Chapter 36 In love with brand investment

Today, Wenzhou already has a number of brand reputations in the world, such as the city of Chinese brands, the capital of Chinese shoes, the capital of leather, the capital of automobile and motorcycle parts in China, the capital of low-voltage electrical appliances in China, the hometown of small hydropower in China, and the city of pumps in China. Valve Township, China Printing City, China Electric City, China Glasses Production Base, China Plastic Film Production Base, China Stainless Steel Seamless Pipe Production Base, China Printing Materials Trading Center, China Forging Industry Base, China Automobile and Parts Export Base.etc.Hundreds of good reputations from all walks of life and various fields are enough to explain the achievements of Wenzhou brand and the significance of brand to Wenzhou enterprises.

Wenzhou people not only launched their own brand internationally, but also tried to quickly realize the rise of Wenzhou brand by acquiring internationally renowned companies. At the beginning of 2009, Ye Maoxi, a native of Pingyang, Wenzhou, followed Premier Wen Jiabao to visit the UK as a Chinese economic and trade representative, and learned that the British Propeller TV station could no longer receive government funding due to the financial crisis and urgently needed strategic investors. Propeller TV station has landed in dozens of countries in Europe. At the beginning of 2009, it also won the award of "Best Satellite TV Movie Channel in Europe" in Venice, Italy.Sensitively aware of this opportunity, Ye Maoxi reached a preliminary acquisition intention with the TV station as the person in charge of Xijing Group.After more than half a year of negotiations and consultations, he finally succeeded in acquiring Propeller TV, making it the first Chinese TV station to acquire a western developed country.And in less than a year after the merger, with Propeller TV's original advantages and Ye Maoxi's management, by the end of 2010, Propeller TV had entered 10 million British households, covering many European countries and regions.Ye Maoxi also intends to continue to promote it so that it can enter the United States, enter the Middle East and Africa, and become a worldwide TV station.

It has almost become a trend for Wenzhou businessmen like Ye Maoxi to build their own brands through mergers and acquisitions of well-known international companies. In 2010, the bosses of some clothing and footwear companies in Wenzhou went to Italy to inspect brands and negotiate purchases.In addition, there are bosses in other fields in Wenzhou, who have also expressed their intentions for mergers and acquisitions for international first-tier and second-tier brands. In my opinion, the reason why Wenzhou has become an area where private capital overseas acquisitions are prevalent is inseparable from the active encouragement of the Wenzhou government.The Wenzhou government clearly stipulates that the Wenzhou government will give rewards ranging from 5,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan for investment projects such as overseas acquisitions, establishment of R&D centers, establishment of marketing outlets, and specialty stores.Although the amount is not large, it shows their attitude, and the pace of overseas mergers and acquisitions by private enterprises in Wenzhou has thus accelerated.

Whether it is creating its own brand or acquiring well-known foreign brands, it is actually a process for Wenzhou enterprises to go abroad, and it is a link in the global strategy of Wenzhou people.This link is not only a new breakthrough for Wenzhou businessmen, but also a new development opportunity, which means that Wenzhou enterprises have a broader market space since then. However, the current achievements of Wenzhou people are not the focus of what I want to talk about. The focus is how Wenzhou people have created such achievements.People who don't know the history of Wenzhou enterprises can hardly imagine that Wenzhou people's achievements today are obtained from the scolding.

In the 1980s, the quality of Wenzhou shoes was very poor. Some consumers complained that Wenzhou shoes could no longer be worn after being worn for less than a month or even a week.Hangzhou Consumers Association and Xintianlong Commercial Building often receive such complaints from people.So on August 8, 1987, Xintianlong Commercial Building took all the Wenzhou shoes sold in the building to Wulinmen Square, and then burned them down, which attracted the applause of thousands of onlookers in Hangzhou.This is the notorious "Wulin Gate Incident" in the history of Wenzhou enterprises.

The "Wulin Gate incident" is a big stimulus for Wenzhou people.Then, cities all over the country followed suit. Wuhan, Chongqing, Dalian and other places also held a "ceremony" to burn Wenzhou shoes.Soon, dozens of large and medium-sized cities across the country refused to buy Wenzhou shoes. In order to appease consumers, shopping malls in various places simply hung a sign on their buildings or store doors: "This building (store) does not have Wenzhou shoes". People even directly said: "There are no Wenzhou products in this store."In other words, not only Wenzhou shoes, but also other products in Wenzhou have become street rats, and everyone shouts and beats them.

Due to the bad influence caused by the "Wulinmen incident", private enterprises in Wenzhou almost experienced an earthquake all of a sudden.Not only the shoe industry in Wenzhou, but other products in Wenzhou are also facing the situation of being rectified and destroyed. For example, low-voltage electrical appliances in Wenzhou also suffered the same fate as the shoe industry. After this incident, the Wenzhou Municipal Government put forward the slogan of "quality builds the city" and adopted a series of measures. A ignorant brand awareness. In fact, before this, Wenzhou people did not have a little bit of brand awareness, and they did not even have their own industrial advantages.Take low-voltage electrical appliances as an example. Low-voltage electrical appliances in Wenzhou are manufactured in this way: buy a low-voltage electrical appliance that sells well, disassemble it for research, and then manufacture it by imitators.The manufacturing process is very simple. If you see the shape of the parts in other people's electrical appliances, you can make a part of that shape;As for the parameters of these materials and shapes, they are completely ignored.How can the low-voltage electrical appliances manufactured in this way not have problems?How can it not be rejected by consumers and rectified by the state?

