Welcome to EasyBizChina News' brand new feature: This Week's Featured Supplier!
Every week we will highlight one company among our more than 100,000 Chinese suppliers, to demonstrate both the diversity and quality of our many member companies, but also to provide our non-Chinese readers and users with an insight into the inner workings and visions of a real mainland Chinese company.
One thing is to place orders and do deals with Chinese companies via an EasyBizChina.com profile, through e-mail or by telephone or a crackling Skype connection. But what actually goes on behind the scenes in the millions of factories that are the true workhorses of the world's soon-to-be-second-largest economy? "This Week's Featured Supplier" tries to shed at least a little light.
This week's featured EasyBizChina supplier is Winalite International, Limited, one of China's market contenders within the research, production, development and marketing of higher-end sanitary napkins and diapers.
The company is a division of the NASDAQ-listed Hong Kong Winalite Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HKWO), founded by Chen Huaide, a native of China's southern Guangdong province and a man accustomed to hardship. Born into abject poverty in a small town, Mr. Chen had to struggle from the very start just to get an education, but finally managed to graduate from Hong Kong's Technological University with a degree in business administration and economics.
An entrepreneurial soul, Mr. Chen immediately took advantage of China's opening up and had either founded, co-founded or invested in no less than 17 different companies, before Winalite International came to life in 2007, as the direct consequence of a tragedy in Mr. Chen's personal life.
Some years before, the young entrepreneur had watched on helplessly as his mother died of an infection in her womb directly related to the extremely poor hygienic conditions available to menstruating Chinese women at the time. Chen Huaide swore that one day he would find out how to prevent such tragedies, and thusly – when he finally had the resources to do so – he set up a research project together with Tsinghua University (one of China's finest) to develop a new product that could help him fulfill his vow.
After some time a breakthrough finally appeared: The poetically named Love Moon Anion Sanitary Napkin system. Inspired by traditional Chinese medicine the project staff concluded that the insertion of an ion-negative patch into high-quality sanitary napkins would greatly increase women's health. And so Winalite International, Ltd. came to be, with the specific purpose of developing, producing and selling ion-negative products to both women and, later on, babies.
The company now runs three 10,000-square-meter manufacturing plants, with two located in Mr. Chen's home province of Guangdong and the last one in the city of Chongqing in the Chinese southwest. Winalite International currently employs over 400 people in mainland China, exports about 50% of its annual production to over 50 foreign markets and has set up strategic offices in several countries, including the United States, Russia, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Winalite International's biggest success continues to be the Love Moon Anion Sanitary Napkin – now patented in 169 countries worldwide – but the company's R&D staff constantly seeks to expand upon Mr. Chen's original vow to fight women's diseases. The newest patent presented by the company is a groundbreaking PH value self-testing kit, which is broadly regarded as a major step in women's hygiene products.
Mr. Chen Huaide continues to embody Winalite's strive for striking a balance between good business and actually making a social difference in a China still generally plagued by poverty. The company founder is now a recipient of several Chinese awards for outstanding contributions to the country's social development, is an honorary citizen in both Guangzhou and New York City, is listed 35th among China's biggest givers to charity and is current vice president of the China Poverty Support and Development Association.
Visit Winalite International's profile on EasyBizChina.com
News category: China
Published on this site: Oct. 12, 2009
Source: Original EasyBizChina article