Lin means business

For inspiration about how to run his business, Lin Cong-ying looks to the Chinese characters that make up his given name. Both mean wise and ingenious, words that could be used to describe Lin's business sense.

And it's Lin's business sense that has earned him the title "King of Trousers".

Lin's undertaking, Jiumuwang Western-Style Fashional Clothes Co Ltd, which has focused on men's trousers for 18 years in Quanzhou, the third largest city in Fujian province, has led the segment's market share for seven consecutive years, beating out more than 110,000 garment enterprises in China.

Last year, it sold over 8 million jackets and trousers with revenues in the billions of yuan. Among the company's 2,560 stores on the mainland, 55 percent are wholly-owned and the rest are franchised - but all profitable.

Lin attributes his success to simple principles - "always be aware and remain one step ahead of rivals".

The company's founder and chairman is now turning his focus toward international markets with a classic men's collection, including trousers, jackets and business suits.

He also plans to list the company on the Hong Kong stock exchange and debut a custom-made online brand this year.

"My ambition is to be China's top men's clothing brand - not only in trousers - in five years and establish a stable foothold in international markets with our brand of JOE|ONE, which I have registered in more than 200 countries," says the 58-year-old Lin.

A simple beginning

In the early 1980s, Lin enjoyed an easy life, working a secure job at the local government's food supply bureau in his hometown of Jinjiang city, Fujian province.

"I felt it was a terrible waste of life, using up the daytime drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers," Lin says.

In 1984, at 24, he quit his government job to carve out his own career.

With a loan of 20,000 yuan, he contracted the business unit of local food supply administration. However, with a lack of management skills and experience, he soon found himself in debt 14,000 yuan.

"I can still remember that on the first day of the Chinese new year, I was in an embarrassing corner facing two of my renters."

A week later, with only 200 yuan - his son's lucky money - he left home for Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, for a sales promotion of slide fasteners, which were in great demand in the rising clothing business at that time.

He managed to squeeze a profit from the small fittings. However, "the margin was not as big as that from the clothing retail business".

He soon opened a garments store in Qingdao. "I accumulated much more experience than money during that time," he says.

In 1989, he went back to his hometown, a porcelain production base, to begin his undertaking as a clothing manufacture.

"The reason is simple: Everybody needs to wear clothes, and therefore the clothing market is less likely to experience a downtrend," he says.

He collected 72,000 yuan from friends and relatives, kicking off his own trousers manufacturer - Jiumuwang.

Although he had only 12 staff and second-hand equipment in a 500 sq m yard, his first set of trousers sold out immediately in Qingdao and Dalian, thanks to his principle "quality beyond quantity".

"We had no time to deal with the orders," Lin recalls.

At the end of the year, after accounting, he was shocked. "The revenue of over 200,000 yuan was ten times my expectation."

Quality is vital

Lin believes that quality is a vital force for a manufacturer without hi-tech equipment.

In 1999, Jiumuwang earned a reputation for high quality trousers with no crimples. Its JOE|ONE trousers are in huge demand in department stores in many big cities.

To meet demand, staff started to ignore blemishes and other faults on the trousers.

When Lin saw the trousers with bad stitching and the wrong buttons, he was furious.

"Although the trousers still could be sold as inferior products, I held an emergency staff gathering and burned hundreds of the faulty trousers," Lin says.

After that, quality became Jiumuwang's most important prerequisite and every staff member shouldered the responsibility of being a quality checker.

"I told them that only if we insisted on perfect quality would our trousers satisfy customers. That's the foundation of a brand," Lin says.

Now a pair of qualified JOE|ONE trousers goes through a rigorous preparation, including 98 cuttings and 108 needling procedures of 23,000 stitches.

"In order to make perfect products, we have passed the international ISO9001 quality control standard and ISO14000 environmental management standards," Lin says.

"And our requirement of 15 to 18 needles per 3 cm is even stricter than the national standard."

Without his foresight and quick response to crises, he may not have gained so much success in just a decade.

In 1995, he happened upon a special fabric in his friend's trousers.

"The feeling was fantastic, smooth and slippery, light but heavy-looking," Lin recalls. "I suddenly realized the textile might be the best material for trousers."

He bought the same pair of trousers and soon learned the fabric was a new arrival from a Taiwan textile manufacturer.

Opportunity knocks

Lin signed a contract to be the sole agency to sell the fabric on the Chinese mainland and set about creating a new design based on the fabric.

But his father, in charge of Jiumuwang's production, argued that it might be risky to invest in what he thought might be "an unnecessary innovation".

"But I told him our company would lose a competitive edge if we didn't go further," Lin says.

As Lin expected, the trousers tailored with the fabric were popular when it hit the market.

The series recorded revenue of over 100 million yuan on 4 million pairs of trousers sold between June 1995 and the end of 2006.

"It's still a sales miracle," he says.

Global ambition

For 2008, Lin says he is preparing for competition in the international marketplace.

Last month, Jiumuwang signed a contract with Ogilvy China, a leading communications group, as its branding and creative agency for two years.

"We expect to upgrade our branding image with the support of Ogilvy's 360o integrated marketing solutions," Lin says.

He hopes the move will help him keep one step ahead of his rivals in terms of international expansion.

"After Ogilvy's positioning of our brand, we will first go to Hong Kong, where we will kick off three stores in 2009," Lin says. "Then we will go to Southeast Asia."

Lin says his online brand will be launched later this year. He says that online prices will be 50 percent lower than in stores.

At the end of last year, Lin started to implement his strategy of talent internationalization.

He recruited a human resources director from Philips, a brand manager from McDonald's, a marketing manager from a Swedish company and a financial principal from Hong Kong.

On March 1, Jiumuwang signed a famous German designer to be its chief devisor.

"With Ogilvy's professional experience and international resources as well as western fashion trends, it won't be hard for Jiumuwang to be a leader in China's clothing industry in five years, providing the highest-quality product line-up."

(China Daily 03/31/2008 page12)