Several choices of the founder of chemical fiber State

When most chemical fiber companies are still looking at the industrial Internet, Fang Junfang founded Chemical Fiber State, which is a one-stop comprehensive service platform for the chemical fiber industry. With the power of the Internet, she challenged practitioners' traditional thinking and traditional business, hoping to bring new possibilities to this traditional industry.

"Our industry is too traditional! Too traditional! Too traditional!" A leading enterprise in the chemical fiber industry after 85 executives had to Fang Junfang feeling.

Originally, many successors of chemical fiber family enterprises and practitioners who came back from overseas study have such doubts: Why do they have to drink and sociate? Isn't there some other way to close the deal?

As a post-80, deeply rooted in the chemical fiber industry for more than ten years, Fang Junfang, CEO of Fujian Fiber Chain Technology Co., LTD., founder of B2B platform Chemical fiber Bang, heard the voice of many second-generation practitioners in the process of practicing. At the same time, she is also sensitive to the fact that the first generation of chemical fiber people has a huge industry consulting demand. Therefore, she hopes to use the power of the Internet to build a new interaction and trade channel for practitioners in the chemical fiber industry.

Chemical fiber Bond is rooted in the chemical fiber industry, focusing on small, medium and micro enterprises in the industrial chain, and is an industrial Internet platform to provide them with industry information and consulting, matching, supply chain finance, SAAS system and other businesses.

As of October 2020, the GMV of Chemical Fiber Bang platform has exceeded 100 billion since its establishment 6 years ago, of which 2 billion are self-operated. Launched in August 2019, the "Chemical Fiber State" APP has more than 150,000 registered users, becoming the largest mobile platform in the chemical fiber industry.

01 Accidentally entered the chemical fiber industry, confused in the "firm"

Since 2006 officially entered the chemical fiber trade industry, Fang Junfang's career trajectory is quite a bit of "the day will fall to the great responsibility of the people also, must first suffer their will" fate theory taste.

The time can be traced back to the graduation season of 2004, Fang Junfang accompanied the students to the interview of China Chemical Fiber Information Network. As a result, by coincidence, I was called for an interview and was successfully hired. As a marketing graduate, Fang Junfang's position is market planning. "I got into this business out of nowhere and stayed with the company until 2006."

Although he started as a marketing planner, Fang Junfang was also arranged to engage in sales work for a period of time. "In 2004, my monthly salary was almost 6,000 yuan." For fresh graduates, this salary level is still competitive today.

But in 2006, Mr. Fang asked his supervisor to leave. She said: "When I went in, the company was five or six years old. The eldest sister sitting across from me has been on the phone since she joined the company. I imagine my future and I feel that my core competence is diminishing."

Due to his work performance was quite recognized by the supervisor, the leader recommended Fang Junfang to the group company - Huarui Information (835311), engaged in the domestic trade of chemical fiber products.

Fang Junfang to every two years as a cycle for their own career planning, according to her idea, after completing the transformation from fresh graduates to social people's identity, 2006 and 2008 is their own mistakes and trial and error stage, in order to find a suitable industry for their own development.

In 2008 and 2010, you should be rooted in your chosen industry. "In fact, I was ahead of my time and found an industry in 2006. The reasons for firmness are also very simple: first, this is a de-aging, de-gendered industry; Second, with the precipitation of time, I can become more core competitiveness. This kind of industry is worth further study." Fang Junfang said that he knows many big sisters and aunts in the industry, one is more than 20 years, and they are respected as "experts" in the industry.

But around 2010, Mr. Fang hit a career wall. On the one hand, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis is evident. The chemical fiber industry opened a round of reshuffle in 2009 and 2010, and she generated career confusion. The China Textile Industry Association pointed out in the "2009 textile industry economic operation Analysis meeting" that in 2009, the chemical fiber industry eliminated a total of 1.372 million tons of backward production capacity, which is the most backward and deepest year.

Fang Junfang also admitted: "Almost to 2012, the entire supply side reform, the chemical fiber industry as a traditional manufacturing industry into a situation of oversupply, very obvious." As a trading company, it is very difficult for us to survive between the cracks."

On the other hand, Fang Junfang is also thinking about other ways to engage in chemical fiber. When confused, reading is the way to clarify themselves. With this idea in mind, she decided to go to the campus to continue her study and was admitted to the Southwest University for Nationalities for a master's degree in philosophy.

Fortunately, her idea of further study also won the support of her boss. The boss agreed that she would not work in the office and hoped to continue to work for the company after graduation. At this time, she would not have expected that it was the "cloud office" at this time that contributed to the idea of starting a business in the future.

During her master's degree, she was constantly receiving calls from clients of all kinds, "the most exaggerated one was starting at 7 a.m. and continuing into the evening." If I'm not out of bed by 12:30 p.m., I don't have time to get out of bed. I'm always on the phone."

Every day there is a customer's "desperate call", Fang Junfang still maintains a clear mind, she will classify customer needs, mainly have the following points: ① can you help me buy a little; ② Can you sell some for me? ③ How to buy too much? ④ How to buy less?

