40 years' dream of "Huaqiang North": once the 1m counter, you can't get out of a billionaire

Release date：2021-12-29Author source：KinghelmViews：875

The first ray of morning light appeared slightly, the boundary between night and day was not clear, and Shenzhen in mid autumn was shrouded in a mist.

Only this 930 meter long narrow street has long been bustling with people. The sound of "stabbing, stabbing" tape packaging broke through the sky. Boxes of various electronic components, mobile phone supporting products, chips and so on were ready to go. Iron trailers came one after another, and gold miners rubbed their heels. Everyone's face was full of the same desire. It was as if they could smell success in the air.

▲ High density Huaqiangbei area

This is Huaqiangbei, the first street of China Electronics, and it is also a well deserved holy land of wealth.More than 50 billionaires and countless millionaires were born here to personally interpret the grass-roots counter attack;Tencent, Kingdee, hanelta, Shenzhou computer and many other famous enterprises have taken off one after another.Over the past 40 years, the changes of the electronic market, the Internet and the city have swept the shore like huge waves, swallowing Huaqiangbei a little, until the prosperity has changed into a loss, and the myth of sudden wealth in the past has come to naught.

From the textbook success and failure of Nokia to the madness and disillusionment in the era of fake mobile phones, Huaqiangbei has experienced glory and glory with countless mobile phone brands, but finally lost in the torrent of the times.

Huaqiangbei's "golden age"

Rome was not built in a day. Fate buried the foreshadowing of its rise and fall.

In 1979, Guangdong north Arsenal moved to Shenzhen and was named Huaqiang, which means "China is strong". The following year, Shenzhen special zone was established. A road near Huaqiang company was named Huaqiang Road, and Huaqiang North was born.

As the vanguard of reform and opening up, Shenzhen and the Ministry of industry have reached a strategic consensus to jointly develop the electronic industry. Relying on the "three supplies and one compensation" processing mode (processing with supplied materials, processing with supplied samples, assembly with supplied parts and compensation trade), Huaqiangbei has formed a complete manufacturing product chain from component procurement to mold opening and finalization, R & D, production and assembly. It can be said that from birth, the blood of electronics and technology flowed in Huaqiang North.

By the mid-1980s, the Ministry of industry and information technology decided to integrate more than 100 scattered electronic enterprises in Shenzhen and named it Shenzhen SEG group company. In 1988, SEG group established SEG electronic market, the first Chinese electronic market in Huaqiangbei. Businesses and enterprises moved quickly. In less than two years, the whole building was occupied by the electronic supporting market.

In short supply, the original SEG market of only 800 square meters was expanded to 4000 square meters, and then the whole building was demolished and rebuilt. A series of buildings were successively established around, officially forming Huaqiangbei electronic industry business district.

In 1999, due to the rise of industrial costs, Huaqiangbei transformed from an industrial zone to a commercial street. Nokia 3310 function machine was released, Symbian system fire broke out, and mobile phones began to be popularized.

At that time, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom had not been established. As the closest port to Hong Kong and the most open trade port, coupled with the first mover advantage in electronic products, Huaqiangbei occupied the best time and place in this period. Mobile phone dealers in Beijing, Shanghai and the second and third tier provincial capitals of the country rush into Huaqiangbei. It is common for Huaqiangbei to fight for supply. Huaqiangbei almost monopolizes the supply channel of mobile phones.

▲ In the busy Huaqiangbei, merchants carry goods between them

In 2003, Taiwan's MediaTek Corporation (MTK) broke through the chip technology held by Nokia, Motorola and other brands and launched the first single-chip mobile phone solution, which greatly reduced the production threshold of mobile phones - manufacturers can produce a mobile phone by adding batteries, shells and some customized parts.

Relying on Huaqiangbei's rich supporting resources of electronic components and ushering in a new opportunity to make money, a large number of manufacturers have transformed into cottage machines. It usually takes only a few weeks or even days to assemble a new mobile phone，Moreover, Huaqiangbei's Shanzhai machine can also add functions that the original machine does not have, such as four cards and four standby, multi system switching, self-contained cigarette lighter and other new tricks. The price is only a few hundred yuan, and the profit space is infinitely enlarged.

Compared with the high labor and logistics costs of Foxconn and BYD, the cost of Huaqiangbei is almost negligible. Taking advantage of this asymmetric advantage, Huaqiangbei is famous throughout the country and even the world. A Foxconn executive once poured bitter water: "our high-quality mobile phones can no longer be sold."

