Editor's note: Three years after graduation, they embarked on different life paths from the same starting point, government institutions, schools, financial institutions, media organizations, and enterprises.... What changes have they made since they stepped into society? What new insights do they have in the workplace? How does the knowledge at the undergraduate level help them in their work?

Henceforth, the University of Waikato Joint Institute at Hangzhou City University (NZUWI) will launch a series of alumni return-visit reports for the class of 2021, aiming to point out the future direction for current students, provide a platform for alumni to communicate and contact one another, and provide a channel for parents to learn about our graduates.

Located on campus, CC Dream Factory is a business incubator. Just as the name implies, it is a dream base for entrepreneurial alumni. Four of the Seven student-registered companies here were founded by the alumni of NZUWI.

Three years ago, we interviewed one of our alumni, Lin Chenyu, among the first graduating class of NZUWI. He had already had a unique experience while in the college:

He has won lots of awards and honors, including the first prize of Zhejiang University Student E-commerce Competition, the bronze award of the "Challenge Cup" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, the first prize of Taizhou Youth Entrepreneurship Competition, the first prize of the school entrepreneurship scholarship and the academic excellence scholarship. Moreover, his project was selected into the second batch of "Weixing Plan" of the Hangzhou University Student Entrepreneurship Alliance and the National University Student Innovation (Practice Category) Project, and finally it was completed with excellent results.

Three years having passed, what has happened to him and his company? Recently, we visited Lin Chenyu again with interest.

Beneath his youthful appearance, there is a series of identities that are different from his peers- graduates of the first class of NZUWI, an entrepreneurial alumni mentor, and a shareholder of two start-up companies.

He has many achievements: “Lingling Washing”, the brand he founded, had a revenue of more than 12 million yuan in 2022 and more than 300 trainees in 2023; in 2024, many stores were selected into the top three on the TikTok praise-list on Local-Life within Washing and Care. Additionally, he founded one self-service pet bath brand named Pupu, and opened the first flagship store in December 2023. 11 offline stores in Harbin, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen province have started to open by April, 2024, and it is expected that more than 100 stores will be established nationwide this year.

From "entrepreneurial gene" to "first pot of gold”

As a "second generation of entrepreneur", entrepreneurship is probably innate.

It is the open, inclusive and free environment in NZUWI that fostered his ideas to flourish from the bud to the ground--In the college, joining several student organizations, he learned the techniques of filming and editing, and also mastered the marketing concepts and publicity materials production skills; his knowledge of finance provided a theoretical guarantee for his future business, and allowed him to further apply himself in the real professional environment in the future; the open and diverse environment of NZUWI also allowed him to make choices about the future without restrictions.

Since his junior year, he has been determined to take the road of entrepreneurship after graduation and become a "time management master", running around to look up business contacts in his spare time.

His keen discovery and extraordinary action earned him the "first pot of gold"——

He discovered the online shoe-washing business by chance, In this business, customers place orders online and the shoes are picked up by the shop. After cleaning and care, the shoes are sent back to the users within a certain period of time. He immediately decided to devote himself to doing it. In cooperation with Lin Zhengqi, an alumnus of the law school, he started his first business.

Lacking funding and stable customers, they rented a space and communicated with the customers and the professional cleaning shops, starting their own small business as "middlemen". In order to avoid costs, and with summer temperatures in Hangzhou often approaching 40 °C, they wore as little clothing as feasible and didn’t turn on the air-conditioning while they packed and shipped. Entrepreneurship", a very grand word applied to daily work, implies one keeps trying, regardless of failure, until a successful and sustainable path is found. In the end, they established their own successful path.

Those days seemed heavily laborious then, but looking back now, they cherish it as a very pure period of their lives. Compared with the simple physical exertion, the real difficulties of starting a business were yet to come. After the start-up period, however, they had their own store, equipment and technology, and their own brand, Lingling Washing! Lingling Washing was on sure enough footing!

If there are any inherent cultural genes of Zhejiang business people, then "Dare to explore and never stop" must be among them.

To what extent can an independent enterprise be built? How to overcome the risk? Can the company go further? Can the experience of an independent enterprise be leveraged to achieve large-scale industrialization commercial activity?