The "Wulinmen Incident" made Wenzhou people aware of the importance of quality on the one hand, and on the other hand, it also made Wenzhou people see the important relationship between reputation and the survival of enterprises.This disgraceful experience made Wenzhou people realize that if they want to achieve long-term development, they must improve the reputation of their company and let their products form word-of-mouth in the minds of consumers.This is not only the need of the sales market, but also the fundamental guarantee for the long-term development of the enterprise. There are many ways for Wenzhou people to improve corporate reputation, the most typical ones are as follows:

1.Actively participate in public welfare undertakings. Everywhere the big bosses in Wenzhou go, in addition to strengthening ties with local chambers of commerce, they also pay great attention to cooperation with government security departments and actively participate in various public welfare undertakings. It can be described as countless.For example, in May 2009, on the first anniversary of the Wenchuan Earthquake, the "Caring for Zero Distance" large-scale public welfare activities in Sichuan, invested by Wenzhou Red Dragonfly Group and organized by Wenzhou Youth Activity Center, were in full swing. In 2010, the Wenzhou General Chamber of Commerce in Kunming actively responded to the second Kunming charity event of "Gratefulness to Parents and Care for the Poor Elderly", with a donation of 20,000 yuan. At the beginning of 2010, the Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, together with Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Jinzhou, Xing'an League, etc., specially established the "Wenzhou Merchants Alliance Voluntary Service Civilization Public Welfare Fund", which opened the curtain of Wenzhou merchants' "grouping" to do good.

Actively participating in public welfare undertakings has not only won popularity for Wenzhou people, but also paved the way for the establishment of a beautiful Wenzhou corporate image in people's hearts. Public welfare activities have become a powerful driving force for promoting Wenzhou's brand. 2. Prefer to sacrifice interests for the image. The reason why Wenzhou shoes have today's status, on the one hand, is because the "Wulin Gate incident" has prompted Wenzhou people to pay more attention to their own quality.On the other hand, there are Wenzhou people themselves who are fueling the flames.The shoe burning incident took place several times before and after. In addition to the forced burning of shoes that were complained by consumers, even in Wenzhou, some Wenzhou bosses personally destroyed their own products in order to show their determination, and they really cared about the economic benefits.They said that the fire was to burn the fake and inferior shoes, but also to burn their own bad past.This way of self-expression has won some people's respect for Wenzhou people.

If the experience of Wenzhou people burning their own shoes is unknown, then the deeds of another Wenzhou boss deserve people's respect.Zheng Xiukang, chairman of Kangnai Group, once said: When Kangnai became famous, many small businesses wanted to make money from the brand of Kangnai, so they proposed to pay 20 yuan for the right to use the trademark for each pair of shoes.This is indeed a great temptation, but thinking that Wenzhou shoes encountered the "Wulin Gate Incident" because of quality problems, he could no longer smash his own signs for the immediate benefit, so he decisively rejected these temptations. If Wenzhou enterprises’ brand awareness in the late 1980s was forced by the market, then since the 1990s, the pursuit of brands by Wenzhou enterprises can be described as a conscious and spontaneous behavior. Deng Xiaoping pointed out in 1992: "We must have our own competitive products and create China's own famous brand, otherwise we will be bullied."National leaders' emphasis on brand directly points out the direction for Wenzhou people's investment.Many Wenzhou people also take these two sentences as their spiritual guidance and consciously work towards international branding. For example, Nan Cunhui, chairman of Chint Group, said: "If Chinese companies want to grow up, they must build international brands." Zheng Xiukang, president of Kangnai Group, said: "I think a brand is composed of a brand and a brand. The brand is the product and the character of the employees. The sum of the two is the brand. The brand is to rank your own products in the industry. Go forward." Meng Jianxin, deputy mayor of the Wenzhou Municipal People's Government, said: "Brand is the soul of an enterprise and the cornerstone of the industry. In 2004, we raised the quality of the market to the level of brand building, and made every effort to build a strong brand market, taking brand building as an adjustment. The most important thing is to focus on the industrial structure, upgrade the industrial level, improve the city's comprehensive competitiveness and the city's image, and add luster to Wenzhou's city image by building an industrial brand and enhancing the regional brand." Wenzhou people not only said so, but also did so.It is precisely because of this dedication to brand awareness that Wenzhou people, who have come out of small businesses and scrambling industries, have gradually moved to the forefront of the world, becoming synonymous with China's capital, technology, and processing bases, and becoming China's first batch of Products that enter the international market and participate in international competition will add luster to Wenzhou people and win glory for Chinese people.The emphasis on the brand also makes Wenzhou not only the Wenzhou of Wenzhou people, but also the Wenzhou of Chinese people, representing the image of China and the vanguard of China's international development strategy.This is something we Wenzhou people can be proud of, and it is also something that Chinese people can be proud of.