"As long as you are not a fool, you can make a lot of money!" In Huaqiangbei, a safe, a calculator, a bookkeeping book and a mobile phone can open the door to do business. When a customer comes to the door, he just needs to tick the list of components to the customer, confirm the order, and then transfer the goods all over the place to match the order. The daily running water can reach hundreds of thousands. This business model of empty handed white wolf makes the miracle of one meter counter stepping out of the billionaire stage again and again.

Under speculation and huge profits, Huaqiangbei has crowded into tens of thousands of shops, electronic companies and hundreds of thousands of electronic practitioners, firmly occupying every inch of Huaqiangbei.With the tide rising, the price of the stall was fired to 300000 yuan / month per square meter, and the transfer fee of the shop was as high as one million, but it was still difficult to find a cabinet.

On October 12, 2007, "Huaqiangbei & middot; China's electronic market price index" was released, firmly ranking the leading position in the national electronic product market; In 2008, Huaqiangbei was officially awarded the title of "China Electronics First Street" by China electronics chamber of Commerce. Huaqiangbei has become a mobile phone trading center in China and even Asia. During the peak period, Huaqiangbei's daily average passenger flow reached 500000 person times and its daily capital flow reached 1 billion yuan. Huaqiangbei reached its peak.

Unexpectedly, at this time, Huaqiangbei, which was at the height of the sun, was already hidden in defeat.

The crisis broke out after the heyday

No one can stop the pace of the times, no one can avoid the approaching cold wave, and so can Huaqiangbei.

In 2008, when Shanzhai machines were booming, there were as many as 5000 Shanzhai machine merchants in Huaqiangbei, and new mobile phones were born every day. However, these mobile phone manufacturers usually only made an issue on the appearance differences, and the product homogenization was quite serious.

andThe component market closely related to mobile phones has also begun to slide from orderly competition into the abyss of counterfeiting and renovation. In packaging, labeling, packaging and testing, all well-known and famous labels are printed. This suicidal counterfeiting has gradually plunged Huaqiangbei's reputation into a mire.

Greed finally swallowed him. In 2011, the market scale of Shanzhai mobile phones reached 255 million units. Therefore, the regulatory authorities in Shenzhen launched a six-month "doubles" special campaign. The Shanzhai mobile phone merchants who were attacked by the police locked the door and were eager to destroy the exhibits. Thousands of Shanzhai mobile phones fell from the 18th floor, and the ground was full of debris.

▲ Screenshot of Shenzhen TV city channel

Chengye Shanzhai and defeated Shanzhai. Hua qiangbei, who once enjoyed the gift of fate, began to retreat.In 2011, the functional machine Empire represented by Nokia gradually bid farewell to the historical stage. Smart phones led by Apple attacked the city and pulled out the stronghold all the way, and domestic mobile phones also began to advance by leaps and bounds. In the past, old mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE and Coolpad followed up one after another, and then new brands with strong Internet genes such as Xiaomi and Meizu rose and launched more cost-effective smart phones, The concept of "user experience" is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and Shanzhai machines are rapidly cold.

With the accelerated frequency of smartphone upgrading, even if Huaqiangbei's businesses are tired, they can't catch up with the speed of the listing of popular products. It should be noted that many domestic mobile phone manufacturers invest hundreds of millions or even billions in R & D every year, which is by no means a heavy burden that mobile phone workshops can bear, so they have to continue to follow the old way of plagiarism and assembly.

Under the vicious circle, the profit space is compressed to a few yuan to more than ten yuan, which is far from maintaining the normal expenses of the whole workshop. If you accidentally bet on the wrong model, tens of thousands of inventory can only rot in the warehouse, the loss is increasing, and the living space of Shanzhai mobile phones is becoming more and more difficult.

At the same time, the growing e-commerce industry continues to disintegrate Huaqiangbei, leaving no breathing time for it. In 2014, JD and Alibaba were listed in the United States successively, and online mobile phone sales were fully launched. Not only the price was open and transparent, but also the goods could be compared. In addition, with the maturity of the logistics and transportation system, Huaqiangbei's proud advantages disappeared.

The recession came faster than expected. Huaqiangbei's reputation and popularity accumulated over the years of painstaking operation have gradually declined in front of the Internet wave. The sharp decline in passenger flow has made Huaqiangbei more depressed, closed and transferred everywhere, and the vacancy rate of stores was once as high as 30%.

