Chapter 10 Haier: Start the process of "Global Brand Strategy"

In 2006, Haier took the "global brand strategy" as its new strategic development direction.Zhang Ruimin believes that Haier still has a long way to go in order to complete the "global brand strategy", and at least three hurdles must be overcome: satisfying the global product quality assurance system and the competitiveness of enterprise operations, whether it can realize The transition from opportunity profit to win-win profit, from single culture to multi-culture.These "three hurdles" were mentioned by Zhang Ruimin in his speech at Haier's 21st anniversary annual meeting in December 2005. In his speech, Zhang Ruimin believed that the past 21 years were a new starting point, and Haier embarked on a path for China. It is a difficult but necessary road for enterprises, and Zhang Ruimin feels that this road is getting more and more difficult.

Nearly a year after this speech, on October 27, 2006, Haier Group announced the establishment of a joint venture company in Japan with Sanyo Electric, which is controlled by Haier. The two parties will devote themselves to the research and development of new global refrigerator products.Sanyo's original refrigerator development team all entered the joint venture company, and the intellectual property rights belonged to the joint venture company.After the news was announced, people in the industry generally believed that Sanyo's world-leading technology in the refrigerator industry would accelerate Haier's internationalization process.

For us, whether the acquisition of Sanyo's refrigerator business can accelerate our global brand strategy with the help of Sanyo's channels and technology, there will be no results for a while, and of course it is difficult to judge and conclude. Interpret it from a certain angle. On December 26, 1984, the 41st production line introduced by China's home appliance industry, the production technology of Liebherr in Germany was introduced to Haier's predecessor - Qingdao Refrigerator General Factory. Haier, in the era of material shortage, started its own business. road. At that time, tens of thousands of home appliances, represented by refrigerators, were being put into hungry Chinese families day and night, and the products produced seemed to be in short supply forever.In April 1985, half a year after the introduction of the production line, the "smashing refrigerators" event that was later widely circulated occurred in Haier's history. The 76 "problem refrigerators" that Zhang Ruimin had workers smashed became the beginning of Haier's strict quality control. The management concept of "defective product is waste product" was put forward.In that era of shortage, this incident undoubtedly produced a huge sensation. For the first time, people from the outside world set their sights on this fledgling small refrigerator factory.In the following six or seven years, Haier, which seized the opportunity, achieved considerable development. In 1991, Haier basically completed its own brand development strategy.

In December 1992, the name "Haier" was determined after merger and reorganization. In 1993, Haier went public and raised 369 million yuan.In the following years, Haier successively took the theory of "eating shock fish" as the basis. By 1998, it had merged a total of 18 companies, and Haier had completed the stage of diversification development strategy.During this period, Haier was no longer a small enterprise that simply produced refrigerators. Household appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and color TVs have become Haier's development industries. In 1998, Haier Group's industrial sales revenue reached 16.2 billion yuan, and created a "myth" with an average growth rate of 82.8% in the 14 years since its establishment. This year was also a turning point for Haier. In this year, Zhang Ruimin proposed the market chain reconstruction project. Under his strong impetus, Haier achieved the reengineering of people through the reengineering of organizational processes.

In the 14 years from 1984 to 1998, it can be said that the rapid development of China's economy brought Haier one after another development opportunities, and Haier's success is undoubtedly inseparable from these opportunities.However, since 1998, Zhang Ruimin believed that in order for the Haier brand to be recognized by the whole world and consumers all over the world to have a certain degree of loyalty and reputation for the Haier brand, rather than simple popularity, it is necessary to start from the internationalization of the enterprise. To transform into an international enterprise, Haier needs to use its own capabilities to expand its brand to all parts of the world through the integration of resources, and Haier has since taken the pace of international development.Taking an international development strategy, Haier and most other Chinese companies with international development are different from entering underdeveloped regions. Haier takes the path of "difficult first and then easy". Access to developing country markets.The key example is that on April 30, 1999, Haier invested 30 million US dollars in the United States to establish a Haier production base in South Carolina. management. On April 5, 2001, in order to thank Haier for its contribution to the local economic development, the South Carolina government named a road near the Haier factory in the United States as Haier Road free of charge. This is also the only road in the United States named after a Chinese brand.In order to establish its own brand image in the United States, Haier even spent 14 million US dollars to buy the 77-year-old New York City landmark "Greenwich Savings Bank Building" from HSBC and renamed it "Greenwich Savings Bank Building". Haier Building", which doubles as the office building and showroom of Haier's US headquarters. "Haier·Made in China" has become more and more recognized by foreign consumers along with the process of Haier's internationalization.

