Early days

Half of starting a business is painful because you have to bear the responsibilities and results alone. The pressure mainly comes from capital turnover, sales targets, and maintaining continuous creativity. There are new problems to face and solve every day, so there is no turning back for entrepreneurs.

In the past, the mainstream value in China was that the winner is the king, so people tended to have a negative attitude towards losers. I personally disagree with this because I think starting a business requires great courage and the chances of success are relatively small. There are many crossroads in life. Anyone who is brave enough to take the first step, willing to change themselves and pursue their goals should be respected. Even if they fail, it is still great and we should enjoy the process.

Of course, my other half has gained happiness. The greatest happiness is the recognition of users, which is a high sense of honor. For example, users’ personal understanding of the details of the tent and their desire for new products. Every time when I am negative, I always see users leaving messages and encouraging me on social media such as WeChat and Instagram, which makes me regain confidence.

The most touching moment for me was those users who silently supported us. For example, during the sharing session in Shanghai, there was a loyal fan from Shanghai who I knew had bought many of our tents. He had been watching me from the opposite side during the sharing session. He looked at me, smiled, and then gave me a thumbs-up. The feeling of friendship between old friends was very warm.

Also, at TFS Camping Day, those who provided us with valuable advice and shared their camping life brought them happiness and touching moments. There were too many such touching scenes, which made us feel the emotional value of making good products and brands for users, as if we had gained a sense of accomplishment as a "dream maker".

Maybe I should talk about my personality first. My personality is more like my father. My father's work style is very rigorous. He is the team leader of the construction team in the factory. His job is to produce insulation pipe materials. According to his colleagues, my father would personally demonstrate before each construction. He also often taught me to be serious and responsible in doing things. Moreover, my father is a bit of a clean freak and has to clean many times every day.

And my mother also has an influence on my personality. Not long after I was born, my mother was injured from her left arm to her back by an industrial mixer in the factory. Later, I heard from my mother that because the hospital in Qingdao could not treat it, she went to Shanghai for surgery. A total of dozens of stitches were sewn. After recovery, my mother's left hand was permanently numb, but she still insisted on delivering products by bicycle and often went to the construction site to deliver meals to support the family. Her tenacious perseverance has always been imprinted in my mind...

The reason why I tell this story is because I think my personality is the most important factor that influences my persistence in starting a business.

At the beginning, although my small brand was short of funds, the small factory was still decorated cleanly and tidy. I bought enough new equipment for making tents, the best within my means, and then consulted those high-quality suppliers, hoping to cooperate with them to ensure the quality of the products. For example, fabrics and tent poles were imported from South Korea. A few years later, in order to make it more convenient to conduct wind resistance design tests on large tents in the company, we customized a wind tunnel test vehicle, and then went to DAC to conduct larger wind tunnel tests.

I remember that when I first wrote to DAC to seek cooperation, I was rejected. They thought I didn’t have the strength to build a tent brand, but I didn’t give up and continued to communicate with Director Luo. After writing several emails, Director Luo finally replied to me. He said that DAC’s current achievements were achieved after more than ten years of hard work, which was not an easy task. Moreover, their standard is to only cooperate with brands that they believe have original designs. They must review and record each product before they can cooperate, and each product has a minimum order quantity. For example, at that time the minimum order quantity for each product was 100 pieces. In order to meet the requirements of most suppliers, I took out most of my funds to stockpile raw materials, purchase equipment and decorate the factory. As a result, the product was not recognized by the market in the first year, and it took us about two years to sell the first tent. This will be unforgettable for me.