My dear friends,
I'm Sand, the team leader of Blue Stone. Warmly welcome to Blue Stone!
I'm thinking over and over how to give a brief of Blue Stone when we had the plan to build a website. Normally, I should show you how professional we are to offer you the service and what do we have to make sure that happened. But it's boring if I do so, isn't it? How about the way of friends' talking? Sharing our stories with friends!
But It will be a long story! So, I put our story on our BLOG for the friends who have interests to understand who we are!
Blue Stone was opened in Yiwu city in 2006. We began as a purchasing office for one company. Later, some friends had heard about us. They knocked our door and we began to offer our purchasing service to other clients.
Mr. Orlando was our first client. He was looking for the reliable suppliers for Christmas Lights at that time. We found some target suppliers after sourcing. Those factories were located around Taizhou city, about 250 KM from Yiwu. Mr. Orlando made the decision to visit all of them one by one. We rent the car, set up the route and made the appointment with the factories.
It was a long trip. And it was a successful trip. We finally confirmed to work with two manufacturers and the target business value is more than one million US dollar in total. Especially the last factory we visited, they are the manufacturer for the biggest seller in Panama. Mr. Orlando was so happy like a child and said thanks to us all the time. Mr. Chen, the owner of the factory had invited us to the big, big dinner and everybody had enjoyed the food and the beer very well at that night.
It might be the problem of the long trip or too much beer in the dinner, Mr Orlando got sick strongly around half hour later after leaving from the factory. He felt very painful on his stomach and began to vomit. It was around 9:30 pm and it would take 3 hours more to arrival in our city. We changed plan to go to the city near us and sent Mr. Orlando to hospital right away.
After examination, the report showed that he got Acute Gastroenteritis. The doctor told us that was better to keep him in hospital a few days. Mr. Orlando was very scared to stay there and he had insisted going home. In that case the doctor gave some medicine and let him take a drip to control the situation quickly. We had stayed in the hospital a night and got back on the way again when Mr. Orlando showed that he was recovering.
I kept Mr. Orlando to stay in my house when we were back to Yiwu. I prepared the food for him, especially the porridge, my mom always told me that was good for the stomach. 3 days later, Mr. Orlando got recover completely.
"I was so lucky that you were there when I got sick strongly!"; Mr. Orlando always said that when he was telling the story with some new friends in our office.
The time flies! 14 years later, the smile of Mr. Orlando is still fresh as new in my mind. For me, that is just like an extra reward. The smile face always brings us warm feeling, doesn't it��
The COVID 19 has attacked strongly the whole world this year. Our clients were suffering a lot as well. One day on March, Miss Alice, one of my managers, came to my office and told me that the client, Mr. William, required us to canceled all his orders, which were confirmed just 2 weeks ago. Alice replied that the orders now were under production processing and couldn't be canceled. Mr. William now was very angry and sent us the complaint email on this issue.
I studied the situation with Alice basing on the news in William's country. Our estimate of his concern is getting lost for the future. The government made the decision to close the market without any re-open schedule. It's nightmare for all boss! I totally understood why he had made this decision. That is really a big challenge. But at the same time, we saw the opportunity as well.
First of all, the market would be closed for a quite long time but the live would move on. The people need the things to live. Second, the importers would stop buying things or decreasing high percentage buying value. In this case, 2 months later, the daily item in the market would be almost out of stock. That was the opportunity that we saw. Mr. William sells daily items and those will be perfect match for the market. If Mr. William could take this chance and send the right items at that moment. His business would be good even in this COVID year.
Alice wrote an email to Mr. William sharing with our understanding about COVID and the market. And we offer our thinking and plan. After that, he replied that he wanted to try it! Our team members had reviewed the orders item by item again with him. Finally, he just changed some colors and kept all orders as plan. To meet the COVID situation, we also discussed with all suppliers to postpone the lead time one month later. In this case, the shipment can catch the market in the good way.
The time approved what our estimate! Mr. William sold out almost all cargo before the container arriving at destination. Now he got recovered from the COVID impact and his repeat orders were under production processing!
Facing problem, we would listen carefully first and try to understand the reason. So that we will work out a solution. But about right or wrong, it's difficult to tell all the time. t is just about what you choose.
There was a meeting happened in my office 3 years ago. It was about setting up the rules of the payment to the suppliers. There is one comment way in the market to round the amount that the buying company should pay to the suppliers. They will round down from tens digit or even hundreds digit of the amount. For example, for the amount 8953.23, they round down as 8900.00. For the amount 38536.33, they round down as 38000.00.
We don't follow this way! And obviously, that is one way to bring the company profit. Other buying company charges low commission for their services so that they have to find different way to get more income. Rounding down the amount is only one of their ways to get extra income from the business.
One team member suggested that we should follow. Because almost every buying company did that way. Or we are difficult to gain more clients. Another team member suggested that we could consider about it. Sometimes the suppliers will give discount to the clients when the goods have a minor quality problem.
I told them NO! The people like money, so do I! But I don't want to get the "dirty"; money, so my team either! Giving discount is a solution against the quality problem. That was what supplier and client agreed with, as a contract without paper. But for the payment amount, that was what we should pay according the goods we had received. Every cent belongs to the suppliers!
A little silly, don't we?
Blue Stone is not the big company. We are just a such team! We insist doing something that we believe it is right and take it as a RED line that we should not cross over. We work hard to do something helpful for our clients and make some money for our family at the same time!
And this is who Blue Stone are!
I might see you soon as you read our story until here. Warmly welcome you to join us and you will find us in your story soon!
Best wishes,
Sand Zhang
October 7, 2020 in Yiwu