As a result, there is no market for Shanzhai machines, and a large number of OEM manufacturers with miscellaneous Shanzhai machines as their main customers are running away. In January 2015, Gao Min, chairman of Dongguan Zhaoxin Communication Industry Co., Ltd., committed suicide. In his last letter, he lamented that the situation of the foundry was getting worse and worse, and the whole Huaqiangbei component market was in a panic and winter all night.

It never rains but pours. The devastated Huaqiangbei was destroyed again. Since March 2013, due to the construction needs of Shenzhen Metro Line 7, the main road of Huaqiang North Road has been closed and reconstructed, which has been repaired for four years, and countless people's dream of making wealth has been broken.

Things are changeable. When the street is reopened in 2017, Huaqiangbei, who wants to do a big job, is facing a strange world: the once assembled PC and Shanzhai mobile phone market are scattered by brand manufacturers; Industrialists invest and build factories abroad, setting off a great discussion on the cost dilemma of manufacturing industry; Shenzhen's house prices also suddenly caught up with Beijing after the GDP growth rate "broke 7".

In the past, the mighty Huaqiangbei has become a faded label in the last business era, and the saying that "Huaqiangbei is dead" is rife.Unwilling to give up, Huaqiangbei once made a short comeback by selling mining machines in 2017, but it was more than a year before and after. After the global virtual currency reached the high point, it fell at an exponential rate, the price of mining machines bundled with it fell, and tens of thousands of merchants became "leeks".Like a dream, Huaqiangbei fell into the dust again.

The future is uncertain in the painful transformation

When Shenzhen became more and more prominent from the beginning to the end, Huaqiangbei's "Shanzhai" label became more and more inappropriate.

"If we don't transform and upgrade and innovate brands, we will always follow others and can't compete with the world". The government is determined to break its wrists and turn this "cottage kingdom" into a "maker's paradise".

In 2015, Huaqiang North International maker center and incubators such as Tencent entrepreneurship base, Futian investment, Qianhai International Capital Management College and Shenzhen Bay jointly formed Shenzhen maker alliance. Huaqiang and Tencent announced to invest 10 billion resources respectively to create 100 new start-ups with a market value of more than 100 billion in the next three years.

However, more than four years later, this ambition is still in the wish stage. According to the Shenzhen Special Zone News, more than 100 international makers have come to Huaqiangbei to turn their ideas into products, then finance on financing platforms in the United States, Europe and East Asia, and then return to Shenzhen for industrial production.

However, the current overall financing environment continues to turn cold. The wave of listing from last year to this year has been very illustrative. Money burning projects are almost difficult to get money, which is not friendly to Huaqiangbei international maker center, which focuses on intelligent hardware.

After the heat of the "China's longest subway Commercial Street" with an area of more than 20000 square meters built at a cost of 100 million yuan faded, the turnover suffered a cliff like decline in the second month of opening, and the business plummeted. In the face of high rent, unsustainable shops successively terminated and withdrew.

▲ First month of opening in July 2018 vs actual shooting status in August 2019

Although Huaqiang North still claims to be the largest distribution center of electronic products in Asia, whether it is the unsatisfactory annual report data of SEG and Huaqiang companies, or the fact that the original Sebo is vacant all the year round and the positioning of Wanshang computer city has been adjusted several times, it is still sluggish, which indicates the decline of the traditional electronic market.

The old Huaqiangbei people who were coerced forward had to survive in the pursuit of change.In 2017, Mingtong digital city took the first step and transformed into "Mingtong cosmetics market". Hualianfa and Bauhinia city followed suit and successively issued new investment promotion plans. Only sporadic uncleaned mobile outdoor advertisements reminded the past here.

"If a 90% new 256g Max sells for 6300 yuan, it can earn 450 yuan, and the profit is only 7%; now the retail profit of beauty and skin care products can be up to 50%, even if it is wholesale, it can be about 30%." An anonymous stall owner revealed.

Nowadays, a strange boundary has formed in these shopping malls that used to mainly assemble and sell Shanzhai machines. People are crowded here in the cosmetics business, but there is little interest in the mobile phone accessories.

From planned economy to market economy, from flipping imported electronic products to self manufacturing, and from personal computer to mobile phone industry, Huaqiangbei has witnessed wave after wave. The times have created Huaqiangbei and abandoned it.

As night fell, the flashing neon lights flickered. The signboard of "China Electronics First Street" placed on this brand-new street was gradually difficult to distinguish its face under the sudden heavy rain.