The 7th Creating Youth -- China Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition came to an end in Harbin on November 11. An XMUT project --A4Box, Pioneer of a New Era for China Branding of Small Kitchen Appliances–succeeded over 25,000 competing projects nationwide to win the gold medal in the Commercial and Industrial Growth Group. At the award ceremony, Fu Zhenbang, a secretary of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Youth League, had a cloud dialogue with the young entrepreneurs over screen, encouraging them to create new and greater achievements, seizing opportunities of the time.
The A4Box kitchen appliances was created by XMUT 2016 alumni You Shaofeng and Li Wanqiu, coached by Zheng Zhengkun, Party Secretary of the School of International Languages committee. The brand aims at developing cute and innovative kitchen appliances for the new urban middle class “to help then obtain pleasure in cooking and added happiness through excellent products and services". Positioned as "novelty kitchen toys", the A4Box has been at the forefront of the industry in design and category innovation, appealing very much to female consumers of the new urban middle class.
A4Box Multi-Function Cooking Pot made RMB 21.5 million in a year starting from scratch, A4Box Self-heated Bento Box hit RMB 600,000 on its first day online sale, and ranked first of its kind for six consecutive months, reaching out to Korea, USA, Singapore and other countries. The A4Box company focuses on online operations, owns Tmall flagship store, JD flagship store, Xiaohongshu flagship store, has 200 online channel vendors in Xiaomi Youpin, Yitiao, Suning and more, and is stationed in 500 offline stores like Shundian, City Super, Ole and Super Species. Since its first product launch in August 2018, 9 products have been independently developed so far. As of June 2020, the cumulative domestic and foreign revenues were 74.05 million yuan.
The competition this year is co-sponsored by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council, the Government of Heilongjiang Province, and the Government of Jiangxi Province. A total of 25,000 entrepreneurial projects participated in the competition since its launch in August this year, and more than 400 of them were selected from the commercial-industrial group and the agricultural-rural group to enter the national final, furthered divided into preliminary, semi-final, and finals. The finals were completed through online project data review, video road shows and defenses, resulting in a total of 17 golds 33 silvers, 70 bronzes and a few outstanding awards.(School of International Languages, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Park, XMUT Youth League Committee)
At the award ceremony
Some A4Box products
