By staff reporters Liu Hui and Yan Yan
"Complaining is cheap. Don't be a dreamer, be a maker and be proud of it." (from "I Create, Therefore I Am") "Ahead lies the starlight, I am full of strength, you stand tall..."
"...ahead lies the endless horizon, and on the shoulders of the brave, glory and honour." (from "Song of the Makers")
When ideas become reality, everyone chasing them is a pioneer. The maker movement of the Innovation 2.0 era has produced wave after wave of entrepreneurs, and their momentum has driven the rise of makerspaces.
Tangshan, a city in the middle of industrial transformation, has become fertile ground for those ambitions. A series of distinctive, well-serviced makerspaces now form a supportive ecosystem for founders. To date the city has recognised 21 makerspaces at municipal level or above, nine of them national-level. Tucked away in office towers and science parks, they act as nurseries where early business ideas can take root and grow.
What is a makerspace?
Step into the makerspace on the 23rd floor of the BSC Global Maker Incubator and the atmosphere is unmistakably post-modern and unconventional. Bare concrete walls, dark floors, stairs and office furniture, and a bright yellow slide running straight down from the industrial-style steel mezzanine: a flash of colour that jumps out of an otherwise restrained picture.
In this 690 square metre space, more than a dozen start-up ideas are taking shape. Once they have grown into viable seedlings, they can move into the incubator to keep developing. This is where grassroots founders test the water.
This is the best time to start a business, a time when anyone can flourish, and makerspaces and makers are closely bound together. On 4 January 2015, attention from Premier Li Keqiang brought the word "maker" into the public eye as a label for the frontier of innovation. The State Council's call for "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" encouraged everyone to start something of their own.
The heart of the word "maker" is creation: opening up new ground. Makers are always the first to try something, because turning an idea into reality is a unique process that carries the stamp of an individual or a team. Every maker has their own idea, but many of those ideas die early for one reason or another. Plenty of founders who failed have said the same thing: "If only I had the right conditions, I know I could have made it work."
Grassroots makers are held back by limited knowledge, limited technical skills and limited resources. What they need is a cradle where they can draw on outside resources and fill the gaps in their own capabilities. The stronger the founder becomes, the easier it is for the idea to succeed.
That is the background against which the makerspace concept emerged. It is a general term for a new type of low-cost, convenient, full-service and open start-up platform, built through market mechanisms, professional services and access to capital, in step with the Innovation 2.0 trends of user-led, mass and open innovation and the realities of starting a business in the internet age. Some makerspaces are built with government investment, some by universities, and some by private companies.
Today a makerspace works like a nursery, a place to try a business idea out. A founder with an idea can simply come in: the space provides desks, chairs, internet and phones. Once the project has matured and proved itself, the team can move on to the incubator, rent a larger office, hire staff and register a company.
Makerspaces are also a form of the sharing economy. Instead of one company per room, all the founders and start-ups work in a common space and share office and service resources, which cuts operating costs. And because a makerspace is itself a hub of resources, it can connect teams and start-ups with the development resources they need. That is its greatest advantage.
Is it hard to get in? The project decides
Is it hard to get into a makerspace? That is a question many founders ask.
According to those we spoke to, Tangshan's makerspaces are for the most part very down to earth. There are no rigid entry thresholds; the project is the only criterion. A founder with a good project that passes review can join the space and enjoy a range of preferential policies. Some founders can truly move in with nothing but a laptop, with all other fees waived.
Take the BSC makerspace as an example. After its expert panel reviews a project, if it judges the project to be practical with strong growth potential, it admits the team, providing space, publicity and fee waivers. It also recruits accomplished experts and academics as mentors, who offer professional consulting, coaching and services to help founders with project planning, market development, brand building, talent development and corporate strategy.
In front of the reporter, a 3D printer developed in-house by one maker team was quietly at work. On the display shelf beside it were articulated fish key rings, custom-designed phone cases, a lifelike Spider-Man figure and moulds for machine parts of every shape, all 3D printed. "Without this platform, even with the people and the technology, this project might never have happened," said Xiao Zhanyou, who leads the Youchuang team. Youchuang is a start-up of four young university graduates working on 3D printer development, applications and 3D printing education. The team was founded in March this year, and the four founders ran into obstacles almost as soon as they started.
