A Private Interview to Manager Wang of YiChuan County ShengYu Fireproof Material Co., Ltd. by iAbrasive

"We called this 'win-win strategy', that is, creating value with your customers."

Interviewee: Wang Hui 
Position: General Manager  
Company: YiChuan County ShengYu Fireproof Material Co., Ltd.
Site on iAbrasive: http://shengyu.en.iabrasive.com/

Located in the ancient city of Luoyang, YiChuan county enjoys a long and splendid history. Meandering River “Yi” flowing here gives birth to the unique civilization of YiChuan County. In addition, rich bauxite resources have laid a solid foundation for its leading position of brown fused alumina smelting and processing. Luckily, YiChuan County ShengYu Fireproof Material Co., Ltd. happens to possess all these inherent advantages.

In 2013, most abrasives enterprises were faced with the economic crises, and some even have stopped manufacturing for quite a while. However, when editor from iAbrasive.com made a visit to ShengYu, the busy factory with workers coming in and out surprised us. How could this company survive from the tough industrial situation and still win a place smoothly? To find out the reason, editor from iAbrasive had a personal interview with the General Manager Wang of ShengYu. 

Return the Hometown and Contribute a Share to Family Business

In some sense, Wang was born with a silver spoon in the mouth. In China, most rich second generation would refuse to take over the family business, cause it was too boring and with great pressure. However, rather than staying in the busting metropolis, Wang made a decision to return the hometown and do sales in his family factory after gratulated from University of Foreign Trade. He started from the basics and was originally responsible for the sales and market research of brown fused alumina as well as the maintenance and update of customer relationship.

Compared with elder generation, the second generation were better educated and tended to be more creative, which injected new blood to the growth of the company. No more than a year, Wang was elected as the manager of sales department for his outstanding performance in the work. Now, Wang has took over the entire businesses of the company and supported the daily operation. His creative management ideas helped ShengYu realize the transformation from a traditional factory to a modernized enterprise successfully.

Enrich Staff by Founding a Learning-Oriented Team

In the modern society, new talents are featured by their high cultural cultivation. However, for an abrasives enterprise, most workers are poorly educated farmers nearby. To improve the quality of the staff, Wang founded a learning team. So, if you have a chance to visit ShengYu, you may see a gatekeeper of sixty years’ old reading books. Under the leadership of Wang, workers from ShengYu have achieved several progresses, such as reducing power consumption to save the cost.

In addition, Wang was also good at financial management. To avoid the unnecessary fees caused by cross-bank transaction, Wang proposed to introduce POS in the financial department, which not only improved the payment efficiency but also saved the cost.

Honesty Comes First and Create Value Together

There are many old Chinese sayings that emphasize the importance of honesty. It is considered as the soul of market economy as well as the best means to win a place in commercial competitions.

During my interview to Wang, what he talked the most frequently was about honesty. For the decades, ShengYu insisted in taking high quality bauxite as the raw material for smelting brown fused alumina, which to some extent would increase the cost. However, because high quality bauxite contained less impurity, it made smelting process easier and saved the power consumption as well as the cost. What’s more, ShengYu could provide customers with qualified brown fused alumina.

When pursuing high quality products, ShengYu advocates a management principle of low profits. Certainly, it does not mean to lower the price for the purpose of market competition, but for a better cooperation with customers in a long run. Therefore, refractory materials produced by ShengYu are quite popular among customers. Wang called this behaviour“win-win strategy”, that is, creating value together.

Carrying forward the fine tradition and keeping innovation consistently, ShengYu shoulders it as the mission to promote the development of abrasives industry in a healthy and sustainable way.