How a Yongkang Small Business Owner Makes 20 Million RMB a Year with a Light-Asset Model

Ying Liang is 30 and has been running an electric power tools e-commerce business in Yongkang, Zhejiang for nearly ten years. He doesn’t own a factory; he rents three offices in a commercial building and manages four or five people. Annual sales reach 20 million yuan. His main product is a chainsaw, priced just over 200 yuan per unit, weighing four kilograms net. He ships more than 100 packages a day, with peak days hitting 100,000 yuan in sales.

His approach differs from most of his peers. While others rush to lease fancy offices and hire aggressively, he focuses entirely on brand operations. He customizes packaging—having the manufacturer add foam inserts and print individual certificates of conformity—so buyers feel they’re opening something premium. Take the bone saw: it was originally added only as an optional accessory to meet specific customer requests, yet it sold explosively within two months with virtually no promotional spend.

What matters most, though, is how he calculates costs. Previously, shipping to western China cost more than the profit on a single order, so he considered leaving that market. Then Pinduoduo set up a regional transit warehouse in northwest China, followed by free doorstep delivery to villages, with shipping costs covered by the platform. That business came back, adding tens of thousands of yuan in annual profit.

Side note: this model is typical of “brand-oriented operators” in industrial-cluster e-commerce. Yongkang is the largest hardware-tools manufacturing hub in China, with a highly mature supply chain. Manufacturers readily accommodate small-batch customization—even starting at 500 units—and proactively offer door-to-door delivery, signaling overcapacity and a need for reliable distribution channels. Ying Liang’s real moat isn’t the product itself but his sharp sense of downstream consumer scenarios (such as bone-saw demand) and his speed in responding to shifts in platform logistics policy. While this asset-light model is replicable because its barrier is operational know-how rather than capital, it remains vulnerable due to dependence on a single category and platform-policy volatility.

Original: Me, 30, asset-light, small team, 20 million in annual sales