19-year-old self-made multimillionaire

（People's Daily Online）  13:11, May 23, 2013  

Edited and translated by Wang Xin, People's Daily Online.

He earned 5,000 yuan ($815) by selling Chinese lanterns when he was a junior student; his dress shop closed down with loss of 120,000 yuan ($ 19,548) after opened half a year later when he was a high school student; his business of sell painting tools runs well while he was preparing for university entrance examination.

Luo Jingyu, 19, four-year hard experiences of running business, he became the owner of eight shops, three online shops, with assets over 10 million yuan. He is also a freshman of arts department in Hubei University.

Dream
No privilege of birth, Luo Jingyu is from an ordinary family. "My parents told me if I want to get something I should make my own efforts to get it, so I earned petty cash by doing housework when I was little". The dream of doing his own business grows up in his heart. He said, "I want to be a successful entrepreneur like Alibaba's Ma Yu, New Oriental Education's Yu Minhong."

Experience in doing business:
When Luo was a 3rd grade junior student, he had idea of selling lantern when he saw many people fly Chinese lanterns in the square. Then Lu bought some lanterns from a warehouse; but the sales was not as good as he expected because the purchase price was at 2 yuan and selling price was only 8 yuan.

"I felt exhausted and no profit was made after a few lanterns were sold on the first day," he said. Then he found another way to do business. He bought lanterns from the Internet at a very low price of 0.5 yuan and gave his classmates 2 yuan if they sold one lantern at 5 yuan for him. Finally he easily made 5,000 yuan in two days.

With a happy beginning, Luo planned to open a dress shop as he thought the dress market has a good profit margin. "My parents didn't support me to open a dress shop, so I had to borrow 120,000 yuan for it." Although he did market research before starting business, the business was still dull because his different fashion taste was not accepted by customers. The shop eventually closed down after half a year.

Experiencing a big loss, he decided to do something he was familiar with - to sell painting tools; as a fine arts student he knew the market. He convinced an acquaintance to invest 1 million yuan on his stationary shop. With good business mind and efforts, the sales of shop reached 6 million in a year. He seized the opportunity to strike the iron while it is hot, expanding the business and opened more shops in the fourth year.

Luo and his business partners put up four companies, eight shops and three online shops in four years. A stationary shop cashes in millions of revenue.

Life
Young and rich, Luo always keeps a low profile. He uses a cheap cellphone, does not wear luxury dresses, and keeps a simple life style. "It is not easy to make money, so money should be used on something worthy," he said.

His aim is to do well on study and business at the same time. "High efficiency is the key to win," he said. He hopes to establish a startup fund for supporting more new entrepreneur to success.