In October 2002, Euromonitor, an internationally renowned information company, released the latest ranking of the market share of global white goods companies. Haier ranked fifth in the world among white goods manufacturers. Leaping to the top of the global refrigerator brand market share with a relatively large advantage, it has become the world's first brand of refrigerators. In 2002, Haier achieved a global turnover of 71.1 billion yuan, 13 overseas factories were fully operational, and its overseas turnover reached US$1 billion. After more than 20 years of development, Haier has developed from a small factory that produced a single refrigerator product to the fourth largest electrical appliance manufacturer in the world with nearly 100 categories including white home appliances, black home appliances, and beige home appliances. In May 2006 In April, Haier ranked 89th on the list of the world's top 500 brands, and it is the only Chinese brand selected into the top 100.Haier's brand value also reached 61.6 billion yuan.World Brand Lab, which compiles the list, said, "Haier is a banner of Chinese brands."In 2004, Haier ranked 95th.

Haier's internationalization strategy was once summed up in nine words: "going out", "going in" and "going up". Since the establishment of the internationalization strategy in 1991 to the present, Haier believes that it has only taken "one step" in the past 16 years. Half".Before Zhang Ruimin announced at Haier’s 21st Anniversary Entrepreneurship Annual Meeting that he would take the “global brand strategy” as Haier’s new strategic development direction in 2006, in 2005, Zhang Ruimin further proposed the “Haier model, that is, Rendanheyi”, emphasizing the relationship between people and the market. Unity, unity of speed and accuracy.At the same time, Haier changed its entrepreneurial spirit and work style to "creating resources and gaining a global reputation" and "integration of individual and order, quick decision and quick victory", hoping to perfectly integrate corporate goals and personal actions.The "person" of Rendanheyi refers to every employee, that is, every independent innovation subject; "Dan" is a competitive market target; Rendanheyi means that every independent innovation subject Capture business opportunities at the fastest speed and generate competitiveness faster than rivals.Rendanheyi is to solve the problem of unification of speed and precision.Rendanhe raised the "person" to an unprecedented height.The reason why people are important is that what drives the future world is the competition among individuals, not the competition between enterprises or even between countries. Thomas Friedman explained this point in the book In the book, the author pointed out to us that the current world is already an era of flattened personal globalization, in which people must "level themselves".It is said that after the book was published, Zhang Ruimin called on Haier cadres to read it.This book is undoubtedly a good interpretation of Haier's new entrepreneurial spirit and work style, because the essence of the new entrepreneurial spirit and work style is that every employee can find their own global position and global goals. Then achieve the goal as quickly as possible.

Zhang Ruimin is obviously not very optimistic about the prospects of the domestic home appliance industry, because the information sent by Whirlpool Corporation of the United States to acquire Maytag makes him think that the future home appliance industry is likely to be like the current steel and automobile industries. The five giants, if this is the case, Haier must grow up quickly and make itself one of the few remaining home appliance giants in the world before this terrible result occurs. Judging from the current situation, this seems to be a bit far away , but the danger seemed so close, Haier needed to accelerate.

Founded half a century ago, Japan's Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. is a large multinational enterprise group involved in a wide range of fields such as household appliances, audio, information and communication, commercial machinery, electronic products, and batteries.Its sales of home appliances once ranked among the top of Japan's famous home appliance brands, and it has a certain leading R&D advantage in the field of home appliances. However, in recent years, Sanyo Electric's operating conditions have not been satisfactory, and the production and operation of white goods have not been profitable. it is good.According to data, in recent years, the company has been in a state of loss, and the loss in 2004 was as high as 171 billion yen.The loss of its refrigerator business is particularly serious. As of March 2006, Sanyo Electric's refrigerator business lost about 20 billion yen.Sanyo eagerly hopes to reduce costs and increase profits by adjusting the production structure. At the beginning of October, Sanyo Electric said that in the next period of time, the company plans to cut about 30 group companies, or about 10%.Previously, Sanyo Electric had announced that it would lay off 14,000 employees, about 15% of the total number of employees in the world; it would withdraw from the DVD player, DVD recorder and cassette video recorder business and close a chip factory, planning to cut 170 billion days. Yuan cost.Therefore, as early as the end of last year, Sanyo Electric stated that it would stop its own production of household appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, and choose to let enterprises in mainland China or Taiwan region produce OEM products.

