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Today is the 2137th day that Shan Renxing accompanies you
(Recording can be adjusted by yourself after clicking to play)
01
I've seen many rookies in the industry, like a dark horse in a heavy siege to kill a bloody road.
However, I rarely see any company that is almost eliminated by the market, and consumers are about to forget, and they can still go again.
Today, there is such a challenger, Coolpad.
To be honest, most people may have forgotten that there is also the coolpad mobile phone brand.
Business is sometimes full of drama, when the brilliant coolpad once entered the top three of the national mobile phone market, and because of the "path dependence" to declare the failure of strategic decisions, it went into decline.
However, Coolpad began a series of campaigns from the second half of last year, announcing that it would return to the first-line mobile phone brand in 3 years.
So, do they still have a chance? How can our business overcome the "path dependence" problem?
2
In the early years, Coolpad was a pager, and later entered the mobile phone market in 2003, with the accumulation of technology, developed China's first color screen mobile phone, the world's first dual-SIM dual-standby mobile phone.
This is the only domestic mobile phone brand that only makes high-end mobile phones in the functional machine era, and I have used it myself.
This route is very similar to Huawei, from switches to communication solutions to mobile phone terminals, from the enterprise capability field, it is to rely on the technical capabilities on the line to upgrade upwards into the vast market of consumer business.
At that time, the price of Coolpad was as high as 7,000 yuan, and it could become a regular customer of government unit procurement.
However, after entering the era of smart machines, many machine manufacturers have been abandoned by the times, and Coolpad has also lagged behind for a time.
Fortunately, the foundation of the technology is still there, Coolpad organized a research and development team of 500 people, which took seven months to carry out closed research and development in The Huangjiang River in Dongguan, completely abandoning the functional machine and comprehensively transforming the intelligent machine.
In the strategy, we have also made important changes, no longer insisting on only doing a high-end market of more than 5,000 yuan, but extending the product line downwards and hitting the price to 400 yuan.
At the same time, in the marketing path, fully lean towards the operator, deeply bound with the three major operators, according to the needs of operators and package customization products, a year can launch 30 operators customized mobile phones,
At its peak, 90% of Coolpad's mobile phone sales are operator channels, so much so that some people say that "I don't really know what Coolpad looks like without going to the business hall."
These decisions have made Coolpad a successful member of the "China Cool Union".
This is a high evaluation, China Cool Union, that is, ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad and Lenovo these four companies.
They rose from the marginal position of the smartphone market to catch up, competed with the international first-line big names, reversed the defeat of domestic mobile phones, and demonstrated the determination of Chinese manufacturing.
However, after Coolpad became the world's sixth-largest mobile phone manufacturer in 2013, the problem of path dependence broke out.
03
In 2014, the three major operators began to change their policies, limiting subsidies for smartphones, and the winter of Coolpad came.
In 2015, Coolpad's revenue plummeted 41% year-on-year, and mobile phone shipments fell by more than half.
In the mobile phone market in the same period, Xiaomi brought a new business model, using Internet thinking to make mobile phones, partnering with suppliers, creating the ultimate cost performance, and making the entire mobile phone industry undergo earth-shaking changes.
In response to the new situation, Coolpad split three brands at that time.
They are the traditional brand Coolpad, the high-end women's mobile phone brand IVVI that benchmarks OPPO and vivo, and the benchmark millet, which is the god of cost performance.
Established the brand route, Coolpad also learned xiaomi to find allies everywhere, first cooperated with 360, set up the Qiku brand, 360 paid, Cool sent technology, the two sides intend to do a big job.
As a result, a dramatic scene appeared.
Coolpad and LeTV's Boss Jia also got involved, and also gave 18% of the shares of their own company to LeTV, which was in the sky at that time.
We all know the things behind, 360 is very unhappy, publicly accusing Coolpad, Coolpad has no reaction, after all, business, there are often things that deceive me.
However, LeTV unexpectedly overturned the car, the capital chain was broken, and Boss Jia became the "Jia Run" who returned to China next week.
