{"id":119629,"date":"2026-07-27T02:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/119629\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T02:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T02:44:09","slug":"black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/119629\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Lake CEO\u2019s strategy to sell AI solutions to factories: turn to food couriers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Zhou Yuxiang, founder and CEO of Shanghai-headquartered Black Lake Technologies, wanted to sell his <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/artificial-intelligence?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> automation solutions to millions of family-run factories across China, he came up with an unconventional strategy: hiring food delivery workers to make sales.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">His entire sales team, hired from various industrial cities, survived a gruelling five-day boot camp on articulating how AI can solve specific manufacturing pain points.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThey are very street-smart,\u201d the 36-year-old said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post. \u201cGood college graduates are often thin-skinned. They linger in front of a factory and can\u2019t get in.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cBut for food delivery guys, they just give a cigarette to the security guard and get in \u2026 They can also bypass guard dogs, or find a back door to get into a factory to meet the owner because they deliver food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">With a sales force of more than 420 delivery workers, Black Lake, established in 2016, has grown to serve 35,000 factory clients, 95 per cent of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The International Data Corporation also ranks it as mainland China\u2019s top provider of cloud-based production management software.<\/p>\n<p>Hong Kong \u2018very attractive\u2019 for next step<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Zhou Yuxiang, founder and CEO of Shanghai-headquartered Black Lake Technologies, wanted to sell his artificial intelligence (AI)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,57018,387,2700,9474,46913,60604,9502,4516,1414,1419,1411,57016],"class_list":["post-119629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-black-lake-technologies","tag-china","tag-hong-kong","tag-indonesia","tag-li-qiang","tag-mixue-bingcheng","tag-philippines","tag-shanghai","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-thailand","tag-vietnam","tag-zhou-yuxiang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}