陈龙:华为喜欢“犯傻” 震坤行喜欢“犯二”

This article is a transcript of an interview with Chen Long, CEO of ZKH, a leading Chinese MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) industrial procurement service provider. It covers the company's current development status, future roadmap and core business philosophy, with clear and practical insights.

1. Key highlights: ZKH has just closed a RMB 360 million Series C financing, the largest single round raised in China's MRO sector to date. As an industry leader, the company's MRO product line is growing at nearly 200% year-over-year, and has earned backing from top-tier venture capital firms including JD Capital and Matrix Partners China. ZKH's strategic goal is to build China's leading industrial supplies supermarket.

2. Actionable takeaways: Companies should avoid reckless expansion after securing financing, and prioritize strengthening core capabilities before pursuing aggressive growth; employee experience and customer experience are mutually reinforcing and require balanced investment; long-term success in B2B business relies on persistence, steady value creation for customers, and rejecting shortcuts.

This article shares ZKH's growth strategy as an industrial service brand, offering valuable insights for B2B brand building and scaling.

1. Growth pacing strategy: Companies should stay disciplined after securing large financing, avoid impulsive over-expansion. ZKH pursues a dual strategy of "sustained growth + internal capability building": it solidifies core competitiveness first before accelerating future growth, to prevent overextension from damaging the brand.

2. Product development strategy: On one hand, the company establishes standardized product data management and assembles a dedicated team to organize and enrich product line data to improve operational efficiency; on the other hand, it accelerates R&D for core self-owned products, benchmarking against top industry players to deliver the lowest possible procurement costs for customers and create greater room for their cost reduction.

3. User experience strategy: ZKH prioritizes customer value, operates China's most extensive network of regional service centers, and its founder conducts on-site customer research personally to oversee service standards across all touchpoints, building a customer-centric brand perception.

This article clearly outlines industry opportunities, risk warnings and actionable implementation plans for sellers in the B2B industrial track, offering high reference value.

1. Industry opportunity: The MRO sector is a category with strong scale effects that create a virtuous growth cycle: larger scale translates to greater profit margins. China's MRO market remains underdeveloped, leaving enormous room for growth. Operators that deliver high-quality service have a clear path to become industry leaders.

2. Operational risk warning: It is common for leadership to overreach and pursue reckless expansion after raising capital. If core capabilities are not fully solidified, rapid growth can sink a business, so clear control over growth pacing is critical.

3. Actionable best practices: Tailor service offerings to customers of different sizes: offer end-to-end procurement outsourcing for large enterprise clients, and flexible online and telephone-based procurement channels for small and medium-sized clients, while guiding clients to adopt digital and intelligent transactions to boost efficiency; launch a "Striver Program" to align the interests of frontline core employees, using multiple incentives to drive team motivation and align the organization around shared goals.

For Chinese manufacturing factories, this article outlines new directions for MRO procurement cost reduction, and offers insights for digital procurement transformation.

1. Cost reduction opportunities: High MRO procurement costs have long been a pain point for Chinese manufacturers. ZKH's MRO procurement solution is projected to help more than 300,000 Chinese industrial enterprises cut annual procurement costs by 21%, directly reducing factories' operating costs and expanding profit margins.

2. High demand adaptability: ZKH meets the differentiated MRO procurement needs of factories of all sizes: large factories can outsource their entire MRO procurement operations to ZKH, while small and medium-sized factories can use flexible procurement methods including online ordering and telephone ordering.

3. Aligns with digital transformation goals: ZKH supports ESP integration and in-ERP transactions, and offers smart on-site warehouses and intelligent supply chain management services. It helps factories improve procurement and operational efficiency, perfectly matching the digital transformation needs of manufacturing facilities.

For service providers in the industrial service sector, this article sorts out MRO industry trends, core customer pain points and proven solutions, with abundant practical insights.

1. Industry development trends: The MRO sector is currently at a critical inflection point for growth. The industry has clear scale effects that create a virtuous cycle where the strong get stronger, and the market will gradually consolidate around leading players in the future. Only scaled players can capture higher profit margins, and the overall market still has enormous room for growth.

2. Core customer pain points: China's immature MRO market has long struggled with high procurement costs and non-standard processes. Meanwhile, customer demand is heavily segmented: large clients need end-to-end outsourcing services, while small and medium-sized clients need flexible, convenient lightweight procurement channels, creating large demand gaps across segments.

3. Proven implementation solutions: Build an omnichannel service network combining online and offline resources, and deploy regional service centers to guarantee service quality; standardize product data management and develop core in-house products to help clients cut procurement costs; upgrade IT capabilities to support multiple system integrations and intelligent supply chain management, to meet integration needs for all types of clients.

For enterprises operating industrial procurement platforms, this article summarizes ZKH's platform operation experience, clarifies industry trends and risk mitigation strategies, with strong reference value.

1. Industry demand insight: China's current MRO market is underdeveloped, with highly diversified customer demand: clients need both standardized products that cut costs, and customized procurement services tailored to enterprises of different sizes. Platforms must build service integration interfaces covering all use cases to meet the needs of all customer segments.

2. Actionable platform operation takeaways: ZKH pursues parallel development of business growth and core capability building: it maintains business growth while continuously solidifying foundational capabilities, including standardizing product data, upgrading IT systems, optimizing supply chains, and building an incentive-aligned team mechanism; it also prioritizes end-to-end customer experience, deploys a national service center network, and its founder conducts on-site customer research to continuously refine services.

3. Risk mitigation warning: Platforms must avoid imprudent expansion after raising financing. Rapid expansion without solid core capabilities will trigger operational risks, so companies must solidify their foundation first before pursuing high-speed growth.

For researchers focusing on the B2B industrial service space, this article provides first-hand information on a leading MRO player, reflecting the latest industry trends and innovative business philosophies, with high research value.

1. New industry development trends: China's MRO sector is now entering a critical period of rapid growth, and has won broad recognition from the primary market. ZKH's RMB 360 million financing is the largest in the industry to date, and capital is uniformly bullish on leading MRO players. The industry's head effect is gradually emerging, and a national leading MRO champion will emerge in the coming years.

2. Business model innovation: ZKH has pioneered the "industrial supermarket" model in China, building a full-chain service system covering product supply, customized MRO solutions and intelligent warehouse management. It can adapt to differentiated demands of large, mid-sized and small clients, and improves end-to-end efficiency through digital operation, making it a representative innovative business model in the MRO sector.

3. New insights on business culture: ZKH put forward the concept of "B2B Spirit", embracing Huawei's pragmatic philosophy of "steady, consistent execution". It emphasizes that B2B business requires persistence and resilience, a constant focus on customer value, and rejection of opportunism. This offers new inspiration for organizational culture building for B2B enterprises.