The major shareholders have difficulties, Coolpad's cash flow has also been problematic, and the product line has been seriously injured, which has also affected the pace of the three brands.
Ivvi pricing is too high to fold the sand, the god is brilliant for a while, because of the lack of funds and no follow-up, the entire cool pie in the emergency of medical treatment, forced to leave the table.
A large part of the root cause of all this is "path dependence".
It refers to the gradual formation of dependency once benefits are obtained through a certain way, channel, or third party.
Path dependence can promote the closed loop of sales, optimize quickly, or sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of pain, or even be "locked" in some kind of inefficient state.
Once you enter this "locked" state, it becomes very difficult to get out, just like Coolpad, which is deeply tied to the operator, resulting in channel path dependence.
This is actually a kind of strategic laziness, after losing the care of operators, Coolpad is chaotic, whether it is cooperation with 360, or let LeTV into the shares, Coolpad does not have enough time to think about how to go in the future.
Of course, this is not only the problem of the Coolpad family, but also the same problem of ZTE and Lenovo in the "China Cool Union".
90% of ZTE's mobile phone shipments also come from operators, and open market channels account for only 10% of shipments.
When the operator's policies tightened, ZTE Mobile wanted to expand its own exclusive channels and set a target of 40% of the open channels in 2016.
Unfortunately, this goal was not achieved in the end, but was won by OPPO and vivo.
The development of channels can not be built overnight, OPPO and vivo in the early stage of a long time, have laid their own offline channels nationwide, product positioning is very clear.
Compared with the machine sea tactics of binding operators, it is difficult for dependents to grasp the rhythm of consumers, and it is difficult for product features to go out of the circle.
So sometimes easy money is like a gentle trap, and when you want to jump out of your comfort zone and get rid of path dependence, you will find yourself too deep.
Wang Shi, chairman of Vanke, once famously said that the company's profits of more than 25% of the business do not do.
Because everyone wants to do easy-to-make businesses, competition will become more and more intense, and profit margins will decline rapidly.
The market is fair, dependent on the money made by others, and will end up losing it in the same way.
04
So, after experiencing ups and downs, can Coolpad regain its strength as they wish?
There's a chance, but Coolpad needs to go a very tough road.
Today's mobile phone market is no longer what it used to be.
In 2014, the mobile phone market was full of flowers, and various brands competed for glory, and no one dared to say that they could become an absolute leader.
But today, the mobile phone market has entered the mature period of the industrial life cycle, and the pattern has been stabilized and has become a stock market.
Want to be rejuvenated in the mature period of the market, unless the entrant has a strong innovation in technology or has a large cost advantage.
However, the cost advantage is based on the premise of market size.
The larger your shipment volume, the stronger the bargaining power with the supplier, the overall product cost will be reduced, and it will have a natural advantage in price.
Want to break this advantage, a recent successful case is the Jitu Express, relying on the strong financial strength of Duan Yongping's family, burning money to fight a price war, dragging other couriers have no money to earn.
Everyone operates below the cost line, and whoever can't hold on first is out.
Jitu Express is to beat the teacher to death with a fist, and at the cost of burning 200 million yuan per day during the peak period, he ate Best Express and seized the market.
Without these two points, it is even more difficult for any company to break through in the mature market.
Of course, there is no shortage of examples of successful people, such as the glory next door to us, and we will talk in detail about Shan Renxing later.
05
For many of our companies, watching the development of the mobile phone industry for more than ten years, the brands that have come up and gone on this track cannot be counted on both hands.
Among them, there are path dependence, there are positioning and pricing chaos that lead to strategic mistakes, and some products cannot keep up with the speed of scientific and technological research and development.
The rhetoric of the successful is the same, while the reasons for the losers are different.
Today, if we want to be at the top of the industry, we all have to ask ourselves the question: "What is my strength?" ”
Do I have a cost advantage? Or is there a disruptive technological advantage? Or do you have unique insights into channels and marketing?
After thinking about this problem, it is not too late to move forward.
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Responsible editor| Luo Yingfan
The pictures in this article are from the Internet