Shared Procurement Alliance is one of China’s influential procurement communities. It connects 60,000 procurement practitioners with more than 100,000 supplier enterprises. Its chapters cover over ten cities across China and have expanded to Vietnam and Thailand. The community originated from a QQ group created by founder Chen Xuepeng back in 2007, when he worked as a procurement specialist at Foxconn. After nineteen-year development, it has evolved from a simple group chat into a full-fledged supply-chain ecosystem. As an enterprise member of the Alliance, the editorial team of Slkor Semiconductor visited the Alliance’s headquarters for this issue, conducting an interview with Chen Xuepeng to hear his story of how a QQ-group grew into a professional industry platform.

Growth: From a QQ Group to “A Big Family for Procurement Professionals”

The idea to establish the Shared Procurement Alliance stemmed from the real-life dilemmas faced by procurement practitioners: limited access to professional contacts and resources at work, and a lack of reliable channels for peer-to-peer learning. Chen Xuepeng had a straightforward vision at that time — to build a circle where procurement staff could expand connections, locate resources and offer mutual support. That marked the embryonic form of the Alliance.

For the first ten years, the platform operated entirely on a non-profit basis. There was no revenue model nor full-time staff. Members were brought together through weekly offline exchange meetings, industry salons and outdoor events. Relationships back then were genuine. Participants interacted purely as friends without any interest-driven ties. Today, the Alliance manages more than 600 WeChat groups. Those junior procurement staff in the early days have now grown into procurement managers and procurement directors. The trust accumulated over nearly two decades has become the platform’s most valuable asset.

What has kept the Alliance going for nearly two decades is user stickiness, its core advantage that sets it apart from other platforms. According to Chen Xuepeng, many comparable platforms collapse within two or three years. Their common pitfall lies in the fact that they hold no genuine resources themselves, while merely attracting parties seeking customers.

From the very beginning, the Alliance has centered on buyers, building “a big family for procurement professionals” and fostering a sense of ownership among procurement practitioners. More importantly, reputation has always been its top priority. Over the years, it has resisted all short-term temptations such as selling member contact data.

This persistence has yielded exceptionally strong user stickiness. The Alliance charges almost no fees: apart from training courses, all events and resource-matching services are completely free of charge. Every week, training sessions, resource-matching meetings and industry salons are regularly held in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou and other cities. More than a dozen badminton clubs and public-speaking clubs also keep operating. As an enterprise member of the Alliance, Slkor Semiconductor also takes part in its activities. The Alliance once hosted a salon at Slkor’s Shenzhen headquarters, where dozens of procurement members visited the company. They attended technical briefings and product sharing sessions delivered by Slkor’s technical staff, and the event was very well-received.

Transformation: From a Non-profit Community to an Industrial Ecosystem

With more than ten years of procurement experience, Chen Xuepeng noticed that most practitioners in this field came from unrelated backgrounds. Society generally holds the misconception that procurement requires no professional expertise. Some business owners prefer assigning procurement positions to their relatives rather than hiring qualified specialists. Young newcomers eager to learn receive little on-the-job guidance after joining companies, as senior staff are reluctant to provide mentorship, and there is no dedicated procurement major in universities. For these reasons, he launched procurement training programs back in 2011.

The training curriculum is fully practice-oriented. The beginner courses target procurement clerks, intermediate courses are designed for procurement engineers, and advanced courses serve procurement managers and directors. Specialized courses covering various raw materials including hardware, plastics, packaging, batteries, PCBs and chips are also available, focusing on material composition, manufacturing processes and market conditions.

The Alliance currently has more than 70 lecturers, most of whom are front-line supply-chain veterans from large enterprises such as Foxconn, TCL and ZTE. Boasting 10- to-20-year-plus hands-on experience and solid knowledge of standardized management systems, their lectures draw entirely from real-world practice, ranging from basic business communication and work reporting to department coordination and anomaly handling.

