Chapter 23 Desheng: "From one end to the end" of an enterprise

The radio history showroom of Tecsun General Electric Company in Guangzhou is filled with hundreds of radios of various brands, models and ages.There are pandas, peonies, red lights, and spring thunders that Chinese families loved in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as products from world-leading brands such as Sony, Philips, and Grundig. The big guy he calls "Tecsun's flagship": the HAM2000. Although Desheng's full name is crowned with the words "General Electric", in fact its only product is the radio.This 10-year-old company now has nearly 1,000 employees, 8 production lines, and produces more than 40 types of radios. It is the undisputed leader in China's radio industry. HAM-2000 is Tecsun's first cross-border joint development and independent production in China. So far, it is the domestic broadcasting and communication receiver product with the most complete functions.In the jargon of the HAMs, this is the ultimate product for "ham-level" enthusiasts.The foreign partner of HAM-2000 is GRUNDIG, the North American radio overlord. The price of this machine in the North American market is 499 US dollars.

For a company like Desheng, which has not been around for a long time, is not too big, and is not too famous, the question that people are most interested in is: why in the winter of 1994, when the Internet age was just beginning to emerge, why did Desheng Students actually chose such an untimely "sunset" industry as radio as their foundation?Perhaps it was because of this question that aroused Liang Wei's thoughts. He has always been low-key and replied to the author's email, and our interview began. The beginning of the email said: "Among many successful companies and business people, you will find these two types, either love to do what they do, or do what they do and love what they do. Desheng belongs to the first category."

Liang Wei did not say the word "love" so easily. Liang Wei, 47 years old, was born in Hainan Province. He has been an out-and-out amateur radio enthusiast since he became obsessed with ore radios in elementary school. After graduating from the Radio Department of South China University of Technology in 1981, he first worked in the Provincial Meteorological Observatory, and later transferred to the Fifth Division of South China Branch of China Electronics Import and Export Corporation. One day in 1988, when several colleagues in the five departments were drinking tea together, they agreed to set up an export processing factory. Liang Wei even named the factory "Dickson". "Edison, pun intended," he joked. (Due to brand registration issues, the product name was later changed to Dissun.) As a radio enthusiast for many years, Liang Wei naturally served as the vice president of Guangzhou Dison Company and the director of Dongguan Dison Radio Factory, and shouldered the product development and production of Dison. The burden of management, together with his partners, created Dickson's radio business.

At the beginning, the vigorous DISSON radio was on the rise. At the end of 1991, when the 24-hour "Voice of West Lake" radio program in Hangzhou was launched, people were proud to snap up and wear the DISSON R707 two-band stereo radio; thousands of people queued up overnight at the Plaza of Tianjin Department Store Disson radio.For a time, Dissanne's reputation even ranked ahead of several famous radio brands at that time. However, with the rapid growth of Dickson's company, a complex psychology mixed with vanity and inferiority spread among some leaders of the company. In 1992, the head of the leadership meeting said: "When I heard that Dickson was a radio maker, I felt so blushed." According to their logic, since the radio can be successfully built, it can be used as a fax machine, and it can be As a cordless phone, you can do satellite communication, and you can also do real estate properties... Dickson gradually deviated from its original intention: "not the biggest, but first-class".

Under the dominance of this mentality, Dickson began to spend money like water, "painting geospheres and buildings", "There is only unexpected, nothing impossible".The goal of Dickson's "Great Leap Forward" is actually exaggerated to reach 6.3 billion in annual sales within three years!Liang Wei said: "I only have one word to describe Dickson at that time - self-harm." On the one hand, the extremely fanatical people "chattered you and said I will come on stage", and on the other hand, people who were disgusted by the company's betrayal of ideals and lost their rationality began to leave Dickson, although they "leaved step by step". In the winter of 1993, Liang Wei, who loved radio like his life, also left. The company said that he went abroad to study, but few people really knew where he went.It wasn't until October 1995 that "Readers" magazine published the first issue of Desun radio advertisements that people knew that he had spent more than a year in the local government and With the support of my friends, I jointly founded the "Desheng Electric" company. There were only 5 people in the company at the beginning, the vice presidents of Q and H, and the other two bachelor department managers, also from Disheng. They continued their dream of radio silently.

