Chen Zhanji's valve life: Haikuo with a high jumper

"A person who has no ideal ambition is the most irresponsible person in his life." This sentence is confirming Chen Zhanji's idea of ​​starting a business.

Chen Zhanji was an apprentice of a publicly owned valve instrument factory. He successively served as a lathe, workshop director, and production director. He was full of ambitions, preferring to abandon the generous treatment, to be independent, to face the disbelief of others, and to criticize others for being brave and baleful. The East borrowed less than 2,000 yuan to create a ball valve factory with a size of only 20 square meters and started the front shop. After the plant's production and business model. With stubborn courage and persistent beliefs, he transformed “Huaxia” from a family workshop into a modern enterprise and created a well-known national industrial brand, allowing “Huaxia” to become a world and create a fortune with hundreds of millions of assets. kingdom.

Abandonment of iron rice bowls to go it alone Chen Zhanji, 51 years old this year, is now the director of Wenzhou City Valve Association, executive vice president of Longwan Valve Association, Zhejiang Huaxia Valve Co., Ltd., chairman of Dongtou Huaxia Valve Co., Ltd.

It was not easy to start his business.

In December 1979, Chen Zhanji, who graduated from high school, entered apprenticeship at Wenzhou Ouhai Baishui Valve Instrument Factory. It is a non-ordinary person who can go to the office of the iron and steel rice bowl company. Through hard study and hard work, he was promoted to qualified lathe in less than six months. He has successively served as a lathe technician, workshop director, and production manager. He not only mastered a solid theoretical basis, technical skills, but also continue to advocate innovation in enterprises, each year was rated as advanced workers in townships. With the continuous deepening of reform and opening up policies, private enterprises in Wenzhou are full of vigor and great changes have taken place in the market economy. In the "White Water Valve Instrument Factory" Chen Zhanji increasingly discovered that the company's mechanism is somewhat unsatisfactory. Despite the steady economic income, it can only maintain the basic living expenses of the entire family. In particular, the technical content of product development in the factory is not high, the added value is low, and the market prospects are becoming smaller and smaller. He has eaten iron rice bowls and rice pots for nearly ten years, and he feels that there is a near-suffering atmosphere in the survival and development of publicly owned enterprises. He often sprouted the idea of ​​starting his own business, desire to develop high-end valve products to meet market demand, create a new brand, bigger and stronger this traditional valve industry. When someone knows what he thinks, he will say with interest: "Chen Zhanji, have you been so fed up?"

Chen Zhanji just smiled in silence. In the "White Water Valve Instrument Factory", he knew that he was an alternative and had a firm say.

In 1989, when he was twenty-eight years old, his leaders, colleagues, friends, and family members persuaded him to be safe and not to lose iron rice bowls. However, he still gave up the responsibility of the director of the Baishui Valve Instrument Factory. He began to raise capital and set up a real-owned foundation, the Bohai Yongchang Ball Valve Factory.

Chen Zhanji said that at that time, it was extremely difficult to set up funds for the factory. The east borrowed 2,000 yuan for the West, and the factory was only 20 square meters. There were only two machine tools. He wanted to ask several good colleagues in the factory to help him. No one wanted. He only recruited 35 young people with strong foreign bodies, taught while doing, and started the production and business model of the front shop and the factory.

Hard work pays off. Chen Zhanji holds the law of “being low-key and high-going” as the method of man-made things. He runs the market to search for business opportunities and breaks through technical problems to improve his craft. And in the quality and technological content of the products we have manufactured and processed, we have made a success in the year and will make the Yongchang Ball Valve Factory operate in a booming market. With the accumulation of capital and the spring breeze of reform and opening up policy, he has increased the investment of enterprises and accelerated the pace of development. In 1996, Wenzhou Huaxia Valve Co., Ltd. was established on the basis of the Yongchang Ball Factory and acquired the Baishui Valve Instrument Factory, which had worked for nearly 10 years. The total number of employees reached more than 60 people. From then on, the “China” brand in the valve industry became famous.

With the help of the peak of talents, Huaxia Valve Co., Ltd. is relying on the spirit of “big focus and small offices”. Rely on "people-oriented."

In 1998, Chen Zhanji renamed "Yongchang Ball Valve" as "Huaxia Valve", which symbolizes that the global valve market is a place for China to compete. Since then, he has begun to fully upgrade corporate image, business management, product technology content, and product quality. In 2001, he rebuilt the factory building and expanded the building area. In this way, the corporate image has a completely new look. Since the scene is big, we must make it bigger and stronger. We must introduce excellent talents and advanced technology and equipment, and we must formulate a management mechanism suitable for the development of the enterprise and build a unique corporate culture.

The enterprise development lies in innovation, innovation is relying on talented people to innovate. Huaxia breaks the tradition in the view of talents and requires the establishment of a diversity of talents. In addition to technical talents, it must also manage talents, marketing talents, and public relations talents. Actively absorb people with special skills or talents to contribute wisdom and strength to the development of the company. Companies also create a platform for them to use their talents.

In 2003, Huaxia Valve hired a senior engineer from the Aviation Department as technical director and was responsible for product technology development. From the original single-product ball valve to the development and production of diversified products. Because Chen Zhanji knows well that China's valve industry is lagging behind the world level, how to move from "backward world" level to "leading world" level, Huaxia has no responsibility. He once again put forward the strategy of "catching up and surpassing".

