Sail across the sea

Chapter 445 Acrylic Coatings

Water-based interior wall coatings are the third-generation product planned by Gaofan for Xinglong Coatings Company.

The first generation was marine antifouling coatings, targeting small fishing boats and transport vessels along the coast. This project earned Xinglong Coatings Company its first pot of gold.

The second generation is reflective paint for engineering projects, mainly used for painting road traffic markings, targeting highway bureaus and transportation bureaus across the country. Chen Xingquan, along with a group of fellow villagers, traveled all over the country to promote it, and in two years they had completed hundreds of projects and earned more than 2000 million yuan in profit.

With these profits, Chen Xingquan moved the paint factory from Nanhao Township, a remote suburb of Yanzhou County, to the vicinity of the county seat. He hired a professional construction company to build a standardized reinforced concrete factory building and upgraded the production equipment, making it resemble a modern large enterprise.

The marine coatings and reflective coatings business is still ongoing, but more and more companies are copying and imitating it, posing a strong competitive threat to Xinglong Company.

These two types of coatings share some common characteristics. First, they are both engineering-oriented, and customers often expect manufacturers to send technical personnel to the site for guidance. As business volume increases, Xinglong Company faces greater pressure in providing after-sales service.

Secondly, the market is highly regional. Once a local market shows a tendency to protect its own interests, it can easily shut out Xinglong Company's products.

In the mid-to-late 80s, domestic market awareness was rising, but market rules had not yet been established. Local governments began to pay attention to local economic development and worked hard to cultivate local industries.

In order to allow local businesses to develop, many local governments have resorted to market protectionism, using administrative power to crack down on goods from other places. Sending militia to set up roadblocks at intersections to stop out-of-town delivery vehicles is nothing new at this time, with the same reason: this market belongs to us, and goods from other places are not allowed to be brought in.

Reflective paint is mainly used in road construction projects, which are all led by local governments. Once a local area has its own paint factory, even if the product quality is far inferior to that of Xinglong Company, as long as the local leaders give the word, the highway bureau has no choice but to obediently use the local paint.

As for the various shady deals behind the scenes, that goes without saying. In this regard, local businesses have a far greater advantage than out-of-town businesses. The connections they have with relatives and friends, those who fought in the war and went to the countryside together, are things that Chen Xingquan's business team cannot compete with with their silver tongues.

In this context, Gao Fan planned the third generation of coating products for Xinglong Company, namely water-based interior wall coatings for building decoration, which are commonly known as wall paint in later home decoration.

Gao Fan proposed this product for the following reasons: First, housing construction is being carried out on a large scale in various regions, and the building decoration market is about to flourish and will continue for at least 30 years. Interior wall paint is a commodity with a long-lasting market. Second, interior wall paint for home use is a household consumer product that mainly relies on brand marketing and is not easily affected by local protection policies or relationship marketing.

Traditionally, interior wall decoration in Chinese buildings used lime plaster, which had the major drawback of being water-sensitive and prone to peeling. Later, some high-end buildings, as well as buildings with high environmental requirements such as hospitals and laboratories, began to use paint as a coating for interior walls, which provides better water resistance, is clean, and easy to maintain.

The disadvantages of paint are also obvious: it's difficult to apply, requiring a very dry wall surface and multiple coats of putty and sanding. Otherwise, the paint is prone to blistering, powdering, and even peeling. In fact, paint-coated walls often show peeling even after many years, sometimes even worse than plaster. Later, latex paint emerged, effectively overcoming the poor workability of oil-based paint. By the late 70s, water-soluble polyvinyl alcohol paint was developed domestically, offering advantages such as low cost, environmental friendliness, and good workability, and began to be widely used in China.

The interior wall coating proposed by Gao Fan uses modified acrylic emulsion, which is now widely used, as the film-forming substance, also known as the "base material," and then adds pigments, solvents, additives, etc.

Acrylic coatings are significantly superior to polyvinyl alcohol coatings in terms of water resistance, scrub resistance, durability, adhesion, environmental friendliness, and decorative properties. The only drawback is their higher price, roughly five times that of polyvinyl alcohol coatings, which would drastically increase construction costs if used for large buildings.

However, when considering home applications, price is not a particularly critical factor. As incomes rise, people's pursuit of quality of life is increasing. As long as you can promote concepts such as "zero pollution," people are willing to pay for it.

Acrylic paint has been used by merchants in various ways in later generations, such as antibacterial and mildew-proof, zero formaldehyde, and baby protection, but the technology is not actually mysterious.

Gao Fan didn't present all these concepts at once; instead, he proposed a basic design based on the most primitive product model. His original plan was that after things settled down at Southern Rare Earth, he would spend some time at Xinglong Coatings Company to help Chen Xingquan and his team develop the product.

Later, while chatting with Xu Yun at the University of Science and Technology of China, he had a sudden inspiration and hired Xu Yun and his "48-legged" teacher Zhou Dongzhi to serve as process engineers to complete the final product design and process development.

The technical difficulties of interior wall coatings were utterly insignificant to Xu Yun and Zhou Dongzhi. Xinglong Coatings Company successfully developed its acrylic interior wall coating in just two months. Testing revealed that its performance was comprehensively superior to all existing interior wall coatings on the domestic market.

At that time, acrylic paints had already appeared on the foreign market, but for Chinese people, they were considered extremely high-end luxury goods. The country only imported a very small amount for the decoration of some high-end buildings.

Xinglong Company's acrylic coatings are significantly more expensive than traditional paints or polyvinyl alcohol coatings, but are very affordable compared to imported coatings. Most importantly, they don't require foreign exchange, allowing for large-scale supply.

With the coating developed, the next challenge was sales. Chen Xingquan's team had extensive sales experience, but this experience came from selling small plastic products. Their main method involved wining and dining with the leaders of client companies, coupled with unwavering perseverance and a willingness to endure hardship. This approach seemed somewhat mismatched when it came to promoting a new product targeting high-end consumers.

At this point, Gao Min took the initiative to suggest that she lead a team to try a new sales model.

(End of this chapter)