Liu Xiaoya is eyeing the "Belt and Road"

Economic Observer reporter Wang Yajie Financing is not a difficult problem for Liu Xiaoya.

When her peers were worried about financing, several banks, including the four major banks, were chasing her for loans.

When we met for the first time, she slowly brewed tea, relieved that the company's most important summary meeting of the year was handed over to the person in charge of her subordinates, and she planned a longer-term goal.

In 2025, she wants to really break out and go out into the world.

She is not a utopian dream, Liu Xiaoya's halal food enterprise brand "Hui Xiang Zhai" has just entered Hong Kong and has become the first local food order out of Gansu.

By the end of the year, her team will officially go to more countries in the Middle East and Central Asia.

"It's difficult", Liu Xiaoya has made more than one set of risk plans. For the next step of market expansion, she gave an example: "When I achieve 10 million yuan, it is not difficult, but it is very difficult to go from 10 million yuan to 100 million yuan, and I have to go out from Linxia, Gansu." ”

At present, Liu Xiaoya seized a good opportunity, that is, east-west cooperation (east-west poverty alleviation cooperation, after the reform and opening up, to solve the problem of unbalanced development between the east and west). She said to the cooperative and helpful cadres from Jinan, Shandong Province, that they don't want money, but resources.

She compares market competition to a fierce horse, and the cooperation of Jinan, Shandong and other places is the driving force to keep it on the horse and run. Liu Xiaoya believes that for small and micro private enterprises, especially start-up private enterprises, such cooperation is the best strategy at present.

The cooperation between the east and the west gave her confidence, standing in the northwest to see the world, Liu Xiaoya's eyes were firmly aimed at the "Belt and Road" countries.

Read a book

When Liu Xiaoya planned to spend 700,000 yuan to study EMBA courses in Wuhan, local colleagues in Linxia expressed their incomprehension.

In 2011, Liu Xiaoya and her husband began to take shape in several supermarkets in Linxia, and they did not have to worry about food and clothing, with an annual profit of about 800,000 yuan. This is a good life in the local area.

But she was not satisfied, and after making money, she began to plan to spend a lot of money to go out to learn economic knowledge. What local peers don't know is that Liu Xiaoya has always been a person who doesn't play cards according to common sense.

After graduating from university, she went straight to Tibet to start a business and opened a supermarket in Tibet. Lacking employment experience, her idea is very simple, there is a shortage of supermarkets there, there is a market, and I will make money if I go.

When people around her thought that she would live in Tibet for a long time, she became interested in this secret place in the southwest corner of the hinterland of Gansu. Looking back at the ancient records, I found that the commercial style of Linxia was comparable to the prosperous Wenzhou today.

The local business atmosphere in Linxia is still strong, and Liu Xiaoya found that the children here began to learn to do business when they were eleven or twelve years old, even if their education level is not high, but their minds are flexible and have the ability to make small businesses prosperous.

This is where the limitation lies.

Locals do not pursue going out, and it is a common business attitude to be rich and secure. Liu Xiaoya, who has experience in starting a business in other places, is not satisfied with this, she and her husband are going to Wuhan to study.

Liu Xiaoya's key courses include business management and financial management. She is particularly interested in the regulation of financial authority.

In Wuhan, she systematically studied corporate capital budgeting, financial forecasting, financial planning, etc., established the quantitative capital needs of her own enterprises for the first time, and screened out the best financing methods, including debt financing, equity financing, etc.

Liu Xiaoya also classified and analyzed the assets of the enterprise, and formulated different measures for maintaining and increasing the value of current assets and fixed assets. In terms of cost analysis and budget control, she is also the first time to seriously consider the reduction of the company's operating costs, trying to further improve the profitability of the enterprise.

After returning to Linxia, she began to maximize the operating income of supermarkets through pricing strategies and sales strategies. In terms of risk management, she began to try to identify, evaluate and control financial risks, including market risk, credit risk, liquidity risk, etc.

For the first time, Liu Xiaoya also prepared relatively complete financial statements, such as balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, etc., for internal management and external investors and creditors.

Her financial management process is becoming more streamlined, constantly balancing the company's debt and equity ratios to optimize the cost of capital and ensure that the company has sufficient cash flow to meet the needs of daily operations and long-term development, and continuously analyzes the company's financial data to evaluate the company's financial health and performance.

It wasn't until this moment that Linxia's colleague, who once thought she was wasting money, changed her mind and said that Liu Xiaoya went out to study at her own expense, which was a very remarkable thing in the entire Gansu Province.

Liu Xiaoya's investment was successful.

To the market

Liu Xiaoya first sought a breakthrough from the seasoning market.

In the process of daily raw material procurement in the supermarket, she found that the market for northwest-style spices was in its infancy and had potential to be tapped. She hurriedly hired professional and technical personnel from other places and set up a new enterprise in Linxia to specialize in expanding the northwest flavor seasoning market.

Her prediction was right, high-purity compound seasonings are very popular in the northwest, and the product line has also been expanding, forming more than 30 production lines including stewed chicken, stir-fried vegetables, fried noodles, dumplings and other types of seasonings.

Liu Xiaoya is unwilling to be confined to the local area, she wants to go out further. In the making, the opportunity came. She became one of the first beneficiaries of the East-West collaboration.

