This afternoon I received a call from Hangzhou—someone offering Alibaba promotion services. As I listened, it was all about methods and tricks: spending money to boost traffic. I’m deeply grateful to Alibaba for providing such a great sales platform. I built my business step by step there, and I still rely on Alibaba to showcase my products. So I spoke honestly with the salesperson: my production capacity is limited and resource‑dependent, because I must control quality. I can’t scale up too fast—if a big promotion drove a flood of orders I might not be able to fulfill them. My current sales are decent thanks to integrity, authenticity, and many repeat customers. I’ve never run formal ads or sales campaigns. I simply focus on my work, sharing my moxibustion experiences and my factory‑founding journey, teaching people what I learn along the way. That’s how I’ve gradually built up my customer base. I always let customers try a small batch first; if they like it, they come back for more. I always put myself in the customer’s shoes. After all, I’m my own biggest customer—if I don’t use the product myself, I can’t track quality or figure out how to make it better. As I explained all this, the salesperson suddenly said she wanted her parents to try moxibustion! In the end, I found myself pitching my own products to her.
Maybe she rarely meets people who pour their heart into making and selling good products—she was genuinely moved by my sincerity.
A few days ago I asked my assistant to deliver some moxa sticks to the nearby clinic. They’d called me several times to hurry up. When my assistant returned, she told me someone at the clinic had been waiting specifically for my brand’s sticks. The clinic has other beautiful gold‑tipped moxa cones, yet they insisted on my 2009 vintage, 5:1 ratio sticks. Such a small thing, but it warmed my heart. Many of my new customers have gotten to know me in our chat group and feel connected to me—maybe they love my sticks because they love me. Sometimes I can’t even tell. Yet there are also customers who don’t know me at all, but discover my products and reach out. I remember Xuanxuan telling me about a parent at the local Country Garden Middle School—a neighbor in our complex—who found her store on Taobao because word had spread among nearby residents. I even gifted a box of sticks to the school’s teachers and parents. They liked the product so much they went online looking for more. It proves that exterior polish isn’t everything—people who pay attention to quality can feel the difference.
Meanwhile, my group friend Xiaoniu has been jumping into other chat groups to recommend my products—she nearly got kicked out for it! Today another friend, Milan, told me somebody in a different group said my products were no good, and she was furious! I comforted her, saying this is actually a good sign: it means I’ve grown strong enough to provoke criticism. We can guarantee we won’t attack others, but we can’t stop others from attacking us. No matter what they say, I can’t silence them—I just need to keep doing my best work.
I move you, you move me—and that mutual inspiration will always endure.