More than a year ago, Zhihu once had such a hot topic: "Compared with the rise of Lynk & Co, what is the reason for the decline in sales of WEY Weipai?" At that time, the official account of the WEY brand personally answered the question and put forward a point of view: in early 2020, the WEY brand released a series of new plans, including a self-developed 3.0T engine, a 9DCT gearbox, and a new product series based on lemon hybrid and coffee intelligence, which will be listed in 2021.
New technologies on the road, old products in the store, product iteration, green and yellow, which directly led to consumers' wait-and-see, WEY brand sales decline. WeY's official account does not even forget to ridicule: if you are still buying WEY's VV series models at the end of 2020, will you not enter the national army in 49 years?
Now, after a year to verify the WEY brand's answer, the comments of netizens have a lot of fun. This year, the WEY brand has successively launched new models of mocha, macchiato, latte, equipped with the latest self-developed 9DCT, lemon hybrid DHT and coffee intelligent system. However, WEY's sales did not pick up, but fell into a slump.
The coffee age is not satisfied
Entering 2021, the gap between WEY and Lynk & Co has been widening, and by October, weY brand sales are less than one-third of Lynk & Co.
The adjustment period of new and old products has led to unstable sales, which obviously cannot justify the WEY brand. On the one hand, the lack of growth of the WEY brand has not been a matter of nearly a year; on the other hand, the flagship product WEY Mocha has been officially on sale for nearly half a year, and there has been no major breakthrough, far less than the VV7 of the year.
Of course, the WEY brand product replacement action is still very thorough. Nowadays, we can no longer see the introduction of the VV series models on the official website of the WEY brand, and after the official launch of the WEY Mocha on May 22 this year, the VV7 has been discontinued and sold, and sales have not been counted since July.
From May to July this year, the WEY brand experienced a period of downturn, the VV series has withdrawn from the sales network, and the new product series has only one WEY mocha on sale, which means that the sales of the WEY brand in the past few months have only come from one car - mocha, and after the listing, it has experienced a sales climb from 2000 to 4700 vehicles. Then, at the end of September, the compact SUV Macchiato entered the market and became the second main force; the third new car latte has also begun pre-sales.
The end market is still unfamiliar with the new product line of the WEY brand, but in fact, we can see the determination of WEY to transform. Before the official listing of Mocha, WEY had a long period of technical preparation, including the spread of lemon hybrid DHT and coffee intelligent systems, trying to make consumers accept or even recognize, and the Great Wall already has a level of technology research and development comparable to that of joint ventures.
Mocha is equipped with 48V, Macchiato and latte provide two forms of general mixing and plug-in mixing, wey came up with a complete farewell to traditional fuel vehicles, farewell to high fuel consumption determination. In fact, the current independent brands using oil-electric hybrid, 48V light mixing is not a radical measure that is difficult for the market to accept, from the market response of BYD DM-i, China's family car consumers' attitude towards hybridization is very objective and open.
This is not the reason why WEY's new series of products is cold. WEY's "coffee series" has not been able to achieve the grandeur of the original VV series for two reasons: it is difficult for consumers to understand the positioning or attributes of the product in the first place, and even it is not conducive to user identity and word of mouth. For a brand like WEY, which is not young and fashionable, using names and classifications such as Mocha, Macchiato, Tenon, and Yuancui is not a plus.
Secondly, the flagship Mocha and the entry-level Macchiato that have been listed have increased a lot compared with the VV7 and VV5 of that year, especially the main sales range of the Mocha has reached 200,000 yuan, and the new technology 9DCT and 1.5L hybrid actual performance of the two cars cannot be trusted by the market.
High open low walk is technical weakness
To be honest, it is difficult for us to see a clear brand image and positioning on WEY's coffee series models, on luxury, on intelligence, on performance, whether it is Mocha or Macchiato, it seems that it is difficult for consumers to have a strong interest in it, and then form a distinct product cognition.
This is the reason why WEY and Lynk & Co set off together but went to different fates, and the sales gap is getting wider and wider.
Four years ago, WEY and Lynk & Co were born successively, they are considered to be excellent representatives of the high-end of Chinese brands, Great Wall and Geely, two private enterprises with years of efforts to obtain a stable market foundation, just chose in 2017 with their own most suitable route to the high-end.
WEY tends to talk about luxury texture, while Lynk & Co focuses on fashion and youth. At the beginning, WEY developed better, the flagship model WEY VV7 clearly designed to create luxury, to configure to create a cross-level value, attracting a large part of the mainstream family car consumption upgrade users, including Haval H6 and other independent brand users to increase the purchase.
Instead, Lynk & Co had twists and turns in the early days, the exaggerated shape of Porsche bumping into the face was controversial, and the strictly controlled sales system also made the independent brand consumers at that time feel uncomfortable, including the early bugs in intelligence, which also made its young audience quite dissatisfied.
Since June 2017, the WEY VV7 has experienced a full year of honeymoon. After 6 months of listing, it has achieved monthly sales of more than 10,000 yuan, which is not easy for an independent brand model priced at 170,000-190,000 yuan. Unlike WEY, which is developed by the European team and blessed with Volvo technology, the initial success of the WEY VV7 comes entirely from its understanding of Chinese consumer preferences.
The sales trend of the entry-level VV5 almost overlapped with that of the flagship VV6, and both sold more than 10,000 within half a year of listing, and at the end of the fresh period of the year, a long sales fluctuation of 1,000-3,000 vehicles began.
