"Now we are not a simple manufacturing company. We are a platform service provider." Li Weiqing, chairman of Guangzhou Shengjie Landscape Design Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shengjie Garden), handed in a business card to the "China Business" reporter. The results of his company transformation in recent years.

The transition to platform service providers is an option for some companies to become bigger and stronger in recent years. As a private enterprise that started as a simulation plant, Shengjie Garden has transformed itself into an integrated service provider integrating the floral and wedding photography industries by integrating upstream and downstream industrial chains.

Established in 2008, the main business of the St. Jade garden established in 2008 was to create a simulation tree. The product structure is very simple. Because this is a labor-intensive productive industry, the added value of products is not high. The business development is not smooth.

From 2010, Li Weiqing gradually clarified the positioning of products and began to undertake a number of well-known domestic and foreign projects, such as Guangzhou Panyu Xiangjiang Changlong Circus, Shenzhen Airport, Wuhan Tianhe Airport, Wuhan Optics Valley Pedestrian Street, Guangzhou Nanyang Changsheng Hotel, The Russian Pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and the Pacific Union Pavilion have won many customers for Li Weiqing.

In contact with various customers, Li Weiqing found that the needs of customers are far more than just simple products like the simulation tree. “Our customer base consists of three main categories: first, wholesalers, second, retail sales, and third, real estate, hotels, theme parks, and other engineering projects. For customers, they need more than just simulation trees. For example, real estate customers need to have flowers. Vases need home support, theme parks need play equipment, need rockery facilities, etc."

Li Weiqing gradually realized that if you simply do simulation plants, companies will never be able to achieve a large scale. To achieve scale development, you need to integrate various resources and become platform service providers.

From 2012 to 2013, on the basis of clear product positioning, Li Weiqing began to integrate the resources of several small and medium-sized simulation plant companies across the country, and established the Guangzhou company as the prototype, establishing points in Dongguan, Shenzhen, Yiwu, Shenyang, Zhengzhou and Xi’an. The company has established a national chain operation development model.

“My main work in the past two years has been resource integration. We have done a thousand square meters of simulation plant showroom. Customers can do one-stop shopping in the exhibition hall. Everything they need can be in our platform. Buy it," said Li Weiqing.

In the thousands of square meters of the exhibition hall of Shengjie Garden Company, the reporter saw that in addition to a variety of large-scale artificial flowers and trees, various chic rockery facilities, exquisite vases and flower arrangements are also spread throughout, and the sanctuary responsible for the work of the exhibition hall Jie garden staff told reporters that here can be regarded as the largest indoor simulation plant showroom.

Li Weiqing’s ambition is not only so. According to him, Shengjie Garden is currently building a larger indoor and outdoor simulation plant base in Dongguan. The base covers an area of ​​120 acres and is divided into three parts: an indoor simulation plant showroom, an outdoor simulation area, and a production workshop.

“Dongguan Base has not only realized the function of the simulation plant showroom, but we hope to extend it to the largest outdoor wedding photography base in the region through our simulation plant set.” Li Weiqing stated that after upgrading to an attraction, its added value will be far Far more than the profits of the production simulation plants, the additional profits can reach about 20% to 30%.

What is even more crucial is that Li Weiqing plans to plan tens of thousands of square meters of factory buildings for rent in the base. The tenants lock in the suppliers in their relevant industrial chains. “Equivalent to me playing the platform, the supplier is only responsible for the production can grow with us.” Li Weiqing said that this also solves the biggest problems faced by productive enterprises: rising property rent and labor costs, and Once this model is successful, the Sanjie gardens can be replicated nationwide.

Overseas markets only serve as terminal service positioning platform service providers, and constantly expanding the domestic market cake is only one part of the development strategy of Shengjie Garden. In overseas markets, Li Weiqing is also setting off a “buzz”. At the beginning of this year, Li Weiqing recruited 80 foreign language salesmen in Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen to directly connect with overseas markets.

"The future living space of middlemen and foreign trade agency companies will become smaller and smaller. If they don't upgrade their services, they will die. It's not that I want to change their 'life', it's the Internet that wants to change their 'life'." Li Weiqing told Reporter, Shengjie Garden is currently setting up Internet search engine services in Russia, Dubai and other countries. “This site is equivalent to China’s Baidu in different countries.”

Although it is not yet known how this kind of promotion will be, in order to cooperate with the online promotion, Shengjie Garden plans to open domestic model exhibition halls to overseas markets and establish artificial flower and wood exhibition halls in the above countries while Daewoo attracts salesmen. The sales team and the installation team are all localized. "We don't do wholesalers. We only do terminal services."

Taking into account factors such as transparency and various profits and taxes, the profits of simulated plants in the domestic market are higher than those in overseas markets, but according to Li Weiqing’s assumption, 70% of the market in Shengjie’s gardens will be locked overseas and 30% of the market will be placed in China. “Foreign markets do take time, and orders will be available from 3 months to 6 months. However, the sales team should build it early. Only after a long time can the performance show up.”

In 2013, based on a turnover of 180 million yuan, the Sanjie Garden set a target of 300 million yuan in turnover in 2014. Li Weiqing’s confidence is derived from the platform model it created. Li Weiqing stated that he hopes that the Shengjie Garden will be able to be listed in 2017 and become the first listed plant simulation company in China.

In the end, expert opinion is focused on a product is good, or the whole category is involved, I can not judge this issue. Among the companies I visited, Shenzhen Yianyi belongs to the former and Hangzhou Tianyuan belongs to the latter. In the most fierce competition and the worst international situation, Yi'an developed, produced, and promoted an LED product. The trend was growing rapidly. The Hangzhou Tianyuan and Shengjie gardens used the opposite approach to open up the market.

In view of this, in fact, there is no single business model that can be used to "conquer the world," and learning from other people's business models is not as good as learning why they use this model.