Chapter 23 Case 1 The invisible champion who sells "hidden champions"

"Liang Boqiang is the kind of person who can't be found immediately after throwing it into the crowd", "There are bosses like him everywhere in the south", "Liang Boqiang, who is not good-looking, likes to speak surprisingly"—almost all the reports about Liang Boqiang They will ridicule him a few words at the beginning of the article.This at least implies two things: first, Liang Boqiang is a person who can make jokes; second, he is frequently exposed in the media, so reporters have the opportunity to learn from each other. 43-year-old Liang Boqiang is from Xiaolan, Zhongshan, Guangdong.He opened a daily necessities company called St. Allen, which mainly produces one of the cheapest but most durable daily necessities-nail clippers. One afternoon in April 1998, Liang Boqiang read an article called "Talking About Nail Clippers" in an old newspaper package delivered by others. When Zhu Rongji met with representatives of national light industry enterprises in Zhongnanhai, he took out a few nail clippers given to him by the Taiwanese and expressed his emotion: "The nail clippers we produce can't be cut after two days, and their products are exquisite and durable. , We must keep an eye on the gap in the market to find a way out.”

The speaker is interested, and the readers are also interested. Liang Boqiang, who has been in the hardware business for more than ten years, began to have a strong interest in this niche market that was ignored by most of his peers.He traveled around the world to inquire about the market of nail clippers, and found that this market is promising: the gross profit margin of low-end products with a retail price of 2 yuan is also 40%, and the profit of high-end products is two to three times.The global market capacity of the entire industry is about 6 billion yuan.The biggest opportunity is that there is no company in the world that really "values" this business.So, Liang Boqiang began to ponder: Since such a small industry as razors can produce big brands such as Gillette and Comfort, why can't I make a Gillette among nail clippers?

In this way, Liang Boqiang officially launched his dream of "cutting nails for the whole world".About 3 years later, his St. Allen company has grown into the largest nail clipper manufacturer in China and the third largest nail clipper manufacturer in the world, accounting for about 27% of the Chinese nail clipper market. The share reached 60%. St. Allen's initial success, like many other local Chinese champions in the market, rested on products that were cheaper than foreigners and slightly better in quality than their Chinese counterparts.But if Liang Boqiang only focuses on cost and quality considerations, then his significance to this industry is at best a motivated and dedicated participant, not a leader with pioneering contributions.

In fact, Liang Boqiang never intended to compete with his colleagues.He wants to give nail clippers a new positioning and completely overturn the rules of the game in this small industry.As Simon said in the "Market" chapter of "The Hidden Champion": "Industry leaders do not regard the market as a given parameter, but as a part of the strategy. The initiative is in their own hands." From the first day he decided to make nail clippers, Liang Boqiang did not regard nail clippers as just a tool for cutting nails: "If it is just a tool, as long as the quality is better, buying one is enough for a lifetime." Inspired by Japanese products He, who studied traditional Chinese painting, believes that this gadget is just like a girl's satchel or hair clip. As long as it is injected with cultural content and turned into a fashion product, it is entirely possible to increase the added value and cause widespread repeat purchases.

Facts quickly proved Liang Boqiang's speculation, and this revolutionary change of concept quickly made him taste the sweetness. When the company participated in the Beijing "International Gift Show" for the first time in 1998, the popularity of their booth surpassed that of "777" in South Korea.One of the important reasons is that they launched themed products commemorating the first anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China.Since then, taking the high-end route under the banner of culture has become a firm strategy of the company.Not only the designers began to constantly renovate the pattern, attaching the logos of various theme activities, the images of various cartoon characters, the tourist scenery of the world and other cultural factors to the nail clippers, but also the company's sales strategy has also turned to beauty and fashion. Supplies companies rather than traditional nail clippers companies (mainly St. Allen series products).

