There is such a legend in the business world, he built a company that is about to face bankruptcy into a public company, from car modification, to professional pickup trucks, from engine production, to SUV.
Through his own efforts, he has created a world of his own, and at the celebration meeting, the sentence "Will Great Wall Motors survive next year?" "Sounded the alarm bell of the sense of crisis in the automobile market, he is the founder of Great Wall Motors - Wei Jianjun."
Telling the story of the original business founder and spreading the top business wisdom, this issue of Founder Observation takes you to know Wei Jianjun, who loves the automotive industry.
In 1964, Wei Jianjun was born in Baoding City, Hebei Province. Wei Jianjun grew up in a good family, his father was a soldier and his mother was a public official.
Wei Jianjun is the eldest son in the family, and he also has a younger brother and sister. Wei Jianjun has been particularly interested in the assembly of toys since he was a child, and likes to take the toys apart and reinstall them himself.
Great Wall Motor Manufacturing Plant
In 1983, after his father retired from the army, he returned from Beijing to his hometown of Baoding, Hebei Province, and founded the Baoding Taihang Construction Equipment Factory.
At the same time, his father smelled the wind direction of the market, and the automotive industry will be a major mainstream in the future, so he suggested that Wei Jianjun's second uncle and private partnership established the Great Wall Automobile Manufacturing Factory.
At this time, Wei Jianjun was a typical rich second generation, in that era, the car was not yet popular, and most families could only have a bicycle in the case of frugality.
At this time, Wei Jianjun had the first imported car. At this time, Wei Jianjun was only 20 years old, graduated from college, and seemed to have no other hobbies at home except playing with cars, so the comfortable days ended abruptly from the death of his second uncle in a car accident.
With the unexpected death of his uncle, the Great Wall Motor Manufacturing Plant founded by his uncle was also operated by people sent by the authorities, but due to poor management, the Great Wall Motor Manufacturing Plant fell into a loss, was responsible for a lot, and was about to face bankruptcy.
Take over the company
His father did not want to see the end of the business run by his relatives, so he encouraged Wei Jianjun to make some achievements, and Wei Jianjun, who was very interested in the automotive industry himself, signed a contract with the government with the help of his father and served as the general manager of the Great Wall Motor Industry Company.
Wei Jianjun, who is only 26 years old, is not deeply involved in the world, and in addition to knowing cars very well, he does not know how to sell and manage them. So he found 20-year-old Wang Fengying, let her serve as a sales supervisor, mainly responsible for the sales of cars, and Wang Fengying was only 21 years old at this time, or a small white, in terms of sales is also half-understood, in this way, they set up a team to start a business.
Wei Jianjun relied on his understanding of automobiles to produce the first car, priced at tens of thousands of yuan. It became a hit in the northeast market, selling a thousand units in three months.
Originally thought that such a state would continue, but in 1994, with the introduction of national policies, the dream of private enterprises to build cars was also broken, and the cars produced had no sales channels, Wei Jianjun was anxious, what to do?
In a year's time, from profit to loss again, Wei Jianjun did not have a dead heart, he decided to go abroad to study and investigate first, to see if he could find a way out of the car.
During his inspections in the United States and Thailand, he found that the streets were full of pickup trucks, so he had a brainchild, why not produce pickup trucks.
Pickup trucks are not restricted by the policy, so he returned to the company, and signed a renewal contract with the agency, deciding to do a big job.
Production of pickup trucks
In 1995, Wei Jianjun led his team to start producing pickup trucks, and Great Wall Motors returned with a new attitude, this time Wei Jianjun grasped the market.
Because the car market competition was very fierce at that time, and the pickup truck was a gap period, mainly the price of imported pickup trucks was quite high, often hundreds of thousands, not ordinary people can afford to consume.
The largest pickup truck manufacturer in China is Tianye Automobile, due to the inflexible enterprise mechanism, the cost of products is relatively high, which is also unattainable for many people.
In contrast, the pickup truck produced by Wei Jianjun led by the team is not high, the price is about 40,000 to 60,000, and the team continues to innovate, a big change a year, a small change in 3 months, always maintaining a sense of freshness, making the pickup truck fashionable, arousing the desire of consumers to buy, so that the pickup truck produced by Great Wall Motors is very popular in the market and has become the leader of the domestic pickup truck industry.
In 1998, Great Wall Enterprises was restructured into a limited liability company, and Wei Jianjun received a sum of money in this restructuring, but he did not ask for the money, but converted the money into shares.
With the help of his family, he purchased shares in the organ and became the actual controlling shareholder of Great Wall Motors.
In 1999, when Great Wall Motors was firmly in the market, Wei Jianjun realized the importance of academic qualifications, so he continuously improved his professional knowledge and management skills, improved his personal ability, and made the company's management more standardized.
In 2001, Great Wall Enterprise was changed to a joint-stock company, and at the same time, the equity in the hands of the seller was sold to employees, so that employees could participate in the management of the company.
Great Wall Motors went public
With the joint efforts of everyone, in 2003, Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and during the Hong Kong public offering, Great Wall oversubscribed 682 times, cashed out 200 million yuan, and the profit of Great Wall after the listing reached 500 million yuan in the same year.
At that time, the pickup truck market laid an unshakable position, sales are also rising year by year, but Wei Jianjun is not satisfied with the status quo, he began to enter the SUV market, three years, the first model of the Great Wall Haval listed, this model is also the predecessor of the future Haval brand.
Of course, in the development process of the enterprise, Wei Jianjun is not smooth sailing, and his concept is not to produce low-cost and low-quality cars.
However, due to the limited technology and hardware conditions of the Great Wall, several models produced during the period could not get sales in the market, and after several failures, Wei Jianjun believed that it was necessary to focus on the development of the brand, focusing on the continuous innovation of SUV and pickup truck production technology.
In 2016, Great Wall Motor's sales exceeded 1 million for the first time, and after that, it exceeded 1 million yuan for four consecutive years.
Will the Great Wall survive tomorrow?
At the celebration banquet of the 30th anniversary of the Great Wall, Wei Jianjun issued a soul torture question: Can the Great Wall survive tomorrow? Also on the side of the tip in the automotive industry fierce competition in the market, not every enterprise can maintain a benign development like the Great Wall.
It is precisely because of Wei Jianjun's spirit of thinking of danger in times of peace that the Great Wall can do better and go further, and we also hope that one day European and American countries will be full of Chinese brand cars.
Today's Great Wall has Haval, Euler, Great Wall pickup truck and other car brands, product categories not only have pickup trucks, SUVs and sedan series, but also have engines, transmissions and other supporting enterprises, Great Wall Company is working hard to move forward step by step.
Wei Jianjun's one-click clearance, readjustment of the pace of development, with the help of the power of the international stage, not only from the technical innovation, but also the sales channels must also be innovated.
His wish is that one day Great Wall Motors can become an international brand. We also look forward to a more brilliant tomorrow for the Great Wall.
There is a saying in the Analects: "Man has no far-sighted worries, but will have near-term worries."
Everyone will encounter all kinds of things in their lives, in the glory of time, to think about the future road to go, in the time of downfall, to think about how to spend this period of time, and then with confidence to continue to move forward.
The awareness of being prepared for danger in times of peace is something that each of us must have in order to be able to keep our heads held high before the storm strikes. All along, Wei Jianjun has done just that.
What do you think of Wei Jianjun's entrepreneurial deeds?
Which business founder's wealth creation story would you like to know?
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