Liu Shuqing: Striking the 'Quality Overture' for Fujian Ceramics
This year marks the 12th anniversary of Baoda Group's founding and the 7th year of its deepening reform. However, it was a crucial decision made seven years ago that propelled Baoda to the pinnacle of the industry.
"At that time, many peers couldn't understand why Baoda slowed down. When we restructured, our positioning was very clear: we must deliver high-quality products that meet genuine market demands, accumulate strengths for long-term development, and continuously upgrade our systems." Recalling the 12 years since the company's establishment, Liu Shuqing, Chairman of Baoda Group, shared with deep emotion.
As early as 2015, Baoda had sensed the crisis of the market transition from a seller's market to a buyer's market, and began its transformation the following year. After three years of arduous polishing, in 2018, Baoda achieved a turnaround against the wind, with a double-digit growth rate in output value. In the subsequent three years, it maintained double-digit growth annually. Even in this year, which is described as the "coldest winter" by various industries, Baoda's export business still shows strong growth.
Liu Shuqing, Chairman of Baoda Group.
Professional management
Injecting New Vitality into Traditional Ceramic Enterprises
Daring to break the traditional family management rules in Nan'an's ceramic industry and delegating power to a professional management team, Baoda is at the forefront. In June 2016, the joining of an elite management team led by Zhang Gang, a "technical school" expert, opened a "new era" for Baoda Group.
Zhang Gang, the current President of Baoda Group, not only graduated from a renowned Chinese university but also worked for a Shanghai-based ceramic enterprise with Taiwanese investment background. The direct competitors of this enterprise were from European ceramic powerhouses such as Italy and Spain, which enabled Zhang Gang to become familiar with the development model of global high-end ceramic tile products from the beginning of his career. Later, he led a technical team to foreign enterprises for three years of development, which also made him realize that the product positioning of the factory must match the sales channels, thereby forming a closed loop from product to sales.
Zhang Gang, President of Baoda Group.
It is precisely these rich and valuable experiences that enable Zhang Gang to quickly "diagnose" the issues restricting the development of traditional ceramic enterprises and implement precise measures.
After taking over Baoda, Zhang Gang took the production of "double-zero water absorption through-body texture porcelain glazed tiles" as a breakthrough point to comprehensively upgrade the company's operational level in terms of products, marketing, and services. In terms of product quality, he directly benchmarked Italian standards and chose to cooperate with global top material and equipment suppliers. However, during the initial display of new products, purchasers had two opinions about Baoda's ceramic tiles: one was whether Baoda's tiles were OEM-produced in Italy; the other was that as Fujian-made tiles, Baoda's products were not worth first-tier prices.
This experience made Liu Shuqing deeply realize that to break purchasers' ingrained perceptions of Fujian ceramics' quality, Baoda could not follow conventional paths but must directly penetrate professional circles. As long as it gained recognition from professionals and with the validation of time, there would be no need to worry about Baoda's quality being questioned. And the Foshan Ceramic Expo was undoubtedly an excellent entry point to quickly access these professional circles. At that time, when everyone had high expectations for the Foshan Ceramic Expo scheduled for October 2016, fate once again tested Baoda.
In September of that year, the super typhoon "Meranti" made a direct hit on Quanzhou, devastating Baoda's factory overnight, leaving it in ruins the next day. Rebuilding the factory would have taken at least several months, but with less than a month left before the expo, the Baoda team had no time to dwell on sorrow. To avoid missing the crucial marketing opportunity in the second half of the year, they worked around the clock and created a miracle: they built a temporary production workshop in 20 days and successfully fired the first batch of products before the expo.
位于南安官桥的宝达瓷砖厂区。
At the expo, Baoda's high-end new products became the spotlight as soon as they were unveiled, attracting many outstanding brands to take the initiative to learn more. After the exhibition, orders poured in one after another. Subsequently, Baoda also extended its reach to foreign markets. To meet the high-standard requirements of international clients, Baoda adopted three-dimensional body structures, modern specifications, and multi-process surface treatments in production, while also achieving high-quality flexible professional customization, enhancing client loyalty. The implementation of these marketing strategies helped Baoda secure many large orders from major clients.
In Liu Shuqing's view, the "separation of production and sales" order-based production model established by the group is also the key for Baoda to remain less affected amid the downward macroenvironment. "In the past, we produced first and then sold; now we only produce after receiving orders. This way, there is no inventory backlog, and we can better manage cash flow."
