Perhaps, Mr. Cai thought about some things too simply, and after the workers built it, although the labor cost was reduced, there was still a situation where the income could not cover the expenditure.

Raw materials and processing equipment have to be shipped abroad, and after processing, they have to be shipped back to Taiwan and sold to Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia and other places, the cost of transportation, customs clearance, market and other costs have increased greatly, and profits are getting thinner and thinner, and Mr. Cai's factory is becoming more and more difficult.

At that time, I was already quite familiar with the agate industry after a few years of contact.

So, I did my best to help Mr. Cai through the difficulties.

Maybe it was my enthusiasm that left a good impression on Mr. Cai, or maybe there was an indescribable fate between the two, and after that, in Dongpu, Mr. Cai looked for me from using the car to looking for me when he had something, and slowly, the two of us developed into good friends.

In the end, the heavens did not fulfill people's wishes, Cai. … He was not able to make the money he had hoped to make from the factory.

In 1995, he decided to sell the factory and return to Taiwan.

After many years of hard work, I was reluctant to give up all at once, and he urged me to buy this factory.

As soon as I heard that it was going to be transferred to me, I didn't know the bottom of my heart, although I was not rich in driving a taxi, but I could earn enough to eat a bowl of rice.

But if you want to take down the factory, the risk will be great.

Not to mention anything else, he has never run a factory, and a talented person like Mr. Cai has made a loss, so why should he turn a loss into a profit?

Taking over the factory is a gamble, and if the gambling is not good, it is very likely that you will go bankrupt, and you will not even be able to afford a taxi at that time, and the price will be too great.

Seeing that I was hesitant, Mr. Cai taught me all the "secrets" such as how to process agate and how to import and export it, telling me to rest assured that I would fight with confidence.

Give it a go?

I fell into deep thought, yes, life can have a few beats, others are not successful, there is a reason, the most important thing is to toss back and forth, the logistics cost is too high, and it is export, the cost of customs clearance is also high, the market is not certain, why not look for the domestic market?

Besides, the factory is in his own village, which is a cost to Mr. Cai and an advantage to himself.

Perhaps, it was predestined in the dark, and I decided to go next.

I did this out of the "righteousness" of helping my friends, and I didn't want Mr. Cai to lose all his money, and at the same time, I was optimistic about the prospects of this industry.

Of course, I didn't do it alone, I persuaded a few other friends Chen Yong, Zhang Bing and others to raise funds and plant equipment and plant to found Lei Xinyuan Jewelry Co., Ltd.

We have reorganized the factory, strengthened management, and at the same time sent salesmen to the south and north to vigorously sell.

At that time, our village was very poor, more than 200,000 yuan of investment money sounds like a lot, the pressure is really great, dare to do next, one is Mr. Cai repeatedly encouraged and supported, the other is that there is really no other way to go, so everyone is very concerted, everyone is willing to work hard, the salesman is carrying a sack on his back to walk the road one by one, one by one stall to sell.

How to revitalize an enterprise that is difficult to sustain in the hands of Taiwanese experts and turn losses into profits?

I decided to start with two things.

One is the equipment.

The price of equipment in Taiwan is high, and maintenance is not convenient.

Therefore, we cooperated with Zhangzhou Longhaijiao Mei Agricultural Machinery Factory to develop new equipment for the process, which is not only two-thirds cheaper, but also has a higher utilization rate of raw materials.

The second is sales.

In the early days, we used the stupidest way to go south and north to sell, carrying a few sacks of agate to find the market, and then continued to participate in CIFIT, cultural fairs and other exhibitions.

These two steps brought the agate processing plant back to life.

At the end of 1995, only one year after taking over the factory, we earned more than 200,000 yuan.

Driven by us, more and more people in Dongpu Village have joined this industry, and the scale has become bigger and bigger like a snowball, and the local agate industry has also ushered in a period of rapid development for more than ten years.

Today, the village with an original population of less than 2,000 people has 89 agate processing factories, and more than 400 families, almost all of whom have built new buildings and purchased luxury cars, has become a well-known and wealthy village.

Now you walk into the agate street and see it, a store next to each other, all kinds of agate jade, strange stones and woods, jewelry, dazzling, people feel like walking into the world of mythology.

With the expansion of raw material channels to South America, Africa and other foreign mining areas, the distribution capacity of our Dongpu Village is also increasing.

Every day, rough agate stones are shipped from all over the world for processing, and then sorted and sent to all parts of the country.

At its peak, 95% of the country's agate bracelets and rings were produced in this area of our village.

Despite the good momentum, there are also some problems in the development of the agate industry, which lie in the minds of practitioners.

In the early days, the processing and sales model of agate in Dongpu Village was relatively extensive, and the products were mainly bracelets, rings and beads.

These products basically do not have certificates and exquisite packaging, and they are OEM by sellers to earn high profits.

In addition, although the local area is famous as a distribution center for agate raw materials, the market will be saturated one day.

To be honest, I am also very anxious, but the whole village can't rely on me alone, first, I am also a halfway monk, and my ability is limited, and second, I need young people to take over, so that this industry can flourish for a long time.

Fortunately, some young people have seen the signs of industrial yaw in advance, and Zhang Zhifei is one of them.

This "post-85" young man has unique insights into business and is the "new generation" of agate in Dongpu Village.

At the age of 19, Zhang Zhifei graduated from school and founded Xiamen Yu Zhongtian Jewelry Industry Co., Ltd.

Different from the traditional model, he found a new way, combining agate with lacquer line carving, oil painting, etc., positioning itself as no longer a simple jewelry, but a cultural and creative product with thickness.

This attempt has given agate products a cultural connotation and successfully entered the high-end market.

I also saw that the direction of industrial development was wrong.

At the beginning of the new century, I initiated the establishment of small industry branches among some self-employed individuals and enterprises, trying to guide industrial transformation and upgrading.

However, the local agate enterprises and self-employed individuals are small and scattered, without conscious awareness and ability, especially under the coercion of industrial development inertia, how easy is it to change?

The opportunity came in 2006.

There was a major event that shocked the industry during the Spring Festival of that year - a batch of local agate jewelry was stopped by the traffic police on the way to Guangdong, because this batch of products did not have "factory name, factory address and contact information", it was handed over to the local industrial and commercial department and was identified as "three no" products.

Many practitioners are beginning to realize that the era of setting up a machine at home to start work and make money is gone.

Under the increasingly fierce market competition, there must be statutory industry standards, and on this basis, we can transform and change.