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Sun Weiting:Create the potential to dominate the market and uphold justice to make wonders

2018-10-11

China Textile 2018年8期

Winner of the 1991 Nobel Economics Prize and one of founders of neoinstitutional economics Ronald ·Coase wrote in his last work How China Became Capitalist that, “since 1978, Chinas reform and openingup policy has been the most successful economic reform in the human history after the World War II”.

The reform and opening up has opened the largest domestic market in the world for China textile and apparel industry. In 1978, per capita fiber consumption in China was only 2.9kg, accounting for 38% of world average level; textiles and apparels output in China reached USD 274,510,000,000 in 2017, being 127.4 times of that in 1978 and accounting for 36.8% of total global textile and apparel trade volume. Sun Weiting is a beach swimmer in the reform and opening up process in China. This President of Huafu Top Dyed Melange Yarn Co., Ltd. has been occupied in the textile industry for over 30 years. Having a strong entrepreneur spirit, he is studious and innovative and advocates struggling and keeping forging ahead, and he has rigorous and practical working style. He started from scratch and it takes him over 20 years to develop Huafu Fashion into an international brand in the colored spinning industry.

Grasp the business opportunity to “go to sea” eating“crabs”

At the beginning of the 1990s, colored spun yarn is still a very small emerging branch of the whole textile industry, featuring high technological content and large production difficult. With deepening of the reform and opening up, China enters the textile industry of market competition at the earliest as its position of a large important textile production, consumption and export power has been initially formed, and thus the sense of competition is greatly strengthened.

By a chance, Sun Weiting who had just left a governmental department to be occupied in gauze and greige cloth production knew about a textile called colored spun yarn from a friend, which would win high ben- efits and was under “demand exceeding supply” status.

Sun Weiting took a fancy to the business opportunity of the “crab mélange yarn. 12-year working experiment in the governmental functionary has endowed him further and profounder strategic foresight and systematic thinking capability compared with ordinary entrepreneurs. Developing colored spun yarn using branding strategies is the answer of Sun Weiting.

“The point of strength of an enterprise decides its future”, expressed by Sun Weiting. Starting from trade, Huafu was never satisfied with pure commercial transaction at the very beginning, but instead, it transcended yarn enterprises which developed only be depending on quality, scale and cost and laid its emphasis on further and more steadfast branding strategies.

Through 20 glorious years after the reform and opening up, Huafu, steered by Sun Weiting, has got through cotton industry at the leading end, and a leading-end cotton network chain system which integrates cotton farm, ginning factory, cotton yarn and cloth transaction market and logistics company has been initially formed; it continuously extends backward to operate rear-end network chain business, actively invest in construction of Lvshang Town and Fashion Headquarters and upgrade towards a textile and clothing fashion operator.

It can be said that entrepreneurial history of Sun Weiting and development history of Huafu constitute a powerful branch of the Chinese textile industry to forge ahead and finally they converge into the reform and opening-up tide to make gallops. During this pro-cess, each turn-back of the entrepreneur and enterprise carries deep times brand marks.

Open a new pattern of yarn spinning industry

Huafu brand was officially registered in December, 1994, thus stepping on the new “unusual” path to explore into industrial branding. In that era, “Made in China” cut a figure in the global textile and clothing industry, few enterprises would consider creating brands, not to mention a small yarn spinning industry.

At the beginning of its birth, Huafu has never taken ordinary paths. During the 25-year enterprise development progress, Huafu has did many things which enterprises within the industry dont dare to do. Nowadays many words relating to colored spun yarn are originated by Huafu like“mélange yarn”, which was defined by Sun Weiting after reading many textbooks and consulting with many insiders (finally he gained inspirations from a Russian textbook published in 1965).

As for product production, Huafu has selected to research and develop colored spun yarn which overturns the traditional production flow, and rightly for this unusual variety colored spun yarn Huafu colored spinning becomes famous abroad; in terms of self-brand building, Huafu has taken a lead to step towards the world with transnormal ideas and laid a solid foundation of enterprise development.

Sun Weiting believes that Huafu selected starting brand construction from scratch since the beginning of the foundation. Firstly the image was built, a “carrier” was determined and then connotation and added values were injected into the brand step by step. The brand becomes full of vivid details through over 20-year efforts with fresh vital force. Color is the most important fashion lifeblood of Huafu.

