Chapter 10 Hisense Swallows the "Dragon": The Dilemma of Multi-Brands

It's night, but for 48-year-old Zhou Houjian, it will be another sleepless night.For several days, he has been caught in the hesitation of raising flags - on his desk is a group's investigation report on Kelon, which shows that although Kelon Group is in a huge financial disaster, its brand And in the field of white goods in China, it still has a very high status.Since Zhou Houjian learned of Kelon’s chairman Gu Chujun’s accident, he knew that this was the best time in Hisense’s history. If Kelon could be acquired, it would mean that Hisense would break out of geographical restrictions and enter the first-line field of “white appliances”. ;At the same time, he can more or less get out of the lingering pressure brought to him by Zhang Ruimin, another strong opponent in the same city.

However, the last sentence of the report made him hesitate: he knew that it was not the Hisense family who coveted Kelon, and Midea and Galanz, who were in Guangdong with Kelon, also wanted Kelon. Recently, Zhou Houjian also received news that the famous American Investment bank Goldman Sachs will also intervene in this matter... Compared with these companies, his Hisense has no advantage at all.To his surprise, he recently heard about Gu Chujun’s decision in prison: Although he was imprisoned, Gu Chujun still owns 20.6% of Kelon’s major shareholders, so he still has the “right of life and death” to determine who Kelon will belong to in the future. "; and because Gu has fought in white goods for many years and has deep grievances with many manufacturers of "white goods", Gu's decision is very likely to be Hisense!

This decision has been widely circulated within Hisense for the past few days. The whole group is now in an extremely excited mood. As the head of the family, he is naturally happy, but Zhou Houjian, who has been concentrating on Hisense's future planning, has to think more He knew that Kelon, with an output value of 8.4 billion, was not something that could be simply swallowed.Zhou Houjian is not very familiar with Gu Chujun, but he is very clear about many things that happened to Kelong. In October 2001, Gu Chujun acquired a 20.6% stake in Kelon Electric for 560 million yuan and became its largest shareholder.This incident also became one of the biggest events in China's financial circles that year, and Gu also became a famous financial figure for a time.Zhou Houjian still remembers what Gu said after purchasing Kelon: With Kelon, Gu’s Greencool dream can finally come true, because in Gu’s heart, he has always dreamed of building a kingdom in the refrigeration industry, but the key is It lies in Kelon, because Kelon has been the sales champion of refrigerators in China for many years.

But mergers and acquisitions have always been a double-tough sword. When it added a heavy sum to Gu Chujun's refrigeration empire, the huge losses of Kelon and the media's speculation about Gu Chujun's intention to settle in Kelon have also become Kelon's lingering problems. nightmare.Until the famous scholar Lang Xianping gave a public speech at Fudan University in 2004, he suddenly questioned Gu Chujun's acquisition of Kelon.Lang Xianping pointed out that Gu Chujun committed at least seven deadly crimes: "Set up a camp, take advantage of the situation, turn against customers, reciprocate, take a big bath, greet people with appearance, and borrow chickens to lay eggs". State-owned property, Gu Chujun is a speculator in the "retirement of the country and the advancement of the people"... Gu Chujun also quickly responded to Lang Xianping. He filed a defamation lawsuit against Lang Xianping through a Hong Kong lawyer, and responded to Lang Xianping's accusations one by one... The "War of Words" is the famous "Lang-Gu Controversy". Although it disappeared afterwards, the far-reaching impact was unexpected.

In May 2005, Gu Chujun ushered in the investigation of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, because Kelon's 2005 mid-year report showed that under Gu's leadership, Kelon's half-year loss reached 486 million yuan.In the previous 2004 annual report, Kelon showed a loss of more than 60 million yuan, but it miraculously returned to profit in the first quarter of 2005. From the perspective of a discerning person, there must be an ulterior secret here. In early August, after the investigation was over, Gu Chujun was arrested by the national public security organ. The official explanation for this is: Since 2002, Gu Chujun and others have used various methods such as falsely increasing income and underestimating expenses in Kelon Electric. Inflated profits caused the financial report disclosed by Kelon Electric to be seriously inconsistent with the facts, and was suspected of multiple violations of the relevant provisions of the "Securities Law"...

Zhou Houjian doesn't know what Gu Chujun did in Kelong, but no one knows what happened to Kelong.After Gu Chujun was arrested, Kelong also fell into a desperate situation.According to relevant data, after a major accident, Kelon was punished by the banking department to stop lending. At the same time, its original distributors also expressed that they would stop selling Kelon brand home appliances. For a company that is operating normally, it means losing the "blood transfusion line" that sustains life. Without blood, Kelon will undoubtedly die. As the saying goes, "a skinny camel is bigger than a horse".Although Kelon was in danger of death due to cash flow problems, Kelon was still surrounded by a very glamorous aura.This home appliance company, which used to be the national refrigerator sales champion for many years, still maintained an annual sales scale of 8.4 billion yuan in 2004 when the disease occurred: in 2004, the sales of Kelon refrigerators were 3.276 billion yuan, ranking second in the industry It owns the three brands of Rongsheng, Kelon and Compaion; the sales volume of Kelon air conditioners is about 4.452 billion yuan, ranking fourth in the industry, and it owns the three brands of Kelon, Huabao and Compaion... Two items are enough to ensure that Kelong will become a huge and attractive "pie".So after the circle learned of Gu Chujun's accident, news spread that many companies were preparing to acquire Kelon.Zhou Houjian's Hisense was also moved.