Taking cartoon products as an example, during the company's shopping mall test, Liang Boqiang saw a little girl pestering her mother to buy a cartoon nail clipper in front of the counter of Saint Allen.But his daughter said: "There is no one like this at home." Since then, Liang Boqiang has become more convinced of the success of his product positioning. "Obviously, the moment a customer makes a purchase decision, what attracts her (him) is not just the product's function of cutting nails." Liang said, "This is impulsive consumption." If it is said that cartoon products attract more children and fashion female consumers, a new idea launched by St. Allen at the end of last year - nail clipper business cards has successfully impressed adult male consumers with more rational consumption psychology. .This idea was also figured out by Liang Boqiang himself. "People with rich social activities will receive so many business cards every year and every month, and they will lose or forget them if they fail," Liang said. A small and exquisite nail clipper with your name engraved on it, do you think he will forget it?" After the company launched this product at the price of 330 yuan for a box (100 pieces) of business card nail clippers, orders continued to flow.

Liang Boqiang's understanding of the nail clipper industry can be said to have subverted the positioning of an industry from the "Tao" level, which means that he may have an unprecedented vast world, but it also means that he will face some unprecedented problems at the "skill" level. Topics, the most important of which is the construction of brands and channels.Before him, the vast majority of Chinese private nail clipper manufacturers hardly had any impulse to build brands. "They are all the ones that are sent to the wholesale market in Yiwu by baskets. You can buy one for two yuan and use it for several years. Do you care about the brand of nail clippers like this?" Liang said.

For St. Allen, the difficulty of brand marketing is that its product is a low-value consumer durable.In theory, every consumer may be its target customer.But its meager production value is not enough to pay expensive advertising fees to the mass media. At the beginning, Liang Boqiang tried to let more people know his brand through some event marketing methods.For example, he once published a "name notice" in Guangzhou's "Yangcheng Evening News", soliciting brand names for his upcoming nail clipper products, and finally chose a meaningful name - "very small device".In addition, Liang Boqiang himself has also received some media attention because of his legendary entrepreneurial experience.But in any case, St. Allen has only 7 years of history after all, and its annual output value is only about 200 million yuan.In the Pearl River Delta, if there is no special reason, it is not easy for an enterprise of this scale to win the favor of the media.

Interestingly, since Liang Boqiang started to get in-depth contact with the invisible champion theory in early 2004 and got acquainted with Herman Simon, the media's attention to him began to grow exponentially.In the past two years, his name has appeared in the long-form reports of dozens of print media in the country, including "Economic Daily", "Manager" magazine, "People Weekly Times" and so on; he has also accepted no less than 10 TV interviews Exclusive interviews, including CCTV, Hunan Satellite TV, Guangdong Satellite TV, Hubei Satellite TV; moreover, only graduated from middle school, he also appeared on the forums of many famous universities, such as Peking University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Renmin University of China.On all these occasions, people's descriptions of him and his confessions are almost always closely related to the phrase "hidden champion".Later, he even published a book called "The King of Small Weapons-Liang Boqiang, China's Invisible Champion".It can be said that Liang Boqiang has become a hidden champion peddling "hidden champion".

Every time he stood on the podium, Liang Boqiang would say sincerely: "After I came into contact with the 'Invisible Champion', I felt suddenly enlightened." Of course, in fact, many of the basic characteristics of St. Allen are indeed very similar to the invisible champion described by Simon. .For example, focusing on market segments; ambitious to become a global leader in this market; highly innovative; and so on.But it should be said that besides the inspiration of the hidden champion theory itself, he also made another important discovery: when this novel theory is widely disseminated by the media, if a company can become the image of "China's hidden champion representative enterprise", Appeared, the brand of this enterprise will undoubtedly catch a ride.Therefore, from the first time he met Simon, he seized every possible opportunity to convey such a set of messages to the media and the public very consciously: "There is a teacher Simon in Germany who has a theory of invisible champions, and the St. Allen Company He is the most faithful executor and beneficiary of this theory in China."