"We were worrying about start-up funding when by chance we came across the BSC makerspace. It gave us a free platform and actively helped us with publicity and project matching." Within a few months the team was thriving, and in July this year its 3D printing project won first prize at the Tangshan University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.
As long as the project is good, the makerspace does what it can to help. "After we moved in, the makerspace gave us a lot of support: free space, computers and other office equipment, and waived all fees for property management, utilities, bookkeeping and office supplies. It also connected us with many external market resources, which greatly eased the pressure of building our business. When we hit technical problems, the space put us in touch with Chenglian E-commerce's development team to help us through. The company is now developing very smoothly," said Zheng Li'ao, founder of Laisige, an e-commerce makerspace company focused on website development, mobile internet products and integrated marketing. He credits the Tangshan e-commerce makerspace with his first real earnings as a founder. Wang Bin, another maker in the same space, agreed: "If I rented premises and bought equipment myself, it would cost more than 60,000 yuan a year, which is a lot for me. The makerspace provides the hardware, so we don't have to worry." Building a product is not the same as building a business. Wang Bin's team is about to launch its platform, and the next step is marketing, but the team has no professional operations or marketing staff. At a small meeting organised by the makerspace, the head of the e-commerce makerspace helped him solve that problem too.
The makerspaces are helping the seeds of entrepreneurship break through. To date, the city's 21 makerspaces, together with 23 technology business incubators at municipal level or above, have supported incubated companies and teams in
421 innovation and entrepreneurship projects, filed 395 patent applications, trained 247 research professionals and developed and launched 584 new products. Between them they have nurtured 20 percent of the city's technology companies, 25 percent of its high-tech enterprises and 60 percent of its software companies.
Stories from the makerspace
A makerspace is a remarkable place. Every day it hosts a different founder's story, with successes, failures, laughter and tears.
"A person with real ambition can afford to dream big. It starts as a dream, but if you keep at it and don't give up easily, it can come true." Those words from Albert Yu, senior vice president of Intel and a leading Chinese figure in the CPU industry, are often quoted by founders to keep themselves going.
Starting a business is more than a dream. It is a road that has to be walked step by step and held to with conviction. A makerspace is only a waystation on that road. Some take on supplies and then shy away from the hard journey ahead; others press on regardless, through wind and rain.
Staying true to why you started may be the highest praise a founder can earn. A Valentine's Day in tears
Elephant Kingdom is not a name anyone would associate with flowers, yet in little more than a year it has become a rising star in Tangshan's floristry scene. With the makerspace's help the project has secured investment and is growing fast. It is the creation of Liu Chang, a maker born in the 1990s. Liu Chang trained in fine art and loves plants and flowers, and she has her own view of floral design: "I want to make something pure, without following trends. Every bouquet is designed to the customer's needs. Having no style is our biggest style."
That insistence on purity led Liu Chang to leave a stable, well-paid job to become a maker. It also won her work a loyal following and quickly opened up the market.
The early days went smoothly, and Liu Chang was tired but happy. Elephant Kingdom was founded on 28 May 2016, and by Valentine's Day in February 2017 the orders were pouring in: "We had to stop taking orders before Valentine's Day. With more than 200 we were afraid we couldn't cope." She was focused entirely on delivering her customers' feelings through her flowers.
What she never expected was that on Valentine's Day itself her upstream supplier's flowers would fail: the air-freighted roses arrived dehydrated. It hit her like a punch to the head. But Valentine's Day lasts only one day, so she pulled herself together, sourced flowers from every possible supplier regardless of cost, and salvaged what she could by changing bouquet designs. Every customer's order was delivered, but some were a few hours late and some looked different from what had been ordered. When the last order was done, Liu Chang sat in her car and sobbed: "I can't describe how I felt: hurt, guilty, under pressure. We couldn't let down the trust our customers had put in us."
The next day, having calmed down, Liu Chang analysed what had gone wrong and put measures in place to stop it happening again. She also made a decision: to refund every customer's Valentine's Day payment. She refunded each one on WeChat, explaining and apologising. Many customers wrote back at length to say they understood and declined the refund. "Even if they wouldn't take it, we refunded it anyway. My staff and I went door to door and handed the money back in person."
