Author: Yi Ming Editor: Zhang Guobin Source: ITpar Original
Introduction:
Four years of phoenix nirvana is still a very short number in the history of enterprise development. However, we still see hope. After all, in the winter of Henan IT industry, Qiu Nan's Aiti computer provided us with a good entrepreneurial sample. The business world is like a battlefield. In the future development, we can't assert that Aiti Computer will be smooth sailing from now on, but there is no doubt that it has a good start and will be better tomorrow.
As a computer user, have you ever encountered a situation where your computer broke down ITPAR critical moment and then spent a day in the technology market for maintenance or waiting for maintenance personnel? Now, with the gradual expansion of the layout of Aiti computer in Zhengzhou, these problems will no longer be problems.
Since its establishment, Aiti Computer has been positioned as a community-based computer service network. Qiu Nan, its founder and general manager, said, "Our current service response time is 2 hours. At present, we have 30 branches in Zhengzhou, mainly concentrated in large communities and places with large passenger flow. As long as you call the company, the nearest clerk will arrive at the customer's home within 2 hours to provide the best on-site service. "
"Doing the best and fastest door-to-door service" is the key point that Qiu Nan constantly emphasized in the interview, and it is also the core service concept of Aiti Computer. Different from the entrepreneurs in the technology market that we contacted before, Qiu Nan has a unique way, which is a brand-new service model sandwiched between ordinary businesses and manufacturers. Four years ago, some people questioned that Qiu Nan would come to a dead end, and Qiu Nan responded with silence. Four years later, Qiu Nan greeted him with a smile.
Travel north and south to accumulate entrepreneurial experience.
Around 1997, countless people in Henan science and technology market started their IT careers. At that time, Zhongcheng had grown up, Shide had just started, and Zheng's college students also joined the ranks. He broke into this field just to configure a really cheap computer. "Finally, the computer I configured cost 8,000 yuan, using a second-hand monitor," Qiu Nan said happily.
Qiu Nan, a management major, is not satisfied with his three-year IT career. He wrote a sentence to the author with a pen: "The signs of vicious competition have appeared." After graduation, he rented his own counter in the old technology market, but in the face of serious vicious competition, Qiu Nan didn't want to cheat consumers with fake goods and parallel imports, so he could only maintain an unsatisfactory turnover. Anyone familiar with this period of history knows that electronic goods were in short supply in the late 1990s, and it was difficult to make money. Qiu Nan, who has always attached importance to credibility, said seriously: "Making products is being a man. Character must not go wrong, so the product can't go wrong. " But this practice did not conform to the market rules at that time. After a short hesitation, Qiu Nan began to look for opportunities in Zhongguancun. He soon went to Shanghai. Under the circumstance that the entrepreneurial opportunity has not been very smooth, an accidental opportunity made Qiu Nan once again go north to Shenyang to enter the investment field.
Talking about this experience, Qiu Nan said that during his investment career, he began to learn to scientifically demonstrate project planning, and he could comprehensively consider development from the aspects of finance, management, manpower and logistics. In 2005, when his old father was unwell, Qiu Nan returned to Zhengzhou to take care of his father and considered starting a new business. This stay is half a year.
Persistence is the key to the initial stage of starting a business.
Qiu Nan still remembers a sentence he saw on CCTV in 2000: "The hardware, software and services in the United States are three-thirds of the world, but the hardware in China can account for more than 80%." IT was inspired by this sentence that Qiu Nan went to Beijing and Shanghai, during which he paid most attention to the service industry in the IT industry.
Businessmen are born, which is also verified in Qiu Nan. Five years ago, a sentence from CCTV determined the direction of his entrepreneurship, and his five-year working career made him more rational and stable. He said that three factors finally made him determined to build a cascade ladder computer: "First, the urban area of Zhengzhou is expanding; The second social division of labor continues to expand and refine; Third, repairing computers is repetitive. " He went on to explain that the continuous expansion of Zhengzhou city has made citizens, including small and medium-sized enterprises, more and more eager for convenient and fast computer services; The expansion of social division of labor also allows manufacturers and businesses to continuously outsource after-sales; The repeatability of computer maintenance makes door-to-door service extremely urgent.
After consulting with several senior IT friends, he immediately started his own business plan. When the first cotton spinning road store opened, he adopted corporate management with complete financial, technical and human resources departments. There are more than ten employees in the shop, including his friends, which undoubtedly increases his cost. Because the store continued to lose money, some friends left one after another and advised him to turn back as soon as possible.
Among entrepreneurs, only a few people can recognize the direction and realize the significance of persistence. Qiu Nan saw that a single computer repair shop had no development prospect, so he came up with the idea of establishing a chain repair shop. Therefore, under the warning of his friends, he did not stop layoffs. Instead, he started four stores in a row.
In order to improve the company's influence, he led employees to "sweep the building" and distributed leaflets and business cards every day. In addition, Qiu Nan concluded that "the focus of door-to-door service is word of mouth", and he would not let any customer who came to the store discover the defects of the service. In order to improve the service concept and quality, Qiu Nan has always insisted on training employees, which has become a culture of the company.