Xiamen enterprises, which came to help Linxia enterprises, brought Liu Xiaoya's seasoning products to the southern market, but southern consumers did not buy it.

She changed her thinking and began to purchase agricultural products from the northwest, such as wolfberry, lily, quinoa, etc., through the poverty alleviation workshop established with the support of the east-west cooperation for rough processing and packaging, and then transported to the southern city, where the eastern cooperative enterprises helped sell and successfully opened the southern market.

However, with the end of poverty alleviation, Linxia, which has turned to rural revitalization, has taken the most difficult step.

During the period of poverty alleviation, even if Liu Xiaoya's products are not good enough, the following support units will accept it, find a way to help sell the products, and even pay for it directly. However, after the implementation of the rural revitalization policy in 2022, market-based assessment will be gradually trialed, and employees will be deducted if they do not do well, and the previous policy support has also been cancelled.

All of a sudden, the local enterprise management methods and ideas need to be changed urgently. When Liu Xiaoya was worried, a new round of east-west cooperation was opened, and the team of temporary cadres and enterprises formed by the local government of Jinan, Shandong Province settled in Linxia and began to look for new ideas and new market-oriented cooperation paths for product consumption assistance in the western region.

The temporary cadres in Jinan decided to "slow down" first, and before expanding the market and seeking consumer terminals, they first intensively organized Linxia enterprise training.

Liu Xiaoya opened her eyes again, and this wave of training mainly analyzed the future development trends and needs of countries along the "Belt and Road" such as the Middle East and Central Asia, especially foreign trade matters.

She felt that she had suddenly opened a new window, that is, not only to compete in the domestic market, but also to go abroad.

Ask for resources

Liu Xiaoya's cash flow is abundant.

Unlike other situations where it is difficult for private enterprises to obtain financing, her company has become bigger and stronger, and she was chased by the bank to give money, and took the initiative to ask her if she needed a loan.

In my impression, as early as 2018, Liu Xiaoya was chased by the bank to give loans, and that year was also the time when she tasted the dividends of east-west cooperation. The local bank is interested in the good reputation and considerable turnover of her enterprise.

In 2024, she will still be a sweet spot in the eyes of the bank, but she is still considering: "After I take out a loan, what kind of profit should I use to give back to them, this is the question I am thinking about." ”

What Liu Xiaoya needs most now is not money, but resources. She doesn't want the way in the past, where she collaborated on projects in the field and directly invested money in the project, what she wanted was more business opportunities and vision.

She believes that the latest round of east-west cooperation can provide her with real resources, such as the "Belt and Road" training organized in Jinan, Shandong Province, which brings her invisible added value and is also an accidental opportunity.

She also took a fancy to the east-west collaboration platform that had just been established in Linxia in Jinan, Shandong.

When Liu Xiaoya heard the news, she chased the temporary cadres in Jinan, Shandong Province and asked if they could attract investment enterprises through the platform, so that these investment enterprises could see their halal food companies. Later, she said that she did not expect the temporary cadres from Jinan to be so enthusiastic, not only able to provide resources, but also to discuss the path and methods of common development.

She wants to go to the world, stand in the northwest and see the world, and her vision is set at the "Belt and Road" countries. Liu Xiaoya hopes that in a few years, Linxia will also become a "small Shenzhen" and a key point for going to sea.

Before that, she wanted to solve the sales problem first. At present, her sales mainly rely on the halal market in the circle, concentrated in five northwestern provinces, including Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Tibet and Xinjiang.

If it can cross out of the circle, or even beyond the category of halal food, and enter the field of healthy green food and non-halal channels, the market prospect will be more exciting.

However, Liu Xiaoya also predicts that Linxia's halal food will face a variety of risks when it goes abroad.

There will be fierce competition in the international market, especially in the mature markets of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. These markets have a policy of protection for indigenous halal products, and the competition is very fierce, and only special products or brands can successfully enter the market.

In terms of compliance and certification, halal food needs to meet international standards, and Linxia enterprises still have some deficiencies in standardization and certification, and many enterprises lack ISO certification, which makes it difficult for them to meet the requirements of the international market and affect the internationalization process of products.

Moreover, many enterprises engaged in halal food production in Linxia are small and medium-sized private enterprises, and their capital and technology are relatively weak, making it difficult to carry out large-scale market development and product research and development. This lack of capital limits the ability of companies to expand and be competitive.

At the same time, the brand influence of Linxia halal food is relatively weak, and there is a lack of well-known brands, which makes it difficult to gain the trust and recognition of consumers in the international market. In addition, the transportation cost of halal food is high and the shelf life is short, and the market competitiveness of the product will also be affected.

Liu Xiaoya's research has learned that in the next step, changes in policies and regulations in the international market may also have an impact on the export of halal food, so enterprises need to understand and adapt to these changes in time to avoid compliance problems.

She planned that in the process of promoting Linxia halal food to go abroad, it is necessary to strengthen brand building, improve product quality, improve capital and technical conditions, and pay attention to market dynamics and policy changes to reduce risks and seize opportunities.

She believes she can go abroad, she says: "I'm no longer a female boss, I'm going to be an entrepreneur." ”