After half a month of preparation, Liu Chang made nothing from that Valentine's Day. What her insistence on doing things properly earned her was experience and her customers' trust. "After that incident, instead of losing customers we gained more. I never expected that." She says she will probably never forget the Valentine's Day in 2017 when she sat in her car in tears. It left a deep mark on her journey as a founder. Even so, this optimistic young woman has held on to her sense of purpose and her commitment to purity, and keeps pressing ahead.
A demanding boss who dismissed an employee over one remark
With cake shops and bakeries on every street, opening a successful bakery is no easy task. Yet in this crowded market, maker Sun Tianze has not only built a thriving small shop but also secured seed funding.
Opening a bakery starts with interest, but making it work takes persistence. Before opening her shop, Sun Tianze's love of desserts and baking had her studying in her spare time for years, so she knew the dessert and baking world well and had her own views on both ingredients and design.
"I will never serve customers anything I wouldn't eat myself," Sun Tianze says. Many cakes use food additives that improve texture and cut costs. "Even where they are within national standards, I won't use them." Good ingredients mean higher costs, and because of her insistence Wholefield Bakery struggled in its early days. She did not give up on her principles.
One day a shop assistant said to her: "Sis, it's fine to use vegetable cream. Customers don't know the difference and can't taste it. Anyway, people only eat birthday cake once a year, it won't hurt them." On the strength of that one remark, Sun Tianze let the employee go. "I understand she was probably anxious because business was slow, but that comment told me her values were different from mine and we couldn't work together."
Her insistence on quality borders on the severe, but it is precisely that insistence that has brought her a growing base of repeat customers and seed investment. For a founder, that is both validation and motivation to keep going.
Copyright, copyright
When we first met maker Tian Xing, he described his business as a "music label". Only after further explanation did it become clear that a music label is a company that releases music albums, particularly in rock and independent music. His company's core business is helping foreign musicians distribute their work on professional music platforms in China, and helping Chinese musicians distribute theirs on platforms abroad. What they care about most in that process is copyright.
Tian Xing says very few companies do this kind of work, probably fewer than ten nationwide. Getting Chinese music onto foreign platforms involves many technical barriers, and the control lies
in foreign hands, so specialist companies like his are needed to break through those barriers. That promotes cultural exchange and also plays a vital role in protecting intellectual property.
China is now paying more attention to copyright. In 2015 the National Copyright Administration's tough anti-piracy order cut deep into the piracy problem; the music market rallied against piracy and gradually changed the old assumption among internet users that music should be free. Major platforms have also accelerated the licensing of legitimate music to give users a reliable catalogue. These shifts give start-ups targeting niche segments of the music market strong growth prospects.
Alongside copyright protection, Tian Xing plans to launch a music festival project: "Something like the Zhangbei Grassland Music Festival, using music to promote our hometown of Tangshan. The problem is that we don't know which government departments to approach." The makerspace does what it can to resolve makers' questions and difficulties, and also calls on the relevant departments to take note.
Tangshan's makerspaces are in full bloom, and there are some rare flowers among them. Today's seedlings will become the pillars of the city's economy tomorrow, and a powerful force behind its economic transformation and upgrading.
Today we turn ideas into reality; tomorrow we look forward to seeing what they become. Related:
The defining features of a makerspace
1. Open and low-cost: open to the general public, with some services free, some paid and some on a membership basis, giving founders a relatively low-cost environment in which to grow.
2. Collaboration and mutual support: salons, boot camps, training and competitions build exchange and community among founders, and the shared workspace encourages mutual help, inspiration and resource sharing, so that bringing people together produces a multiplier effect.
3. Integration: teams with talent, innovation with entrepreneurship, online with offline, incubation with investment.
4. Convenience: space and events make it easy for founders to showcase products, share ideas and pitch projects. Start-ups also get practical support during their seed and growth stages, such as financial services, business registration, legal services and help applying for subsidies, so they can grow quickly and healthily.
5. Full service: the materials, equipment and facilities needed for innovation and entrepreneurship.