Gome, which has just been rated as the third strongest chain enterprise in China by the Ministry of Commerce, has once again made a name for itself. On February 24th, Gome Global Strategic Cooperation Summit, the largest and highest-profile summit in the history of home appliance industry, was hosted by Gome in Beijing. Chinese and foreign giants responded with one voice and built nests one after another, so that it took a full twenty minutes for the host to introduce the guests.
Haier Zhou Yunjie, TCL Yuan Xincheng, Hisense Yu Shumin, Skyworth Zhang Xuebin, Midea Fang Hongbo, Admiralty Wanping ... The flag figures of China's home appliance industry who live in seclusion on weekdays all came to join us; Sony, Toshiba, Sanyo, Electrolux, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Sony Ericsson ... Foreign giants who have always been proud of downstream sellers dare not ignore Gome's invitation, and have sent presidents, CEOs, general managers in China and other senior executives to make a collective appearance at the meeting; However, senior leaders of the State Council Development Research Center, Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Commerce, China Chain Store & Franchise Association, China Household Electrical Appliances Association and other related management departments and associations actively participated in the meeting, which made the meeting far beyond the scope of an enterprise.
Although we have predicted in advance how spectacular the summit will be, people who come to the scene will still be deeply shocked by Gome's appeal. As Luo Qingqi, senior director of Paler Consulting, said: "It is the first time for this industry to let all the giants of circulation and manufacturing sit here together." Geping Guo, president of China Chain Store & Franchise Association, was also surprised: "I didn't expect Gome to have such influence in the home appliance industry!" Some insiders believe: "The summit held by Gome has surpassed the concept of corporate behavior in a sense. It allows all well-known executives at home and abroad to put everything at hand, listen to the arrangement of a private enterprise and come to the same place at the same time. In fact, Gome's cohesiveness has even surpassed the relevant industry authorities. "
Since ancient times, interests have made it.
The ancients held the emperor to make the princes. Today, Gome, who is only 17 years old, can move many home appliance manufacturing giants with a long history around the world to Beijing to start new business. The trump card it relies on is its huge retail network with more than 50 branches in 25 cities across the country, and its huge sales of177.9 billion yuan in 2003. Although it may seem to be a small number, it has "occupied 15% of the industry's first-class market share, and has become Haier, Konka, TCL, Kelon, Midea, Skyworth, Hisense, Changhong, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, Philips, Sharp, Sanyo, Electrolux, Smith and so on. According to Zhou Yunjie, vice president of Haier Group, "Haier's annual sales in Gome is not less than10.50 billion. "
It is for this reason that Zhou Yunjie compared the manufacturing industry and the circulation industry to a close "husband-wife relationship", but said that "it needs to be understood slowly"; Although Wan Ping, president of Guangdong Group, Mao, chairman of Ningbo Kitchenware Co., Ltd. and the head of Hisense Group Co., Ltd. still implicitly said that "there are still problems and contradictions in the cooperation between manufacturers", when Gome, the largest consumer electronics retailer in China and China's largest customer, held a summit and invited them, they all came in a hurry and sat down to discuss according to the topics formulated by Gome.
Chai Xinjian, vice president of Jiangsu Little Swan Marketing Co., Ltd. bluntly said: "There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests." Yuan Xincheng, vice president of TCL Group Co., Ltd., smiled and did not answer "Is Gome's piety attracting you to attend the meeting?" Wu, chairman of Malata Group Co., Ltd. clearly stated: "It is very important for me to attend this meeting today. I hope that through communication, Gome can sell us more Malata products. If we are not profitable, there will be no such cooperation at all. " "If anyone has a bad relationship with Gome, the market share will inevitably decline." This is a fact that everyone knows very well. What's more, Huang Guangyu, the boss of Gome, who has always been low-key, attended in person and declared that "the principle of doing things is that the greater your trust in me, the greater my trust. If you can give me something, I will take the lead in supporting your brand! "
As Chen Huai, director of the Market Economy Research Institute of the State Council Development Research Center, said: "The reason why so many manufacturers give Gome such a big face today is because of objective needs. This objective need is not a simple profit division, it is not to come here to coordinate, whether the merchants can not fight price wars, and whether the manufacturers can give me a higher discount rate. These are not big problems. The key is that manufacturers hope to cooperate with Gome for a long time. The reason why manufacturers still want to cooperate with Gome in any price war is because the circulation cost of Gome manufacturers can be reduced, and Gome sales are more cost-effective and more profitable than manufacturers' own sales. This is an objective reality. "
As for foreign home appliance manufacturers, they are more enthusiastic than domestic ones. Lu Jianbo, deputy director of the Market Consulting Center of the Institute of Market Economy of the State Council Development Research Center, believes that this is because "Gome is their only channel in China"-"I don't deny the technological advantages of foreign brands, but as far as channel advantages are concerned, they no longer exist. China's market is a very complicated dual market. The primary market and the tertiary market are far apart, and there is a big difference. Foreign-funded enterprises don't know much about the tertiary market, so the only thing they want to seize is the rapidly expanding primary and secondary markets, otherwise they will soon withdraw from the China market. " As if to confirm his words, Le Jia Ming of Motorola (China) Electronics Co., Ltd. clearly and directly said: "Our strategy this year is to rely on large chain stores like Gome in first-and second-tier cities and cooperate directly with them."
