From 6 People And 1 Machine To A 10,800㎡ Factory, How Did YindeKuai Keep Growing Despite Having No Orders?

Looking back on my entrepreneurial journey, as a native of Yiyang, Hunan, I have actually been rooted in the printing industry in Guangdong for 29 years. Before founding Ink Kuai, I had 23 years of experience working in a traditional printing factory. Previously, the factory was fully equipped with Heidelberg traditional printing equipment and had long been deeply engaged in traditional manual printing. Traditional printing production processes are complicated. A standard manual requires seven production steps including paper cutting, plate making, folding, and binding. The production cycle is long, upfront costs are high, and small batch orders are difficult to fulfill-these are long-standing pain points that traditional printing struggles to overcome.

In 2021, I went to Guangzhou to attend an industry exhibition and saw inkjet rotary printing equipment in person for the first time. I found that it only requires printing and binding to complete finished products, greatly streamlining the complex traditional production process. Based on years of industry experience, I believe inkjet rotary printing is the future trend of digital printing. After the exhibition, I resolutely resigned and founded Yinkuai in Zhongshan, Guangdong.

Previously, a friend from the Zhongshan Printing Association inquired about our corporate vision and mission, and we have a clear positioning: Printing Fast aims to build a modern printing enterprise characterized by "wealthy employees, strong enterprise, and significant social contributions." Printing technology is one of China's four great inventions, but over the past century, the core printing technology has long been monopolized by overseas companies. This is also our original intention to deeply cultivate domestic inkjet and uphold the upgrade of local printing technology.

Three stories

Building the foundation for the rapid development of printing

On the five-year entrepreneurial journey, Inkfast had no ready-made industry templates to copy. As the first domestic inkjet rotary printer in Zhongshan, we independently explored domestic equipment supporting processes and back-end connection models. The following three real customer and production stories fully record Printfast's growth and transformation.

01

The Story of Belief: Standing Firm in Industry Doubts and Holding Firm in the Face of Zero Orders

At the start of production, we were full of anticipation: relying on domestically produced inkjet equipment that leads local peers, scattered small orders from the market would continuously flow to factories. But the reality was quite the opposite. At that time, the printing industry was plagued by inherent biases, with most peers believing that domestic printing equipment was outdated and that inkjet rotary printed products had substandard image quality. Affected by industry skepticism, Yin De Kuai did not receive a single valid order for a full two months before production began, putting pressure on the factory's finances and facing the risk of bankruptcy at any time.

A senior industry colleague who cares deeply about me specifically advised me, bluntly saying that domestic equipment is unlikely to break through in the short term, and suggested shutting down the factory as soon as possible to cut losses in time and minimize losses. But our team remains convinced of two points: First, domestic printing equipment technology will gradually catch up with imported equipment in the future; Second, the digitalization of inkjet wheels is an irreversible direction for printing. Relying on this belief, we gritted our teeth and endured the startup winter to reach where we are today. From this experience, we deeply realized: many things are not believed only after seeing them, but only after choosing to believe that we have the chance to see the outcome.

02

The story of quality: Using traditional quality control standards to overcome the challenge of printing white lines

In the third month after the company was established, we connected with a client. This customer had a large number of small-batch production orders for several hundred manuals, adapted for inkjet rotary printing, but initially commissioned two factories to test orders, both of which had white line defects due to large color block printing, failing to meet shipping standards. The customer approached us with a 'give it a try' attitude, and I immediately promised: if our products also had white line issues, we would give the entire batch of manuals free of charge.

At that time, we had only been in production for a short time, with only 600dpi precision in use, and the industry lacked mature technical solutions to solve the common problem of large color patches and white lines. Drawing on 23 years of management experience in traditional printing factories and drawing on the traditional print master inspection system, I implemented a dedicated control plan on the inkjet rotary printing line: for every batch of product printed, the on-duty machine captain thoroughly inspects and checks quality, records quality inspections are made, defective products with white lines are picked out on site, and the causes of defects are traced simultaneously. Relying on this seemingly clumsy traditional quality control method, we successfully delivered flawless finished products. Since then, the customer has entrusted all instruction manual orders to our production, which further proves that the strict quality control systems of traditional printing can also be effective when implemented in digital inkjet printing.

03

The story of Benben: During periods of loss, he bore tens of thousands of losses himself, but through a sense of responsibility, he secured long-term customers

The end of 2021 was the most difficult period for Yidekuai's operations, with a fixed monthly loss of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan. At that time, we received an order for a shower enclosure manufacturer's manual-over 400 manuals, with an order amount of only a few hundred yuan. During production, there was a page error error: page 3 was mistakenly connected to page 2, the entire batch of manuals was invalidated, and the misprinted products were packed and stored together with the shower enclosure products. Over 400 manuals corresponded to nearly 10 container products, and the estimated loss of all rework was tens of thousands of yuan.

The quality manager contacted by the customer bore partial responsibility for oversights in inbound inspection and originally hoped both parties would share the rework costs. Yet even in the difficult situation of continuous losses, we still adhere to our corporate responsibilities and proactively promise externally: Yindekuai will take full responsibility for production errors, and all rework materials and labor costs will be borne by us, with customers paying no fees.

After the matter was properly resolved, the client admitted that this was the first time in their career they had encountered a supplier who had orders worth just a few hundred yuan and voluntarily absorbed losses of tens of thousands of yuan. Subsequently, this client printed all instruction manuals for all categories at designated locations for fast production and continued to introduce us to many high-quality new clients. To this day, we have always believed: sticking to our principles is the most cost-effective intangible asset for a company.

In the broader environment

Committed to deepening quality and service

Looking back at the development of the domestic inkjet rotary printing industry, five years ago, domestic inkjet equipment was rare in the market. After rapid industry growth, domestic inkjet rotary printing equipment is now flourishing everywhere, with both equipment and printing capacity surplused across the industry, plunging the industry into extreme price competition.

From the perspective of small and medium-sized digital printing factories, our view is clear: future industry competition will not be about lower prices or faster printing speeds, but about refined production implementation and full-chain supporting services. The vast majority of customers choose long-term cooperative suppliers, and their needs go beyond "printing and shaping the product"-they hope printing factories can help solve the challenges of full-chain product production. There is no lower limit to price negotiations, but no upper limit to service sales.

Finally, a few words of encouragement to all colleagues in the printing industry: there is no glory that waits for to come, only brilliance that comes from hard work. Though the road is long, if you walk it you will arrive; though the task is difficult, if you act, you will succeed.