China’s most awesome factory girl: a former assembly line worker, now the head of a billion-dollar empire
Latest update time：2024-03-19
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On March 7, the day before Women’s Day, Forbes China released the 2024 Top 100 Outstanding Business Women.
This list is also called the "List of Strong Business Women". The nominees are all elite women from all walks of life, and there are many names we are familiar with.
Such as Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, Gree Electric’s Dong Mingzhu, Wahaha’s Zong Fuli, etc.
But the one who ranks first on the list is strange to many people. Her name is Wang Laichun.
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In the "Hurun Global Rich List" released on February 26, 2024, Wang Laichun's net worth is as high as 58 billion yuan
Compared with others, Wang Laichun is too low-key. She dresses simply and is never keen on dressing up. She looks like the aunt next door.
But in fact, she is in charge of a giant company with a market value of more than 200 billion. This company is called "Luxshare Precision" and is a Fortune 500 company.
In her early years, Wang Laichun was a female worker on the Foxconn assembly line. Later she started a new business and founded Luxshare Precision, which produces electronic products on an OEM basis.
After more than 20 years of development, she miraculously built Luxshare Precision into one of the world's largest foundries, competing with Foxconn, and its market value once exceeded Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Precision.
Terry Gou, the head of Foxconn, was furious about this: "She came from us, but now she wants to steal our jobs!"
There are also many rumors in the industry that Foxconn has set up a working group to study its technology, expansion plans and recruitment strategies in order to deal with Luxshare Precision.
Although Foxconn officially denied this in subsequent interviews, it has to be said that
Luxshare Precision is indeed its most troublesome opponent.
So, what is Wang Laichun’s background? How did she counterattack from a working girl to become the strongest woman in the business world?
A truly self-made rich man
Wang Laichun is a native of Chaoshan, fellow villager with Li Ka-shing, Ma Huateng and Huang Guangyu.
We are used to hearing stories about rich people starting from scratch, but strictly speaking, not many can truly be called self-made.
Take Ma Huateng as an example. His father is the vice president of a famous port group. In the early days of Ma Huateng's business, his parents gave him considerable help. Even Tencent was registered by his parents and was handed over to Ma Huateng a year later.
Another rich man named Ma is Ma Yun. His father is the chairman of the Provincial Folk Artists Association. Good family conditions provided Ma Yun with enough trial and error costs. He took the high school entrance examination twice and the college entrance examination three times, which made him a rare commodity in that era. of college students.
Compared with them, Wang Laichun had nothing.
With no resources or connections, I relied entirely on myself to work my way up the ladder step by step.
●
Wang Laichun
Wang Laichun's family was very poor when he was a child. He was born in Shantou, Guangdong in 1967. His parents were farmers who dug in the soil. Wang Laichun was the youngest of three children in the family, with two older brothers.
Because he could not afford the tuition, Wang Laichun barely made it to junior high school and then dropped out of school.
My parents have very traditional ideas and think that girls should stay at home, wash, cook and take care of the housework, and marry into a good family when they are old enough.
But Wang Laichun didn't think so. She was unwilling to live like this all her life, so she left her hometown and went to Shenzhen to make a living.
In 1988, Taiwanese entrepreneur Terry Gou invested in mainland China and established a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen to produce computer peripheral connectors.
Wang Laichun joined Foxconn this year and became one of the first 149 employees on the assembly line.
●
Foxconn employees took a group photo in front of the factory.
Wang Laichun,
sixth
from
left in the front row
When he first arrived in the big city, Wang Laichun found that it was completely different from what he had imagined.
The conditions in the factory are very difficult. It is normal to work more than ten hours a day. There is almost no spare time, and the working atmosphere is extremely depressing.
In summer, the factory buildings and dormitories are like steamers. More than a hundred female workers in the factory are crowded into simple dormitories, feeling hot and tired. They sleep in Datongbu.
Sometimes when an urgent order comes in, I will be woken up suddenly in the middle of the night and I will get up and continue working.
Domestic water is also a problem. Every day, we have to fetch water from a place one kilometer away to take a bath. Four wooden boards surround it as a "bathhouse".
Such a difficult environment is unbearable for many people. Employees come and go one after another, and the replacement is like a revolving door.
But Wang Laichun persisted and worked for 10 years.
Recalling those days, she said: "If I hadn't had the experience of poverty as a child, I might not have been able to survive. Only those who have endured hardship will know that the process of enduring hardship is also a process of experience."
"I will give you half of the money I make in the future."
Wang Laichun has never been reckless.
During her 10 years at Foxconn, she rotated through all positions in the factory. Not only did she understand every process and step in the factory, she also taught herself management methods.