In the process of developing "Lingling Washing", Lin Chenyu met two business partners who do shoe washing training business, and after continuous exploration, the three gradually developed the current model: with the leverage of the Internet platform, the partners provide potential  customers, and Lin Chenyu's team became responsible for securing customers. After the partners complete the initial training, the Lin Chenyu’s team follows up the subsequent operations on behalf of the company to achieve a closed loop of the entire profit model.

Behind "Securing customers" and "on behalf of the company", the workload is indescribable. 

How do they choose the address of the shops? What do they pay attention to when decorating? How do they operate on the Internet platform? How do they promote? How do they communicate with customers?

For newcomers to the online shoe-washing business, they may encounter many difficulties, but Lin Chenyu's company solves this process toward a successful path.

He said frankly that the company's business has no barriers at the technical level, and what is stronger than others is the ability to attract investment. There are 150 brands engaging in the online shoe-washing business on TikTok, of which 149 employ the direct-selling model, and only these have opened franchise channels. In the Internet era, these young people have made use of the online information and achieved the opening of dozens of shops on average monthly, relying on the platform TikTok.

How do they achieve such a great result? From their experience. From the idea to the real landing, it can be said that every step in the whole process of operation have been through their continuous refinement.

After the customers place the order, a WeChat group of customers, including customer service specialists and Lin Chenyu, is quickly established. In this group, all questions are answered promptly, accurately and in detail.

The corporate culture of Lin Chenyu's company is "freedom with rules". Freedom lies in not limiting the clock-in time of employees, and even not restricting whether to work in the office. However, he requests that employees never put off till tomorrow what may be done today, and that the last message in the WeChat group be sent by their staff by the end of a day. Only then can the daily work be regarded as a closed loop.

The courage to start again

One of Zhejiang business people’s spirits is to "do everything you can". It is not only to try to open up the situation at the beginning of the business, but also to find ways to open up a new situation again after the enterprise has developed to a certain scale.

After the business is scaled, he and his partners set out again to find a new outlet. He found a self-service pet-bathing shop on Xiaohongshu by chance (*The shop is equipped with a self-service bathing cabin, including a bathing pool, a drying table, a dryer and other facilities, and consumers only need to scan the code to enter the cabin.). It took him two days to get in touch with the shop owner - this small but crucial detail made him intuitively feel that it may be a new "outlet".

After a week of discussion with his partner, his extraordinary action once again took the lead, and they started another venture boldly and carefully. Starting from the smallest-scale, pilot model store, they continued to use the experience accumulated in the “Lingling Washing” brand, developing the "Pupu Self-service Pet Bath" project step by step.

Pure happiness

People often say that only one out of 10 people will succeed, and Lin Chenyu’s team has not only become one of the successes, but also always maintain the courage to explore, not being afraid of difficulties.

Since the establishment of the company in 2019, this year is his fifth year of entrepreneurship. Nowadays, he no longer considers himself "starting a business", but "doing business" - doing business is a step-by-step process, looking up to the sky and being more down-to-earth, not to pursue a grand narrative for the time being, but to live in every moment, serve every customer well, and complete every order well.

Looking back, he can remember the hardest times. At those times, he was not only physically tired, but also mentally tired.

He was mentally tired because they had daily expenses for rent and labour, but no customers and income. In the sea of commerce, their small business was like a lonely boat in the storm.

In contrast, the physical strain is even considered ‘pure’: in the first few years of university, he travelled between the dormitory and the teaching building every day, focusing only on his studies; in the latter years, when he started his own business, as a salesman, he was often on the move, too busy to eat; in order to save on costs, he carried the heavy loads by himself.

In his opinion, the days when he was studying were pure and happy, learning knowledge in class and having fun with his classmates after class were all incomparably happy and pure things.

Such pure days passed by very quickly, and such happiness nourished him continuously in the future, providing him with a loose, open and diversified soil when he was the youngest and most energetic, so that the idea of entrepreneurship could take root and grow luxuriantly.

Entering the fifth year of entrepreneurship, many things that he once did not dare to imagine have been outlined, and many things have greater possibilities waiting to be discovered. He still looks forward to exploring!