Author: LMH
In the bicycle field, there are countless well-known brands. Even if you ask a friend who is just new to bicycles, you can also tell the names of Giant , Lightning, Shimano , etc. If you ask the "old bird" who has been in the industry for many years, you may also be able to count the number of people in the japanese area and location. However, bicycles are assembled from parts. In addition to the familiar brand "big parts" mentioned above, there are also many small parts and small accessories that are easily overlooked. As the saying goes, red flowers also require green leaves to be matched. Only when each part cooperates tacitly can an excellent whole vehicle be created. So today we will talk about a Taiwanese brand that specializes in "small parts" but has made great achievements - NECO Zhiqing.
[Born in Taiwan]
The most important thing to know a brand is to understand its founder. Wang Jinyuan, the founder of NECO, can be said to be a representative of grassroots counterattacks. Born in rural areas, he entered the factory to work and study in 1977. His first job was to process bicycle cranks and repair motors. The hard work and meager income did not make this young man complain or give up on himself. On the contrary, he regarded this experience as a precious opportunity to enter the bicycle industry.
worked hard in the factory for many years, and has been engaged in electroplating, film processing, mechanical mold design, etc. However, Wang Jinyuan did not regard himself as an ordinary employee, but always worked with the boss's mentality and thought about problems from a higher perspective. When the time was ripe, he resolutely chose to start a business. In 1981, a team of four or five people was born.
Although at that time, Taiwan's economy was developing rapidly and there was a wave of opening factories, Wang Jinyuan, who had no money, chose a lower-cost entrepreneurial method: because of the business problems of the boss of the Yongyi Dental Cylinder Factory, he was affiliated with the Yongyi Dental Cylinder Factory in the form of a contract workshop, and started to do the processing, polishing and electroplating of the Dental Cylinder with a few friends. The contracting workshop has not been smooth during this period. Wang Jinyuan not only faces the situation of shortage of people and money, but also faces the problems of delivering goods, asking for accounts and even having to sue. However, after going through ups and downs, Wang Jinyuan's team has gradually expanded to more than a dozen people.
1985, Wang Jinyuan, who was gradually growing, began to terminate the affiliation with Yongyi Dental Cylinder Factory and independently produced parts, but they did not completely cut off contact with Yongyi Dental Cylinder Factory. The well-produced central shaft and bowl group were eventually sold back to Yongyi Dental Cylinder Factory. From the current perspective, this team is still equivalent to the factory's outsourcing production line.
day of unexpected events. Yongyi Dental Factory, which has been working for many years, has lost its main sales channels due to the adjustment of its business direction. This also forces them to start to truly establish their own business and make a living by themselves. This small "workshop" for semi-finished products has begun to face the first real challenge. But it was also this ups and downs that forced them to think carefully about what products they should make. Years of experience made Wang Jinyuan decide to produce bowl group and central axis, and sell it to vehicle manufacturers.
The bowl group of bicycles is the basic part that controls the rotation of the front of the bike. With the bowl group, the front fork and frame of the bicycle can be firmly fixed together. Traditional old bicycles use toothless bowl groups, while modern bicycles generally use toothless bowl groups. Taking the toothless bowl group as an example, it can be divided into hidden bowl groups, external bowl groups, semi-hidden bowl groups, etc. Because the head pipe diameters and specifications of different manufacturers and different models of frames have diverse head pipes, and the front fork rudder pipes also have multiple sizes, so there are countless specifications of the corresponding bowl group.
So, although the bowl group is small in size, it also contains a big world. The bowl group produced by the team at that time was mainly supplied to Taiwan's vehicle manufacturers, and was matched with lady cars, commuter cars, and sports bicycles. From the 1980s to the 1990s, when Taiwan's economy took off and entered the " Four Little Dragons " in Asia, not only did the island have strong demand for bicycles, but the bicycle export industry is also gradually developing. Wang Jinyuan has stepped on the right pace and found the right direction.Since 1990, we have rented land to build factories and prepared to expand production scale. By 995, the NECO brand was officially born .
997, NECO, which has gained a foothold in the industry and is well-known, was preparing to set up a factory in the mainland. At that time, the mainland began to attract investment, and Taiwan's "going westward" to set up factories has become a trend. A group of outstanding Taiwanese entrepreneurs went to the mainland to open factories. For them, the mainland not only had cheaper labor costs and policy benefits, but also had huge market potential. NECO was also one of the many Taiwanese businessmen who entered the mainland market with the trend.
