On August 9, at three o’clock in the morning, in Honglin Town, Xuancheng, Anhui.
Zhu Defan, 46, opened the door and got into his pickup truck. In the compartment, 50 boxes were stuffed full, that is 200,000 pens.
On this trip, he wants to send the assembled pen back to his “natal home” – Tonglu Fenshui. This business took 5 days, with an income of 7,000 to 8,000 yuan, and 6 transactions a month, which is more than 40,000 yuan.
We all read the story of “Ma Liang” when we were young. A child named Ma Liang has a magical pen. Whatever you draw with this brush can become anything, and everything you paint becomes real.
For Zhu Defan and the 30 employees in his company, this pen from Fenshui is a happy pen, a magical pen, which allows them to have things to do, money to make, and life to look forward to.
Fenshui is located 70 kilometers southwest of Hangzhou. The Fenshui River “slips” down Tianmu Mountain and draws a long stroke in the western Zhejiang. In this bend, the thousand-year-old city of Fenshui was born.
Overlooking Fenshui from the air, a wide avenue flies across the Fenshui River. This Provincial Highway 302 is the main traffic line of Fenshui and the main artery of Fenshui’s economy. There are 884 pen-making and supporting enterprises scattered along the line.
There are many pen-making enterprises on Xinchun East Road, Fenshui Town
On April 10, 2003, Comrade Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, came to Tonglu for investigation and research, and he prescribed a “16-character prescription” for the water-dividing pen stuck in the bottleneck of “low, small, and scattered”——to do Bigger and stronger, strengthened characteristics, expanded space, and linkage between urban and rural areas, this has become a good recipe for the development of the local pen-making industry.
Over the past 20 years, Tonglu people have kept in mind their entrustment, deeply cultivated the massive economy, and explored new development momentum for the pen-making industry. A small pen not only draws the happy life of Fenshui people, but also draws the whole world.
Today, Fenshui has more than 8 billion pens shipped to the whole country and even the world every year, bringing hope and happiness to more Zhu Defans, and Fenshui has become a veritable “World Pen City”.
First turn the hour hand back to the previous century.
In 1974, Lou Atu, Chief of the Supply and Marketing Section of Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory, visited the Ruqiao Brigade of Fenshui Commune at that time to visit his daughter who jumped in and settled here. Perhaps out of “professional sensitivity”, he found that a kind of small bamboo here is very suitable for making ballpoint pen holders, so he proposed to the village cadres to use small bamboo to produce ballpoint pen holders.
At that time, Ruqiao Primary School had a school-run factory for processing bamboo products, and began to try to produce “bamboo ballpoint pens”. “Water-dividing pens” sprouted.
Two years later, with the support of Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory, the school-run factory began to “upgrade” and produce “plastic pen holder ballpoint pens”.
This is the first upgrade of the fountain pen.
The pens in Ruqiao Village opened the eyes of the people in Fenshui. Cleaning the living room, dismantling the pigsty, and setting up a few tables became a production workshop. For a time, small pen-making workshops blossomed everywhere.
Du Baochen, who founded Tonglu Yunshan Pen Co., Ltd. in 1994, was among the first batch of founders of Fenshui. In 2003, Comrade Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, came to Fenshui for investigation, and Du Baochen made a report as the first president of the Hangzhou Pen-making Association.
“‘A pen’ is sufficient for the people’s economy, but the low, small and scattered industrial conditions limit the further development of the massive economy. Comrade Xi Jinping carefully visited the company’s injection molding workshop and sample room, and said to the comrades present that pen-making The scale of the industry is still small, and we must make it bigger and stronger, and strengthen our characteristics.” Speaking of the scene at that time, Du Baochen vividly remembered it.
How to keep in mind the ardent entrustment of the general secretary and make it bigger and stronger has become the lofty mission of the pen maker of Fenshui.
Nanbao Village below Fenshui has experienced severe floods in history. In the face of natural disasters, the people of Nanpu did not shrink back, relied on themselves, and rebuilt their homes, forging the “Nanbao Spirit” that never bends over Mount Tai.
This time, when difficulties were presented to the Fenshui people again, they did not back down either.
First of all, lying in front of Fenshui is the small ball on the tip of the ballpoint pen that can almost be seen with a magnifying glass.