It can be seen that manufacturers, whether domestic or foreign, always seem to be opposed to Gome for the distribution of benefits, but they have to admit their failure and cooperate with Gome because they are beyond their reach in some market areas and can expect huge sales and market share. And Gome is in this non-stop wrestling, gaining greater voice and appeal every time.
Crocodiles in Lian Heng
From an electrical appliance store with tens of square meters beside zhushikou Avenue in Beijing 1987 to chain stores in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hebei and even Hong Kong today, it exceeds 150. From the sales of 3.02 billion yuan in 2000 to the annual growth rate of 654.38+07.79 billion yuan in 2003, with an average daily growth rate of 50 million yuan, the rapid development of Gome created the chain myth of China. No wonder Nobuyuki Hirata, the general representative of Toshiba Corporation in China, sincerely praised: "Gome achieved what Toshiba did not achieve at 17."
There is a reason for success, and successful people have a successful philosophy. The development and growth of an enterprise requires decision makers to have a unique and long-term strategic vision. Huang Guangyu is undoubtedly such a person. From the summit held by Gome, the scale and momentum can be described as "unprecedented", which is enough to see Huang Guangyu's step-by-step and thoughtful business strategy.
In fact, there are summits like Gome every year, but this year is undoubtedly the largest; Huang Guangyu, who has always kept a low profile and likes to speak as the president of Pengrun Investment Co., Ltd., is very rare to attend the meeting as the general manager of Gome, which is very small town. Gome, which has always been aggressive and invincible, even took the lead in saying to manufacturers at the meeting, "We hope to establish new strategic cooperative relations with our partners. On the basis of win-win cooperation, the two sides will strengthen cooperation between manufacturers, support each other and serve each other from a development perspective, better serve consumers through resource sharing and professional division of labor, and finally achieve strategic assistance and win-win cooperation. " Behind all this is unusual, in fact, Gome's far-reaching strategy and planning for the future are hidden.
Plan a new alliance of manufacturers.
February 2 1 day-Four days before the Gome summit, the top executives of Best Buy Group, the world's largest home appliance chain retailer, went to Beijing and solemnly announced that they planned to purchase 654,380.2 billion US dollars of home appliances and computer products in China this year. The personal visits to China by its vice-chairman and CEO brad anderson, vice-president of strategy and vice-president of international procurement show that they attach importance to the China market and this procurement. According to media reports, the main purpose of Best Buy's visit to China is to explore its retail business opportunities in China, plan business investment, find more China suppliers for cooperation, especially help China suppliers to make their products meet international requirements, so as to gradually expand their future purchases in China and the Asia-Pacific region.
