In 2017, the steel processing and sales platform of Shougang Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center organized an online bidding of 327 tenders of available materials, with a total cash transaction of 269 million yuan. In the first month of this year, 58 tenders were bid, with a cash bidding income of 46.04 million yuan. The total amount is 315 million yuan. Up to now, the cash return rate has reached 100%. There has not been a breach of contract or the phenomenon that merchants leave without paying. Seeing this result, everyone must be curious about this platform and want to learn the story behind the 100% cash transaction, just like a reporter, so let’s go into Shougang Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center to figure it out.

Established in July 2016, Shougang Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center’s main work is to properly resettle the employees. Now, 830 people are enrolled in the book. As for how to receive and resettle these transferred employees so as to help them get jobs, income, and prospect, the leading group of the center thought of many different ways at the beginning. Once, before the stack of unscheduled steel plate outputs, “If only these things could be sold,” said the logistics master who had come to transport the goods, has suddenly enlightened the director of the center. Although these unscheduled steel plate outputs can’t meet the requirements in the field of high-end products application, they can fully satisfy the merchants’ quality demand in other fields. To this end, a new sales model combining the current e-commerce technology “Internet + steel sales” came to his mind.

A simple word lights the director of the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center, since there is a glimmer of hope, it is necessary to have a try. At the beginning, the employees of the entrepreneurial development center searched for information as if they were “fishing for fish” in the sea. They visited many distribution centers of steel products in Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other areas in order to explore the developable market. In the interview, Sun Bing, an employee of the entrepreneurial development center, told a story that had happened when he just started doing market research with tears flowed from the corners of his eyes immediately. Sun Bing found that a place in Shanxi was a flange processing center through internet, but its geographical location was relatively remote. They had to transfer twice by train, and had to take coach to reach it. After dozens of hours of travel, they finally arrived. Without rest, they immediately visited and did investigation on the processing plants there. A scene that happened later is still unforgettable to Sun Bing.

When they knocked on the door of a flange processing plant, Sun Bing and his colleagues introduced themselves, “We are from Shougang and want to do a research on your products here”. The boss of the flange processing plant looked up and down at Sun Bing with doubts, and said, “You must be cheating me. Will such a big enterprise as Shougang do research in our remote small workshop? Even if it’s real, we have to visit Shougang in person. You are not a good cheater”. The door was shut before his voice had died away. It was Sun Bing’s first visit, but he was given a blow. Just as they were wondering what to do next, a big yellow dog appeared and ran towards them fiercely. After this, Sun Bing and his colleagues had the idea of giving up, but chose to persevere to prove themselves. The next day, Sun Bing and others came again, and they finally won the trust of the boss of the flange processing plant with sincerity.

When they just began to run for business, such experiences as that Sun Bing mentioned are common in the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center. At that time, each team had to visit more than 10 merchants a day. It was precisely this seemingly “stupid” method that let the merchants dispel their doubts. The merchants also told the staff of the entrepreneurial development center about their small scale, insufficient cash flow and lack of access to the first-level procurement platform, and expressed great interest in the idea of an online public online sale of steel that the center planned to implement.

Hard work pays off. Soon, a market research report with detailed data and abundant information was formed and recognized by Shougang. The staff of the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center began the preparation of the steel processing and sales platform. In order to make the blueprint of “Internet + steel sales” a reality, the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center invited the platform construction unit to give advice, analyzed and integrated the characteristics of other industry sales platforms on the Internet, and planned a steel sales platform that accords with its own characteristics with simple interface and strong operability. After several months of hard work, the rudiment of the steel processing and sales platform was completed and entered into the process of content filling. In this process, the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center needed to input into the sales platform information such as the variety and quantity of all kinds of available materials one by one. The steel sales used paperless computer data transmission operation from the source to the terminal to avoid errors caused by human factors.

The entrepreneurial development center strengthens study and training. Professionals are invited to speak from the zero basis of computer operation. Go out and let employees who have a certain basis of computer operation come to the front line to teach by hand aiming at the problems. Through a few months of study, they have not only mastered the basic operations of setting up tenders on the Internet, approving them online, issuing them, managing contracts, managing orders, posting accounts and delivering goods, financial settlement and so on, but also made use of the network, buying books at their own expenses and other forms to explore the production of WeChat push content. From learning while practicing to timely and accurate release, they have built a bridge between merchants and users.

The steel processing and sales platform of Shougang Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center made use of Shougang’s brand advantages. The bidding was settled in cash. The base price of sales was determined according to the market condition, floating at a certain proportion between the Shougang’s list price of quality goods and the purchase price of low sulfur steel scrap. Based on the investigation and analysis of previous visits, the users of the platform are locked in the secondary market. Take the users as the core, insist on the quality service, optimize the approval process, lower the entry barriers and build bridges between small-scale steel trading & processing enterprises and large iron & steel enterprises. In the interview, the reporter met a user from Tianjin and asked him about his feeling of the steel processing and sales platform. He said with emotions: “For a long time, we have dealt with a lot of merchants, and we have encountered some things. The most troublesome thing is the problem of shipping after auction. Delay and inaccuracies happen frequently. We have had so many deals with the Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center. The bidding information and physical objects, registration of shipments, and arrival of goods are all accurate. The ‘green channel’ saves us from our worries, which is really unexpected”.

On January 12, 2017, the first online bidding of the steel processing and sales platform that everyone looked forward to began. The first bid available steel was 384 tons of hot-rolled coils. The starting price was 2,860 yuan per ton. The screen showed that there were more than 10 merchants participating in the bidding. In the first minute of the bidding, there was silence in the conference room. It was so quiet that as if you could hear the heartbeat. Then someone suddenly said, “Someone has increased the price.” The silence was broken by the applause of congratulations in the conference room. As the bidding price rose again and again, the second doubt was dispelled. At this time, he raised his head subconsciously, and saw a crowd of people outside the glass window of the conference room, with their necks stretched and their eyes locked on the screen. As the offer slowed down, the bidding entered the countdown. When the moment of drop hammer was approaching, suddenly, a merchant increased his price by 50 yuan each time, driving the sales price into a new round of climbing. The first bidding was dragged into a delay state, and finally, after 28 times of circulating offers, the first items were sold at 3,290 yuan per ton. People inside and outside the scene got excited instantly. Applause and acclamation were one after another. Everyone was excited to shed tears of happiness.

After a period of market development, the number of users participating in the bidding has increased. Each bidding often showed users competing for a price increase with a large bid gradient of 50 yuan, and the maximum number of price increases reached 332 times. The bidding time is prescribed for 10 minutes each. The offer in the last 30 seconds was postponed 30 seconds until there was no more offer. Due to the excessive number of price increases and the automatic delay of the system, there was a bidding time of 58 minutes. The bidding and sale range was gradually extended from the original single hot-rolled coils to 28 varieties of steel, such as hot rolled pickling coils, waste cold-rolled coils, scrap steel billet, non-oriented electrical steel tail coils and shun-cooling products.

Struggle leads to happy, struggle is the ladder to achieve one’s own growth, and struggle is the driving force to push the times forward. The employees of Shougang Worker Entrepreneurship Development Center are deducing a new life and writing a beautiful future with unremitting struggles.