However, it required a lot of funds to open a factory. NECO's financial situation was not optimistic at the time. Before entering the mainland to invest in and build a factory in 1997, NECO's debt was as high as 4 million yuan. Faced with high debt, difficulties in bank borrowing, and opposition from his family, NECO founder Wang Jinyuan needed to cross countless mountains before entering the mainland. It was precisely because of this that he made up his mind to go all out. When reviewing the development of NECO, founder Wang Jinyuan often mentioned Liu Bang and Cao Cao . In them, they reflected a spirit of fighting that never gives up. It was this spirit that inspired NECO to be reborn in desperate situations and ushered in new opportunities.
[Developed in the Mainland]
With dreams and the borrowed funds, NECO has entered this land that is both awe and unfamiliar to them. As a ordinary bicycle parts manufacturer without deep background and strong funds, we must first examine the location selection. NECO chose Guangdong Province. First of all, because fellow villagers have successfully set up factories in Guangdong, so they are not completely unfamiliar with Guangdong and can learn from their fellow villagers. Secondly, Guangdong has a superior geographical location, relatively developed economy, and is also a frontier of openness. It has many coastal ports, which facilitates export trade. Third, Taiwan Shunliu Bicycle Factory, which has cooperated with NECO in the past, has invested and built a factory in Shunde, Guangdong, with an annual output of 4 million units. For NECO, which urgently needs to "cooperate" with vehicle manufacturers, Guangdong, especially Shunde, which is next to vehicle manufacturers, is undoubtedly the best choice.
997, the Zhiqing factory in Shunde was established, and NECO officially began its development in the mainland. Although the mainland's market is large, it is not easy to get a piece of the pie. In the early stages of Taiwan's entrepreneurship, due to lack of funds and limited by concepts, NECO did not attach much importance to brand promotion. In the face of the new market in the mainland, publicity work began to be taken seriously. Jinbei Silver Cup was not as good as the reputation of customers. NECO adopted a steady approach, visiting vehicle companies from door to door, introducing and selling products, and the newly developed customers and the original orders, finally NECO's production line slowly rolled.
But in the first few years, NECO spent a lot of money on building a factory to purchase equipment, and could only rely on borrowing and sales profits to support its operations. By 2000, NECO's debt was even as high as RMB 13 million, but the mainland's rich talent resources and huge market gave NECO sufficient confidence. In the early stages of the factory construction, NECO had to recruit dozens of workers, and hundreds of people met the conditions to apply in just a few hours, which is unimaginable in Taiwan. In the subsequent market exploration, Wang Jinyuan keenly discovered the business opportunities of scooters, and the bicycle's bowl set and bearing accessories can be used on scooters with slight changes. Faced with fleeting market demand, NECO responded quickly and launched bearings and accessories for scooters. With products that are not available and Taiwanese quality endorsement , NECO has been continuously ordering, the factory works overtime to produce, and at the same time recruits soldiers, and the employees have expanded from dozens of people to two hundred. The scooter opportunity made NECO start to generate profits, and he dug out his first pot of gold in the mainland, and the sales funds were slowly recovered. NECO paid off its debts in just one year and had a surplus.
At this time, NECO's business strategy began to change. At the beginning, an important reason for NECO to enter the mainland was to reduce production costs, and the products produced should still be sold to Taiwanese-funded vehicle companies "nearly". However, after witnessing the huge market brought by the huge economic hinterland of the mainland and the strong demand of many mainland local vehicle companies, NECO realized that it could make great achievements in both domestic sales and exports, so it quickly deepened its cooperation with local bicycle companies, innovated, developed new products, maintained a high-level production, and improved product quality. Soon, NECO successfully became a spare parts supplier for well-known brands such as Xidesheng , and also exported finished parts to foreign markets such as Europe and South America through mainland traders.
With orders, there is hope. It is urgent to improve production capacity to face future growth. With the right time, place and people, NECO started its first expansion in the mainland with the help of the funds accumulated by scooters.