Although Best Buy and other enterprises have not made great progress in China market for the time being, it is still unknown whether they can adapt to the market environment in China and how much competitive advantage they can have. However, Gome, which has taken precautions, has long been soberly aware that foreign home appliance retail giants will come in sooner or later, and they are the real competitors of Gome in the future with hundreds of chain stores and annual turnover of billions of dollars. Hua Tian, general manager of Gome's headquarters sales center, said: "Gome's first market completely comes from the space left by the withdrawal of old home appliance channels; The second market was seized from the rivals of the same format after the old channel withdrew; The third market is a China-like product market with the development of product technology and the change of consumption pattern, which is a real overseas market. Of course, this third market is to compete with multinational home appliance circulation brands. "
At present, although the competition for the "second market" is still in progress, compared with Suning, the biggest competitor in China, Gome's absolute advantage is the general trend and very obvious. The number of outlets, annual sales performance and ranking of the Ministry of Commerce are the best proof of the latter's comprehensive strength and advantages. However, this is not the case in the third market. Although Gome has always hoped to establish a well-laid and large-scale chain retail network in China before the formal entry of foreign capital, so as to seize market resources first, so as to build a solid competitive advantage and cope with the strong challenge of foreign large-scale chain commercial capital, and therefore, it began to enter China mainland and Hong Kong from last year's 1 1, trying to find a breakthrough in the direct collision with local foreign home appliance retail giants. Accumulate experience, but in the past few months, Gome has repeatedly stressed that the symbolic significance of the Hong Kong store is greater than the actual profit, but time waits for no man, and the pace of foreign investment is getting faster and faster. "Manufacturers alliance is the inevitable trend in the future. If you don't do it, naturally someone will do it, and Gome must do it first, "Zong Xiangdong said.
It can be said that factory resources are an important guarantee for Gome's sustained and rapid development over the years. With the rapid establishment of stores and stores, Gome's network is increasing in value and its sales force is growing. This is naturally attractive to home appliance manufacturers. Using Gome's chain network all over the country, they can bring products to market quickly, at low cost and efficiently, saving all kinds of personnel and management marketing expenses in the previous sales channels. According to Hua Tian, "Gome has more than 200 multinational and local suppliers and is the largest supplier team of consumer electronics products in the Asia-Pacific region." With the increasing value of Gome in the whole consumer-oriented supply chain from manufacturing to circulation, the interests between manufacturers and them are becoming more and more inseparable. However, because the division of interests is difficult to balance, the game between manufacturers about product pricing power has been going on for many years. Recently, manufacturers have a strong demand for rectifying the market order of the industry.
Huatian said that Gome's sales volume is the largest in China market. "Since 1998 joined the National Information Industry Center and the Business Information Network of the National Bureau of Statistics, the sales statistics of Gome's color TVs, air conditioners, mobile phones, refrigerators, washing machines, DVD players, white household appliances and other commodities have ranked first in the same industry in China every year." Therefore, cooperation with Gome means a substantial increase in sales, and manufacturers have no choice. However, the current situation is not so simple, as Chairman Mao of Kitchenware said: "The household appliance industry in China has indeed undergone tremendous changes. The global home appliance manufacturing industry and the global home appliance circulation industry moved these two bases to China at the same time. This is a very special situation, which has never happened in Japan or South Korea. China has become or will become the main battlefield for global competition in the world's home appliance manufacturing and circulation industries. "
One foot of foreign home appliance chain has entered China, and the intensification of competition has led to major changes in industrial organization. The competition between enterprises is no longer the competition between individual enterprises, but requires the upstream and downstream enterprises that have cooperative relations with themselves to form a supply chain that can quickly respond to market demand-that is, the competition between enterprises has become a supply chain competition with terminal enterprises as the core. Gome Huatian believes that the comprehensive integration of home appliance circulation channels has begun: "At present, the number of home appliance circulation enterprises in China has exceeded 32,000, while the number of home appliance circulation enterprises in the United States has been less than 1000, and the market share of the top three home appliance retailers in the United States has exceeded 80%, which shows that the resources of the home appliance retail circulation industry in China will be further integrated. With the continuous development of home appliance industry, competition is also intensifying, which has gone beyond the scope of quality competition, price competition and service competition. Resource competition will be an important problem that manufacturers and businesses must face in the future. The competition between manufacturers for channel resources and terminal resources, and the competition between merchants for product resources, marketing resources and human resources will form a new round of competition peak in the near future. " Therefore, Gome very much hopes to integrate the resources of manufacturers through the alliance of manufacturers and realize a win-win situation in the future. Huang Guangyu told reporters frankly: "Now everyone is most worried about when the merchants will give up the manufacturers, but in fact, we are also afraid that the manufacturers will give up the merchants. Every time such behavior occurs, it may cause our two companies or the whole industry to go backwards for at least a few months. "
Huatian listed such a set of figures for manufacturers: "When the international market competition is becoming more and more fierce under the background of globalization, the resources or capabilities of any organization are limited, and long-term prosperity is a challenge for any enterprise. China's household electrical appliances enterprises hope to become long-lived organizations with orderly operation, so the strategic alliance among manufacturers will surely become the main strategic channel to gain competitive advantage. At present, most western enterprises have more than 30 alliances, among which the world's top 500 enterprises have an average of about 60 major alliances. In fact, the manufacturing industry and the circulation industry belong to the same industrial chain. In the long run, they are interdependent and inseparable, and jointly create value. In the final analysis, it is difficult for both manufacturers and retailers to go against the general trend of market development and go with the flow. Strategic alliances between manufacturers can integrate resources, reduce costs, reduce waste, improve efficiency, and greatly improve the capital utilization rate and return rate of manufacturers. "
However, some merchants have put forward different opinions on the strategic cooperation of manufacturers, and their words and deeds are still ambiguous. Wu, chairman of Malata, said: "We should be in-laws with Gome. I have many products, just like many daughters, which can be given to Gome or Dazhong, but we will develop many different products. " Huang Aiping, vice president of Amoi Electronics Co., Ltd. also said that it is necessary to "provide differentiated products and services for different users, create different values, and better integrate each other's interests."
