[Ear Talk] Feiao James: Businessman, Teacher, Engineer

wedge

, if everyone is asked to name their "favorite HiFi brand" online, the answers are mostly varied. However, if you ask about the most existential brand in the domestic portable HiFi circle, I'm afraid most people will point to Feiao. As the largest and most representative enterprise in the circle, Feiao has always been at the forefront of the industry in the course of more than ten years of development. However, most people know very little about James, the founder of Feiao.

many people think of him, is the "Internet celebrity" boss who spends all-weather on Weibo. It seems that as long as he closes his eyes, he can imagine the picture of him pointing the country in a luxurious and spacious office. Compared with the all-powerful image on the Internet, he is undoubtedly much more low-key in reality: he rarely shows up, does not like to take photos, basically does not participate in exhibitions in the circle, and occasionally speaks like gold. Different from the huge enterprise in the spotlight he created, James has more or less mysterious atmosphere for outsiders, and there has never been any gossip around him and Feiao. Last summer, thanks to a rare opportunity, we came to Feiao base camp in Baiyun District, Guangzhou with curiosity, and started a new period of ear talk.

's interview was arranged in James's private office-an unexpectedly small space of only more than 20 square meters. Sitting behind his desk, James is just a standard appearance of a "street old man"-bald head, not tall, cotton T-shirt, underpants, slippers, it is not too much to describe it as "ordinary. Only a pair of energetic eyes under rimless glasses and the involuntary leaning body of the front desk staff who guided us when entering the door reminded us of the identity of the owner of this office.

James saw us entering the door and glanced at the mi band on his left hand. "It's about 10: 00, now it's 10: 01, you are quite punctual." He got up and walked to the old and white sofa in the corner of the office, motioning for us to sit together. There are no common tea trays and tea sets on the tea table. Instead, three bottles of Nongfu Mountain Spring have been prepared. There are no feng shui ornaments that are quite popular in Guangdong. We sat on the sofa and looked around. The only thing that attracted our attention was a model of an Airbus A380 on James's desk.

our 7-hour interview, we opened the chatterbox from this model.

1. Stories

James was born in a family of military officers in the 70s. Under the influence of the pilot's father, he had a strong interest in aviation since childhood. A decent family background laid a solid foundation for James in his early growth. He was admitted to the radio communication major of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics after the college entrance examination. Thanks to the convenience of his own profession, James came into contact with "trendy" equipment such as Walkman from overseas very early, and thus started the fever process for the next few decades.

in 1992, James's first job after graduating from university was to engage in software and hardware research and development in a local communication equipment company, but he was more eager to find passion in his field of interest. So in 1995, he went south to Guangzhou and came to the famous HiFi power amplifier factory "Gao Shi" in China, relying on his professional accumulation to devote himself to the practice of interest. In 1999, Bubugao, who was already prestigious in the industry at that time, offered James an olive branch and invited him to play on a larger stage. After the complacent James joined Bubugao, he was promoted to the head of the R & D department in a short time. The first peak in his career.

even after many years, James still had a bright eye when he mentioned his work at Bubugao to us."For me, the greatest value of Paco's experience lies not in the wealth outside the body, but in the somersault and suffering",James recalled the rigorous business training we experienced day and night, and the sleepless nights with team members for technical research. He said that in the golden seven years of his life, he and his equally talented colleagues in the team, from cognitive concepts to methods of doing things, have been heavily branded inside such a standardized and precise machine as Bubugao.

Later, James left Bubugao due to physical and family planning reasons. He jokingly said that he had achieved the initial "financial freedom" at that time ". For a whole year, James retired from the Jianghu with his wife's belt and experienced a lot of leisure days after retirement in advance.

left Paco, still kept in touch with his former friends. After "retiring" for a year, he was invited to work as a consultant in a friend's company. At that time, the iPod was selling well all over the world, and many companies that designed dock speakers for the iPod made a lot of money. James, who was keen, found business opportunities and persuaded his friends to develop an exclusive speaker for the first brand of MP3 in China at that time.

structure, hardware, electroacoustic design and finished product manufacturing were nothing to say to James and his old friends. Raw materials were quickly purchased and everything was steadily advancing. James also slowly found the passion of hard work again. However, there was an unexpected situation. The project of the base speaker was suddenly canceled by the cooperative brand, and everything became up in the air. James couldn't bear to lose the early material cost and research and development investment. He locked himself in his study all night and made a decision: start a business and register a brand to push the project forward.

's years of working experience in giant enterprises have made James know the value of the team. At that time, the old employer Bubugao canceled the audio division because of business transformation, and his comrades left the company one after another. James, who learned of this, sent an invitation to his former "revolutionary partners", and everyone hit it off.

the story of "Feiao", this is the beginning.

