Chapter 11 "Building a Chinese Brand"

At the negotiating table for the resumption of customs clearance, aggressive opponents are threatening China to give up the communications market as a condition.China, a market full of temptations, has already made those who are willing to salivate, and the "lion" who is eager to eat has long been wandering outside the door.As a private enterprise, it is hard to imagine the difficulties. Faced with strong foreign brands, many Chinese companies retreated and attached themselves to these big brands one after another, only to be controlled by others.What China lacks is a brand, but it is not easy to build a national brand!

Ren Zhengfei didn't care about it at all. He wanted to build a brand and build a Chinese brand. "Any country, any nation, must base its confidence in building its own motherland on the basis of trusting itself. Only on the basis of independence can it gain equality and respect." Only with its own brand can it compete with those established giants To compete against them, he started a difficult entrepreneurial road. The American news giant Reston was born poor. His mother said to him: "You can't be satisfied with being an ordinary worker. Poverty itself is not a sin, but if you remain poor, it is the real sin."

Ren Zhengfei has experienced many hardships, and he is not satisfied with being poor forever. He wants to find a way out.After experiencing ups and downs in life, he started a difficult entrepreneurial career. In October 1987, in two "simple houses" in a place overgrown with weeds by the Shenzhen Bay, Ren Zhengfei and others jointly invested 21,000 yuan to establish a small company, named "Huawei", and registered as a collective enterprise. It is engaged in the development and production of small-scale program-controlled switches, fire alarms, and air floatation instruments, as well as related project contracting and consulting.In the first two years, the company mainly sold HAX switches in Hong Kong as a consignment, profiting from the price difference.In this way, Huawei was born, but at that time, no one thought that this would be a company that would go global, including Ren Zhengfei himself.

In the early days of Huawei's founding, Ren Zhengfei lived in a very poor life with his parents and nephew in a small room of more than ten square meters, cooking on the balcony.In order to save money, my parents bought dead fish and shrimp to eat, and only went out to buy vegetables at night when the vegetable market was about to close. When Huawei was first established, it was located on the fifth floor of a dilapidated seven-story building in Nanyou Industrial Zone, Nanshan District, Shenzhen.Behind it is a building called Elite, and a Sino-Italian joint venture company named Shenyi Piezo occupies the entire building.An old employee recalled that at that time, he was very envious of this big company and felt very proud to work there.But "10 years later, it's still the same, it hasn't changed at all."

The house was empty, and later Huawei moved to another building in the Nanyou Industrial Zone.Every floor of the building I was in at that time was a warehouse-type house, and Huawei occupied more than a dozen warehouses.On the other side of the warehouse, a wall of bricks was built to separate the single rooms where the employees lived.There are very few windows in the warehouse, and there is no sunlight in these separated single rooms. The partition walls are only built as high as one person, and there are no tiles on the roof. The "slanting wind and drizzle" is unstoppable, so there is no need to worry about forgetting to bring the key to the dormitory. Just go over the wall of the warehouse.The warehouse is full of switch parts and assembled machines from Hong Kong companies. Employees develop SKD parts for accessories in a corner of the warehouse, and then assemble the purchased parts into complete machines.

However, poor people have a lot of ambition, and those who have the courage to start a business have lofty aspirations.On the shore of Shenzhen Bay, in a simple and simple house of more than ten square meters, in a warehouse opened up, Ren Zhengfei has hidden in his chest the ambition of "promising China". Looking back now, Ren Zhengfei is deeply moved: "Huawei was very naive at the beginning of its establishment. It chose the communication industry???, but it did not expect to encounter international competition at its doorstep. The competitor is a world-renowned company with tens of billions of dollars in assets. .If there is no national policy protection, Huawei is easily destroyed."

Traditional Chinese people pay the most attention to concentration in learning. "Ten years of cold windows", not only must be able to sit still, but also be able to sit for a long time. Only in this way can one become a master of the generation.This is also the reason why there are no masters in modern China.Temptation and impetuousness permeate the whole social atmosphere, looking around all day long, worrying about gains and losses, so impetuous that people can't sit down at all.This is true for learning, and it is also true for business.Staring at the money in front of you all day long, rushing to see what makes money, and rushing to leave when it sees no profit, such a business will definitely not last long.

In January 1992, after Deng Xiaoping's speech on the southern tour, after three years of governance and rectification, the economy entered a restorative high-speed growth.However, the fiery investment and rapid expansion made the economy start to "fever". Hundreds of billions of real estate funds flew to several regions in the south, including 80 billion yuan in Hainan, 30 billion yuan in Beihai, and 15 billion yuan in Huizhou, which quickly set off a frenzy of speculation. "Construction is starting everywhere, the house has not been built, and there is only a blueprint for sale. The project is sold first-hand, second-hand, and third-hand. Those who develop the project are not making money faster than those who are hyped. The developer may earn 500 yuan per square meter. People who speculate can earn 1,000 to 2,000 yuan per square meter." A person who once experienced the scene recalled, "At that time, even the government departments of various provinces in the country raised funds to make a fortune in Hainan, and one person could make money overnight. become millionaires."

