Those young people who "play with things and make goals"

On the B side of the consumption feast of Double Eleven, there are countless Liu Guangyao and Zhao Wei. They are young, born in the 1990s, or even born in the 1995s, with extraordinary academic qualifications and determined aspirations. They seem to be "not doing their job properly", but in fact they are ambitious and break into the business world with bare hands, hoping to change the rules of the game.

For them, this experience is not so much an entrepreneurial story as a "rebellion" against the established track of life. Do what you want to do, be who you want to be, and fight against boredom and mediocrity.

Text | Cheng Cheng

It was a few days ago that Liu Guangyao, who was born in 1995, felt "mature" for the first time.

At 4:30 in the morning on November 1, he walked out of his office on the outskirts of Hangzhou and took a taxi home. The first night of Double Eleven passed smoothly. "It seems to have rained a little in autumn," the middle-aged driver said, and Liu Guangyao said "hmm" as an answer. He fell into a subtle mood, "very calm, not very excited. I fell asleep when I got home." Three years after starting the business, Bosie began to look like a company.

Liu Guangyao has many shining labels. He ranked second in liberal arts in the Shandong College Entrance Examination, received an undergraduate degree from Peking University Guanghua School of Management, and a master's degree in finance from Tsinghua University. Three summers ago, when his former classmates were flocking to securities firms and investment banks, he chose to go against the trend, living in a factory in the urban-rural fringe of Hangzhou and starting to tinker with his own clothing brand.

On Tmall, he is not alone. At about the same time, Zhao Wei returned to Shanghai after graduating from Loughborough University in the UK. He rented a dilapidated warehouse in an industrial park in Minhang District and started his business.

This year’s Tmall Double Eleven, emerging brands have become the biggest dark horses, ranking first in the industry in 375 sub-categories. Most of the founders behind them are born in the 1990s. On the B side of this business feast, there are countless Liu Guangyao and Zhao Wei. The Internet has broken the established order. In a very short period of time, some people have gradually emerged, completed the transformation from 0 to 100 million, and challenged the established giants, while others left the game empty-handed.

"Do you play League of Legends? This is also a game. It is still difficult for me to say that I am running a company. It is more like a group of friends doing something they like together." For these young people , this experience is not so much a business story as a "rebellion" against the established track. Do what you want to do, be who you want to be, and fight against boredom and mediocrity.

“This is a road rarely taken by peers”

Before opening a cheongsam store on Tmall, Zhu Jing knew little about cheongsam, which was a “mistake” The life options that come out.

In 2015, after graduating from Donghua University, Zhu Jing worked as a public relations manager for a Swedish luxury brand, which was stable and glorious. One day, her mother decided to take her to a cheongsam party held in a bungalow in Hongkou, and she came into contact with cheongsam for the first time.

Zhu Jing was born in 1992 and grew up in Shanghai. His father was in the steel business and his mother was a housewife. In her impression, her mother is a typical Shanghainese woman. Her clothes are always pressed and hung up, her nails are always neatly trimmed, and she likes to visit shopping malls near Hengshan Road and Jing'an Temple.

In order to participate in this cheongsam party, Zhu Jing went to the old tailor shop on Changle Road to customize a cheongsam. "Pink, silk cheongsam. In order to expedite it, I spent nearly 6,000 yuan." Although the master's craftsmanship was exquisite, the style was traditional. After a party, the cheongsam was thrown into the bottom of the box by Zhu Jing.

However, her interest in cheongsam became increasingly strong, and she even came up with the idea of ??making a career out of it. At that time, she was getting tired of her work in brand public relations: "With an ordinary salary, I have to guide others to live a luxurious life. These people and things around me seem to be related to me, but everything has nothing to do with me." Zhu Akira wanted to do something with a more "certainty".

The craze for Hanfu has been quietly heating up, and she has a vague feeling that these niche and niche things may be an opportunity.

Zhu Jing resigned and started a business on Taobao store. When registering the name of the store, she was obsessed with a few poems by Bai Juyi: "Pine trees will eventually decay for thousands of years, but hibiscus flowers will be proud of themselves for a day. There is no need to love the world and worry about death, and never feel tired of life." She never forgets the word "hibiscus". , after many unsuccessful attempts, I simply entered "Jinye Dongfang" - passed.

Because she had no funds and no support from her parents, she rented a 10-square-meter office in an industrial park in Changning. "It was only big enough for a bed. I often slept there by myself," she said. The partners are two college classmates. No one understands e-commerce operations, and no one understands the market. The three of them are designers, customer service personnel, and porters.