Since Fang Junfang entered the line, the contacts and services are small and medium-sized enterprises in the chemical fiber industry. Behind these demands lies the blind spot of procurement and sales in the industrial chain transactions of such enterprises. In 2013, when Fang Junfang once again stood at the fork in the road of life choice, she saw another life possibility besides studying for a doctorate.

02 Founding of chemical fiber State, "judgment" after careful thinking

The basis for optimistic chemical fiber industry is closely related to its development characteristics.

The cluster phenomenon of chemical fiber industry is obvious, and upstream raw material manufacturers have long held the right to speak. One important reason is that chemical fiber raw materials are commodities strictly controlled by the state. Chemical fiber raw materials such as PTA(refined terephthalic acid) are subject to crude oil price fluctuations. Although China is also carrying out oil and gas reform, it is still difficult for private capital to extend to the upstream of the industrial chain. For private small, medium and micro enterprises, the specific performance is in a weak position in market transactions.

Fang Junfang has such a description in his personal BLOG: "An interesting phenomenon often occurs in the industry, maybe this customer has done business with you for many years, doing tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of sales a year, but what does this person look like, the scale of the factory is large or small, many times it is actually unknown." This is probably unique to our industry. Many people from the same sales background are surprised by this, but in turn they are deeply envious and jealous, because this reflects a fact from the side: there is no worry about selling!"

Fang Junfang, who has been dealing with micro, small and medium-sized enterprises for a long time, hopes that he can play a greater role in them to change or improve their business environment.

Private small, medium and micro business owners have the characteristics of "high IQ, low culture". With the post-80s as the boundary, the post-60s and post-70s are the first generation of practitioners who currently support and promote the development of China's chemical fiber industry. Due to historical reasons, the average level of education of these two generations is not high, and they are part of the people who "got rich first". Long-term experience has trained them to have a high degree of market sensitivity, but a lot of interpretation and judgment about the industrial chain, they are not yet able to do.

Fang Junfang mentioned a story before starting her business: one Friday night, she made an appointment to go to the movies with friends. At about 20 o 'clock, she received a call for help from a wife of about 50 years old, "Xiao Fang, I heard that there is a very important report to be released in the United States tonight, do you see what impact it will have on our industry, will the raw materials increase in price?"

This "important report" refers to the non-farm payrolls report. The non-farm payrolls data refers to the number of non-farm payrolls, the employment rate and the unemployment rate. As the name suggests, it is a data indicator that reflects the employment status of the non-agricultural population in the United States. It is important because it can greatly affect the value of the dollar in the currency market. As mentioned earlier, the price of crude oil is linked to the US dollar, and as shown in Figure 1, crude oil will have a series of correlated effects on chemical fiber raw materials.

"They can use their computers very flexibly, but there's a long list of relationships that they haven't been able to decipher." To help these business owners straighten out the impact of non-agricultural data on chemical fiber raw materials, and make final judgments and suggestions based on it, such as the rise and fall of raw material purchase prices, whether to purchase, the size of the purchase, etc., this is an important customer service work of Fang Junfang.

Why do these customers trust Fangjun so much? Originally, since entering the line in 2006, she insisted on sending text messages to target customers at about 7:30 a.m. every day, the word count is controlled within 70 words, the content is mainly concerned about the industry news and personal interpretation, and attach the raw material quote that she can give.

"Until now, I have not been interrupted. In their eyes, Xiao Fang is a practitioner of high-knowledge culture." Fang Junfang said that after the issue, he will record it in a notebook, and then review his market judgment after a period of time. If it is not correct, I will give advice to the client again and then make a summary by myself.

This habit of thinking, since September 26, 2015, Fang Junfang has retained in the way of writing a BLOG. In five years, she wrote 170,259 words.

"The industry will not disappear, but the enterprise certainly has a life cycle." This is the basic cognition and judgment that Fang Junfang is willing to deeply cultivate the chemical fiber industry.

At the same time, she saw this phenomenon in the process of understanding the industry. "Companies of the same size, located on both sides of the same road, may purchase the same raw materials at different prices. The reason comes from the results of different levels of relationship with suppliers, such as some bosses themselves run more often during the holidays, or may directly deal with the supplier's salesman."

The way the post-60s and post-70s do business is something they have worked out in practice. However, the post-80s represented by Fang Junfang are trying to use their own advantages and the tools of The Times to serve the chemical fiber industry.

For their part, succeeding executives are eager to carve out a new business path. Because of the accumulated business experience of their parents, they are extremely distressed, on the one hand, they do not want to spend too much energy on social activities, on the other hand, they can not find a better tool or way to expand the business.

On the other side, such small and medium-sized business owners have a huge demand for information and consultation in the chemical fiber industry. It is difficult to serve customers in bulk alone. She began to summarize and reflect: Is there any way to serve these needs at scale?

At the crossroads of life in 2013 and 2014, with the development of Internet technology, society is changing with each passing day. Consumer Internet has gradually given birth to Taobao, Tmall, Meituan and other platforms, but the industrial Internet process is still relatively slow.