The minimum diameter of these balls is 0.25mm, and the maximum is no more than 1.4mm. A sneeze or a cough may blow away thousands of pellets.
But it is such a small ball, but it has fallen into the dilemma of “import dependence” for a long time in the past.
Why can’t the great steel country produce its own small nib?
It turns out that although the ball is small, it has extremely high technical content. When writing, the ball rolls several times faster than a car running on the highway. After writing with a pen, the ball has to roll more than 100,000 times, and it has to bear the friction loss caused by various writing angles.
Tonglu Dingshen New Material Technology Co., Ltd. does not believe in evil, and is determined to challenge the “difficulty of balls and beads”.
The final inspection of the balls produced by Dingshen New Material Technology Co., Ltd. under the microscope
“The core competition lies in as many as 20 or 30 kinds of raw material formulas. The mixing of various materials is like kneading dough. Subtle changes will affect the quality of the balls. Our formula is completely self-developed and cannot be imitated.” The technical leader of the company Wu Yakun said.
A subtle ratio of trace elements, after countless experiments, was finally found by them. At present, “Dingshen Technology” can produce 2 billion balls per month and export them to India, Italy, Japan and other countries. It is one of the five companies in the world that can produce balls, accounting for nearly one-third of the world’s balls. market.
Ball production workshop of Dingshen New Material Technology Co., Ltd.
In Fenshui, the team of enterprises like “Dingshen Technology” who have mastered the “core technology” of the pen industry is constantly growing.
The Pen of Breaking Bamboo: The Nirvana of a Butterfly Born Out of a Cocoon
The key bottleneck technology has been broken through, but more breakthroughs are needed to sell the pen, and even sell it to the world. Just like a butterfly, starting from the chrysalis, it still needs to go through many tests and even live to death before finally breaking out of the cocoon and nirvana.
For example, sales.
In Fenshui, Zhou Jianqin is a person who is often mentioned. He founded Tonglu Baxter Stationery Co., Ltd., which is the first “billion-level pen-making enterprise” in the local area.
In the second half of 2015, affected by the rise of e-commerce, Zhou Jianqin, with the help of his daughter, gradually extended the sales channel to the Amazon e-commerce platform, and shipped more than 6 million pieces in one month, with sales increasing by more than 20%. Especially in 2020, the “stay-at-home economy” under the epidemic has detonated the sales of pens, and almost 80% of pens were sold out as soon as they were launched on cross-border e-commerce platforms. In 2021, Baxter’s cultural platform sales will exceed 100 million in one fell swoop.
For example, management.
Management is the most important thing for an enterprise to run well.
However, the extensive management of Fenshui pen-making enterprises in the past left an unforgettable story: Typhoon Morakot hit in 2009, and the warehouses of several pen-making factories in Fenshui were damaged to varying degrees. , They all said “a few million”, because I don’t know how many goods are in the warehouse.
But now, it is also a warehouse. Jinma Stationery & Gift Co., Ltd. has digitized its entire line. An assembly line, a workshop, and a warehouse are all managed through digitalization, which is clearly and clearly organized.
Another example is the brand.
In everyone’s inherent impression, the pen is simply used to record text. In Tonglu Ausai Pen Co., Ltd., there are various new ways to play pens. There is a rotating pen specially used to train fingers dexterity, which endows the pen with modern functions such as counting, counting, timing and speed display; Many pens integrate various elements such as accessories, toys, cartoons, animation and intelligence, and present them to users with a new texture.
Osay, as the leading enterprise in Tonglu pen industry, is also the licensed stationery supplier of Hangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee. They have jointly established an industrial design joint research and development center with Zhejiang University of Technology, and 24 licensed products for the Hangzhou Asian Games jointly developed have been mass-produced and put on the market, with a sales value of more than 50 million yuan.
Asian Games stationery gifts designed and developed by Ousay
Pay attention to the brand, strengthen the characteristics, and make it bigger and stronger. Nowadays, many local enterprises in Fenshui have launched new brands: “Zhiwu” brand pen products of Zhiwu stationery, “Lian Shangzi” made by Jinyao pens, “Aijia” of Aijia stationery… a piece Ordinary pens cost a few yuan, while a brand-name pen can cost tens or even hundreds of yuan.