Of course, persistence is more than just talking about such a simple thing. To this end, Qiu Nan had to bear all kinds of expenses of his seven direct stores in the first two years, and he had to bear the mental pressure of waiting for profit. The initial pain of starting a business inevitably came to the founder of the chain store. Qiu Nan also calculated an account for the author with figures. His first store didn't start to make a profit until 2007, that is, two years later, the second store took three years, and by the time of the tenth store, the investment period was only three months. So far, excluding the consideration of fixed costs, the investment period has been reduced to zero days.
Speaking of this, Qiu Nan deeply quoted a sentence from Ma Yun to the author: "Today is cruel, tomorrow will be cruel, and the day after tomorrow will be beautiful, but many people died the next night." In persistence, Qiu Nan is lucky.
New ideas have a new way out.
There is a saying in management that "thinking determines the way out". For Qiu Nan, his opportunity comes from the constant renewal of ideas. Consumers generally have two choices to buy computers, one is DIY merchants, and the other is complete machine dealers. For the former, DIY merchants are directly responsible for after-sales, and some also provide on-site service. For the latter, the manufacturer has an after-sales office responsible for inspection and maintenance. Generally speaking, big businesses will also set up their own after-sales centers to attract customers, such as Henan Shide.
Under the double pressure of global manufacturers, big merchants and small merchants, the repair shops in Qiu Nan are likely to face the embarrassment of long-term lack of market, and even lead to bankruptcy. However, after four years' efforts, Qiu Nan has broken the original market structure and established 30 computer chain stores in Zhengzhou with remarkable achievements. When it comes to this mystery, Qiu Nan has a talk with Kan Kan.
He said that it was because of his deep understanding of the continuous refinement of social division of labor that he dared to take the risk. Although there are many DIY merchants in the store, they can also provide after-sales service, but due to limited strength and personnel, they may not meet the customer's service requirements. Manufacturers have a date guarantee after sale, and only provide hardware services, which will be rejected by customers.
Practice is the only criterion for testing truth. A few years ago, Haier and other big factories started from after-sales, and now after-sales has become a burden. Whether it is Patriot, Lenovo, Haier, Gree and other home appliance manufacturers, their inefficiency has become increasingly difficult to meet the needs of customers, which must be changed by external forces. The rise of Aiti computer in one fell swoop is the general trend of social development. Qiu Nan told the author that in the future development plan, Zhengzhou's chain target is 100 stores.
In view of the rapid development (data show that 15 stores joined in 2008 alone, accounting for half of the total number of stores, and continued to join in 2009), and the application of the public has been accepted, the management training, logistics and supply channels are strictly controlled. In the current layout, in order to prevent regional competition, after learning from the models of many chain stores, they take it as an institutional constraint that they are not allowed to open a second store within 3 kilometers. So far, the effect is good, Qiu Nan said.
After the success of chain computers, Qiu Nan began to consider negotiating agency services with manufacturers. After signing the after-sales agency service with TCL and Shenzhou a few months ago, Qiu Nan complained that other big manufacturers had to take sales as the after-sales condition of their agents. In his view, this does not conform to the law of market development. In addition to after-sales technology, Qiu Nan began to try to represent products, and attracted the attention of manufacturers by virtue of the regional advantages of 30 stores. When the author asked whether the agent products and other businesses would damage the current IT brand, he replied with a smile: "Love computers is like computer doctors, and the most important thing for us is to be optimistic about the disease. As for the agent products, it seems to be selling medicines, with the aim of providing consumers with diversified services. "
Details affect success or failure.
There was a popular management language in the early years: personality determines fate, and details determine success or failure. Qiu Nan is a person who attaches great importance to detailed behavior. For example, he left a lot of things to employees to deal with, and at most provided directional suggestions, which was in line with the management rules. In addition, the name column of his business card was changed to "Complain about Investment Promotion", and the maintenance agreement sheet was printed with the selection box "Whether to save data" to determine the responsibility. There are many similar examples. Since acting as an agent for TCL netbooks, he has used one of them as his office computer. "You have to be experimental and start from the feelings of consumers," Qiu Nan said.
Perhaps in the deepening market-oriented reform, details are not enough to determine success or failure, but they can affect success or failure. And these good habits, in his college business administration class. In internal management, he likes to learn from Sina's management model. He believes that although Sina has changed hands several times, the stability of management is worth learning. Just like this, from the beginning, he paid attention to the establishment of multi-departmental cooperation and the mutual help of different stores, and always put employees in an important position. In the relationship with customers, the interests of customers will always come first. One of his friends told the author that Qiu Nan's thinking was particularly flexible, he considered problems comprehensively, and he was brave in practice. He is definitely a doer. These advantages have brought him 60 stores and 300 technicians, exceeding 10000 SME customers.
Postscript:
Four years of phoenix nirvana is still a very short number in the history of enterprise development. However, we still see hope. After all, in the winter of Henan IT industry, Qiu Nan's Aiti computer provided us with a good entrepreneurial sample.
The business world is like a battlefield. In the future development, we can't assert that Aiti Computer will be smooth sailing from now on, but there is no doubt that it has a good start and will be better tomorrow.