Zhu Jing makes sample clothes in the studio. Picture / Interviewee

From fabrics, styles to colors, they have made drastic improvements in cheongsam, trying to make cheongsam for the post-90s and post-95s generations. Only 20 days after the Taobao store opened, Jinye placed his first order, and the customer was a Taiwanese. Because there are so few orders, they almost only do "advanced customization." Zhu Jing took the fabric and drawings and went to a tailor shop near the Chenghuang Temple to find a master for processing and completed the first order.

"There are very few cheongsam practitioners and consumers born in the 1990s." Loneliness and lack of peers have been Zhu Jing's biggest worry for a long time. The most "thrilling" time was when she was driving alone from Changning back to Pudong. She fell asleep due to exhaustion and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat.

Loneliness was also an emotion that troubled Zhao Wei. In April 2018, she returned to Shanghai after graduating from Loughborough University in the UK. Instead of following the established direction of applying for jobs, interviewing, and becoming a white-collar worker in an office building in Lujiazui, she started a business in a factory in the suburbs of Minhang. The idea at the time was very "simple". She found that the post-95s generation who had just entered the workplace did not have suitable clothes to accompany them through the awkward period of role change - she stubbornly believed that this was a real pain point.

"For a long time, I walked against the flow of people. They went into the city to work, and I went out of the city. The carriages opposite the subway were bustling, but my place was empty." At that time, their company's office was The end of Line 1, "The further you go out of the city, the fewer people there are."

The subway is like a metaphor for life. Zhao Wei's classmates have entered large companies one after another and have a stable life, but he travels between factories and stalls every day, rushing for an "illusory" tomorrow. "Stress and inadaptation come from the disappearance of the coordinate system of life." She was silent for a moment, and then said, "Of course, this is a normal price."

"Any niche on the Internet may become "Public People"

However, Tmall confirms the ideas of these young people.

Zhao Wei named his brand Circlofy, which means "double-sided life". When he started his business, Zhao Wei only wanted to make one single product—white shirts. In September 2018, during the autumn recruitment season, tens of thousands of people flocked to Circlofy’s Tmall official flagship store to snap up a white shirt.

Zhao Wei saw many comments from those born in 1995 or even 2000 in the comment area. They shared their experiences of wearing white shirts to participate in debates, interviews, and dates. The new formalwear is proving to be a real track. Circlofy began to see a turnaround, and its products expanded from white shirts to other categories. "They stand at the crossroads of society, hesitant and want to insist on themselves, but also eager to integrate into new rules. Many people have experienced it, but later we chose to ignore it. The white shirt is a kind of understanding. I want to tell them, go ahead. Move forward bravely."

"Understanding" brought her real success. On Tmall Double Eleven in 2019, Circlofy’s single-day sales exceeded 3 million, and this year the number may be 12 million.

Zhu Jing also experienced the joy of “proving yourself” on Tmall. In 2017, after two years of hard work, Jin Ye Dongfang’s sales reached 4 million. She attributes this to young people fighting for their own voice. That year, the first batch of post-95s in China entered the workplace at the age of 22. They began to express their attitudes and opinions, "Whatever they like, they should wear it."

"A girl She told me that she started wearing our clothes in college, wore them to jobs, interviews, and now is going to wear them to get married,” she said.

The office began to expand from 10 square meters to 800 square meters, and Zhu Jing also recruited senior designers. "The stand-up collar has been lowered, the skirt has been enlarged, and the sleeves have become wider...to differentiate between daily play scenes, wedding scenes, etc..." Zhu Jing couldn't hide his excitement. By 2018, the store's sales had reached 20 million, and most of her fans were her peers.

In February this year, a customer in the United States customized a set of cheongsam for a wedding. However, due to the anxiety of the epidemic, the factory was shut down and could not be completed. She told Zhu Jing on Taobao that she liked this dress very much and hoped to wear it at the wedding, and begged her to think of a solution. The customer's mother is in Shanghai and will leave for the United States today. You can entrust her to take it with her. Zhu Jing found a local tailor in Shanghai, sneaked back to the factory, made a cheongsam for her, and handed it to her mother before she got on the plane. "It can be said to be 'risking your life.'"

Any niche hobby may converge into a river on the Internet - this is a unique opportunity for this generation.

Bosie’s legend from 0 to 100 million was achieved one year after entering Tmall - it opened in May 2018, and its omni-channel sales in 2019 were 140 million. "This is the opportunity of the times and the magic of the Internet." Founder Liu Guangyao said firmly. The boundaries between the edge and the center are broken, established business rules are reshaped, and some things that seemed impossible in the past are becoming unexpected but reasonable plots.

