From first-time vendor to an industry leader

For Qiu Zhiming, an entrepreneur from Ningbo, Zhejiang province, the China Import and Export Fair is more than a trading event — it’s a driving force of his success.

Qiu is chairman of Beifa Group, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of stationery.

Qiu used to be a senior executive of a State-owned enterprise in Ningbo. In the 1990s, Qiu’s father, boss of ballpoint pen manufacturer Beifa, faced difficulties in business. Qiu resigned from the SOE to help his father.

In 1993, he attended the CIEF, also known as Canton Fair, as a vendor for the first time, helping his father sell ballpoint pens.

The executive recalled that he brought only two pens when attending the fair on the first day.

On the second day, Qiu brought a box of the pens to the exhibition venue and after that he began communicating with buyers and exchanged business cards.

His efforts finally paid off. On the seventh day of the fair, a Yemeni buyer contacted him to have a talk in the evening. This helped Qiu secure his first order valued at nearly $20,000. It marked the beginning of his foreign trade business.

Since his first presence at the fair, his business has developed steadily. At Canton Fair in 1994, Qiu received orders worth $22.6 million.

In 1998, Beifa became a Chinese brand widely recognized in overseas markets, according to Qiu.

To increase the company’s production capability, Qiu expanded cooperation with nearby pen manufacturers. However, things were not going well as a series of quality problems arose, especially in pen tips and printing ink.

Qiu said he had spent two months traveling the world and found qualified pen tips and printing ink in Switzerland and Germany.

After the trip, Qiu was determined to set up a research and development center to tackle the quality and technological problems for pen-making.

In 2000, Beifa Group set up an office in the United States. Since then, the company has focused on producing patented products. In 2002, Beifa Group signed an order worth $4 million from Walmart.

To date, the group has a total of 3,232 granted patents, with 49 of them invention patents.

From being a vendor to a nationally leading pen manufacturer, Qiu said: “Canton Fair has not only introduced me to foreign trade, but also promoted the development of Beifa.”