Record of China's cutting-edge brands: building brands from 0 to 1

Over the past few decades, Made in China has become world-famous. Many Chinese companies participate in international competition as OEMs and share the dividends of the times. Nowadays, as the country promotes the "transformation of "Made in China to Chinese brands", more and more enterprises are actively transforming and making changes to win the next decade.

The biggest challenge for Chinese companies is how to establish their own brands in the highly competitive international market. Compared with global century-old stores or strong brands, Chinese brands still have a long way to go. The most critical step at present is to complete the "from 0 to 1" leap of cutting-edge brands.

To open up a new situation, Chinese enterprises need to make efforts in brand positioning, product innovation, channel operation, supply chain management and other aspects. At the just-concluded 4 Global Sources Exhibition, "CEConline" saw such a group of companies: some of them have made small achievements in brand building, some have just emerged, and some are still waiting to see and brewing... For some We have conducted on-site interviews with companies that are already ahead of the curve to explore their ways of breaking the competition.

Precise positioning

Founded in 2004, Guangzhou Langston Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. is committed to creating an international audio brand with technology and innovation. In the past fifteen years, the company has independently established the LANGSDOM brand, designing and producing multi-functional headphones such as music headphones, sports headphones, game headphones, and smart headphones.

"When you were doing B2B before, there wasn't much feedback from users, but 'no voice' doesn't mean you did a good job," Langston general manager Cai He Jin told "CEConline", "Now When making C-end products, there may be many voices saying that you are not good, especially the durability problem will suppress sales, and these years are also in the process of paying tuition fees.”

Langston general manager Cai Hejin believes that, As a cutting-edge brand, it is difficult for LANGSDOM to compete with a century-old store, whether it is brand awareness or technology precipitation. As a result, LANGSDOM targets young consumers and provides them with "fashionable and interesting" products. "This consumer group is more suitable for cutting-edge brands, and our product features will be more in line with their preferences."

Cai Hejin believes that in order to persuade more consumers to buy products, brand positioning must be consistent with Similar brands do differentiated competition. Specifically, for different styles of big brands, LANGSDOM will introduce different function adjustments and different pricing to conquer consumers with high cost performance.

For consumers, brand awareness is determined by brand positioning, and their personal value proposition is also reflected by brand positioning. Therefore, for enterprises, the primary task of brand positioning is to find target consumers, and to find a differentiated advantage position in their minds from competitors, so as to stand out among many products. Langston's approach cleverly avoided the frontal battlefield of "head-to-head" with strong brands, and matched target consumers with precise positioning, thus opening up a new situation for emerging brands. It is understood that it not only won the "Top 20 Chinese Export Brands in 2019" by Global Sources, but also became a "recommended brand" by JD.com.

The product is the foundation

In addition to brand positioning, for consumers, the most intuitive experience comes from the product itself. Assuming that a product that has existed for many years is about to be declared "dead" in its life cycle, what should an enterprise do to rejuvenate the "second spring" of the product? Newman's answer is "micro-innovation", creating a good user experience by digging into the individual needs of customers.

For enterprises, the decline of a product is often unavoidable, but in order to boost sales, what is needed is the innovation of the enterprise. "These micro-innovations can bring higher added value to enterprises and higher practical value to customers." Yu Haicheng, general manager of Shenzhen Newman Technology Co., Ltd., told "CEConline", " The only way for new and cutting-edge brands to go out is to adhere to the path of innovation."

In its exhibits, a Bluetooth car charger fully reflects Newman's deep understanding of users' pain points. The charger's USB cable has a small improvement - it can be connected either way when plugged into a device. Through this micro-innovation, the driver can free his hands and concentrate more on driving.

"In my opinion, the investment and cost of product innovation are the lowest, and other means of product promotion and marketing are supplementary. The most important thing is innovation ability. The stronger your innovation ability is. , the greater the probability that you will win in the future competition." Yu Haicheng said.

In addition to meeting user needs in product design, product quality is the most considered issue by consumers, especially in terms of durability. Xia Yu, foreign trade manager of Shenzhen Gopuda Technology Co., Ltd. believes that the trust of customers in Gopuda over the years mainly comes from the excellent quality of its products.

Gupuda is a manufacturer of mobile phone and tablet accessories with 13 years of professional production experience. It passed Apple's audit in 2009 and became Apple's official MFi certified contract manufacturer. The company produces all kinds of high-end fashion electronics. Accessories products, including Apple U disk series, USB chargers, etc. The company has its own brands "Gopod" and "Gmobi", which have been recognized by the market in Europe, America and other regions due to the good quality of the products.

"Our company has very strict quality system requirements. The products are 100% fully functional and the defective rate of some products is within 3‰. The suppliers of key materials are our investment partners, and we guarantee to do Good quality control. I think this is the reason why customers choose us." Xia Yu said.

Whether it is micro-innovation in product design or excellent product quality, the rise of Chinese brands is inseparable from the product itself. The brand value is ultimately reflected in the product. Therefore, no matter how widely spread and how complete the channel is, the product itself is not good enough and will not be attractive to consumers. It can be said that the product is the foundation of the brand.

