The prerequisite for persistence is to have a right strategic decision. Once a wrong decision is made, sticking to it is to magnify your mistake.
I often ask myself, “ what is it that makes a company succeed in the competition?” Normally, there are two modes of business operation, one is differentiation and the other is low cost. A company can usually grow bigger through low-cost operation, cutting down cost by large-scale purchase and centralized production. Then what makes the small business grow and develop in the market? The only way is to be different from others. How to differentiate your company from that of your competitors? Take our industry as an example, it is too hard to make the differentiation of products, or packages, or product brands.
Let’s make an assumption, just imagine that we buy ten banners from ten suppliers, then remove the labels and put them together to have a blind test. What will happen? Obviously, we will find it is hard to pick out the banners according to their manufacturers. If all the other competitors can produce the same product, it will be of no use to try to make product differentiation.
Here comes the question, how can we make our company different from others? First, we should create our own business genes based on the core competence of our founding team. To be specific, a good business gene is related to the design ability of the top-level executives, the integration capability of the company and the individual credit of the founder in the industry. Then we should lead our team to go through the hard times by firmly sticking to the 10,000 hours principle (If you want to be an expert in an area of expertise, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours on it, that is, you need to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 years). Eventually, our core competitive advantages will be built.
In the advertising textile printing industry, the competition in differentiation doesn’t lie in the products but in the top-level design.