NECO intends to open a second factory in mainland China, but Guangdong already has a Shunde Zhiqing factory, and the two factories do not need to be concentrated together. In order to serve existing customers and develop the Central China market, the second factory must be closer to the local bicycle manufacturers in Central China. NECO went north and inspected Jiangsu Province, where the bicycle industry is relatively concentrated and developed. After preliminary investigations of Kunshan, Jiangsu, Taicang , Changzhou , Zhenjiang Jurong and other places, NECO finally selected Tianwang Town, Jurong City, under Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province as the location for establishing a new factory.
001, the Jiangsu Jurong Zhiqing factory, which covers an area of 30 acres, was put into production, marking the start of NECO's road to the north. Why choose Jurong Tianwang Town? NECO has some unique reasons. First of all, although there are many production and assembly factories of bicycle brands in , Kunshan and other places, which are theoretically most suitable for the location of supporting products such as NECO, Kunshan has many other industries in addition to the bicycle industry, and there are many factories, which lead to relatively high land price and labor costs. Technical workers are the blood of the factory. If a local factory gathers, it will inevitably lead to increased mobility of workers, which will further increase production costs. Secondly, Jurong is close to Nanjing, adjacent to Zhenjianggang , and is only a two-hour drive from Kunshan. It is a traditional agricultural area, with a dense population and relatively convenient employee recruitment, which is more suitable for enterprises like NECO. In addition to the suitable environment and convenient transportation, Jurong also has a national 5A-level scenic spot - Maoshan , which is also the birthplace of Chinese Taoism.
With a factory and employees, Jiangsu Zhiqing has started construction in full swing. At that time, it had just entered the new millennium, and all walks of life in the mainland market were accelerating their development. NECO's focus also shifted to vigorously developing the Jurong factory. The Jiangsu factory was the place where NECO devoted the most effort, but the overall environment of the bicycle industry at that time still caused the Jiangsu factory to lose money for five years. During these eight years of dormant, NECO has relied on its Taiwan headquarters and Shunde factory to actively develop customers and maintain stable income, while changing its concepts and looking for new breakthroughs. During this period, Wang Jinyuan met many veterans in the same industry and made many friends in the industry. With their help, Wang Jinyuan increased his investment and equipped a complete production line for NECO's Jiangsu factory. It not only can produce traditional products, but also complete complex metal surface treatment processes such as electroplating, electrophoresis, and heat treatment.
In the following years, facing the increasingly strict environmental protection regulations in the mainland, the NECO Jiangsu factory with a complete production line can achieve independent production throughout the process and complete environmental protection indicators, which makes it difficult for competitors to catch up. This advance layout not only makes the Jiangsu factory the largest production base under NECO, but its processing and manufacturing capacity is only a handful in the industry.
Although the Jiangsu factory has always faced various problems, NECO has always maintained an uncompromising attitude towards the production process and a serious and responsible spirit of products. It has finally been praised and recognized by industry insiders. Vehicle manufacturers from the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta have cooperated with NECO, and even a good friend of the founder provides interest-free loans to alleviate the turnover problem of Jiangsu factory.
Finally, in the sixth year, Zhiqing Jiangsu factory achieved profitability and explored the 442 model, that is, 40% of the products are supplied to vehicle manufacturers, 40% of the products are sold overseas, and 20% of the products are relied on traders for retail sales. Today, the Jiangsu factory produces more than 20 million bowl sets, central shafts and foot pedals each year, which not only achieves sales targets, but also supplies them to the Tianjin factory.
[Golden Decade]
NECO's first decade of development in the mainland has passed in a blink of an eye. NECO has also become the leading brand in the industry based on the mainland's production capacity and market. In the next decade, NECO faces new opportunities and challenges, and this decade is also known as the golden decade of NECO's development.
In 2009, after experiencing global financial crisis caused by , the mainland market was generally sluggish, and this time was actually a time when opportunities arise. Considering the potential of the North China market, in order to improve production and provide good services, NECO's northbound expansion plan was launched again.
In 2010, NECO signed a contract with Tianjin Jinghai District, and the Zhiqing Tianjin factory project was launched. Three years later, the Zhiqing Tianjin factory (original name was Mingte Technology Development Co., Ltd.) was completed and put into production. The Tianjin factory covers an area of 54 mu and has a total assets of 200 million yuan. It mainly produces bicycle cranks, discs, central shaft bowls, crank bowls, front fork joints, central shafts, iron split disc groups, aluminum dental disc groups and other products. It is a factory that produces more types of bicycle accessories for NECO.
