By Shen Zejin

Are bicycles as a kind of transportation tool provided with more extensive "special functions" for purpose of bodybuilding, leisure or even being changed into other tools? At the achievement exhibition of the First China International Bicycle Design Contest recently held in Shanghai, the reporter saw a number of possibilities like health, environmental protection, energy conservation, convenience, speediness, time saving, shock reduction, safety, etc.

As understood, nearly a thousand submissions of participants into the contest on bicycle design have been received from all over China during the contest. Of the applicants taking part in the contest, industrial design enterprises accounted for 20 percent, 50 percent are from higher education institutions, integrated design enterprises also accounted for 20 percent, and are individual participants accounted for 10 percent. Patents have been applied for quite a number of submissions, and some of them have been made into model and real things. For instance, an old gentleman aged 82 from Shanghai even went to sign up and participate in the contest by riding a multiple-functional force-saving bicycle made by himself.

It was beyond the sponsors' expectation that so many submissions of participants were received; and it is also pleasantly surprised to see that those submissions are so excellent. Many submissions are provided with respective forward-looking ideas and technically practical, and they have helped to get the traditional living style completely changed. For example, a type of bicycles can be changed into a little cart that people can bring into a supermarket to do shopping.

Out of the nearly 1,000 submissions, the evaluation committee of the design contest chose 100 pieces of excellent paper design works as Entry Award winners, then 20 were chosen out of which as winners of Award of Merit during the preliminary contest. Those 20 pieces of works will be made into models by the ratio of 2:1 and get consummated in accordance with the requirements of the subscribing enterprises on craft, technique and pricing. Those models will be exhibited at the 19th China International Bicycle Exhibition to be hold in May 2009. Meanwhile, manufacturers will be invited for purpose of property right subscription and mass production.

At the same time, to protect the designers' submissions against pirating, the Organizing Committee of the Contest and Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration jointly established the "creativity envelope" protection system to protect all those original achievements in this phase.

From manuscripts to models, products, and commodities, this round of bicycle design contest explored a way to turn the "pager designs" into "real commodities", thus truly setting up a platform for design enterprises, higher education institutions, and the industry to get connected with one another. He Zengqiang, Secretary-General of Shanghai Creativity Industry Center, a co-sponsor of the contest, told the reporter that most of those who contacted designers were manufacturing companies, including both large-scale traders and certain foreign companies. "They believe that demands in the market in China can be satisfied by use of their marketing ideas and the creativity of Chinese designers."

China is the largest manufacturer, user and exporter of bicycles in the world. In recent years, China has been exporting more than 50 million bicycles each year, accounting for over 60 percent of the global bicycle trade volume. However, China has been lagging behind developed countries in terms of bicycle design for long. China lags behind in terms of the integration between design and the industry. Most enterprises give priority to original equipment manufacturing (OEM), and they do not have self-owned brands to conduct marketing in the international market.

Profits can be only made by only several RMB yuan from a single bicycle. The homogeneous competition makes it hard for manufacturing enterprises to exist, and it is even impossible for them to maintain high end designing talents. The objective to hold the design contest is to bring new opportunities for manufacturing enterprises with new products, enabling them to purchase fairly competitive products with comparatively low costs and change the situation that they have no products with independent intellectual property rights.

Design enterprises are as worried as manufacturing enterprises. As designing has been disconnected from production for a long time, it is not for sure whether the conceptional design can be turned into market demands and whether enterprises can realize the design technique. Presently, during the bicycle contest enterprises were asked to buy design achievements, thus design enterprises will have opportunities to realize a "leap" towards the market and then get in tune with the international market.

"If originality and industry can get completely connected to each other, each manufacturing enterprise will have a relatively fixed design enterprise; thus, a design outsourcing system will be shaped up and new products closer to the market will be consistently launched. As to design enterprises, they can focus on market survey and satisfying the consumptive demands." said He Zengqiang.

It's the fist attempt on the mode of "the industrialization of originality and the industrialization with originality" in China. China's bicycle industry will be thus driven to step onto a development road to accelerate the cultivation of self-owned brands, and an industrial chain with outsourcing services on the upper stream and original design manufacture (ODM) on the downstream will be shaped up. The core competitiveness of the industry as a whole will be promoted, thus making China stride forward from a large producer of bicycles to a great power in terms of creations concerning bicycles.