterprise in Yucheng County to obtain the
European OHS environmental protection standard certification and the European
Union EEC certification, which has fully opened up the European market.".
Despite the downturn in the industry last year, we still maintained the momentum
of shortage of supply and demand after making full use of product quality and
technological content. Intelligent electronic measuring tools that can speak,
electric digital display tape that can display, hand-pushed long-distance
large-area measuring instrument with automatic conversion function, assembly
machine that can directly assemble steel tape.. In the industrial agglomeration
area of Yucheng County, patented products are dazzling. Enterprises in the
region have 76 national patents and have successfully developed nearly 40
national patented technology products. We encourage enterprises to actively
adopt new technologies, new technologies and new materials, increase investment
in R & D funds, and set up enterprise technology centers or R & D
centers, with remarkable results. Wang Ganfeng, head of the industrial cluster
area in Yucheng County, said that in 2010, there was only one enterprise
technology center in the area, and in 2016, the number increased to seven; the R
& D investment of enterprises also increased year by year. At present, 125
enterprises above the county scale have established product and technology
research and development institutions, of which 6 enterprises have been approved
as high-tech enterprises, 6 enterprises have been approved as Henan Engineering
Technology Research Center by Henan Science and Technology Departm ent, and the
number of patents owned by enterprises in the county exceeds 300. The benefits
of innovation are emerging. In the National Quality Supervision and Inspection
Center for Steel Tape and Hardware Tools in Yucheng County, a 50-meter-long
inspection "ruler platform" is noticeable, fully demonstrating the strength of
this national quality inspection center. " With the acceleration of innovation
and development of "Steel Tape City", mini tape measure ,retractable
tape measure sewing, the quality inspection center came into being in 2011.
It has passed the national "three in one" qualification certification, and the
testing scope has been expanded from 6 categories of steel tape and hardware
tools, 41 technical parameters to 9 categories, 11 products and 91 technical
parameters, involving 16 international standards and national standards. Through
the establishment of a national public platform for quality inspection and the
continuous strict supervision by the quality supervision department, the steel
tape and hardware tools industry in Yucheng County has broken through the
quality bottleneck and entered a new stage of winning by quality and making full
efforts to innovate. Sun Wenfeng, director of Yucheng Quality Supervision
Bureau, said that in recent years, the quality of steel tape and hardware tools
in the county has been continuously improved, and the qualified rate of Yucheng
products sampled by provincial and municipal quality supervision departments was
89% in 2014, 97% in 2015 and 98% in 2016. Online sales to achieve global
customization "More than 80% of the steel tapes in the country are produced in
Yucheng, but none of the students know about it!"! I want to go back and sell
steel tape measures. In 2012, Li Qianzhi, a second-year graduate student in
Hebei, said to her classmates. Teachers and classmates who have a good
relationship are concerned about her future: "This is promising!"! It's not easy
to get out of that poor place. Why do you have to go back? "I want to try!" Li
Qianzhi answered firmly. On March 8, 2013, Li Qianzhi's Henan Golden Rabbit
Trading Co., Ltd. was officially opened. Two people, one network cable, two
computers, one second-hand printer, work until four or five o'clock at night.
Not afraid of the hardships of entrepreneurship, but worried about the
positioning of the company. The leading enterprises in our hometown have
occupied the domestic market, and the capital, technology, management and
channels are not comparable. After thinking about it, Li Qianzhi decided to do
"pure cross-border electricity supplier" and take the "Internet +" express
train. Open online stores, purchase, find sales channels, overcome language
barriers, contact customers.. Li Qianzhi is very busy. For a while, I received
an email from a Nigerian customer around two o'clock every night. From 1:30 at
night, she stayed in front of the computer and kept refreshing the page. The
thoughtful service made her and the customer quickly become friends and promoted
long-term cooperation. Another African customer came to Yucheng in the winter of
2014. The lowest temperature was below zero, but he came in short sleeves. His
country is very hot, and he has never worn a down jacket. Li Qianzhi immediately
bought him a down jacket and a hat, which touched the customer very much.
