Interview with Guo Li, General Manager of Purple Jade Mulan: The Cultural Mission of Traditional Old Cloth Shoes

Interview with Guo Li, General Manager of Purple Jade Mulan: The Cultural Mission of Traditional Old Cloth Shoes

The embroidered shoes will always bring to mind the quiet backyard garden, the smoky breeze of early summer, and whoever is the dainty lady with a half-covered face, the lotus steps gently moving, and the tips of the shoes slightly exposed. In the world's fickleness, people want to move today, embroidered shoes represent the era of the beauty of the clouds, become a mark of the past, is forgotten by people's prosperity. However, in the red dust, there is a woman called Guo Li, unveiling the beauty of the dusty veil, step by step to pull her back to the mundane world.

Guo Li is her Chinese name, her real name is Saren Gao Wa, translated into Chinese is "beautiful moon". 2000, Guo Li single-handedly founded the Purple Jade Magnolia Crafts Co.

In Guo Li's view, produced in Yunnan, the Purple Jade Magnolia is a very elegant and beautiful flowers, white petals purple core combination, like a very gentle and tough traditional Chinese women, in addition to Magnolia also reminds people of the father of the army Mulan, Guo Li hope that they can be as brave and determined, so that her "Purple Jade Mulan" handmade embroidered shoes to all over the world.

The little girl knows business opportunity

In 1999, Guo Li's sister received a customer from Hong Kong, before returning to Hong Kong, the customer proposed to bring a few pairs of handmade lasagna shoes to go back to the sister of Guo Li handed over this task to Guo Li.

Wearing her mother's shoes since childhood, Guo Li grew up, at first did not think that this matter has any difficulty, but ran a few days down, Guo Li found himself actually a pair of suitable shoes can not buy - the market is not too rough or style of shoes is not beautiful, she had no choice but to ask her mother at home to make two pairs of shoes to her sister to send.

After this incident, Guo Li keen to see the business opportunities, and launched the action. She first research on the surrounding market, but the results made her disappointed - in the survey, most of the respondents said that the cloth shoes are not interested in, there is a respondent asked Guo Li on the spot: "cloth shoes? That's not for old men and women to wear? What do we wear that for?"

The loss of the first round of market research so that Guo Li is very frustrated for a while, but she quickly pulled herself together, the domestic market does not mean that the international market does not recognize, line or not always have to try to know. So, Guo Li took her mother to do a few pairs of cloth shoes samples ran to the Canton Fair, encountered foreign businessmen took out the shoes to others to see, a straightforward way to show the scene really let a lot of foreigners interested in her cloth shoes. With unremitting efforts, Guo Li finally got the first order - a foreign customer to her order 300 pairs of traditional embroidered cloth shoes.

From the establishment of the company in 2000, to the formal excavation of traditional handicraft cloth shoes, research and development, production and sales, Guo Li spent three years.

Starting a business is easy, success is difficult, Guo Li with the unique care and caution of female entrepreneurs on each of the preliminary preparations are repeated, confirmed. She did not hastily pull the capital, building plant, recruiting workers, but from only a few people's workshop, step by step to today's scale. 2009 September, the company is located in Changchun City, Green Park Economic Development Zone, the first phase of the complex has been put into use, now has more than 1,300 employees, the products are exported to the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom and other 20 countries and regions.

Persistence + Responsibility = Success

For so many years, Guo Li's Purple Jade Mulan has been adopting the production and management mode of "Company + Farmers". She breaks up the entire embroidered shoe manufacturing process, each part of which is handled by farmers from one region, for example, some regions specialize in the soles, while others specialize in the embroidered uppers. This arrangement not only saves the cost and time of employing people in the enterprise, but also provides convenience for local farmers to increase their income in their free time, which can be said to be a win-win thing.

To ensure the quality of the product, the training of farmers is particularly important. Before the division of labor, the company will be centralized pre-service training for all farmers, the assessment of qualified to formally start work. This move has been welcomed by the farmers and solved the problem of many poor families and laid-off women.

Entrepreneurial journey more difficult, Guo Li has been discouraged, thought of giving up, she even admitted that his psychological resistance is not particularly strong, encountered difficulties 'when there will be "forget it, too tired, do not do it" and so on and so forth. However, every time she thought of her hands off, the company so many employees have to re-employment, she will again bite the bullet and insist on, and so far today.

"When I was a kid, I listened to my teachers talk to us about social responsibility, and I felt that this word was so far away from me that it didn't seem to have anything to do with my life. But now I'm sitting in this position, I have to be responsible for all the employees, the company is not my one person, it is everyone's, I have a responsibility on my shoulders, and that's how the sense of social responsibility came about. We do business, we have to have a sense of social responsibility, otherwise it is impossible to go long." Guo Li said.

Speaking of the elements of success, Guo Li said it must be persistent. She feels that entrepreneurship is like climbing a mountain, the front are very tired and hard, if you climb halfway to give up, then never see the view from the top. Tired also endure, hard also endure, no matter what must adhere to the top of the mountain, you will be successful.

Culture is the soul of an enterprise

16 years after the founding of the enterprise, Guo Li's Purple Jade Mulan Crafts Ltd. has been awarded the title of Changchun City and Jilin Province, "excellent cultural enterprise", has been identified as the "provincial intangible cultural heritage", is the Ministry of Culture, Jilin Province, Changchun City's "Cultural Industry Demonstration Base", "National Minority Product Production Base", "National Minority Product Production Base", "National Minority Product Production Base", "National Minority Product Production Base", "National Minority Products Production Base", and "National Minority Products Production Base". It is the "Cultural Industry Demonstration Base", "National Minority Products Production Base", "National Women's Entrepreneurship and Employment Training Demonstration Base" of the Ministry of Culture, Jilin Province and Changchun Municipality, as well as the production base of export products determined by the Ministry of Culture. Purple Jade Mulan handmade embroidered shoes won the "Mountain Flower Award" and the "Folk Crafts Excellence Award" of the China Folk Art Expo, and the enterprise was also honored as a "National Key Cultural Export Enterprise". Ziyu Mulan brand "embroidered dragon Kung Fu shoes" was also identified as Olympic gift shoes, won the "China Folk Art Fair Silver Award". Up to now, the company **** won the municipal level above all kinds of honors 73, respectively, 28 municipal, provincial 30, national 16.

Although the harvest honors a lot, but Guo Li always modestly think they do "not very good", support her to go on the power is her love of national culture.

"China's culture is profound, deep and far-reaching, and it needs someone to pass it on. The first few years of business, I still feel not obvious, but over the years I feel more and more y that I am doing a cultural heritage business. Our target market is mainly Europe and the United States, on the surface is selling handmade embroidered shoes, in fact, it is a kind of cultural output, to let more people in the world know our traditional Chinese culture, understand our traditional culture."

More than a decade, China's economy is changing rapidly, Guo Li looked at the annual sales volume and cost statistics, but feel the pressure to increase." Just started that, looking for people to find the soles of up to 5 dollars, now at least 15 dollars, and transportation, transportation, technology, equipment, and many other aspects of the cost of the straight line up, the overall sales volume has not changed significantly." The result of rising costs and unchanged sales is less profitable, Guo Li confessed that if she had to make a profit as the only goal of the business, her company would not have been able to open, and even from the beginning of her Purple Jade Magnolia Embroidered Shoes is not a very profitable project. She chose this path because of the cultural attributes of the Purple Jade Mulan, she wanted to do her own modest efforts, even if it is only for the cultural heritage of China's journey to point a spark, has been enough.