After October 1995, many cadres and employees who left Disheng successively gathered in Desheng again.Now the cadres above the vice president of Desheng are all from Disheng.The director of the general manager's office, the manager of the quality control department, the engineering department and the manufacturing department were employees on the same production line when they worked in the Dickson factory in 1988.Until now, Desheng's cadres occasionally slipped their tongues during meetings and referred to Desheng as Disheng. However, don't think that Desheng is just a closed enterprise with inbreeding and no enterprising spirit. After September 1996, Mr. M and Mr. Z, who had worked in Shenzhen SEG, also joined Desheng, and were once in charge of the chief engineer office of Desheng.There are also many production and technical backbones from other radio factories.Fan Zhongxiong, the current deputy general manager of Desheng, wrote in a post on the BCL forum of Desheng: "This group of people who have designed radios, produced radios, sold radios, and have always loved radios gathered together. Desheng's That’s how his career started!” Fan Zhongxiong himself was from Dickson, and everyone called him Lao Fan.

It is precisely because of their love for radio that when Tecsun people make products, it seems that they are making a gadget that can make them smile for a group of friends who are also radio enthusiasts.Lao Fan said that in order to test the reception performance of Desheng's new products, the leaders of Desheng always carry various radios in their bags. One thing they often do is to take the radio to the streets and lanes of the city and All over the wild mountains and mountains to try their new products.Before the launch of the Desheng Super Shortwave King R-9700, they took the radio to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, and listened to the radio with the border guards, Tibetan and Uighur herdsmen.They not only listened to it themselves, but also sent it to friends from all over the world, and even let the Chinese Polar Expedition Team take it to the North and South Poles to listen.

In the mid-1980s, some traditional radio brands continued to fade away or turned to new fields, such as Red Light and Panda. In the mid-1990s, the original structure of China's radio industry changed again because of the rise of Desheng.These cutting-edge players in the early 1990s, including Dissun, Bolong, and Seger, also gradually retreated and shrank because they did not think about making progress in production design and marketing.For a period of time, Desheng almost became the only one. "It is said that in 1997, almost all major radio manufacturers in the country except Desheng gathered for a meeting to jointly deal with Desheng. They also divided the work, and Desheng produced this model for you to 'copy' , which one should be 'copied' by him... I didn't know about it until recently." Liang Wei smiled lightly, quite a bit like "the mast and scull were wiped out in ashes".

Why did Desheng stand out?After all, the biggest reason is that it devotes more attention and loves to this industry than others, so it can produce some newer and better things.On the walls of every office and every production line of Desheng hangs a passage from Liang Wei's friend, Qin Shuo, editor-in-chief of "Nanfengchuang", titled "Greatness lies in the accumulation of details".This is also Desheng's creed. The details are accumulated like this: In 1995 and 1996, they devoted themselves to improving the quality of ordinary shortwave radios; In 1996, the PL-737 popular digital tuner radio was launched.

In 1997, the first R-9700, which was popularized on a large scale in China and applied double frequency conversion receiving technology, was launched, and R-818, which adopted digital display frequency technology; In 1998, launched the digital tuner PL-757 which can directly input the radio frequency, in addition to meeting the domestic demand, began to supply the European and American giants in the form of OEM; Since 1999, it has jointly developed and produced broadcasting and amateur radio communication receiver HAM-2000 with GRUNDIG of Germany and DRAKE of the United States. HAM-2000 was put into production in 2000, and it was continuously exported to developed countries in Europe and the United States. At the same time, it was used as a broadcast monitoring product by many domestic radio stations and Vietnam National Radio Station. It was also favored by domestic amateur radio circles (HAM) and broadcast enthusiasts (BCL). .