In this regard, Gome is obviously prepared. Huang Guangyu's attitude clearly pointed out: "If everyone has been in a state of mutual use and mutual suspicion, changing one place at a time, Gome won't do it with me, Dazhong won't do it with me, I'll find Gome, I'll kneel down and beg everyone to do it, and then I'll find a way to retaliate. This will be a vicious competition cycle. Today's manufacturers and businesses are unlikely to crush and control who. Therefore, we should strengthen mutual trust and sincerity, reduce exclusion and distrust, design our long-term development direction and integrate our relationship. In fact, none of us can live without anyone, and if you use me Huang Guangyu to balance my opponent, I will have a way to balance your opponent. " A word was said on and off the court.
For Gome to take the lead in proposing an alliance with manufacturers, Huang Guangyu's explanation is: "Some problems can't be solved for a while now, but we should start from where we have knowledge. The most important thing is to take practical actions, and don't always wander outside. I don't see any harm in taking the first step. Gome has always played such a role. Moreover, at present, many vendor organizations and business organizations do not match, resulting in a large number of resources dislocation. Therefore, manufacturers really need to seek further development in seeking common ground while reserving differences and enjoying resource information, that is, brand-plus-scale cooperation-through Gome's brand, help manufacturers of goods they sell establish brands, increase sales and make them develop on a large scale; Manufacturers should also let businesses establish brands and get due profits in the process of selling manufacturers' products. "
In fact, when multinational home appliance giants have increased their investment in the China market, China home appliance manufacturers must naturally realize that they should not fight fiercely in their own nests anyway, but need to formulate new "rules of the game". As Chloe Wang, deputy secretary general of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, said, "China's household electrical appliances market is one of the most competitive and mature industries. Due to the expansion of market manufacturing capacity, the resources reorganized in the past will become scarce and scarce. In the new transformation, various resources will inevitably flow to advantageous industries and enterprises, and competition will inevitably prompt home appliance dealers and manufacturers to choose the same interests and strive for a win-win situation in close cooperation. " Paler Consulting Luo Qingqi cited such an example to illustrate that the resource docking between manufacturers has begun to become a reality: "In trying to convince consumers, manufacturers have a division of labor-high-end manufacturers are responsible for persuasion, and their advertisements are mainly for high-end, telling how their products are novel and how they have special concepts; The persuasion of low-end consumers is mainly carried out by businesses like Gome through various promotional activities. " On February 14, Gome launched "Rainbow Service" nationwide, which is actually an integration of service resources of home appliance manufacturers. "Gome wants to establish perfect service standards and standardize the services of current home appliance manufacturers, which is also a service improvement for consumers." Zong Xiangdong explained the purpose of Gome in this way and said: "All manufacturers who cooperate with Gome should gradually incorporate their services into the system." This has been regarded by the industry as the beginning of Gome's attempt to control after-sales service resources most effectively.
But the key question remains-who should make this new "rules of the game"? In fact, a new round of competition between manufacturers and retailers for possible changes in control and dominance has begun. And the wrestling between them will undoubtedly make this new transformation evolve faster and more thoroughly. The final result is likely to make the strength of both sides more balanced and return the cooperation between them to a more just and fair normal business track.