According to the data of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the annual retail sales of passenger cars nationwide in 2021 reached 20.146 million units, an increase of 4.4% year-on-year. Among them, there are 11 automobile companies with domestic sales of 500,000 to 1 million vehicles, and 6 automobile companies, including Great Wall Motors, have seen double-digit sales growth. In 2021, Great Wall Motor's products are like dumplings, launching a number of replacement and new models such as Haval Red Rabbit, Haval Divine Beast, Wei brand Maqiduo, Wei brand latte, Wei brand mocha, tank 300 city version, tank 500, Euler good cat GT, etc., and newly established the tank brand, as well as completed the global debut of salon cars.
In inland cities such as Baoding, starting with pickup trucks, catching up with the SUV dividend period, and gradually forming a large enterprise with annual sales of millions of cars, tens of thousands of employees, business penetration of the industrial chain, and covering overseas super enterprises, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, can indeed be regarded as a talented entrepreneur. In the course of more than 30 years of development, great wall has seized the good opportunity of the rapid growth of China's auto market and become the head enterprise of China's own brands.
Great Wall is most proud of the SUV, constantly expanding the market segment in the field of SUVs, from H2 to H9, and made the Haval H6 into a long-lasting ace model. However, including Wei Jianjun in a recent interview, he also admitted that in another five years, the brand value of H6 will be negative. The current products have been achieved to the extreme, and how to develop further down is the key to whether we can stay ahead.
From the past experience, it is to further subdivide the product line of SUVs and expand to every model in the market segment, small, medium, medium and large. Then it is sold in series, brands, and generational models at the same time, differentiating in marketing. Even so, the bottleneck will be highlighted again, not only will the increment be more difficult, but it will deprive them of the space of their original core products. Therefore, how to make increments and make distinctive new products is a problem that requires enterprises to continue to think deeply.
On June 28, 2021, Great Wall Motor announced its 2025 strategy to achieve annual global sales of 4 million vehicles by 2025. From 1.281 million vehicles in 2021 to 4 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 33%, how to complete it? Even if Great Wall Motors has made good achievements in 2021 and caught up with the East Wind of new energy vehicles, it is still full of challenges.
So far, the Great Wall has initially explored the method of successful experience, that is, to do innovative categories, to subdivide some segments that look like the market space is not large, to make the public from the niche, and to create a market increment.
What is the category and what is the difference?
To make a less appropriate analogy, biology divides organisms into boundaries, phylums, orders, families, genera, and species. If the difference between different configurations of the same model is counted as "species", then the so-called new category needs to at least reach the range of "eye", that is, the difference between monkey and man. In the existing market space, through the change of product characteristics, technology, marketing and service, it has distinct differences and unique non-replicability, which can lead the trend. This is like "Wei Xiaoli", which is high-end in terms of brand building and has a very high-tech style; and like SAIC-GM-Wuling, the micro-electric vehicles that have almost been abandoned are made of water, which can be called the innovation of works.
One of the most successful places of the Great Wall in recent years is the successful attempt at category innovation, which has made or will be made into differentiated new categories by many brands such as tanks, Great Wall guns, Euler, and Salon.
The first category is Tide Play Off-Road. In April 2021, the tank brand was officially established, creating a new category of "tide play off-road", launching two major product matrices of "mecha technology" and "business luxury", and completing the comprehensive coverage of the high-end off-road SUV market from compact to full-size. In 2021, the tank brand will occupy more than 50% of the market share in China's off-road vehicle market, ranking first in the Chinese hardcore off-road vehicle market.
In the hardcore off-road field, the existing brands are tepid. And the tank, as a latecomer, can catch up, relying on what? On the one hand, user co-creation, from the user's point of view to the so-called unconventional off-road users, turned the tank into a universal product. On the other hand, it is refined by roughness, and the rugged and luxurious interior of the hard-core off-road vehicle is made into the same technology and refinement as the car, which is pleasing to the eye. Unlike Beijing's off-road bias towards niche markets, tanks have made "tide play off-road" into a big market. With the market, there is a follower of the market. For example, Chery recently released a hardcore SUV Jetway T-X. IT IS ALSO SAID TO BE BUILDING HIGH-END OFF-ROAD VEHICLES. It can be said that the tank 300 single-handedly opened up a new market.