The relationship between Sanyo and Haier can be traced back to 2001.This year, Toshi Ive, then president of Sanyo Co., Ltd., visited Haier. He was deeply impressed by Haier's management model and products.Jing Zhimin expressed his willingness to cooperate at that time, and the two hit it off. On January 8, 2002, Haier and Sanyo announced in Osaka that they had formed a strategic alliance and jointly established "Sanyo Haier Co., Ltd."In December of that year, Sanyo Electric also officially started construction in the Haier Industrial Park and became one of Haier's supporting factories.The Japanese home appliance market is the most "stubborn" market in the world. The five major domestic brands including Sanyo, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi and Sharp monopolize 90% of the market. This cooperation enabled Haier to use Sanyo's channel to enter the Japanese market, and Sanyo also easily entered the Chinese market shortly after joining the WTO through Haier. It can be said that the cooperation between the two parties brought a lot of benefits to each other at that time.

In 2006, when Sanyo planned to sell its refrigerator business by adjusting its production structure to reduce costs and increase profits, Haier was naturally considered.It is conceivable that, on the one hand, Sanyo wants to get rid of the "burden" of the refrigerator business. Considering that Haier is a good buyer, and the two parties have had a pleasant cooperation before, Sanyo is naturally willing to sell the refrigerator business to Haier; on the other hand, Refrigerators have always been the core business of Haier. If the acquisition is successful, it will be a powerful supplement to its comprehensive strength. After promoting its own brand, Haier has been looking for M&A targets around the world. When the opportunity comes, Haier will naturally not miss.Therefore, this merger seems to be expected. When it happened, it did not cause a sensation in the industry like Lenovo's merger with IBM PC and TCL's merger with Thomson's color TV business. This merger came and ended almost in peace. of. On October 27, 2006, Haier and Sanyo signed a contract in Tokyo, and the two parties cooperated to establish a joint venture company "Haier Sanyo Co., Ltd."The registered capital of the joint venture is 500 million yen, with Haier and Sanyo accounting for 60% and 40% respectively.Haier invested in cash, and Sanyo entered the joint venture with its original refrigerator business development team. The joint venture will devote itself to the research and development of new global refrigerator products, and the intellectual property rights will be owned by the joint venture.In addition, Sanyo will also sell the refrigerator factory in Thailand, which holds 90% of the shares, to Haier, and Haier will produce Sanyo's refrigerators in the future.A peaceful merger and acquisition case has come to an end. According to data, Haier Group fell into a difficult period of consolidation in 2005. The sales revenue of 103.9 billion yuan was only 3 billion yuan more than that in 2004, and some domestic markets even declined; the total profit also increased from nearly 3 billion yuan in the same period last year. Yuan dropped to 1.3 billion yuan, and the sales profit margin was only 1.27%.Some experts pointed out that it is difficult for Haier to make new breakthroughs in sales revenue relying on traditional growth methods.Therefore, Haier must move closer to the high-end market in order to improve technology and brand image, and accelerate the process of internationalization.This time, Haier, which started out relying on refrigerators, acquired the Sanyo refrigerator business through acquisitions. After controlling Sanyo's R&D department, Haier refrigerators will gain certain advantages in high-end technology, thereby enhancing the brand value of its entire line of products.However, mergers and acquisitions are often a double-edged sword. It does not only bring benefits and value to the company, but it may also harm the company if it is not good. What are you wearing?After the acquisition of Sanyo Refrigerator, can Haier get rid of the difficulties of overseas mergers and acquisitions of Chinese companies and bring us surprises?