Her position also rose, from an ordinary assembly line employee to a team leader, and later to a section leader, the department head.
From this, she came into contact with some of the more core things in the company, such as product channels, production costs, profit margins, suppliers of various parts, etc.
As his horizons continued to broaden, Wang Laichun gradually came up with the idea of starting a business.
In 1998, she submitted her resignation to Terry Gou and left Foxconn.
People around him didn't understand Wang Laichun's decision. In their view, Wang Laichun was a leader in the factory and his salary was not low. It was a pity to resign.
Her parents also strongly opposed it, thinking that she was just messing around by quitting her job to start a business.
Only the second brother Wang Laisheng stood by her unconditionally and even spent all his savings to support his sister's business.
Wang Laichun was so moved that she named the company "Quansheng"
(the predecessor of Luxshare Precision)
and told her second brother: "You will share half of the money you make in the future."
●
Brothers and sisters
Wang Laisheng and
Wang Laichun
This sentence sounds like a joke, but Wang Laichun is serious.
So a few years later, in October 2020, a very rare scene appeared on China's rich list -
two brothers
, Wang Laisheng and
Wang Laichun, each had a wealth of 91 billion yuan, ranking tied for 44th on China's rich list.
Wang Laichun fulfilled his promise with practical actions.
The rise of “Luxshare Precision”
In the early days of starting a business, Wang Laichun received only small orders to produce electronic components such as connecting wires and connectors.
It happened that Foxconn had a heavy order load due to business adjustments. In order to complete these orders on time, Terry Gou urgently needed to find a foundry of the same nature to share the task.
The appearance of Wang Laichun just solved Gou Taiming's urgent need. The two had worked together for many years and knew each other well, so they felt comfortable making deals.
In this way, Luxshare Precision became the "OEM" of Foxconn, a foundry. Foxconn's unfinished orders were all handled by Wang Laichun's Luxshare Precision.
These orders once accounted for more than half of Luxshare Precision's annual revenue.
However, Wang Laichun is very clear-headed. She understands that if a company wants to grow bigger, it must independently develop its own customers and develop its own brand.
So in 2010, Wang Laichun took the initiative to end his cooperation with Foxconn and turned to independent research and development and production.
●
In 2010, Wang Laichun led Luxshare Precision to be listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
In the following years, Luxshare Precision continued to improve its manufacturing and technology and moved towards high-end product lines.
From connectors to linear motors, wireless charging, to acoustic components and camera modules, Luxshare Precision began to supply many large enterprises at home and abroad, including Lenovo, Asus, Huawei, Sony, Microsoft, etc.
Later, it entered the Apple supply chain and successively obtained orders for iPad internal cables, MacBook power cables, Apple Wacth wireless charging, etc., and became the largest supplier of AirPods, openly competing with Foxconn for business.
When Foxconn finally realized the threat, it discovered that it could no longer be stopped.
In 2020, the total market value of Luxshare Precision exceeded 400 billion yuan, leaving Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Precision far behind.
This small factory that started with small electronic devices has truly become a giant that cannot be ignored in the global field.
●
Luxshare Precision Dongguan Park
Life is about constant struggle
Wang Laichun likes a proverb: Those who can fly with the phoenix must be handsome birds.
Over the years, she has been doing her best to improve herself and make up for her academic shortcomings and the limitations of her childhood "poverty mindset."
While working at Foxconn, she worked hard to learn technology and management.
After founding Luxshare Precision, she passed the EMBA
(Executive Master of Business Administration) program
at Shenzhen Graduate School of Tsinghua University
and studied economics, management and other courses to adapt to the ever-changing international business war.
Wang Laichun is by no means a person who is content with the status quo and has always had great ambitions.
In addition to the manufacturing and production of consumer electronics such as mobile phones and computers, she has been actively developing a broader market.
Including 5G, AIoT
(Artificial Intelligence Internet of Things)
, automobiles, etc., these have become part of her business landscape.
This once unknown working girl has become the head of a powerful empire worth hundreds of billions, working hard to achieve her own destiny-defying change.
Wang Laichun has always believed that no one is born poor, and only those who dare to fight can become winners in life.
●
Reference materials
[1] Jimu News｜Forbes China releases the 100 Outstanding Women in Business in 2024
[2] Forbes China | Wang Laichun: 40 years in manufacturing, making the right choice among limited opportunities
[3] China Entrepreneur Magazine｜From an ordinary factory girl to the head of a company with a market value of 100 billion, why is her company so wolfish?
[4] Red Star News｜"Workers" become "people's masters": Luxshare Precision becomes Foxconn's rival? The company’s CEO was once a working girl from Foxconn
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