In the words of Chen Zhanji, "catch up" means keeping abreast of world standards. The world's advanced standards are the most direct reflection of the world's current level. It is a summary of the experience of countless foreign companies and countless foreign engineering and technical personnel over the decades or even hundreds of years. And crystallized. Therefore, the adoption of world standards directly across national industry standards is the most important aspect of catching up with the world. To "super" it requires innovation, and the integration of science and technology is an important means of innovation.

To achieve this strategic goal, Huaxia Valve Co., Ltd. has established a scientific and technological research group, set up a company's high-tech R&D center, and has established friendly cooperation with a number of research institutes. The annual investment in research and development of new products accounts for 5% of sales. The company has formed an all-round scientific and technological innovation system that focuses on technology, integrates scientific research, sales, and manufacturing. It intends to establish a well-known “Huaxia” brand in the field of valve manufacturing, and aims to be “strong” and “precise” in the field of valve manufacturing. "High-precision" products have become the "propellers" for enterprises to increase efficiency, based on domestic and international.

Under the correct leadership of Chen Zhanji, the rapid development of the company. Every year, a number of new product lines are introduced. “High environmental protection, high energy-saving, and high-reliability ball wedge needle valve and squeeze connection pipe fittings have pipe extrusion connection, ball wedge opening and closing and sealing pair, triangle sleeve sealing and trapezoidal It seals four world-leading technologies and passes national technical appraisal, completely breaking the US monopoly on the technology in the international market for 60 years.At present, the company has won 8 invention patents and more than 10 utility model patents, of which 5 are international inventions. Huaxia Valve is honored as "the world's epoch-making valve", and the National Standards Committee and Huaxia will cooperate to write the "Standard for Expanded End Through Pipe Fittings" by Chen Zhanji. Once this standard is formulated, it will break all mechanical industries. Product production standards are monopolized by foreign developed countries.

Create national industrial brands with quality and reputation Like other valve companies in Wenzhou, the newly established Huaxia Valve Company has been producing samples of valves for other people's products, and is sold by dealers throughout the country.

In the early 1990s, Wenzhou valve companies developed like mushrooms. The market price competition was fierce. Chen Zhanji thinks that as long as the product quality is good, it will not be crowded out by the market and it will be favored by customers. However, he never expected that it would not be possible for those dealers who are only seeking low prices and not seeking good quality. The character “sticky”, he never reduced his own products, resulting in the Chinese valve for a period of time in the domestic market began to “cold.” In the face of such a difficult situation, Chen Zhanji has become confused and puzzled. However, he still puts product quality first. After meditation, he decided to abandon the domestic market for export and seek business survival and development.

Therefore, since 2000, he has set his sights on foreign markets. Due to the excellent product quality, he has been recognized by foreign customers from the beginning, and orders have been transferred from China, Japan and the United States to Huaxia Company in less than two years. At the time, Huaxia's product export rate reached more than 80%. However, although foreign customers take a fancy to Huaxia's product quality and reputation, they do not want to play the "Huaxia" brand and only allow Huaxia to do OEM processing. Chen Zhanji did not feel happy with such an export method. He thought he had lived on foreign orders and had nothing to do with wedding dresses. He decided to fight his own brand, and only by playing his own brand can he truly master his own business. Develop fate.

Through unremitting efforts, the company has achieved ISO9001 international quality system certification, ISO14001, OHSAS18001 certification; European 97/23/EC pressure equipment directive product manufacturing CE certification, API certificate and national pressure pipeline component special equipment manufacturing TSG quality assurance system certification. Since then, Huaxia valve products have been affixed with the “Huaxia” trademark and successfully entered the international market.

Chen Zhanji said, "China is about quality and credibility, there is no quality and reputation, Huaxia brand is not erected." Huaxia Valve's product quality is now favored by foreign markets, but also by domestic customers. Due to the brand effect, the domestic and foreign markets have both fish and water, with annual sales of 200 million yuan. In particular, many foreign companies have come to China to seek cooperation and have enhanced Chen Zhanji's confidence in taking the international market.

In 2007, Huaxia Valve Company acquired 100 mu of land in Dongtou County and invested 120 million yuan to build Huaxia Valve's hi-tech product production base. In the same year, Nanjing Ao Tuo Fluid Equipment Co., Ltd. was established; in December 2008, a joint venture company integrating sales, R&D and after-sales service was established in the United States, laying a solid foundation for Huaxia's integration into foreign capital and accelerating its group construction. The ancients said: "The fruit of the harvest is for the hard-working and intelligent people."

In the past decade or so, Chen Zhanji’s hard work has paid off. The company's annual output value has reached 200 million yuan and its sales volume has reached 180 million yuan. The company has been awarded the title of "High-tech Enterprise", "Wenzhou Pump & Valve Industry Leading Enterprise", and "China Valve City (Longwan) Meritorious Enterprise"; its individual has won honor awards at all levels of the provincial and city levels.

When I ended Chen’s interview, I sincerely admired his mind, thoughts, confidence and persistent pursuit, especially the kind of entrepreneurial spirit of Wenzhou businessmen.

Wide sea diving, sky high the birds to fly. It is believed that under the leadership of Chen Zhanji, Huaxia people will continue to forge ahead, develop and innovate, and China’s tomorrow will be even better and more brilliant...