As the "window" of reform and opening up, Shenzhen is experiencing another kind of madness. In August 1992, Shenzhen issued 500 million yuan of new shares by issuing a lottery form for subscription.Starting from August 8, millions of stockholders marched into Shenzhen, and formed a long queue in front of 302 sales outlets in Shenzhen, hoping to buy a lottery form worth 100 yuan each. When the sale started on the morning of August 9, the order was still orderly, but the turmoil was surging, and the speculation became higher and higher. A subscription certificate was flipped to thousands of yuan, which led to "chaos in the world". On the morning of August 10th, all the lottery forms were sold out.On the evening of that day, thousands of stockholders who had not bought the lottery tickets marched on Shennan Middle Road in the city, unfurling slogans about anti-corruption and demanding justice, creating a situation of besieging the city government and the People's Bank of China.This is the famous "8.10" storm in the history of Chinese securities.

At that time, the well-known Stone Group made great strides in diversification, kept up with the trend, and set foot in real estate.Liu Chuanzhi, who has always advocated "thinking about it before doing it", couldn't bear it anymore and invested in real estate in Huizhou. However, he had to change his plan and use the name of "International Computer City" to attract investment, and finally had to use it as his southern production base.Liu Chuanzhi said, "If I were asked to do it again, I would probably still choose this way." As the saying goes, concepts determine destiny, and ideas determine the way out.Shortly after the birth of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei proposed the goal of "being a world-class and leading telecommunications equipment provider", and he talked about it with everyone.His wish is: "Ten years later, the world's communication industry will be divided into three parts, and Huawei will account for one part."

The competition in the telecommunications industry is very cruel. If you don't develop, you will perish. There is no middle way.The same is true for Huawei. There is no retreat, and development is the only way to survive.Ren Zhengfei gritted his teeth and insisted, "At the juncture of the life and death of the national communication industry, we must do our best to develop from the bottom up in fair competition, and never back down or bow our heads" and "not to be knocked down by those powerful companies." Management guru Churchill Xie Andong said: "Never follow the fashion of the industry and do what other companies are unwilling to do. At the same time, don't do what other companies are already doing or may do in the future." Driven by his own interests, he has always focused on developing independent technologies. He led Huawei on a road of research and development full of unknown risks. Chinese people like knights, and the spirit of bright swords spread among ancient knights.When these knights meet their opponents on a narrow road, no matter how powerful the opponent is, even if they are number one in the world, they must show their swords, even if they lose miserably, they will be defeated with honor.This is the true spirit of the Chinese nation, which is commendable. The value of Huawei is that it dares to show its sword and challenge the most powerful opponent.For the independence of the national industry and to gain a foothold in the market, Ren Zhengfei worked hard on research and development, determined to build his own brand to compete with foreign giants. As soon as the company had some savings, Ren Zhengfei decided to devote all his funds to the research and development of digital switches.He made an unexpected decision: to invest huge sums of money in developing the C&C08 machine.Therefore, since 1992, it has been investing in the development of C&C08 machine. In that year, the first small switch was developed, and the first program-controlled switch was developed three years later. In November 1994, Huawei Wanmenji was born and achieved great success at the first China International Telecommunications Equipment Exhibition.In this year, Huawei's sales exceeded 100 million yuan for the first time, and its profits were tens of millions. On average, each employee had nearly one million yuan.The birth of Huawei's Wanmen mobile phone undoubtedly gave Huawei an extra "sharp sword" that is rampant in the world. In 1996, Huawei's domestic sales reached 2.6 billion yuan, far ahead of its domestic counterparts. In 1996, Huawei began to enter the international market.Since then, Huawei has sprung up suddenly, played triumphant songs, and become a new force in China's communications industry, growing continuously. "China Promising" debuted.Ren Zhengfei designed a way out for Huawei, and quickly expanded overseas after gaining a firm foothold in the domestic market. Huawei set foot in Hong Kong in 1996, entered Russia in 1997, entered India in 1998, entered the Middle East and Africa in 2000, rapidly expanded to Southeast Asia and Europe in 2001, entered the United States in 2002, and basically completed its overseas market layout in 2003 . In the face of aggressive international giants, Ren Zhengfei did not flinch, and boldly showed his "sword".Facing a risky and unpredictable future, he moved forward without hesitation.