China has hundreds of thousands of hardware product manufacturers, but it is still labeled as a “world factory” rather than a “world brand”.
Focusing on Zhejiang, Yongkang is the “Hardware Capital of the World” and one of the “Top Three Global Power Tools” together with Japan and Germany. However, it has long used “OEM” and “low price” as its survival passwords, and its profits are as thin as spring ice.
Nearly 80% of the profits generated from factories to overseas consumers are divided up by overseas brands, distributors, and standard setters, but Chinese factories are still involved in the “20%” profit limit.
At the same time, geopolitical risks have intensified, raw material prices have skyrocketed, and international trade barriers have erected. The traditional model of going overseas has become unsustainable.
Change is imminent.
“Currently, the demand for companies to go overseas is being upgraded from single sales to full-link brands, channels, and standard overseas services. The supporting overseas service facilities are the biggest shortcomings of the industry’s group overseas expansion.” Xu Weiqiang, chairman of the Mailian Group, as a “veteran” who has been deeply involved in the hardware and power tool industry for decades, put it bluntly.
This shortcoming is being addressed by him, together with the relevant local departments in Yongkang and the state-owned Zhejiang China Science and Technology Hardware City Group Co., Ltd.
“Going to sea as a group” is high-speed rail.
To understand Yongkang Hardware’s latest exploration, we must go back to the transformation trajectory of a key enterprise.
In 1983, Crown Power Tool Factory was established and started out as OEM OEM, but its performance was once at a loss; in 1997, Xu Weiqiang graduated and took over. After more than ten years of hard work, its own brand “CROWN” ranked first in the market share of more than 30 “Belt and Road” countries.
But at that time, Xu Weiqiang saw a more far-reaching path – just one company working alone would never be able to leverage changes in the entire industrial belt.
In 2018, he made a major decision: changing its name to “MaiLian”, transforming into an industrial Internet platform service provider, opening and sharing its own brand “CROWN” to the outside world, and developing it into an AI-driven dual-cycle industrial service platform.
The underlying logic of this decision is clear: most domestic small and medium-sized enterprises lack brands, channels and standardized overseas capabilities. They go it alone to build their own brands to go overseas. Channel laying and after-sales service require huge investments.
Instead of fighting individually, it is better to go to sea together.
This model is showing a strong aggregation effect.
The latest data shows that the Mailian platform has brought together more than 500 production-end companies, and has downstream links with more than 450 hardware industry buyers. Its business covers more than 100 countries, covering 13 major categories such as power tools, hand tools, garden tools, and welding tools.
The cumulative trade volume of the platform has exceeded 4 billion yuan. The global channel network covers more than 100 markets in Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States, and has more than 400 domestic and overseas warehousing, distribution and maintenance service providers.
Yongkang Mingpu Industry and Trade Co., Ltd. is a company that produces electric hammers and picks. Like many Yongkang companies, it once manufactured for foreign brands.
In more than ten years, the company has grown from more than 10 people to hundreds of people. Although the business has grown every year, chairman Wang Huiyuan feels that “every step is very difficult, and it is actually just about making a profit.”
Wang Huiyuan introduced that after joining the platform, sales increased from more than 4 million yuan to more than 25 million yuan in 2025.
He particularly emphasized the transparency of the platform – domestic and foreign buyers publish purchasing information on the platform, and the platform recommends suitable factories for inquiry and negotiation based on needs. The two parties complete the transaction on the platform, and the service fee is clearly marked, and there is no middleman to make the difference.
Zhejiang Taifu Pump Industry Co., Ltd., which has been focusing on water pump manufacturing for more than 40 years, received a cooperation invitation from Mailian in 2024. Zhang Junjie, the general manager of the company, said frankly: “At that time, I was worried, would Mailian Company seize our market, and would each other become competitors?” On second thought, Taifu could not copy the stable global sales network of Mailian Company in a short time, and Mailian Company could not quickly build a water pump super factory.
“Since I can’t be you and you can’t be me, then choose to hug each other.” Soon, Taifu received a surprise.
From the conclusion of the cooperation in August 2024 to 2025, its sales have exceeded US$10 million.
With such an increase, Zhang Junjie was quite emotional, “Taifu spent 20 years cultivating a customer with an annual purchase volume from 0 to 40 million US dollars.”
This kind of “visible” benefit makes more small and medium-sized enterprises willing to join this “big ship”.
Xu Weiqiang used transportation methods to make a vivid metaphor: “If traditional foreign trade is a green train, e-commerce overseas is a high-speed train, and group overseas travel is a high-speed rail.”
The expedition of a joint fleet.
It is worth mentioning that this model continues to iterate after it takes shape.
Xu Weiqiang introduced that in the past, when talking about going overseas, it was just about opening up Mailian’s own brand and channels; now when talking about going overseas, the core is to teach everyone to copy brand services, channel services, and standard services, so that more people can integrate 100 Crown’s brands, channels, and standards to jointly expand overseas services.
The Tiantian Pulse Fair and the opening ceremony of the Yongkang Product Selection Center to be held on April 12 have the theme of “Replicable Services and Global Co-Growth”. “The core value of this Pulse Fair is to build an open and shared industrial service platform to answer the question of ‘Who will provide overseas services and who will invest in the facilities’?”
The proposition is to drive the entire industry chain to jointly enter the overseas service track.”
“Yongwujin is a well-known hardware industry belt in the country.
After two years of exploration, today, we join hands with the Hardware City Group to launch the Yongwujin Product Selection Center, hoping to link the entire industry through the closed-loop model of ‘domestic product selection + overseas implementation’.
Overseas regional service centers in 16 countries around the world and 23 provinces and cities in China have unified brands, unified standards, and jointly built channels, using digital intelligence and AI as tools to provide domestic and foreign customers with one-stop empowerment from product selection to branding and localization.
It is not only an important carrier for the government to promote industrial digital transformation and brands to go overseas, but also a key node for the seven major service models to move from strategic conception to actual verification. It also carries the significance of deepening government-enterprise cooperation, linking global resources, and building a high-quality core platform for overseas expansion under the “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
“We hope to break down the mature overseas service model into standardized SOPs around the five dimensions of category services, public brand services, regional supply chain services, national supply chain services, and regional sales service platforms, and implement them through the whole process of ‘concept-details-objects’ to help companies quickly grasp the logic of overseas services and realize the transformation from manufacturers to industrial service providers.” Xu Weiqiang said.
It is understood that the Yongkang Product Selection Center will be unveiled simultaneously on site. As the core extension of Tiantianmai Rendezvous in Yongkang, it will be combined with the digital capabilities of Xiaomai APP, cloud business platform, and indicator system to form an online and offline closed-loop service carrier to provide enterprises with full-chain support such as industrial belt docking, talent training, and digital empowerment.
In the land of central Zhejiang, hardware is a prosperous country.
On April 12, Yongkang International Convention and Exhibition Center and Yongwujin Hardware Industry Belt Product Selection Center will be officially opened.
The foreign procurement matchmaking conference held at the same time is expected to attract more than 400 guests from home and abroad.
Under the theme of “replicable services and global symbiosis”, Yongkang Hardware is using the “chain sharing” model of “eight years of sharpening a sword” to explore a new route from “exporting products overseas” to “exporting brands and services overseas”.
This may be the only way for China’s hardware industry to go from “big” to “strong” – not a voyage of a giant ship, but an expedition of a joint fleet.