Sure enough, the media are very happy to interpret the imported new term "invisible champion" through such a vivid and friendly case.Later, when the media paid more and more attention to Liang himself, he logically launched the theory of invisible champion as the theoretical support for his business dream.Thus, a new management concept originated from Europe and a typical Chinese farmer entrepreneur complement each other wonderfully. Facts in the past two years have proved that Liang Boqiang's brand strategy of "sell yourself first" is indeed beneficial and cost-effective.Not only did a large number of consumers get to know "Saint Allen" and "Very Small Device" through media reports, but also many readers and listeners across the country quickly became the company's direct customers and distributors.If the same effect is to be achieved through typical means of advertising, the cost may be unbearable for a small and medium-sized enterprise like St. Allen. As the most loyal supporter of Herman Simon, Liang Boqiang not only posted a large photo of himself and Simon on the most conspicuous window of the company, but also participated in every lecture of Simon in China.What's interesting is that once, a reporter at the scene asked Simon: "Didn't you say that the invisible champions are all low-key and unknown companies? Then if you show your face everywhere like Mr. Liang, wouldn't you be unqualified?" Laughing, the old man replied seriously: "Low-key and silence are just appearances, not goals. It depends on whether your market needs you to do so. In fact, all invisible champions are visible to their customers, and they are all love. Show off. Each of you is a potential client of Mr. Liang, so it is normal for him to try to get you all to know him." In addition to the brand, another problem is channel construction.On the one hand, the wholesale channel through the small commodity market does not match the brand positioning of St. Allen.Moreover, this is also the channel through which Liang Boqiang disdains to meddle.But on the other hand, entering shopping malls in a large area is not realistic in the short term.Although the price of St. Allen's nail clippers is much higher than that of most Chinese counterparts, it is still difficult to bear the high cost of shopping malls only through natural sales when the brand's pull is not strong enough. entrance fees and rent.Moreover, the consignment model of shopping malls is difficult to capture those group buying orders that have already given him a taste of the sweetness. In order to completely overcome this hurdle, Liang Boqiang made a big determination at the end of 2004 - to invest in the construction of his own channels.The company has launched a project called "315 Boss Incubation Plan", which means that it will take 3 years to invest 10 million to cultivate 500 bosses.The so-called "boss" refers to the franchisee.However, compared with general franchisees, the "boss" in the 315 plan has several important differences: first, the trainees (candidate franchisees) are recruited through recruitment advertisements rather than investment advertisements; secondly, trainees bring Salary training, after the training, you can also get a start-up fund.In order to systematize and routineize the training, Liang Boqiang later simply established a "D&A Business School" in the company.After graduating from the "Business School", the trainees returned to their familiar cities to establish St. Allen's specialty stores, and then used the specialty stores as a base to carry out extensive group buying business. The concept of the 315 plan reflects Liang Boqiang's painstaking efforts in channel construction.Long-term systematic training not only helps to cultivate franchisees' sales skills, but more importantly, cultivates recognition of corporate culture and products and increases loyalty.The establishment of venture capital helps to improve the enthusiasm and risk tolerance of franchisees.Liang knows very well that at the stage when the influence of the brand is not strong enough, most students will face considerable resistance, and they must be given sufficient support.But once they take root, the energy they exert will be incomparable to traditional channels. To be honest, the initial progress of the 315 program was not very smooth, the key reason being the selection of students. "Some young people may be full of enthusiasm, but they underestimate the resistance of the market. In addition, the accumulated social resources are relatively small, and the situation cannot be opened for a while." Liang Boqiang said.Therefore, starting from the second batch of students, Liang adjusted the policy in a timely manner, paying attention to the age, qualifications, economic conditions and social background of the students. "Each of them is required to bring their own laptops to study, not for anything else, but to set a threshold to examine your financial ability and dedication to this matter." By the second half of 2005, the 315 plan began to produce relatively optimistic results. There are more than 100 "baked" students, of which about 50 franchisees have "survived", and the one with the highest monthly turnover even reached 2 million yuan.Moreover, St. Allen's official website posted a notice that "this semester's enrollment is full".It seems that this somewhat crazy channel dream has not only begun to become real, but also has the momentum of starting a prairie fire.