With its training system well-established, the Alliance began to expand overseas. As manufacturing shifted toward Southeast Asia, the Alliance took the lead in setting up chapters in Bac Ninh of Vietnam and Rayong of Thailand. It has also gathered abundant resources of Chinese-funded enterprises across Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Singapore.

According to Chen Xuepeng, companies investing and building factories in Vietnam can only enjoy tariff preferential policies when over 30 % of their raw materials are sourced locally. Newly-arrived enterprises often have little local market knowledge, and the Alliance acts as their resource navigator. At present, there are more than ten WeChat groups in Vietnam covering five to six thousand enterprises, while the Thailand chapter has assembled over one thousand member companies.

After 2017, Chen Xuepeng began full-time operation of the Shared Procurement Alliance and started exploring a sustainable business model. Training programs, enterprise membership services and exhibition services were successively launched.

In 2026, he rolled out two new revenue-generating projects. The first is centralized procurement, which consolidates scattered demands from small-sized enterprises into large-volume orders to negotiate better pricing with upstream suppliers and help companies cut costs. The second is in-depth member engagement, enabling procurement practitioners within the platform to act as promotion nodes for enterprise-member clients, so as to realize the closed-loop circulation of procurement and sales resources on the platform.

Even more promising are the under-construction B2B industrial internet platform and the newly-established Supply Chain AI Application Research Institute. In his view, AI will penetrate every industry and occupation within the next three to five years. “If we fail to embrace AI, we will be outcompeted by those who do.” Once the new platform goes live, procurement requirement posting, supplier responses and order matching will all become digital and visual, breaking free from the current limitations of relying on WeChat groups and Excel spreadsheets.

Roots: Let the Tree of Business Take Root in Society

While achieving continuous commercial progress, the Alliance has never forgotten to ground itself in society. Since 2014, it has provided one-on-one financial aid to nearly 300 underprivileged students across Xizang, Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei and other regions. Each student receives an annual grant of 2,000 RMB until their graduation from university. Chen Xuepeng often leads field-visit teams in person. On one occasion, he drove more than 6,000 kilometers across multiple provinces to visit the sponsored students.

In addition, the Alliance organizes annual outreach activities including visits to nursing homes and orphanages, as well as donations for mountain-area primary schools. Donated supplies cover multimedia blackboards, football fields, water heaters and electric fans. Volunteers also celebrate Children’s Day together with local children.

During this year’s “520 Outdoor Clean-up Day”, Chen Xuepeng took his son to collect litter. From his perspective, setting a good example through personal conduct represents the best form of education for children.

Off-the-Stage: The Other Side of Chen Xuepeng

Stepping into Chen Xuepeng’s office, a record player and a guitar stand quietly in the corner. After wrapping up his busy work for the Alliance, he picks up the guitar to play for a while, goes live to sing a few songs for relaxation, and occasionally plays ensemble music with friends in the park or takes on some performance gigs. This serves as his gateway to the world of music, an outward outlet for his long-cherished musical dream.

When talking about his hometown Yongzhou in Hunan Province, Chen Xuepeng speaks with obvious pride. “Last year, the Yongzhou team beat the Changde team 1-0 and claimed the championship of the first Hunan Super Football League.” During the tournament, he put up billboards in his hometown bearing the slogan: “Based in Shenzhen, heart tied to my hometown”. Even though he could not travel back to watch the matches in person, he promoted Yongzhou’s cultural tourism via WeChat Moments and short-video platforms, hoping that more people would get to know and visit Yongzhou.

Looking back on the past nineteen years, the motto “Share Resources, Connect the World” has evolved from a simple slogan into a platform gathering 60,000 procurement practitioners and more than 100,000 supplier enterprises. According to Chen Xuepeng, he aims to build a global supply-chain business ecosystem based on the existing foundation. Yet his core mission remains unchanged: to drive the sound development of the procurement profession and enable more efficient resource connection, which is what he will keep pursuing.

At present, the teams of Kinghelm and Slkor Semiconductor have gradually integrated into the ecosystem built by the Shared Procurement Alliance and found their own value within it. Mr. Song Shiqiang extends his best wishes for the Alliance’s continued prosperity.