2. do what we can-the only mystery

talk about enterprises with "step-by-step blood", they often cannot avoid the word "duty" frequently emphasized in step-by-step culture. In recent years, OPPO, vivo and other companies have been in the limelight, and the company's managers have expounded their understanding of "duty" more than once in public, either converging or different. When we asked James about the meaning of "duty" in his mind, he did not say a lot of rhetoric as we imagined, but threw out four very simple words: do what you can."The significance of the truth lies in guiding behavior. It is a bit fancy to talk too much."

James told us that when Feiao was first born, it was far from having a solid user base and technical accumulation as it is today, and it also had painful running-in and confused trial and error. What supports the company to this day is not the opportunities that fall from the sky in the story, but the "stability overrides everything" of the founding team.

Feiao's earliest positioning when it was founded was actually not related to HiFi, but to be a digital accessories company like Belkin Corporation. The E3 earpiece, which was launched at the end of 2007 and received great acclaim in the European and American markets, enabled James to discover market opportunities, and the company began to transform and focus on research and development in the field of portable HiFi. From portable earphones with good quality and low price, to the first generation of national brick X3 and phenomenal product X1, to the earphone department set up by all DAP manufacturers in the industry, James and his team have worked hard for 13 years to make the name Feiao known to more users in more than 100 countries around the world step by step in each transformation.

in the hearts of the people in the industry, whether they are willing to admit it or not, Feiao is a stable and powerful giant: rich product reserves, precise market strategy, large fan base and consistent reputation. James, the founder of the company who often makes public appearances on the Internet, is naturally called by many people in private as a well-known decision maker and "the shrewdest businessman". During the interview, we revealed the existence of this statement to James in due course, and expressed our opinion on his evaluation. "I don't think I am an excellent businessman," we guessed the first half of the sentence, but did not guess the explanation of the second half:

"A good businessman must have ambition, in other words, ambition and hard work, but I don't have it. What I have done over the years is just to accomplish my part within the framework of planning in advance."

this seemingly "Versailles" sentence, let us fall into a brief meditation. Seeing that we did not respond, James added:"Every major decision of an enterprise is not a flash of one person, but relies on a large amount of market data and detailed analysis. Leaders only make reasonable judgments based on existing resources;the same, product development needs to follow the logic of business. The responsibility of engineers in mature enterprises is not to pursue their own so-called "extreme", but to solve problems for customers and provide stable quality products to target customers at reasonable prices within their capabilities."

is different from many bosses who pour chicken soup to everyone after making achievements. James looked light when he said these words. In his opinion, there are not many secrets to Feiao's development process. It can be said to be simple and even boring."I think I can only be regarded as an engineer who has received some systematic management training. Together, we are just implementing a set of basic strategies that belong to mature enterprises."

, James only summed up the mystery of Feiao as "acting according to one's ability". In our opinion, this may be the reservation of the operator, or it may be more like a light weight. Although James did not mention many details, these four words are thought-provoking enough.

3. Face Dispute

the word "tree attracts the wind" is used to describe Feiao, which is more appropriate. In the process of more than 13 years of development, the criticism and doubts surrounding the company have never stopped, and the two issues that have been mentioned most are "no tuning" and "originality. Halfway through the interview, we posed a question to James in a pretending casual tone: how to view the relationship between learning and plagiarism.

he quickly responded: "You want to ask me what I think of my products being copied from the appearance, right?"

this "calm" is beyond our expectation.

"I guess you will ask similar questions," James pointed to mate30 on the desktop. "All consumer products have to be designed to serve the needs. Smartphones have developed for so many generations. The backplane is nothing more than ceramics, metal and glass. There is not much difference in appearance. The first" Liu Haibing "mobile phone belongs to Apple, and the first multi-camera mobile phone comes from LG. Is Huawei's mate30 copied Apple and LG?" seeing that we smiled unconsciously, he added"if any industry wants to develop, there will be reference and learning between products, but 'similar looks 'is a subjective judgment of thousands of people, while 'plagiarization' and 'plagiarization' are serious objective concepts. In business, they have clear boundaries."

we joked that the meaning of this sentence can be summarized as "If you think there is a problem, please sue, otherwise the rumors have nothing to do with me", James is noncommittal. He explained that Feiao is a complete "user-oriented company". The changes in appearance design combine various considerations of market sentiment, user experience and manufacturing cost. For example, the reason why the appearance of M15 adopts a circular arc design completely different from that of M11 is, on the one hand, it continues the classic shape of its own ear holder that has been used for many years, and on the other hand, it is also to avoid the discomfort brought by the sharp edge. For netizens who insist that Feiao "plagiarized", such a change has helplessly become another proof from copying X-profit and to copying X-ni.

commercial problems are solved by commercial means. This explanation has obviously been prepared for a long time, and the logic is almost impeccable. But James also admitted that Feiao, like most companies, had suffered losses due to insufficient copyright awareness, and took the initiative to mention the recent "promotional film storm". "It is impossible for the development of an enterprise to never make mistakes. We will not pretend to be wrong because of the so-called 'face'. Whether I am or Feiao, I hope to turn every loss I have eaten into a wake-up call and supply." As he said, he called up the company's public information, which listed more than 60 designs, utility models and invention patents registered by Feiao over the years, as well as more than 20 pieces of software copyright information. "The audition tracks we built into the player are paid a lot of fees to the copyright owner and have been officially licensed."