This home appliance company started in 1969 with the production of semiconductor radios. Since its birth, it has been attracting the attention of China with TVs. From black and white tube TVs to today's plasma color TVs, the history of Hisense has permeated China. Changes in the history of color TV.But in the field of color TV, Hisense also feels the threat of competition all the time.After years of development, Changhong and TCL have come ahead of Hisense in terms of scale and output value.It was not until 2005 that Zhou Houjian's Hisense entered the top five in the industry. To make matters worse, Hisense, which is in Qingdao, has been shrouded in pressure from fellow city Haier.Zhou Houjian and Zhang Ruimin are both friends and rivals.Under the leadership of Zhang Ruimin, Haier has become a leader in China's home appliance companies, representing China to the world, and even Zhang Ruimin's management experience has become one of the few Chinese cases that entered the Harvard Buddhist room.

For more than 30 years, Hisense has been in the process of constantly surpassing and finding the way forward.Hisense's main business is televisions, but in recent years, Hisense has also been looking for development opportunities in multiple industries.Now, Hisense has set foot in the six fields of color TV, air conditioner, refrigerator, mobile phone, IT and real estate. The sales revenue in 2004 was 27.3 billion yuan, and it has more than 20 branches.However, what Zhou Houjian knew clearly was that Hisense’s position in these industries was not secure: the Hisense color TV mentioned above has just entered the top five in the industry, and the only competitive advantage of Hisense air conditioners is the frequency conversion technology. Although Hisense refrigerators and mobile phones have A certain market share, but the status of the industry is far behind the top five, and the situation of several other industries is not optimistic.

Therefore, after 1995, Zhou Houjian put down many daily affairs and devoted himself to studying the strategic development direction of Hisense.During this period, although it has been revealed several times - Hisense has developed China's first chip with independent property rights, and others have found some strategic opportunities - but generally speaking, the middle-aged Hisense is still stuck in geographical restrictions and two, In the situation of the third-rate scale. Zhou Houjian knew that if he wanted to develop by leaps and bounds, he had to wait for a great opportunity from heaven to come, and at the same time, he had to vote for the director of Hisense.

Kelon is undoubtedly such an opportunity! Over the past few days, with the continuous changes in the Kelong incident, Zhou Houjian's heart has been ups and downs, which is difficult to calm down.On the one hand, he always has a sense of the times that a major historical moment is coming, but at the same time, he is shrouded in an impenetrable annoyance. Time will also be around. Yes, the acquisition of Kelon is indeed a huge historical opportunity.If Kelon is acquired, Hisense will usher in an important breakthrough in the two fields of air conditioners and refrigerators. According to the existing scale of the two parties in 2004, these two industries will have the opportunity to compete for market dominance after the merger. Previously, Zhou Houjian Don't even think about it, isn't it very tempting?

"I don't know where history will lead me?" This is a question that Zhou Houjian has been wondering for several days. Of course.The news brought by his subordinates shows that Hisense is very likely to "take Kelong back", but Zhou Houjian has been hesitating: how should his Hisense digest Kelon, the "beauty"-Kelon has grown into a "big man" with 8.4 billion yuan. "Girl", but his Hisense is still a young man: in 2004, the output of Hisense refrigerators was about 700,000 units, and the annual sales were about 520 million yuan; the sales volume of Hisense air conditioners was only about 1.5 million units... so In the face of Kelon's 8.4 billion scale, its performance is really not worth mentioning. Zhou Houjian knew that if Hisense’s acquisition of Kelon was successful, it must be due to three factors. One was Gu Chujun’s own wishes; It is Hisense that has been earning some cash in recent years.Zhou Houjian knew that in recent years, Hisense’s largest income in various industries has always come from real estate. In the 2005 national real estate company rankings, Hisense Real Estate ranked 48th, and ranked seventh among the top ten growth-growing real estate companies in the country.Hisense's real estate development area reached more than 800,000 square meters last year, and its annual profitability was more than 700 million yuan.Although he has made huge profits in the real estate industry, Zhou Houjian has not promoted real estate for many years, and even rarely mentioned it, although the money for the acquisition of Kelon this time still has to come from real estate.Because Zhou Houjian always believes that it is not the long-term and core goal of a home appliance company to engage in an opportunistic industry, and he also needs to rise in the war-torn home appliance market to be truly successful. However, the industrial integration after the acquisition of Kelon is a problem, because the acquisition will consume Hisense's huge funds and occupy a lot of Hisense's resources. Does that mean that Hisense needs to shrink its front, give up industries such as real estate, and focus on operating home appliances? Woolen cloth?Giving up the real estate also means giving up the source of funds, so what should Hisense do if something else happens to him? But this is not what worries him the most. What makes him hesitate the most is actually the issue of Hisense's brand integration.After the acquisition of Kelon, Hisense will own 7 brands including "Hisense, Kelon, Rongsheng, Huabao, Compaion, Snowflake, and Bole". , representing the past history of these places.For the brand, Hisense faces two choices.One is to retain all existing brands and let them continue to compete in the market separately, but this means that Hisense will disperse limited resources, and it will not meet the original intention of Hisense to acquire them.The other way is to only choose a brand with growth potential to operate, but there is a difficult choice here: although Kelon is the brand that values ​​Kelon, it wants to acquire it, but Kelon is just a general big brand with no practical value. Big.Kelon has refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines, but it doesn't dominate in any one product category.So someone suggested that he give up Kelon, and concentrate on managing the Rongsheng brand under Kelon, because Rongsheng was the national refrigerator sales champion for eight consecutive years from 1991 to 1998, but was driven away by Haier because of lack of investment in brand maintenance. Super, but its consistent refrigerator brand image retains the possibility of catching up with Haier, which may become a trump card for him to catch up with his old rival, but if so, how should Kelon deal with it? ... Thinking of these questions, Zhou Houjian fell into lost thoughts again. He looked out of the window, Qingdao in midsummer was shrouded in the humid sea breeze, and Qingdao in the night was also vaguely charming... What will happen tomorrow?It was almost dawn when this question appeared in his mind again.