Goods clothes can be fabricated only using good yarns. Therefore, its said within the industry that colored spinning leads the color fashion trend. Colored spun yarns produced by Huafu Fashion show multiple col- ors on the same yarn, and the colors are rich, full and soft. The fabrics woven by mélange yarn have hazy 3D effect and the colors are implicit, natural and full of layered sense.

Natural and originally simple styles of Huafu mélange yarn have been favored by consumers with high life quality like Europe and America. Huafu has been upgraded from a mélange yarn manufacturer into a leader in the mélange yarn popular trend. The French design team has cooperated with international famous trend institutes. All kinds of new-type materials, novel colors and newly created processes are applied based on in-depth market researches. Popular colors are released in spring and summer and in autumn and winter separately every year so as to inject unique fashion elements in the mélange yarn industry. Fabric structural trend is combined with clothing application to lead the fashion trend in the industry.

In 2010, Huafu Top Dyed Melange Yarn Co., Ltd. held “Huafu Cup · China Mélange Yarn Fashion Design Contest” jointly with China Fashion Association for the first time in 2010 to dig mélange yarn fashion lifestyles, and this was one of important actions taken by Huafu to create “Huafu fashion, fast fashion and source power”brand image. Mélange yarn product being the expression carrier, fashion design of colored spun yarn fabrics was started.

Sun Weiting deems that Huafu is “source power of fast fashion”. Huafu has promoted “fast fashion”supply chain integration, continuously popularized Huafu brand and new-type mélange yarn products,developed individualized product services, and striven to promote the strategic cooperation with critical customers and jointly develop new products based on continuous cognition of its own brand orientation. Its brand competitiveness is improved while product lines of mélange yarn industry are enriched. Huafu has formed a “fashion ecosphere” of mélange yarns.

In the capitalist era, only reformers can make progress

Huafu which was oriented at brand development since the foundation has continuously endowed the brand connotations by creating product quality and added values in the follow-up 20 years, and this has always become the key for Huafu Fashion to stand out in the great waves sweeping away sand.

What can mostly embodies “overlord” temperament of Huafu in the mélange yarn industry is its“strategic acquisitions” expansion means, which is totally different from development process of most textile enterprises which develop from small factories into big groups.

Sun Weiting recalled that during the “12th FiveYear Program” period, the whole textile industry was faced with enormous challenges. Domestically, the textile industry was already in a difficult situation after going through “roller coaster type” and “cliff type”situation of raw cotton materials. Moreover, with continuous elevation of costs of domestic production factors and labors, development of textile enterprises became worse.

Internationally, gradual emergence of textile industries in some countries and regions like Southeast Asia posed a enormous impact on Chinas textile market. Under the dual impacts of “internal and external challenges”, transformation and upgrading were urgent for textile enterprises. “Huafu Fashion mainly concentrated on three aspects: industrial transfer, product upgrading and enterprise transformation”, said by Sun Weiting,

Industrial reform strongly appeals to industrial ecological innovation. As for textile supply chains, they may be highly integrated in the future to cope with rapid changes, and integrating upstream raw materials is the foundation for textile enterprises to run through the whole industrial chain.

As early as 2000, Sun Weiting who made a leading step started “tenyear acquisition” low-cost development path of Huafu. From acquiring Jinyun cotton spinning mill to becoming a listed enterprise which rapidly made up the deficits and got surpluses within one year after merging with Feiya Stock and then to subordinate enterprises distributed in five major sections: Zhejiang, Yangtze River, Huang-Huai River, Xinjiang and Vietnam, Huafu has merged and acquired over 30 enterprises within ten years to rapidly realize industrial upgrading, and the achievement is quite astonishing.

Sun Weiting believes that enterprise development is nothing but two patterns: one is new construction and input and the second is industrial mergers and acquisitions. This is a combination of asset elements carried out by each enterprise in different phases.

“If 100 million yuan is needed to build an enterprise, then merger and acquisition only needs 20 million yuan”, expressed by Sun Weiting. Under specific conditions, Huafu must grasp the optimal opportunity for strategic mergers and acquisitions, get through industrial chains the mergers and acquisitions, and then blend the acquired enterprises into brand blood of Huafu through cultural fusion, management reconstruction and technological transformation and upgrading so as to complete the critical one step in the whole layout.

With deepened reform of market economy and prosperity of the internet and capital market, “a blending era” has officially come into being. Flow of commercial resources becomes freer, and lightening and sharing have become way of survival for enterprises.