多品牌运营
开启福建砖新征程
For a long time, there has been a saying in the ceramic industry: "Guangdong produces bricks, while Fujian sells bricks." However, Fujian-made bricks are rarely mentioned. Coupled with the insufficient investment of Fujian ceramic enterprises in channel construction and brand image building, ordinary consumers hardly hear about Fujian bricks.
Witnessing the continuous growth of Foshan brick brands, Liu Shuqing was acutely aware that to reverse this situation, Fujian bricks must create and strengthen their own brands. Therefore, building brand recognition became the second step in Baoda's transformation and upgrading. While empowering traditional first-tier brands, Baoda also established three independent brands: Tutto BENE, Shenke, and Salante. The first two are joint-stock enterprise brands developed by Baoda in collaboration with brand management teams, while Salante is a wholly-owned brand of Baoda Group, personally overseen by Zhang Gang. As a result, Salante has become the primary carrier for Baoda's "structurally growth-oriented products" that benchmark Italian design logic.
It is reported that the Salante series products integrate Italian design elements and manufacturing standards, introducing original designs into the brand's DNA to form a systematic original design system and quality control system, supplemented by the cost advantages of Chinese factories, so as to establish competitive advantages against other international brands. In terms of domestic distribution systems, Zhang Gang has also boldly abandoned the traditional regional general agent model characterized by resource monopoly and adopted the "Italian model" in which enterprises with different resource endowments act as agents for different products.
"Three brands with three operational teams mean different 'operational brains,' maintaining a healthy competition among them. Additionally, their products do not overlap, so there is no conflict," Zhang Gang said. He noted that many traditional enterprises in the past focused more on manufacturing than operations. The reason Baoda established three brands is to attract more outstanding talents with the same values and retain them by sharing achievements.
In Liu Shuqing's view, the era of "working for others" has passed, and the future competition of enterprises will be a battle for talent. The multi-brand operation is actually a product of cooperation between enterprises and outstanding professional managers. It means empowering employees with corporate resources, cultivating them into talent that meets the enterprise's needs, sharing interests, and enabling employees to spontaneously strive for the enterprise's business profits.
Sharing in the Circle of Friends
Creating a New Future for Industrial Clusters Together
While focusing on product quality and building its three major brands, Baoda has also actively integrated into industrial clusters, shared its network with like-minded enterprises, broken through industry limitations, and deeply integrated ceramic products with bathroom products, thereby accelerating transformation and upgrading.
Last year, Baoda joined forces with leading Fujian-based bathroom and furniture enterprises—Xiamen Dabai Technology and Anxi Xintangxin Furniture—to appear at the Jinjiang Home Expo. In the nearly 900-square-meter "Trendy Home" design exhibition area, they collectively showcased Fujian enterprises' complete industrial chains and high-quality innovative products in the pan-home furnishings sector.
Liu Shuqing stated that Nan'an Pan-Home Furnishing is an excellent industrial cluster platform, integrating the home product advantages of thousands of traditional enterprises in stone ceramics, plumbing kitchen and bathroom, fire safety and security, furniture and home appliances, footwear, apparel, and light textiles. Additionally, Nan'an has actively explored setting up offline experience halls for pan-home furnishings in cities and countries along the "Belt and Road," forming a development chain of offline experience centers featuring one-stop experience, integrated procurement, and comprehensive services. This further enhances the visibility of pan-home furnishing industry projects and promotes their rapid expansion into the global market.
"Under the new normal, the pan-home furnishings industry project serves as a platform and key driver for the Nan'an Municipal Party Committee and Government to develop Nan'an's economy, especially its advantageous industries. For our enterprises, it undoubtedly provides an additional channel for external operations. Additionally, driven by the pan-home furnishings alliance, the regional brand effect of Nan'an's pan-home furnishings industry has gradually emerged, promoting the expansion of the all-element ecological 'circle of friends' for the industry's development," Liu Shuqing spoke highly of the pan-home furnishings model. Meanwhile, Baoda's newly built exhibition hall has broken away from the traditional pure-display model by integrating home design concepts, allowing consumers to visualize their future homes at first glance within the hall.
When talking about future plans, Liu Shuqing believes that the strategic direction emphasized by Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei in recent times is no different from that of the ceramic industry. "The future situation will be more severe. Traditional ceramic enterprises must adhere to a sense of crisis and frugality, avoid adding processes for control purposes or creating positions for personnel, and enable everyone to become value-adding operators. At the same time, they should continuously strengthen strategic positioning, systematic processes, product standardization, and digital monitoring."
