From OEM to Own Brand: How This Venue Flooring Company Rose to Regional Leadership
In a factory in Jiangmen, Guangdong, workers on the assembly line are conducting the final quality inspection on a batch of table tennis court flooring destined for Europe. The order comes from a long-established German sports equipment manufacturer, whose requirements are nearly exacting: thickness tolerance must not exceed 0.1 mm, surface friction coefficient must remain stable between 0.4 and 0.6, and even odor is strictly regulated. Two decades ago, the factory's owner, Zhu Weixing, was just an OEM sitting on the other side of the negotiation table, hearing the words, "Just follow our standards."
From OEM to own brand, Xingjiafang has walked this path for a full twenty years. The story traces back to 1989. At that time, Zhu Weixing, still a middle school student, followed his father to Shenzhen to visit the International Knitting Machinery Exhibition. A fully automatic Italian seamless pantyhose machine caught his eye and held his gaze. Coming from a family with deep roots in the sock business, he forged an unbreakable bond with the "business underfoot." Little did anyone imagine that this obsession with "foot feel" would eventually lead him into the seemingly unrelated industry of sports flooring.
The First Decade: Building "Muscle Memory" Through OEM
Around 2004, the domestic sports flooring market was almost entirely dominated by imported brands. A standard badminton court flooring from an imported brand could be priced three times higher than domestic alternatives. Zhu Weixing decided to start with the most straightforward approach: OEM for international brands. During those years, his factory workshop was plastered with various process standard cards, from PVC raw material ratios to the number of fiberglass mesh layers, every step executed according to European laboratory data. At the most stringent times, a batch was rejected entirely because the surface texture depth was off by 0.02 mm, resulting in the scrapping of over a dozen tons of rolled material.
"The biggest gain from OEM wasn't profit; it was teaching the team what 'being meticulous' truly means," Zhu Weixing later emphasized in interviews, often recalling a specific detail: to simulate the force exerted when athletes make sudden stops and turns, they modified a testing machine themselves, using a motor to drive a rubber wheel across sample surfaces in repeated friction, running tens of thousands of cycles. This makeshift method later became the prototype for Xingjiafang's R&D center.
Turning Point: Turning Down a "Cost-Saving" Deal
In 2016, a Southeast Asian client approached them with a large order but flexible requirements: the surface layer could be thinner since it would be installed indoors, and no one would measure it with a ruler. Zhu Weixing calculated that following the client's quote would double their profit, yet he still returned the contract. His reasoning was simple: "With flooring like this, an athlete's fall could affect them for life. If we save 0.5 mm today, we might be saving away a child's knee tomorrow."
The loss of this order left the factory idle for two months. But three months later, a domestic chain fitness brand came knocking. They said they had compared over a dozen manufacturers in the market and heard about a factory that "wouldn't even take foreigners' money," so they wanted to check it out. That collaboration led Xingjiafang to customize impact-resistant flooring for gyms, incorporating a high-elasticity foam layer that reduced the noise of dropped dumbbells by 40%. This batch was installed across the brand's 200-plus stores nationwide, and to this day, there hasn't been a single complaint related to flooring issues.
The Last Five Years: Turning "Small" into a Moat
In 2017, Xingjiafang officially established its brand phase of "Making You Fall in Love with Sports," expanding from sports equipment to full-scenario sports flooring. By 2021, the brand positioning was upgraded to "Master-Level, World-Class." Behind this was substantial investment: the R&D center grew from an initial three people to over a dozen, with a dedicated sports mechanics laboratory established to test the impact of different flooring thicknesses on joint stress. The product line expanded from single table tennis court flooring to over twenty scenarios, including badminton, basketball, dance, gyms, and even outdoor interlocking floating floors.
In December 2024, Xingjiafang was selected as a member unit in the "Brand Power" preferred project for table tennis tables. This selection, co-hosted by the "Discover Brands" program team and the University of International Business and Economics, required participating companies to pass multiple rounds of screening, including qualification audits and public opinion monitoring. Concurrently, Xingjiafang's trademark registrations now cover China, Japan, the United States, the European Union, and several Southeast Asian countries, with ISO 9001 quality management system certification covering the entire process from cutting to precision finishing.
Today: Doing "Fast Business" with "Painstaking Effort"
Now, on Xingjiafang's official website, the project case page showcases over twenty real-world scenarios, including steel-structured swimming pool table tennis halls, dance studios, school tracks, and commercial office flooring. From school playgrounds in Inner Mongolia to office corridors in Guangzhou, from military training equipment to children's play facilities, their products have found their way into various unexpected corners. In terms of production capacity, the factory currently operates multiple fully automated coating lines, producing over one million square meters of flooring annually, and has established three logistics warehouses nationwide to ensure orders are shipped within 48 hours.
When asked why, in an era where everyone is competing on price, they still obsess over "invisible details," Zhu Weixing's answer is pragmatic: "Back in our sock-making days, a pair of socks lasting three years without tearing relied on every stitch being perfectly aligned. It's the same with flooring—the feel under an athlete's feet can't be fooled."
From the teenager in front of that Italian machine in 1989 to the industry veteran holding dozens of patents today, Xingjiafang's story lacks dramatic twists. It's more like a roll of flooring slowly unfurling—every inch pressed firmly, every layer built to withstand scrutiny. If you're struggling with venue flooring choices, why not check out their official website cases? Those courts that have been in use for five or six years and still perform flawlessly might just be the best answer.