of the rapid response, clear logic, and no personal feelings, James is undoubtedly the most skilful and comfortable among all the interviewees who "talk in the ear" so far. Although we did not disclose the direction of the interview to him in advance, every dialogue in this office today has obviously been carefully thought by him beforehand.

the topic went on here, our two interviewers smiled bitterly at each other. Today's interview is calmer and smoother than expected. I'm afraid there is no chance that all kinds of wonderful hot stalks and imaginary scenes will happen.

, when we talked about the phrase "migrant workers tuning", which was labeled by a few netizens on Feiao's head, we noticed a subtle change in James's mood.

"This is unfounded slander",James, the familiar smile on his face disappeared, and the sudden change of tone seemed to lower the temperature in the office. "The person responsible for the tuning of Feiao products is one of our original founding partners, my old comrade-in-arms for many years, he is an outstanding expert. Feiao has served millions of users over the years. We respect the personal preferences of every burning friend and never explain to ourselves on the topic of good or bad tuning. The work of each of our colleagues is to implement the company's ideas and strategies. I will not accept the disrespect for people."

may be aware of his excitement, James took a sip of water and was silent for a while.

"Feiao's adjustment of sound follows the principle of' there is no best, only the most appropriate', which may be slightly different from the understanding of some burning friends," James pointed to the rows of work stations in the hall outside the door and continued:"We have a large development team and know exactly what kind of voice each product is making. Different target groups will not converge in the selection of tuning styles. The engineer's job is to design machines that meet the needs of users under the guidance of the analysis team. From dozens of small earphones to high-end players with a price of 10,000 yuan, tell me whether Feiao's tuning is accepted by the target users, not a few words on the Internet, but sales data in the terminal market."

said these words, his signature smile climbed up James's mouth again. Unconsciously, the interview returned to his rhythm, as if everything just happened was just our illusion.

4. identity

whether James is willing to admit it subjectively or not, today he is considered a successful entrepreneur under a wide range of standards. The last question we asked him in a one-day interview was an interesting idea: would you start your own business in the electronics industry if you had another chance to choose?

"I hope I can be a teacher",James replied with a smile, "It is also polishing. Engineers polish products and teachers polish people. The life of products is short, but the fetters of people and people are much longer."

is a "teacher" complex that is not uncommon in the current entrepreneur circle, the reason given by James, who is a technical background, is quite thoughtful. Although he has reached the age of "knowing the destiny", although it is difficult for him to return to the podium to "teach", he has obviously done a lot of "educating people" actively or passively.

came out of James's office and we had a short visit inside Feiao Company. Many employees in the company dressed like James style -- T-shirt, slippers and underpants. In sharp contrast to the casual dress style, it is the working state of everyone:is approaching the off-duty time, in such a large space, hundreds of people did not make any extra noise, only the keyboard tapping and occasional business communication.

to our surprise, Matt, a senior employee on the side, has taken it easy. He described James as a "strict and tolerant class teacher": on the one hand, the requirements for work are extremely demanding, and any mistakes can't escape his eyes, which often makes everyone feel more pressure; on the other hand, for the temporary lack of ability and experience of employees, he was extremely patient and did not hesitate to teach his own experience. "The young people in the company have a complicated feeling of" respect and fear "towards James. We thank him for his cultivation and are very afraid that we will disappoint him." Matt's remarks represent the aspirations of more than 200 employees in Feiao.

, in the eyes of Zhang Gong, the current CEO of Feiao and who started his business with James, James has a fuller image. He summed up his evaluation of James as follows:small win depends on wisdom, big win depends on virtue."When I was walking high, he was my idol. I made up my mind at that time that I would follow him wherever he went." He told us in a tone of admiration that James had no leadership in his job, and had been taking the lead for many years, undertaking all the most difficult tasks in team development,"He is the backbone and the team's Poseidon needle."

interview, James once joked that he is now a "redundant person" for the company-only choose a specific day to work in the company, neither signing documents nor planning, the company can operate normally without him. However, this huge enterprise has been deeply branded by him: rigorous management standards and complete product plans are good habits brought by James from Bubugao; Good team building mechanism, scientific rank system and detailed personnel training plan are also valuable assets he gave to other managers of Feiao. Even though he claims that he is in a semi-retired state, every word and decision made by this "mediocre" middle-aged man is still in this hundreds of people company.

today's flying pride, like the huge 380 airliner on James's desk, already has the ability to soar in the blue sky for a long time and make people look up to it. James, who is committed to "teaching and educating people", pays attention to its operation like a captain, grasps key decisions, and keeps whispering to everyone:is stable, stable and stable.