In the internet era, only innovators can grow strong

2016 is another important year in the Huafu development history. Under the transformation trend of traditional industries, Huafu has innovated business models by virtue of the forces of the internet and capital, released a future ten-year plan from “10 billion” to “100 billion” and formally announced that “a piece of yarn will be used to run through the textile and clothing industry” and it will be transformed towards a fashion operator in the textile and clothing industry.

“Even though we expanded through mergers and acquisitions in the past, we are not about to carry out large-area merger and acquisition. Moreover, the present goal and method of merger and acquisition are also different. In the past, production capacity was the merger and acquisition goal, followed by talents. Follow-up merger and acquisition will focus on business and driving the industrial force which is more important than entrepreneurship, making 1+1>2”.

Nowadays the textile industry is experiencing a“chaotic period” full of uncertainties. Sun Weiting has mentioned his reflection upon uncertain factors in the market more than once on a public occasion. In his eyes, to master the new destiny must know how to use the public resource: the internet.

“What on earth is the Internet? Somebody says that it is a tool, somebody says that it is a channel and somebody says that it is a technology, how you understand it decides how will you use it”. In the plan made by Sun Weiting, how release some experience accumulated in the colored spun yarn industry over the 20 years to the whole industry for sharing is a brave step made by the enterprise under the big background of the internet.

The future society needs to depend on innovation, the internet and finance to drive development of enterprises. “The development of an enterprise needs driving force, and development can be realized only when the driving force is greater than resistance. Driving force will be switched under different historical backgrounds. The driving force in the enterprise development can also turn into resistance. The enterprise development can be promoted by new driving force only through continuous innovation”, said by Sun Weiting.

Not long ago, foundation of Huafu Fashion Zhejiang Shangyu “network chain headquarters” which totally invested 1 billion yuan was formally commenced on the 25th anniversary of Huafu Fashion. It will be created into a national fashion industrial demonstration base to drive industrial internet reform of Huafu to a new level.

Great waves are sweeping away sand, only reformers and innovators can achieve victory

The 25-year Huafu development history from 1993 to 2018 can be said as an innovation history of mélange yarn industry. In the era of all kinds of sudden changes, Huafu copes with changes through changes and strives for innovative development; taking a broad view of the whole industrial chain, Huafu manages top-level design and long-term planning to ensure steady implementation of strategies.

Capturing the correct orientation is more important than making efforts. Sun Weiting stressed that, “managing an enterprise never depends on experience, and mastering the opportunity is critical. We have persisted in the business of a piece of yarn, continuously combined the business with the major orientation of social development and stood at the commanding height, and this is our strategy”.

Looking foward to the future, Sun Weiting has a brand new goal. He hopes to turn the “global largest supplier and manufacturer of mélange yarn” label created by Huafu over the 20 years into another label namely“an operator in the fashion industrial supply chain” and upgrade the existing 10 billion yuan manufacturing ideal into a 100 billion yuan dream.

This goal seems very magnificent, but the Chinas textile industry must be turned to development direction of fashion industry, and only in this way can real potentials of the textile industry be dug. Forging ahead with fashion, Huafu Fashion steered by Sun Weiting is not only the leader dominating transition of the textile industry into fashion industry but also a pathfinder.

Over the 40-year reform and opening up history, the Chinese land on which “the bravest institutional experiment and development practice in the world” are being implemented has obtained remarkable achievements. As bellwether of reform and opening-up policy, pioneer of reform of the economic system and “parent” industry in the industrialization process, Chinas textile industry has achieved all-round and groundbreaking development with deep and radical changes and made multi-dimensional and historic contributions.

Today Chinas textile and apparel industry has entered a new “innovation-driven” phase. The reasons why Huafu has created such abundant material and spiritual wealth are: time (opportunity) of the reform and opening up, favorable geographic conditions of Chinas rise and unity and coordinate of all the people of one mind. The business philosophy “Create the potential to dominate the market and uphold justice to make wonders”of Sun Weiting makes innovation driving and value driving become engines for Huafu Fashion to step towards 100 billion yuan industrial dream.

Only reformers can make progress, only innovators can grow strong and only reformers and innovators can achieve victory. Standing in the special year - the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening-up policy, the magnificent Oriental tide has profoundly changed China and influenced the whole world. Starting from a new historical starting point, the reform and opening up steps in the new era will be more powerful, steadier and more heroic.