Antaihe: Benchmarking the European market with a high starting point

To be a handed down enterprise. Gao Fuhui, general manager of Antaihe Auto Parts Co., Ltd., said that this was the original intention of founding Antaihe.

As a mature industry, the automotive brake pad market is highly competitive, with many brands but mixed. Founded in 1995, Antaihe is an OEM At the very beginning, several founders, including Gaofuhui, were planning to build their own brands, so the customers who choose OEM customers are almost all the world's leading brands. "The ultimate goal of cooperating with them is to be a world-class brand. Chinese enterprises, world-renowned Chinese brands. "

Improve our own brand by OEM

"We started our business based on Europe at first, and later expanded to markets such as Asia, Africa and South America. Gao Fuhui said. Antaihe currently has more than 1,500 kinds of brake pad products, of which the coverage rate of commercial vehicles has reached 80%. "The European market has high requirements for product quality. We cooperate with German, Italian and British companies Cooperation, based on this, we can continuously improve our production management level and promote our ability to solve problems. This is consistent with our original idea of making high-end products. ”

Gao Fuhui said that the requirements of European customers are all-round, not only in product performance and production process requirements, but also in product packaging design, logistics , the requirements of after-sales service are extremely standardized and high standards. Following this development track, Antahe has achieved a high level of stable operation. In the annual supplier evaluation report, Antahe's grade is in a rising trend. On the other hand, Gao Fuhui pointed out: "We must make our own brand a higher level than the existing brands in the market, otherwise how will it be recognized by everyone? "

Impressing customers with cost-effective product quality is the foundation for Antahe's OEM and private label business to leverage the European market. Gao Fuhui is also a R&D engineer, and has high requirements for product quality. It is almost paranoid. Foreign experts are stationed in the factory for guidance, adopt international advanced equipment, and send products to foreign professional laboratories for testing, test and compare with other manufacturers' products, and cooperate with professional system vendors and manufacturers... In this way, the production is gradually improved from the technical level. Management level. Gao Fuhui revealed that in laboratory tests and comparisons, some of Antaihe's products are even better than European manufacturers in some performances. In the automotive brake pad industry, Antaihe's enterprise scale can only be regarded as medium, but its reputation is already high. Ranked among the best.

When Antaihe products gain high recognition in the market, Antaihe timely launches its own brand related products, and conducts overall design and marketing for agents in various markets, and provides exclusive Agents give more resources to support. Gao Fuhui said that the current annual investment in its own brand accounts for 5% of sales. After ten years of hard work, the tiger's mouth is full of food. In 2005, Antaihe ushered in its own brand in the market.

Accurately control market demand

However, Gao Fu will say that when a brand achieves a certain level, it is not only about price and marketing, but also about the value of the brand itself, the most important part of which is to target Product quality, unimpeded communication with foreign experts, so as to obtain fast and effective guidance to solve product problems in market feedback. "The difference between Antaihe and other brands lies in the high quality of products, and the impact on the market. The high familiarity and strong control ability of our company are the most attractive places for our customers. ”

The particularity of the automotive brake pad industry is that due to differences in national conditions such as road conditions and driving habits, the use of the same product in different markets will generate different market feedback. At this time, companies need to be able to thoroughly grasp the needs of the market , adjust the product. For example, the German highway has no speed limit, so the braking performance of the brake pads is very high, but the noise requirements are not strict, but in some European markets, the products are required to almost reach the silent standard.

In order to accurately grasp the differentiated needs of different markets, Antaihe requires the front-line sales personnel who are in contact with the market to have a keen sense of the market and an understanding of technical issues, not just as a transit-connector When the problem arises, it is directly transferred to the technician. At Antaihe, the standard operating procedure for sales staff after encountering a problem is: communicate with customers in a timely manner, accurately grasp the problem, conduct a simple analysis, communicate with customers, and further grasp the deeper information behind the problem, and then feedback it to the internal technology of the enterprise personnel. "Our sales staff must have two hard conditions, one is a mechanical professional background, and the other is agile thinking ability. Sometimes, our sales staff can even help customers solve some very deep technical problems."

In fact, in the automotive brake pad industry, whoever can solve the problem quickly can gain a reputation in the market and thus have a strong competitive advantage. Gaofuhui emphasized that Antaihe has relevant professional and technical backgrounds from management to sales staff, which enables it to communicate with customers quickly, accurately and without errors, and thus can solve problems effectively. There was a problem with one of Antaihe's products before. Through repeated communication with local customers and taking the product to different markets for testing and observation, it was finally found that the problem was not the product itself, but the system itself. This problem is also a common problem faced by colleagues in the industry. Communication with European experts, coupled with its own accumulated technical experience, Antaihe has made corresponding changes to the product's internal and external design to solve this system problem. Compared with the solution of another European company, Antahoe's solution achieved the same effect. "Many companies just can't solve this problem in the first place, and in the end, they can't give priority to seizing this product market, and they can't establish their own competitiveness in the market." Gao Fuhui said. Later, this improved product was launched in Asia, Africa and other markets, and the sales feedback was also very good. This incident changed the image of Antaihe as a foundry company in the eyes of customers, and highlighted the overall operation and management capabilities of the company.

Antaihe conducts regular communication and visits with customers through the three levels of sales staff, technical backbone and management team. "These exchanges are very sincere," Gao Fuhui said. "We will also recommend suitable products to customers based on market conditions, rather than what customers need, we will provide." Although the current model of person-to-person communication is not conducive to Antaihe Focusing on the after-sales market is enough, but Gao Fuhui is not satisfied. He has already begun to envisage the establishment of a special information department, which will collect data on market demand, products, promotion, habits and other data in various countries around the world, and analyze related products. " Formulations" International Latest Technical Report. At present, the production and technical capabilities of most Chinese counterparts are still limited by customer orders, but Antahe hopes to jump out of the constraints of orders, take the initiative to grasp market trends, and enter new markets in advance. "Now we are mostly passively receiving information, and the specialized information department allows Antaihe to take the initiative to grasp market information and be at the forefront of the market." Gao Fuhui said, "Incorporating the latest product design into our products. Only by taking one step ahead can we develop rapidly and survive for a long time." Antaihe requires sales staff to have professional background and agile thinking ability, so as to accurately grasp the differentiated needs of the market.