Nowadays, every important festival in China, Li Qianzhi always receives the
blessing of this customer. He invited us to his country many times and even
invited us to his daughter's wedding, all of which he paid for. How big the
dream is, how big the stage is. Li Qianzhi, with her hard work, has turned an
unpromising two-person small company into a medium-sized cross-border e-commerce
enterprise. Two employees have become three teams of more than 20 people,
language communication has become difficult to have English, Russian, Korean and
other multilingual professional customer service, a single product has become a
steel tape, tape measure, screwdriver and other nearly 30 categories of hundreds
of commodities, as a middleman to build 2500 square meters workshop, produce
their own brand.. In 2015, Li Qianzhi's export volume exceeded 10 million yuan,
of which e-commerce accounted for more than 90%, and its products were exported
to the United States, Brazil, Italy and other countries. As a leading
enterprise, Yang Jianbo's Shangqiu Jianbo Measuring Tools Company is also a "big
e-commerce family". The online transaction volume of the Company in 2014 was RMB
28 million, including RMB 11.6 million for cross-border transactions; the online
transaction volume in 2015 was RMB 32 million, including RMB 14 million for
cross-border transactions. Yang Jianbo told reporters that the multi-channel
sales promotion model of "wholesale + direct sales + agency sales" not only
saves costs, but also improves revenue. The power of "e-commerce" marketing is
accelerating. Busy online shopping, lay the foundation offline. Cheng Huijian,
Standing Committee of Yucheng County Committee and Deputy County Governor, said
that we should pay close attention to the construction of cross-border
e-commerce industrial parks and e-commerce incubator parks, and launch a
cross-border trade and modern logistics base in eastern Henan Province with
"online trading as the main part, entity operation as the supplement, and
coexistence of supporting services", so as to enhance the "China Steel Tape
City" and build a "world hardware city". In April, Henan Shangqiu Bonded
Logistics Center (Type B), located in Yucheng County, passed the acceptance of
the General Administration of Customs and will be closed for operation in the
near future. Li Qianzhi said happily that it used to be laborious to deliver
goods to coastal provinces and cities for export, but now it is convenient to
have a bonded area. The wish of "export at home" has finally come true. From OEM
Domestic Sales to OEM Export Sales "Jianbo, not only a famous Chinese brand, but
also a foreign brand, has been registered in South America for more than ten
years, including Brazil, Panama, Chile, Argentina and other countries." Mention
oneself brand of steel tape, Yang Jianbo is very proud: "Without brand, be
accepted hard.". ” From processing workshops in villages and towns to small
vendors in Yiwu, from medium-sized enterprises with OEM production to large
enterprises with registered brands overseas and specializing in foreign trade.
Over the past 20 years, Yang Jianbo has taken a road of branding. In 2000, Yang
Jianbo contracted a booth in Yiwu and started customized production of steel
tape labels. Different customers have different preferences. If you do what you
like, the sales volume will be bigger. But like many export enterprises, Yang
Jianbo has encountered a new problem: the profit of OEM is very low, and
well-known enterprises will not look for him at all. I'm determined to create my
own brand. Since 2005, he has registered the "Jianbo" trademark in South America
and other countries. At the beginning, the product popularity was low and the
shipment volume was small. But he insisted on high-quality production and
gradually won the trust of customers. In 2016, 10 million Jianbo measuring tools
were sold, with a total sales of 120 million yuan, of which 50% were self-owned
brand products. Today, Jianbo Measuring Tools Company covers an area of 45 mu,
with 22000 square meters of factory buildings and 268 employees. Its products
are exported to dozens of countries and regions such as Europe, America and
Southeast Asia, and it has become a leading enterprise in the industry with
total assets of 120 million yuan. Looking ahead, the display wall of the
workshop is filled with all kinds of steel tapes, red and yellow, round and
square. Yang Jianbo enthusiastically showed the reporter: "This laser steel tape
can accurately measure the distance by pressing the button to irradiate the
laser; this is an electric red wine bottle opener, a portable car tire
inflator.." The most important thing is that this is our own brand. Like Jianbo
Company, many measuring tool enterprises in "China Steel Tape City" have
registered their own trademarks abroad. Jianbo, Haibo, Crocodile, Ocean,
Hualian, Yadong.. This "overseas corps" of Chinese steel tape and hardware
measuring tools has created a shining "Chinese business card". " Holding a group
to go overseas, the brand effect is more significant. Zhang Yadong has a deeper
understanding of the brand. Yadong Company used to export its own products
separately, but now it exports with other measuring tools enterprises. It used
to export steel tapes, but now it exports household tools, professional tools,
electric tools and other series of products. The overseas market share of Yadong
Company is gradually expanding. Zhang Yadong said that the promotion of group
exports is the regional brand, which has more benefits. Like a professional
market, high visibility, more customers, do not buy his buy yours, all brands
will benefit. From product brand to regional brand, how to form the
word-of-mouth effect of "speaking of steel tape, everyone knows Yucheng" in
China? How to play the "national character" sign of "China Steel Tape City"
overseas? Highlight the "Yucheng Brand" and constantly expand its influence.
China Yucheng International Hardware Tools and Measuring Tools Expo will be held
to help enterprises develop domestic and foreign markets; Yucheng Tools and
Measuring Tools Global Promotion Plan will be launched, and international
professional marketing agencies will be invited to plan and promote; enterprises
will be organized to participate in global exhibitions, and Yucheng Special Zone
will be set up; Shangyu Tools and Measuring Tool Industry Group will be
established to make Yucheng brand bigger and stronger.. Bai Chao, the county
magistrate,printed
tape measure, said that he would polish the brand of "China Steel Tape City"
and move towards "World Hardware City". Make the "hardware" cake bigger, create
advanced production and living hardware tools and equipment, so that Yucheng
"hardware" can better decorate the colorful world. Return to Sohu to see more
Responsible Editor:. tape-measure.com
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