Especially in the traditional chemical fiber industry, Fang Jun Fang's words are described as "mostly watching." After careful thinking and judgment, she decided that the industrial Internet was a good way to solve her problems.

Today, looking back, she laments: "Now the whole market looks at us, and we look at ourselves, as having done something 'right but really hard.'"

In 2014, Fang Junfang officially registered the company opened, and its brand "Huaxian Bang" was born. At present, in the corporate operation management chain built by Fang Junfang, Chemical fiber Bang is to build a digital operation platform for small and medium-sized enterprises in the chemical fiber industry, aiming to improve the overall operational efficiency of the industry through the digital process.

Matchmaking, self-management, supply chain finance, SAAS systems and other businesses are gradually derived and subdivided based on the platform. Simply put, chemical fiber state is like the Jingdong of the chemical fiber industry, that is, the B2B mall that buys and sells chemical fiber. Different from Jingdong, chemical fiber Bang is also a free industry information platform, and the APP has a special supply and demand information release module to help small, medium and micro enterprises to exchange needs.

03 Entered the School of Management of Zhejiang University for further study and sought a breakthrough

Fang Junfang divides the development of chemical fiber into two stages:

(2014, 2017) Ice-breaking period: "The first three years were very difficult, people kept questioning you, and you kept questioning yourself: Is this thing right?"

The most difficult part of this kind of suffering is the low acceptance and acceptance of customers. In the ground push, some customers directly questioned: how can I give hundreds of thousands of millions of goods to others for sale? The result is that "basically, there's nothing we can do to change them." Buyers, for their part, are also suspicious of online goods that they do not see in person.

There are, of course, many reasons for this. From the customer's point of view, the chemical fiber state that has not yet developed mobile products mainly exists on the official website, and many small and medium-sized business owners of this kind do not even use the keyboard, how can they have a sense of trust in the PC platform? In addition, people's inherent thinking is also difficult to change in a short time.

(2017, 2020) Accumulation period: Fortunately, Fang Junfang, who diligently insisted on sending short messages, won the trust of these target customers, and they also became the first batch of users of chemical fiber State.

During this period, smart phones have been rapidly popularized in our country, and social transfer software such as wechat has covered the whole country. These business owners in the chemical fiber industry began to enjoy the convenience of The Times, but also felt the impact of the Internet.

A boss once lamented to Fang Junfang: "Hard work this life earned money, but they are like quicksand, may be diligent to lose out." Because the external interaction, trading and operating environment has changed dramatically.

"A good friend advised me that if I want to go to a bigger and higher stage, I should not focus on the current problem, but should contact and make more forward-looking and deep thinking people." For Fang Junfang, who has gone through the ice-breaking period, she also needs a rest station to clarify the future development direction of the company for herself.

So she enrolled in the EMBA Education Center at Zhejiang University's School of Management. "My biggest feeling is that I really understand what patterns and worldviews are." Fang Junfang said with emotion, "President Wei Jiang of Zhejiang University School of Management is talking about business model innovation and enterprise strategy. In class, he used our company as an example, and through a series of guided questions and sweeping analysis, I learned to think and look at problems from multiple perspectives, both vertical and horizontal."

Of course, Fang Junfang also made a group of "good classmates", "we often discuss and exchange a lot of things together, from them, I learned a lot of cross-professional knowledge."

The bonus came from a practical course. "Good professors are really good," says Fang Junfang. "I thought learning financial management must be very boring. However, the knowledge of the underlying financial structure of entrepreneurs is a compulsory course, and I originally planned to bite the head, but I did not expect that Professor Han Hongling of the School of Management taught the "Analysis of corporate financial statements" very well, which put professional knowledge into simple words, and the course atmosphere was humorous, so that I listened to it twice. I plan to listen to it once a year if I can. From the day I entered the School of Management of Zhejiang University, I never thought about graduating."

The change of chemical fiber State is that it has opened its own mobile era.

On August 15, 2019, it is the anniversary of a milestone event of Chemical Fiber State, and the APP of the same name of "Chemical Fiber State" was launched. "Our strategic logic is to focus on mobile over PC." Fang Jun Fang said.

This year, chemical fiber State also completed a B+ round of financing, and food and grass have been fully prepared. "We have IPO plans, so far, quantity change to quality change, chemical fiber has already met this condition."

In fact, from the earliest Internet platform in the chemical fiber industry, the chemical fiber industry Internet has gone from the PC 1.0 era to the mobile 2.0 era. Chemical fiber Bond is one of the earliest platforms to enter the field and has grown steadily and healthily so far. After experiencing the crisis of distrust in the early market and supplier default, it will enter the power period in 2021.

This is not only a test for the chemical fiber state, but also a challenge for the industrial Internet to overcome difficulties again in the deepening development of the traditional chemical fiber industry.

In the face of these trials and challenges,

I believe that Fang Jun Fang is continuing to accumulate strength

And not afraid.

As a brave cross-border, break through the tradition

And the entrepreneurial women who keep learning,

There's always something coming out of her

A powerful force,

This strength is enough to push her on the road to entrepreneurship

Smooth, all the way through the obstacles.

Tough and resolute, tough and soft,

Maybe this is female power!