Wheely good ideas

He hit the library to study structure and played around with every possibility before developing a viable plan. Inspiration came to him when he found a sleeping couch in a magazine. Song figured that, if wheels were added to a cradle and could be rolled up and down, the whole thing could double up as a stroller and a cradle.

"That way, parents could also soothe their children and let them sleep in the stroller," he says. Song quickly got down to fleshing out his improvised idea.

Thanks to his early years in rural China, Song was good with his hands and eventually, through much trial and error, built a working prototype, for which he obtained a patent.

He sold the patent for 40,000 yuan, which was the first time he'd struck gold since he took the helm of the plant. "We didn't have the capacity for production, so I used the patent money to give our plant a face-lift and build the morale among remaining employees," Song says.

This early success encouraged him to continue to develop his ideas, adding more functions to the baby strollers. He later patented a version that had four functions, including as a walking aid.

The patent price reached up to 150,000 yuan in a bidding war in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

When Song saw the astronomical figure, the penny suddenly dropped and he finally saw the potential of his design. So, he called the bidding off and sought investment from the bank and local government to buy raw materials and tools to build his four-function stroller.

At the same time, he went out of his way to show his new product at a Changsha exhibition in September 1989.

"It was on the walkway between booths of two major domestic baby stroller producers," Song recalls.

However, it was his unique stroller, with its various functions, that drew the attention of visitors.

"We got orders for 200,000 strollers on the spot," Song says.

About two months later, the first of his baby strollers officially went on the market.

He named his brand Goodbaby.

His problems, it seemed, were not yet over. The price of the Goodbaby stroller was 150 yuan, while mainstream products cost around 50 yuan at that time.

Unwilling to compromise product quality, Song targeted the high-end market. He had his eyes on the Shanghai No 1 Department Store, which, at the time, was one of the biggest of its kind in Chinese mainland.