Honest young man goes to the city to make his way and creates a "five-in-one"
Zhang Xingshun is busy drawing up the employment assistance plan for the new year.
The convenience supermarket opened by Zhang Xingshun.
Zhang Xingshun goes to the village to give on-site guidance to farmers on scientific planting.
Zhang Xingshun, 40 this year, is a "man of the hour" in Xiaobeiguan, Zhangjiawan Town, Tongzhou District. More than 20 years ago, this young greenhorn "left" his hometown and went to the city to make his way. Starting out selling tea, he built up his own business "empire" step by step. Today, he has become a "five-in-one" comprehensive entrepreneur with a tea shop, a restaurant, a supermarket, a trading company and a modern agricultural sightseeing park. While achieving success himself, Zhang Xingshun has not forgotten to give back to the folks in his hometown. He launched a "public-benefit project claim" platform to lead the villagers of his hometown to prosperity together.
Just starting out
Building a tea shop from scratch
In the 1990s, Zhang Xingshun, who had just left school, was truly "a newborn calf that fears no tiger", bent on going to the city and making a name for himself. "When I was a child, the countryside was poor, and I always felt farming was bitter, so I wanted to go to the city and look around, to find opportunities." Because he was unwilling to go back to the village and tinker with the family's one mu and three fen of land, and influenced by the wave of the reform and opening up in which everyone went into business, Zhang Xingshun joined the ranks of entrepreneurs at this time.
Because he was of peasant origin and had few resources or connections, Zhang Xingshun chose to start "small" when entering the trade. "At the time I found that the tea industry still had fairly large room for development, especially since rural people had a relatively large demand for tea." Zhang Xingshun said that in the countryside, weddings and funerals all require banquets, and banquets require tea, but limited by conditions, rural people found it relatively difficult to buy decent tea, so he took this as an opportunity and set foot on his own business path. At that time, he apprenticed under a master to learn the trade, traveled south to Fujian and Zhejiang to visit tea gardens and do purchasing, and worked day and night regardless of hours; it was very hard. But relying on this "diligence", he also won the recognition of those around him. "To be honest, I have to thank my fellow villagers. At the time they knew I was selling tea, and they all took good care of my business." Zhang Xingshun said that because he did things in a fairly solid way, the villagers trusted him more, and word-of-mouth marketing that spread from one to ten and ten to a hundred brought him quite a few customers.
After several years of struggling and learning, Zhang Xingshun kept accumulating experience, and he felt that to develop further he still needed his own enterprise, so in October 1995, he used all his savings to build the "Fuyunlai" tea shop. To run an enterprise, one must first understand market supply and demand. In his early market research, Zhang Xingshun found that the time-honored tea shops "Zhang Yiyuan" and "Wuyutai" targeted high-income groups, which ordinary people generally could not afford. Ordinary people loved drinking tea and drinking good tea, yet found it hard to afford the expensive price of high-quality tea. In order to let more ordinary people drink good tea, and also to achieve the growth and expansion of the enterprise itself, he positioned "Fuyunlai" as "our ordinary people's own tea shop". Because of its honesty and closeness to the people, in only 4 years Zhang Xingshun expanded his tea shop from a 30 sq m storefront to more than 100 sq m, and business grew ever more prosperous. Zhang Xingshun said that "Fuyunlai" tea shop insists on taking honesty as its foundation, selling high-quality tea with excellent service and relatively low prices, being truly practical and cheating neither the old nor the young, truly enabling ordinary people to drink tea often and drink good tea, and also accumulating a large number of stable customers.
Reading the market
Seizing business opportunities to expand scale
Running the tea shop not only let Zhang Xingshun accumulate experience, but also gave him the ability to understand people's needs and grasp the pulse of the market. "After several years of running the tea shop, I won the trust of old customers, and they also hoped I could sell some other things." Zhang Xingshun said that customers' "calls" gave him great confidence, and he established a trading company and began selling vegetables, fruits, tea and various other goods related to people's daily life.
In 2004, the construction of Tongzhou New City accelerated, residential communities sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain, and the low, cluttered village houses were replaced by bright, tidy residential buildings. But although the communities were built, the corresponding living support service facilities could not keep up, and Zhang Xingshun felt he should do something about this. At the time, he learned that the Qunfangyuan community in Liyuan, Tongzhou, had long lacked a comprehensive supermarket, and residents had to go very far to buy some daily necessities, which made life very inconvenient. In order to let them walk a shorter distance and to add a share of strength to urban construction and development, Zhang Xingshun opened Beijing Xinfuyunlai Trading Co., Ltd., and in less than a year he built a comprehensive supermarket in the Qunfangyuan community, truly making things convenient for the surrounding residents with good service and fine, inexpensive goods.
In 2008, many old customers around the Xishangyuan community where the "Fuyunlai" tea shop was located talked to Zhang Xingshun about how the area lacked a good place to eat, and it happened that a shop of more than 1000 sq m was for rent, so Zhang Xingshun leased it and built the "Xingfulou" restaurant. In 2009, Zhang Xingshun built comprehensive supermarket No. 2 in the Banbidian community of Tongzhou, and business was also very good, and people all recognized it. "Maybe because all my commercial investments start from people's basic needs, they all have fairly good returns." Zhang Xingshun said that he always remembered that behind building these restaurants and supermarkets was serving ordinary people; if he only thought of making money, passing off inferior goods as good and cutting corners, it would be impossible to win people's trust and support, and without people's support, no matter how many restaurants and supermarkets one opened, it would not work. In June 2013, he also timely merged the Beijing Xinfuyunlai Comprehensive Supermarket No. 2 in Banbidian with the country's largest listed supermarket, also a vegetable-basket-project supermarket - Yonghui Supermarket, and established the Yonghui chain supermarket in the Banbidian area. Through the merger, he not only raised the management level and grade of his own supermarket, but also injected new vitality into the supermarket's development.
Returning home to start a business
Building an agricultural sightseeing park
As citizens' requirements for the quality of vegetables and food have grown higher and higher in recent years, in 2010 Zhang Xingshun extended his business philosophy to the field of the agricultural industry. He felt that the safe production of agricultural products is the basic guarantee of people's health, so he had the idea of building an agricultural industrial park that could provide people with reassuring vegetables. With increasing age and accumulated experience, Zhang Xingshun's investment and business philosophy also became more and more steady. He first chose his hometown, Xiaobeiguan Village. During the investigation, he found that after many years of reform and opening up, his hometown had not changed much. There was almost no industry or commerce in the village, the villagers still farmed with the same wheat-corn rotation as 30 years ago, and the villagers' life was just "living from year to year". Zhang Xingshun felt deeply that he should have done more beneficial things for the folks of his hometown much earlier. Together with village officials, he discussed with villager representatives the building of an urban modern agricultural industrial park in his hometown without changing the nature of land use. The park's land is transferred from the villagers' hands, and each year the park pays the land use fee to the villagers who transferred the land, while also providing jobs for villagers willing to work in the park or in companies under Zhang Xingshun.