Do a good job in channel management

“It is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him a fish. We are more willing to train and support agents and do things well together, rather than simply selling If you give him the goods, it will end our sales." Zhang Jilin, sales director of Shenzhen Ruihe Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with "CEConline".

Ruihe Technology has opened 5,500 brand stores around the world, and the number of stores has expanded rapidly in just a few years. "We will try our best to teach agents how to make money through our products and how to always be ahead of others in this industry. We believe that our customers will become the first in the industry, and our brand will naturally occupy the industry. It is in the forefront."

It is understood that the agents of its brand REMAX can not only sell multi-dimensional products such as trendy digital products, new and exotic smart hardware, and smart living homes, but also obtain the headquarters' store design drawings and standard retail stores. Comprehensive support for store operation services such as product display guidance, package matching, sales training, event organization, and even warehouse management.

For example, a high-quality Taiwanese agent supported by REMAX has soared from 2 million per month to 7 times sales through comprehensive training within half a year. With years of experience, REMAX replicates the successful model in different countries around the world.

In addition to agency management, REMAX also considers channel layout. "We will formulate different strategies according to the characteristics of different regions, the capabilities of different customers, and the different situations of local competitors. For example, I may have wholesalers who specialize in channels, agents specializing in chains, and specializing in line sales. The sales agents on the website are determined according to the situation in different regions.”

For example, REMAX’s product display mainly conforms to the configuration of people’s visual habits. In terms of color, from left to right, from light to dark; from top to bottom, the product changes from small to large. In addition, there will be many green plants in the store as decoration, which is to buffer the cold tones of electronic products, which can create a warm atmosphere so that consumers can stay in the store for a longer time.

Brand products entering overseas markets need to rely on channel operations to expand their territory. How to cultivate high-quality customers to grow together is a problem that Chinese enterprises need to pay attention to. From the case of REMAX, we can see that doing a good job of refined channel management can effectively improve the brand's influence.

Improving efficiency

The market is becoming more and more subdivided and competition is becoming more and more intense, which is one of the difficulties faced by enterprises today. How to keep up with the rhythm, rather than stand still or even fall, the key is to improve management efficiency.

Ding Xianlin, co-founder of Shenzhen Yuanchuang Times Technology Co., Ltd., told "CEConline": "Our solution is to integrate the internal supply chain, and the most important thing is the handling of inventory and the improvement of efficiency. ." Yuanchuang Times is a world-leading manufacturer of computer and digital peripheral products. The main product of its brand ORICO is memory, and it currently has more than 500 patents in China.

After opening up the supply chain, ORICO has transformed from the previous "inferential ordering" to "pulling replenishment", from traditional manufacturing to lean production. At present, ORICO's products have been delivered to consumer terminals in a relatively short period of time, achieving the goal of zero inventory.

For example, ORICO's power bank products have 50 sales in the online mall that day, then the information of the order will be communicated with the supplier terminal and the factory assembly terminal, and the semi-finished materials will be assembled according to the information. "Many uncertain things are made into shared materials for backup, and then shipped when there is business demand, which greatly improves efficiency." Ding Xianlin explained.

Efficient supply chain integration can effectively support the brand to become bigger and stronger. Through the integration of the production process or the in-depth cooperation of production enterprises, the precise matching of supply and demand can be improved, the demand can be quickly identified and the market forecasting ability can be improved.

Founded in 1998, Hailutong is a large-scale communication digital product company integrating R&D, manufacturing and sales, with customers all over the country and more than 50 overseas countries. After years of development, it now has thousands of employees and hundreds of senior talents in scientific research and development, enterprise management and so on.

"When the scale of an enterprise grows, the most important test is your reaction speed." said Zhen Chao, CEO of Hailutong. In his view, scale is leading, not as effective as scale. As a large-scale enterprise, Hailutong has taken the lead in the pursuit of efficient scale.

It is understood that in the past six years, Hailutong has opened up the overall information flow within the company, and has been equipped with ERP enterprise management system, WMS warehouse management system, and SCM supply chain management system in different links. , CRM customer relationship management system and PLM product life cycle development system.

For example, after completing the digitization of supply chain management and control, Hailutong has achieved information transparency in its system regarding product qualification, delivery time and distribution quantity. Assuming that Hailutong places an order to the supplier, and enters the automatic warehousing system after the delivery arrives, the quantity can neither be more nor less, so that the logistics turnover rate will be increased, and the storage space will not be occupied. From the perspective of customer management, Hailu makes plans by collecting customer sales, avoiding blindly producing products.

Zhen Chao said: "We started investing in it six years ago, and the overall investment is relatively large, with a total of more than 60 million yuan before and after. In the long run, the competition of future enterprises must be 'three-oriented'. ', that is, informatization, automation and intelligence."

In summary, the rise of cutting-edge brands is different from traditional brands, and the growth patterns of different Chinese companies are different. The "star of tomorrow" has yet to be verified by the market. In the future, how to seize the commanding heights faster and better, I believe Chinese brands will have more stories to tell.

Photo/Global Sources