Like a pen: a full-service masterpiece
“I am responsible for the sunshine, rain and dew, and you are responsible for thriving growth” – this famous saying of Dream Town, Future Science and Technology City, is also a portrayal of the relationship between government and enterprises in Fenshui Town. In Fenshui’s pen-making business, the government is a kind “shop boy” and an inseparable “guide”.
In order to transform the Fenshui pen-making enterprise from a family workshop to a modern company system, Fenshui Town decided to build a pen-making industrial zone to introduce the enterprise into the road of large-scale production. Wang Min, the former director of the Economic Development Office of Fenshui Township, said that at that time the township government took out more than 4 million yuan of funds to build a new office building, and invested it in the construction of “three links and one leveling” infrastructure in the industrial zone.
In 2021, although Fenshui has been hailed as the “hometown of pens in China”, it is still blank in the R&D and production of high-end pens. The pens are all outsourced, and the most important link in the industrial chain is missing. In mid-February, Wang Weihong, who had just taken office as Party Secretary of Fenshui Town in Tonglu County, rushed to Wenzhou to “persuade” Xingyang Stationery to come to Fenshui.
“Xingyang Stationery is a high-end pen manufacturer, which can fill the gap in the pen industry in Fenshui and play a role in strengthening the chain and supplementing the chain.” Lin Feng, deputy mayor of Fenshui Town, said.
The first few times I went there, among the two brothers in charge of Xingyang stationery, the elder brother was moved, but the younger brother always refused to nod. But Wang Weihong was not discouraged, and repeatedly visited the door to explain the recruitment policy, and finally persuaded the two brothers to come and have a look.
Under Wang Weihong’s persistence of “visiting the thatched cottage three times”, Xingyang Stationery finally signed an agreement. In January this year, the new factory building was successfully completed, and the training of operating staff is being stepped up to prepare for production.
“After the high-end nib production line with an annual output of 400 million pieces is put into operation, the estimated annual output value can reach 160 million yuan.” Lin Feng said.
Fenshui Town has also vigorously cultivated core enterprises by launching financial tools such as “Miaobidai” and “Twelve Opinions on the High-quality Development of Manufacturing Industry” and other policy support to help enterprises “break billions of dollars”.
In order to enhance the R&D and innovation capabilities of the pen-making industry, we invested more than 6 million yuan in the construction of a provincial-level pen-making industry innovation service complex, and flexibly introduced more than 10 high-end talent teams; issued “innovation coupons” for pen-making enterprises with annual sales of more than 5 million yuan “; actively expand the market space outward, and hold eight consecutive China Pen Expo; optimize the planning space inwardly, and build a “1+N” industrial platform system.
Today’s Fenshui Town has formed an industrial gradient matrix of 100 million yuan pen-making enterprises, 3 100 million yuan cultivation enterprises, and a group of technological growth enterprises.
Spring Breeze at the Bottom of the Brush: A Colorful Picture Scroll of Common Wealth
The pointer of time moved to 12:00 noon on August 9th. When we set off at 3:00 in the morning, the sky was dark and the sun was shining brightly.
In Tonglu Fenshui, Zhu Defan has packed 50 boxes of accessories for ballpoint pens in Renyuan Pen Factory, including nibs, caps, and springs… planning to return.
It took more than 4 hours to drive from Tonglu Fenshui to Honglin Town, Xuancheng, Anhui, 185 kilometers. Zhu Defan said that he couldn’t remember how many times he drove.
This back and forth, Zhu Defan has to repeat every four or five days.
Deloitte Labor Service Co., Ltd. run by Zhu Defan has a total of 30 employees. It specializes in providing assembly services for Fenshui pen-making enterprises, and also provides employment for local low-income people to increase their income.
“The original intention of setting up this assembly point is to help the disabled get employed.” Zhu Defan was originally a village cadre. Seeing that it was difficult for the disabled in his jurisdiction to find employment, he set up this assembly point under the auspices of the governments of the two places. At first, the employees were mainly disabled, and later the elderly and people who were unemployed at home joined in.
Jiang Shunzhen is one of the employees of the Deloitte labor service company. She has a second-grade physical disability. Her husband, a bricklayer, has a bad lumbar spine, and the family of three is struggling with income. After entering the assembly point, she worked five or six hours a day, assembling more than 2,000 pens, and earned more than 1,000 yuan a month.