At this point, the basic pattern of NECO Zhiqing Cross-Strait Four Factory was officially confirmed. Different factories have different divisions of labor. Zhiqing Shunde Factory (Yongqing Bicycle Parts Co., Ltd., Foshan Shunde District) mainly produces central shaft, central shaft bowl and frame bowl set; Zhiqing Jiangsu Jurong Factory (Jurong Yongxing Bicycle Parts Co., Ltd.) not only produces conventional products, but also produces foot pedals; Zhiqing Tianjin Factory (Zhiqing Technology (Tianjin) Co., Ltd.) mainly produces trays and flower drum ; Taiwan's Taichung factory's production capacity is gradually transforming, focusing more on product design and research and development.
NECO also actively participates in various exhibitions, sponsors teams, and improves brand awareness and reputation. The NECO R&D team, which has strict requirements for products, found that forming a team is very helpful for testing new products. Advanced drivers have high requirements for the accuracy and durability of spare parts such as bowl bearings and central axles, which also puts forward higher requirements for NECO's product design, manufacturing, and processing. However, only by improving the product based on the actual situation of the driver can we optimize production and improve quality.
Starting from 2015, " Sharing Economy " arrived, and the whole society was immersed in the madness of shared bicycles. For a time, Internet companies found traditional bicycle manufacturers with a large amount of demand. NECO, a supplier of supporting products, also ushered in huge orders. This is an attractive opportunity for companies that rely on the slow growth of the traditional market, but if they are not careful, they will become "toxic apples". In the eyes of Wang Jinyuan, the founder of NECO who has been struggling through the business world, the large number of orders shared bicycles bring to NECO are both exciting and worrying. On the one hand, orders suddenly emerge, and there are many and urgent things. This is a phenomenon of capacity grabbing that is inevitable due to the hope of various Internet companies to implement shared bicycle projects in a shorter time and seize the market. The solution is to quickly purchase equipment, increase production capacity, and digest orders. But what is the prospect of shared bicycles? How long can this "fire" last? When the shared bicycle market is saturated in the future, the production capacity that is now blindly expanded will become a backlog of costs. Therefore, NECO finally chose to increase production lines on the one hand to deal with huge orders, and on the other hand, it looked for a dynamic balance between production capacity and demand to avoid disorderly expansion.
For many years, as a senior component supplier in the industry, NECO is very sensitive to the trend of the industry. The rise of electricity help in the global market has made NECO notice the future trend of the bicycle industry. In 2016, NECO began to lay out electricity help products and established Zerobe Electric Motor Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai to develop electromechanical equipment and accessories used in power help bicycles.But at that time, the electricity-assisted products were mainly supplied to overseas markets, so the domestic market did not have a high awareness of NECO electricity-assisted products.
In recent years, NECO has looked up at the stars while being down-to-earth, focused on the mid-to-high-end sports market, and followed the trends and trends of equipment development, and launched high-end products such as full-internal wiring bowl sets to provide vehicle manufacturers with a variety of solutions and achieved good results. On the other hand, NECO has also laid out smart bicycle hardware, trying to create a cycling ecosystem and explore more possibilities in the future.
▲NECO cylinder shaft hub motor M30CD-T has occupied an important position in the development of NECO's enterprise history. It separates the body of the fast-disassembly cylinder shaft hub motor from the axis center, thereby achieving rapid replacement and efficient riding
▲NECO mid-mounted motor MM18, making power output more energy-saving, labor-saving, and smarter
At the same time, NECO has also increased investment in the field of electric assist bicycles, integrating R&D, production and sales, and has cooperated with multiple brands in the industry to develop dozens of drive system solutions. It has also become one of the global suppliers that can self-develop and produce high-quality electric assist motors, controllers, sensors and other complete electric assist systems. The history of brand development of
NECO is actually the success history of founder Wang Jinyuan. NECO Zhiqing was "born in Taiwan, grew up in the mainland, and went to the world". On the road to success, Wang Jinyuan's determination to burn his boats, his unique sense of business and hard work, and the unity and struggle of all NECO employees. At the same time, the struggle of a person and a company is important, but it also needs to consider the historical process. NECO's success history can be seen as a successful case of "small parts drive big industries" and as a microcosm of the era reflected by a generation of successful Taiwanese businessmen. It is in the hot land of the mainland and in this open and inclusive market that carries the 20 years of rapid development of NECO, allowing NECO to calmly welcome the next journey.