Tank 500
The second category is pickup trucks. Great Wall Pickup trucks sold 233,006 units in 2021, an increase of 3.6% year-on-year, and the cumulative global sales exceeded 2 million units.
Great Wall Cannon
Pickup trucks have always appeared in China with a very rustic image. However, the Great Wall Cannon has made fashionable commercial and passenger leisure two categories, in 2021, the global version of the passenger gun, artillery, black bomb, brigade gun, locomotive gun, etc. have been listed, and new cars such as full-size pickup trucks, supercar concept cars, and King Kong cannons have been unveiled, reversing the image of pickup trucks in the minds of the Chinese people as "rural trucks" and "Middle East chariots". In addition, the Great Wall Cannon has also been listed in more than 50 countries and regions around the world, such as Australia, Chile, South Africa, Egypt, etc., opening the first year of the globalization of Chinese pickup trucks. However, think of The Rivian and Tesla's pickup truck ideas, I believe the Great Wall Cannon will play more openly.
At the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, the Great Wall Cannon exhibited a number of modified models
The third category is the female car Euler. In 2018, Great Wall released the Euler brand. As the Great Wall's exploration in the field of new energy, the initial product IQ can neither see the characteristics nor have any advantages. With the initial success of the two products of black cat and white cat, in 2021, Euler appeared as a "car brand that loves women more" and quickly became an Internet celebrity product. The Euler brand sold 135,028 units in 2021, up 140% year-on-year.
Euler good cat
In the previous women's car market, the most impressive is the Beetle, MINI and other models, these are niche markets, mainly imported cars, often also buckled with the hat of the second milk car, from the perspective of steel straight men like a big toy, resulting in such an inherent impression and marketing at that time.
Traditional marketing is too cautious about the female market and cannot change the subordinate position of women to buy cars. Since 2021, Euler has positioned itself as a "car brand that loves women more", and has successively launched a number of new members of the cat family such as ballet cats, punk cats, and lightning cats, further integrating cars, pets, and families, opening up a new world of the market, and the user's consumption concept has also changed.
The fourth category can only be said to be half, which is the salon. After all, the product has not yet been brought to market on a large scale. In 2021, Great Wall Motor's newly incubated salon car made its global debut, launched the "mecha technology category", and officially entered the luxury pure electric car market. The debut of Salon Motors' first model, the Mech Dragon, caused widespread controversy.
Mech Dragon
As a new brand, salon is actually risky to enter the market with controversial products. Mecha, there are indeed many people like, but there are also many people who can't accept such an aesthetic. This is not the user's problem, after all, the value is justice, as a user, no need to understand the car, do not need to understand the design rules of the car, the development history, just need to see whether it looks good, is not safe, is not like can make a choice. Therefore, if the salon can make some users particularly like, it proves to be successful.
The retro car, which debuted as the Wei brand in August 2021, has been named Dream Fulfillment. Once it is introduced to the market, it will also form a bipolar public opinion. The Great Wall has always been without the topic of controversy caused by products.
Wei Pai fulfilled his dream
Of course, the negativity of the influencer brand is like a shooting star. If the category of things is too internet celebrity, the degree of attention is high, and once it is not done well, the problem will be magnified. Not long ago, Euler encountered a greater challenge because of chip problems.
Creating new categories is not just a matter for a company on the Great Wall. However, it is rare to have such a multi-point flowering situation as the Great Wall. Turning new products from the niche market into a mass market is not only a matter of sales, but also provides reference and confidence for many later car manufacturers. As long as you dig deep into the needs of users, the market space is not just as much as the sales data reflects, but a greater opportunity for this and the other.