Zhou Pinyu, founder of CiPU
author | Zoe
Zhou Pinyu, founder of Taiwanese mother bag brand "Xipu", is a woman who can't stop being "curious".
Zhou Pinyu graduated from the Landscape Architecture Department of China University. After graduation, she entered a planning and design consulting company and worked as a shop guide assisting the government in implementation for 4 years. Then, she took a long vacation and went to Australia to work and study for a year. After returning to Taiwan, she worked as a project manager at a computer company in Neihu Science and Technology Park. She just needed a salary because she was short of money at the time. "The job I liked before was to do things differently, but working in the technology industry means trying to do everything the same." She soon discovered that this job was not suitable for her at all. Year, Zhou Pinyu resigned.
Next, no one would have thought that Zhou Pinyu’s career choice was selling popsicles. Because of the introduction from a friend she met while tutoring Jinguashi B&B, she decided to try the taste of selling. "Looking back on that year now, I actually paved the way for my subsequent entrepreneurship, because I started from scratch, setting up stalls, planning, marketing, Internet sales, shipping... I did everything, learned everything, and accumulated a lot of experience. A lot of experience that will be needed later."
Zhou Pinyu has liked blogging since college. In 2008, Zhou Pinyu quit her job after getting married and became a housewife. In 2010, she founded the fan group "Pink Wife Zhou Pinyu" and became a member of nearly 10 An internet celebrity wife blogger followed by 10,000 fans, she started a mommy bag business with an annual turnover of nearly 30 million yuan.
Zhou Pinyu started her business with 20,000 yuan sponsored by her parents-in-law. In September 2010, the first batch of "Xipu" mother bags sold with her English initials were officially unveiled through her blog. The appeal of the community made Xipu the first Once it was launched on the maternal and infant platform, it set a record of selling 300 bags in 6 minutes. "Actually, at the beginning, I just wanted to design a bag that I needed after becoming a mother. I didn't expect that the first time I shared it on the blog, it would cause such a big response, and then through the word-of-mouth effect of the first batch of users, "It spread!"
Zhou Pinyu, who majored in landscape design, started designing mother's bags. "Designing bags is a completely different process, but because of the designer's out-of-frame thinking mode, he can tailor it to his own needs. The first mother bag was successfully completed during pregnancy, and after giving birth, it was slowly adjusted according to the actual application scenario. She felt that mothers were most concerned about the weight of the bag, and developed an ultra-light air mother bag that weighs less than 500 grams. " Later, she launched more styles for different needs and occasions, making the brand series richer and more complete.
When placing an order for mommy bags, you need to customize a certain quantity. Zhou Pinyu said: "The first batch of bags was made of 100 pieces, and the price at that time was 1,888 yuan. Later, I found that the cost and profit were not proportional, so I quickly adjusted the price."
In order to avoid the cash pressure caused by stocking up, Xipu adopted a pre-sale system in the first year. "There were times when delivery was delayed and the goods arrived with defects, and I was scolded as a ruthless businessman." Faced with the crisis, Zhou Pinyu did not only make phone calls to The customer apologized and even recorded a video to apologize. After the storm subsided, Zhou Pinyu changed the sales model to spot supply, and her performance slowly recovered.
html I didn’t hear much about products like mom bags 28 years ago. Today, Xipu has become an Internet celebrity brand in the mom circle, selling nearly 40,000 mom bags a year. This year, sales channels will be expanded to mainland China, the United States, and Germany, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, France and other places. At Xipu's Taipei Nangang headquarters, Zhou Pinyu has a huge world map posted next to her desk. Every time she enters an overseas market, she will insert small push pins on the map. Zhou Pinyu is also the mother of a boy and a girl. She is a strong woman in her career and an independent woman in public opinion. This is probably what most people think of as a winner in female life, right? No, her father died young, she was burdened with student loans, it was difficult to start a business, and it was difficult to have children...
The sudden death of her father when Zhou Pinyu was 18 or 19 years old was a huge shock. Even now, she still gets emotional easily when talking about her father. The embankment broke.But in fact, now she has no regrets about her father's passing, only emotion. She feels that there are still many achievements that she wants to share with him. If she could meet again, she would most like to say to her father, "I am living a good life, and my family is also very good." "When
started her business, Zhou Pinyu gave birth to her first child. Later, the pressure of starting a business caused her to experience three failed artificial inseminations until she gave birth to her second child through in vitro fertilization 2 years ago.
Perhaps this kind of life experience allowed Zhou Pinyu to experience human nature early. She once wrote a book, "You Can Fall But Can't Be Knocked Down," in which she mentioned that optimism and loving yourself are the biggest secrets to overcoming all the setbacks encountered along the way.
Zhou Pinyu’s husband Zhang Jiazhen also joined Xipu in 2014 to jointly operate it. However, the couple had very different personalities. In the first year of working together, they encountered great challenges in getting along. Zhou Pinyu said: "I am an antelope. I will try something when I think it is possible. How can I know if it won't work if I haven't tried it? When I decide to do something, I will take action immediately, but my husband must be fully sure of the matter, so look back He may still be warming up, and he may also wonder why the way my wife talks to me at work is so different from how she talks to me at home. "Sometimes he will get angry and ask me to find someone else to do it, or the two of them just have a business dispute. And I have to pick up the child immediately in a loving manner." Zhou Pinyu said with a smile: "I will ask him to respect my opinion. For example, if we are still chatting about family matters in the car, I will switch to work mode as soon as we get to the company and let each other. Focus on work."
Zhang Jiazhen, who is responsible for Xipu's finance, operations, human resources, logistics, and supply chain, introduced the institutionalized management of foreign investors to Xipu. He said: "Frankly speaking, there was a lot of friction in the early stage, but fortunately, We are not each other's pig teammates."
Zhou Pinyu lamented: "There are many different stages in life. In some stages, you don't have to be too obsessed with making a lot of money at the moment. Instead, it may be more important to focus on doing things well at the moment. It seems that the ability to solve complex problems now is the accumulation of getting my hands dirty in the past. Knowing how to invest in yourself is more important than making money. The hardships in entrepreneurship are really hard. I always encounter this level and feel that it is too hard to pass. , once passed, it seems to be okay."
editor | MENG
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