In 2004, the export to the US market has reached 40% of the company's annual sales. "The retail price of HAM2000 in the US is as high as 500 US dollars. It is one of the most expensive home appliances manufactured by the Chinese and sold in the US." Liang Wei is proud say. ... Liang Wei said: "In the beginning, there was no market research, we just believed in such a dead truth: twenty years ago, radio lovers in the generation who grew up listening to storytelling and radio dramas were still there. Well. It’s just because the excellent radio factories in China have switched to other products, and people haven’t seen a good radio for a long time. But now there are such a group of people who are so serious about making radios and advertising, there will definitely be people who will cheer.” This passage In fact, it also echoes one of the interpretations of the company's name by the people of Desheng - Virtue is born naturally. As for why other radio brands declined, "the reason lies with them, not a market problem," Liang Wei said.In his radio exhibition room and reception room, Liang Wei pointed to a group of domestic brand-name radios produced in the late 1970s and sighed to me: "If some of them can go down this road, maybe there will be no German radio today. It happened. Desheng’s success, to put it bluntly, is actually someone else gave us the opportunity.” From the establishment of China's No. 1 radio brand around 1997 to now, has no one really persuaded Desheng to do something else? "Yes, and often." Liang Wei admitted. "But I know very well what the consequences will be if I really do something else—a powerful opponent from abroad will naturally hide in the quilt and have fun; because it was difficult for you to concentrate all your strength to compete with him, but now you dare to scatter Energy, isn’t it courting death. Compared with other domestic radio brands, they have worked very hard, this time I will definitely thank you for handing over the great river and mountain.” Lao Fan has another explanation for Desheng's single-mindedness: "Because we really don't have the energy to do other things, there are too many things in the field of radio reception that we need to study." There are only a dozen of them in Dongguan Desheng In a simple office shared by five or six people of square meters, Lao Fan talked about a small product they developed recently, R912.During the debugging process, they found that if an FM coil is placed flat, there will be a slight howling sound between shortwave 9 and 10, which can only be felt by professionals. This problem can only be solved by standing it up. "This is fine, this is not good, why do you say? It's interesting." Lao Fan muttered to himself, while gesticulating with his right hand back and forth three or four times, with an intoxicated smile that only technology fans can have on his face. Regarding the prospect of Desheng, I asked Liang Wei what he was most worried about. "I'm just worried that everyone will get tired of doing the same thing for a long time," he said. "Of course, I won't get bored, it depends on others." "Our biggest opponent is ourselves" From the current situation, it seems that there is no need to worry too much about this.The old fan told me that Desheng's workforce is very stable, "even a bit too stable." There are not a few veteran employees with 8 years of service in Desheng.However, because of this, Lao Fan himself has another worry, "Fashion is not only for companies, but also for our universities. Excellent students also favor those so-called popular majors. If this continues, radio technology may one day be followed by no one. .” The media revolution triggered by the Internet has become ubiquitous. Will Desheng, who only makes radios, really have a better tomorrow?Both Liang Wei and Lao Fan seemed confident.Liang Wei said in an email: "There are more and more radio stations in China, which means that there are audiences and markets. Broadcasting is not a 'sunset industry'. The radio industry is not what people call a 'sunset industry'. Desheng believes: in There is still a lot of room for R&D, production and sales of radios and the promotion of radio culture, and there are more things waiting for us to do.” After many industries mature, there will be a group of fixed consumers, and the same is true for radio programs. "Students, army soldiers, field workers, a considerable number of elderly people who have retired from training and floating population are all loyal users of radios." Lao Fan said. So far, more than 90% of the world's radios are produced in China, so the export volume of Chinese radios reflects the demand of the world's radio market to a certain extent.Fan Zhongxiong said that this number has been rising, "As far as I know, it is currently about 60 million units per year." The "sunset argument" largely comes from the history of the radio and the judgment on the technical content - the basic principles of the radio have not changed much since the invention of the radio 100 years ago.But in fact, innovation in this industry happens all the time. "From electron tubes to transistors to integrated circuits, who can say that this industry is stagnant." Fan Zhongxiong said. "Twenty years ago, who heard of FM stereo, now you can turn on any new radio and you can get 20 or more FM stations." As for Desheng's ideal, "It's actually very simple. That sentence has been hanging on the wall of the engineering department for eight years-'Professional and dedicated, make the best radio in China!'" Liang Wei stopped and took a sip from his glass. Milk tea, he casually added, "Maybe it will belong to the world in the future."