In 2018, at a fashion week in Shanghai, Bosie, which had just been established and advertised as "agenderism", was spotted by Tmall's men's clothing waiter and extended an olive branch. At that time, "genderless dressing" was an unfamiliar term. Bosie's founding team was a group of post-95s young people who were almost immature. They didn't understand the supply chain or channels, and they were only full of enthusiasm. However, the men's clothing waiter was keenly aware that they might have stepped on a certain trend of the times. Two months later, Bosie officially entered Tmall. Founder Liu Guangyao later recalled it and summed it up as “the feeling of being chosen.”

The Bosie team discusses new styles. Picture/Interviewee

In the past two years, sudden opportunities and uncertainty about the future have always accompanied Liu Guangyao. He gave an example. Before Double Eleven in 2019, an intern with a monthly salary of 3,500 strongly recommended a down jacket he designed to him, but Liu Guangyao was a little hesitant because the style was fancy, the workmanship was complicated, and the cost of 300 yuan was far higher than other styles. Everyone Not optimistic about it. In order to support young people, Liu Guangyao placed an order for the factory and made 50 pieces at almost a loss.

Facts have proved that Liu Guangyao was wrong. After adding a pre-sale link to the down jacket, the number of collections, additional purchases, and visitors increased all the way—nearly 10,000 pieces were sold in the first 10 minutes after midnight, with sales reaching 7 to 8 million.

"You see, this is the fun part," he said.

"Do what you want to do and become who you want to be"

To this day, Liu Guangyao still resists words such as "company", "CEO" and "boss" . He likes to say, "our team" and "our brand." Most people at Bosie are born after 1995. They don’t need to clock in to work and can work from home.

"I have never been in any workplace. This is my first job, and probably the first job for many people in our team. I did not start a business for worldly success. " he said.

It has been his dream since he was a child to build a clothing brand. In the past, he always chose according to other people's expectations. It was not until college that his grandfather, who loved him most and raised him single-handedly, passed away, and he began to think about the "meaning of life." He came to the conclusion that life is short and perishable. He was ready to truly live for himself once, drop out of school, go south to Hangzhou, and start a business.

Starting a business is much harder than taking an exam. In April 2019, new summer models were launched, but due to insufficient supply chain, Bosie was unable to ship goods for a month. There was a backlog of seven to eight thousand orders online, and the online store may be closed at any time due to a large number of complaints. At this time, Liu Guangyao was under great pressure, so much so that he couldn't stop crying while facing a meat and vegetable lunch.

In this wave, of course, there are not only stories of early fame. The two young people who started the business with Zhu Jing have left and returned to the office building.

"There is no distinction between high and low in all careers and choices. I prefer to understand it as a way of life. The competition in clothing is fierce. Even if the company goes bankrupt tomorrow, it is normal. I did not give Whether you have predicted success or failure, the most important thing is now," Liu Guangyao said, "If it goes bankrupt, let's talk about it later.

"

He likes to play League of Legends. "If you treat entrepreneurship as a game, you might as well have a playful attitude. "During Double Eleven in 2018, Bosie's team was only about 10 people, living in a factory in Linping. Liu Guangyao worked as both a customer service and a courier. Everyone was very excited and "couldn't sleep at all." That day The sales figure was finally fixed at 6.95 million, exceeding everyone’s expectations. In the middle of the night, someone from the factory next door sent them a bottle of champagne. “Bang, we opened a bottle from nowhere in the messy factory. Here comes the champagne. ”

“Existence is diversity, unknown is interesting. "Zhao Wei is full of yearning for the future. In addition to Double 11, she is planning a new product line "Houlang Commuting Wear", hoping to use fashion brands, sports and other elements into workplace attire.

Don’t set limits for yourself and try more possibilities. During the interview, Zhao Wei mentioned these two sentences several times. In July 2019, she went to Inner Mongolia to take a test flight certificate. During the process, she needs to prepare 15 kilograms of equipment, which is about 3/4 of her body size, climb to the top of the mountain, and then dive down from the cliff.

Zhao Wei is participating in paragliding. Photo/Interview.

“If you want to stay in the air longer and enjoy the scenery on the ground, you need to learn to control the airflow. Although it is an extreme sport, the process in the air is very slow and peaceful. "She never forgets the scene she saw while gliding in the air: the summer grassland, green grass, cattle, sheep and white yurts scattered among them, a gentle river, meandering in an unknown direction.

Zhu Guang Qian's "Talk about Beauty" gave an example: There is a road in an Alpine valley with extremely beautiful scenery on both sides. There is a placard on the road advising tourists: "Walk slowly and enjoy it!" ”

“I’ve probably had the same feeling in the past few years. " Zhao Wei said.

If you want to see more, please go to the WeChat account of Daily People (ID: meirirenwu).