“The threshold for installing pens is low, and the profit is also low, so every link must be saved.” In summer, Zhu Defan chooses to set off in the early morning, just to save some fuel without turning on the air conditioner. He even brings his own lunch in the microwave oven of the gas station. Once it is hot, it will be dealt with.
Wang Yinmei, 61 years old this year, has also done assembly work for many years. The day before yesterday afternoon, she was putting sleeves on pen holders at the assembly point at the entrance of Wusheng Village, Fenshui Town. She installed one in about three seconds, and the movements were skillful and smooth.
Wang Yinmei has been doing this job for 20 years. She suffered from polio when she was a child, and her legs and feet were disabled. Her husband, Gui Zhixiang, is hearing-impaired. There are two children in the family, and the life of the family of four is very difficult.
Wang Yinmei is working
“Currently, I can earn 15,000 yuan a year. Those like us who cannot go out to work cherish the work at home. The two children in the family rely on this income to go to school.”
At present, relying on the overall planning of the town party committee and the pen industry association party committee, Fenshui Town has built 318 assembly points in and around the town, with 1,863 assembly personnel. The assembly points have also spread to Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and other surrounding provinces and cities. More than 100.
According to statistics, there are currently more than 15,000 direct employees in Fenshui’s pen-making industry. The per capita disposable income of residents in the town has reached 68,800 yuan, and the income gap between urban and rural residents has dropped to 1.5. It can be described as “a small industry enriches the people”.
Both economical and beautiful. Through the transformation and upgrading of the pen-making industry, Fenshui Town aims to create a beautiful town demonstration town, and strives to create a “wonderful pen town”.
Miaobi Town
In 2015, “Miaobi Town” was included in the list of the first batch of characteristic towns in Hangzhou. Hong Ying, the commentator of the small town’s living room, told us that relying on the existing pen-making industry foundation and ecological environment advantages, the town will focus on developing a fashionable pen industry cluster that focuses on pen production and supplemented by modern business services. A characteristic town integrating science and technology innovation, e-commerce, cultural creativity and leisure functions.
In 2016, Fenshui was selected into the first batch of characteristic towns in the country. Today, Fenshui Town has already broken away from the concept of simply being a pen-making and processing place, promoting tourism through industry, promoting industry through tourism, and setting up a pen-making industrial tourism project. National Public Technology Service Center, Intellectual Property Rapid Rights Protection Center, Testing Center, E-commerce Center, etc. have successively settled in…
The beautiful blueprint of Miaobi Town is slowly turning into reality.
【North Peak Observation】
Scattering is a sky full of stars gathered into a ball of fire
——Zhou Tao
From the bamboo pen holder in the school-run factory to “one pen per capita in the world”, Fenshui has drawn a different kind of picture.
The massive economy has always been the advantage and characteristic of Zhejiang’s economy. Zhejiang has developed from a province with small resources to a province with a large economy. The role of the massive economy cannot be denied. At the beginning of the development of the market economy, a variety of massive economies emerged in Zhejiang. However, how to give full play to the advantages of Zhejiang’s institutional mechanisms and realize the upgrading of the massive economy has become a huge challenge. The common prosperity story of Fenshui benefiting thousands of people with a single pen provides a solid practical sample.
From “creating something out of nothing” to “creating excellence out of something”, and then “making strength out of excellence”, the most fundamental way out is to develop modern industrial clusters, lead high-quality development, and take a new road to industrialization. As early as 2003, the “eight-eight strategy” was finalized and pointed out the direction.
As business entities, many entrepreneurs burst out with infinite innovation capabilities, technological innovation, product innovation, sales innovation, and management innovation because of their instinct to survive in the sea of the market. With self-innovation again and again, the enterprise will breed infinite power and step up to a new level step by step.
As managers, the “mayors” took the initiative to lower their stature and transform into “shop assistants”, doing everything possible to help and serve the enterprise. The instant cooperation between the market and the “mayor” finally turned Fenshui’s “bamboo brush” into a wonderful brush, drawing a picture of living in the Fuchun Mountains in the new era.
“Scattered is full of stars, gathered into a ball of fire.” Zhejiang’s massive economy is bursting out with infinite vitality, painting a new picture of spiraling upward to promote high-quality economic development by leaps and bounds.