WEY brand growth is weak, in fact, 2018 began to show signs, but at that time, WEY continued to launch a new compact SUV VV6, the product cost performance caused a certain squeeze on VV5 and VV7, so the entire 2018-2019 VV6 as the main force to support the WEY brand, the situation is not particularly difficult.
In fact, when the early Lynk & Co brand only had two SUVs, 01 and 02, the market performance was also less than expected, until a sports-focused car Lynk & Co 03 was launched on the market, and with the championship of the event, Lynk & Co 03+ limited sale pushed up the brand awareness, Lynk & Co got out of the predicament and boarded another competitive dimension.
The good performance of Lynk & Co 03 has allowed Lynk & Co to get rid of the simple cost-effective struggle, so that some consumers have begun to look at Lynk & Co with a joint venture perspective, and because of the product reputation of Lynk & Co 03 and 03+, the outside world has more intuitively seen Volvo's technical blessing for Lynk & Co.
Whether this is "cheating" or not, at least Lynk & Co has received the support of continued efforts, and at this time, WEY has not been high-end enough in technology, making the 2.0T fuel consumption problem, chassis texture problem, Haval H6 shell change doubts more acute, previously with the cross-level configuration, the luxury of the cross-level stacking can not stand the test of time.
Putting aside the design style and luxury interior elements of the VV series, consumers speculate that the VV series is the shell of the Haval H6, and the configuration of the stacking is not synchronized with the power matching, so there is a fuel consumption controversy behind. But at the same time, the potential users of VV7 have a large number of Haval H6 users and loyal fans of the Great Wall, who contributed sales and sound to WEY in the early stage, but this group of people eventually paid more attention to price and cost performance.
WEY was strategically abandoned?
The WEY brand is transliterated from the surname of Wei Jianjun, the soul of Great Wall Motors, such an important decision means that the WEY brand can only succeed and cannot fail.
Great Wall Motors has succeeded in professionally making SUVs, and so is the WEY brand - specializing in Chinese-style luxury SUVs. Great Wall Motor's advantages in the field of SUVs, especially its insight into Chinese consumer preferences, have made WEY's VV7 series famous in one fell swoop. But the more focused you are on a path, the narrower you are likely to go.
Today, the Lynk & Co brand has six models, of which the sedan Lynk & Co 03 supports nearly one-third of sales, followed by the compact SUV Lynk & Co 01, the small SUV Lynk & Co 06, and the price range covered by the six models of Lynk & Co is also very broad, from 110,000 to 370,000 yuan, involving the Geely BMA platform, Volvo CMA platform and SPA platform, with 1.5T, 2.0T, 2.0T plug-and-mix multiple power combinations.
This is the flexibility given by Lynk & Co's product positioning, with fashionable, sports labels to the young group, from the beginning of the compact family car price segment began to do dislocation competition, downward competition for the independent brand market, upward challenge to the mainstream joint venture, so Lynk & Co can do 06 on Geely's BMA platform, but also in Volvo's SPA platform to do 09, these are the results of continuous exploration in 4 years.
In contrast, the development space of WEY is narrower, the three cars in the VV era cover 120,000-180,000 yuan, and the upward new energy vehicle WEY P8 is already very weak. On the one hand, the Great Wall cannot let WEY's models continue to explore, which is not in line with the luxury positioning and will hurt the interests of Haval; on the other hand, the WEY in the VV era also lacks a platform concept and advanced powertrain that can be technically premium, so that the flagship VV7 sells cost-effective.
The only thing that makes the WEY brand re-emerge is the Tank 300, which has stepped on the outlet of the hardcore SUV, and with a good styling design and the same over-the-top luxury interior style, it has become the only one in the same class of the market: more luxurious than the pure hardcore SUV, more personalized than the mainstream home SUV. As in the VV era, half of the success of the Tank 300 came from design.
Even now, the Tank 300 has been on the market for nearly a year and still has nearly 10,000 sales, and there is no sign of decline. However, this has nothing to do with the WEY brand. The success of the Tank 300 made Great Wall Motors realize the possibility of expanding into another market segment – the hardcore luxury SUV. Riding on the east wind of the tank 300, the Great Wall will be independent of the tank 300 and the tank brand, and the subsequently listed tank 500 will also take this hardcore off-road + luxury texture route, and by the way, it will collide with the excellent design of the predecessors.
Tanks parted ways to take the hardcore luxury, and the remaining WEY brand can only talk about smart luxury - the same home, just a more subdivided home. A road that was not wide in the first place was divided into two forks, leaving the WEY brand's smart luxury SUV to become more difficult to perceive:
Compared with the VV era, the design shape of the coffee series is getting closer to Haval, and the international luxury style has been diluted; and at the moment when intelligence is very inward-looking, WEY's coffee intelligence does not have unique differences that can be quickly remembered.
Indeed, at present, the WEY brand is in the throes of product adjustment, and the coffee series equipped with new technologies still needs a period of market accumulation before it can be recognized and recognized by more consumers. However, it is worth mentioning that the Great Wall's lemon hybrid and coffee intelligent platform is not exclusive to the WEY brand, and now the lemon hybrid DHT has been planned to be installed in the Haval model, and the coffee intelligent system also benefits brands such as Euler.
For WEY, there are not many trump cards that can be held in the hand. If there must be sacrifices, WEY cannot hurt Haval downwards, nor can it affect tanks; "coffee" is not an option for Chinese consumers.
Figure | Sourced from the web
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