My landlord
In the first week of the Year of the Tiger, there was a rumor circulating in the news, "After losing a series of production bases such as Hanteng and Hanlong, Zotye's Linyi Automobile Base was also recently acquired by Great Wall Motors." ”
Although both parties involved are very taboo about this matter, it is already an open secret in the industry, because as early as the end of 2021, Great Wall Motors and the Linyi Municipal Government have officially signed a contract on related projects. In Linyi, search for "Zotye Automobile" with Baidu map, and the previous Zotye Automobile Base has become "Great Wall Motor Linyi Vehicle and Parts Production Base". This means that although the traces of Zotye are still there, the production base has been passed on to others.
At the same time as the loss of one production base after another, Zotye's performance in the securities market is also declining, in just a few months, ST Zotye's stock price has plummeted from the previous 10 yuan platform to the current 5 yuan below, and in the car sales list released every month, it is difficult to find the shadow of Zotye models. In fact, unless there is a miracle, otherwise, it will be difficult for Zotye, a generation of cottage masters who have contributed star models such as Baoshitai to China, and it will be difficult for them to turn over.
In fact, not only Zotye, as an era label for the development of China's independent automobile brands, the three major cottage masters in China's history have actually embarked on the road of no return.
The three major cottage masters in history
The first copycat master of China's automotive industry is Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan, who was born in Sanlu's hometown, Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, and can be called the grandfather of China's cottage cars. As early as the 80s of the last century, when the vast majority of China's independent brands had not yet been born, Shuanghuan opened a cottage career; the first generation of Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan Cottage Jeep Cherokee, so that the inexperienced Chinese people were stunned; the second generation of Shuanghuan Cottage Honda CR-V, so angry that the Japanese blew their beards and stared; the third generation of Shuanghuan Cottage BMW X5, the Germans threatened to sue the double ring to the United Nations; the fourth generation of Shuanghuan Cottage Mercedes-Benz Smart, domineering like Mercedes-Benz, can only swallow the bitter fruit helplessly.
The second cottage master is Zotye, Zotye's first well-known model code 2008, the cottage of the big hair special sharp, a hit, sales are hot, and then on the road of the cottage to run wild, until later Zotye version of Porsche famous jianghu, become the top master of the cottage industry. At its peak, Zotye even surpassed shuanghuan and became the godfather of cottages in the new era.
The third cottage master is Lifan, although Lifan debuted very late, but the shot was decisive and old, the first model directly aimed at BMW, with the newborn calf is not afraid of the heroic spirit of the tiger to become famous, the peak period to feed countless modification factories, "Lifan 320 into, BMW MINI out", "two cars side by side, An can distinguish that I am male and female"?
Cottage Road
The three major cottage masters have invariably chosen the path of cottage, which is actually a benefit, because compared with positive development, the benefits of cottage are obvious.
The investment is small; according to the conventional process, it takes 3 to 5 years to develop a model normally, and it takes hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to invest, but a model of copycat is much simpler. Spend hundreds of thousands to buy a car, find a few engineers to reverse survey, and then change the details slightly, and then order a set of abrasives, in a few months, tens of millions or even millions can be done.
2. Quick results; just as pirated books on the market will target best-selling books, cottage models are aimed at best-selling models of large brands, and these target cars are generally beautiful in appearance, high in popularity, and hot in sales. After the cottage, the shape is almost the same, the price is only a fraction of the original car, it is easy to open the market, and the effect is very fast.
3. The risk is zero; in a normal society, copycat is a high-risk industry, just like pirated books, although the profit is high, but unfortunately the risk is too large, once caught, the light one is fined, and the heavy one is ruined. However, in the automotive industry, there is basically no risk in shanzhai, Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan cottage Honda CR-V, and later Honda sued Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan for infringement of intellectual property rights, and later directly lost the lawsuit, Shuanghuan not only did not need to compensate Honda, Honda also had to compensate Shuanghuan for 16 million yuan of reputation loss fees.
The question is, since the cottage investment is small, the effect is fast, and the risk is zero, why are the three major cottage masters either dying, or breathing, or stopping breathing long ago? What is particularly paradoxical is that Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan won 16 million yuan from Honda, but by the time Honda paid the fine, Shuanghuan had even died directly, and there was no trace. Zotye is now struggling, owed a bunch of debts, and survived by selling property. Lifan has lost money year after year, the market has disappeared, and the cars sold are not even enough advertising fees.
Copycat is equal to drug use
It is no accident that the three major cottage masters who were once in the limelight have embarked on the end of the road. There is no unprovoked love in the world, there is no unprovoked hate, and all the collapse or rise of everything actually has traces to follow.
One of the undoubted reasons is that behind each cottage brand, there is contempt for technology, contempt for research and development, and abandonment of core technology. In the history of china and global automobile development, we have never heard of any car company going all out in terms of core technology, and then directly copying the cottage in terms of appearance. Most of the time, when car companies are reluctant to spend money on shallow technology development such as shape design, do you still expect them to spend a lot of money on engine and transmission design and development?
In fact, an obvious reality is that the cottage brand has long despised the core technology, and in the period of loose competition in the industry, as long as the price is cheap and the appearance is beautiful, there are still people queuing up to buy. But when the market is tight and the competition is cruel, and competitors have come up with more powerful engines, more advanced gearboxes, and more comfortable chassis, the cottage models are completely unable to compete and can only lose.
At the same time, after generations of cottages, enterprises have long had the gene of opportunism in their bones, just like drug addiction, such enterprises must lack respect for quality. In fact, whether it is Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan, or Zotye, or Lifan, the general quality is extremely bad, giving the impression that the donkey dung ball is outside the light. Behind the brilliance of the product, most of them are strong condemnation by consumers:
"Fighter in the Garbage"
"I don't want to give it away for free"
"Open for a year, it's a piece of garbage"
……
Extremely poor quality, so that these cottage brands sell a car to cut a road, the more they sell, the faster they die.
Consumer attitudes towards copycats have changed
Another reason for the disappearance of the cottage brand is the change in the market environment.
In the early days of independent brand entrepreneurship, cottage behavior is very common, not to mention the three major cottage masters of Shuanghuan, Lifan and Zotye, even if the Great Wall, Geely, Chery and BYD and other independent front-line, early have obvious cottage memory, but at that time the independent brand was born soon, no funds, no technology, no strength, no ability to independently complete product design, cottage behavior, although not right, is worth understanding and forgiveness.
The first-line legions such as the Great Wall, Geely, Chery and BYD quickly began to develop themselves after digging the first bucket of gold, bidding farewell to the cottage rivers and lakes. But Lifan, Zotye and Shijiazhuang are obviously different, they are not forced to copy, but active cottages, long-term cottages and continuous cottages. Typical examples such as Shijiazhuang double ring, as early as the early 90s of the last century began to copy, until the collapse of 2016, the whole cottage for thirty years, cottage Jeep, cottage Honda, cottage Mercedes-Benz, cottage BMW, as long as the model can be seen directly copycat, can be called the originator of a generation of cottages, and later Zotye and Lifan are the successors.
Long-term cottage greatly overdrafted the brand reputation, seriously hurt the brand image, even if there are individual consumers because of greed for cheap and vanity to buy a copycat BMW, buy a copycat Porsche, buy a copycat MINI. However, the vast majority of consumers actually scoff at the copycat behavior. Especially in recent years, with the improvement of the quality of the whole people, people's aesthetics are also changing, driving a cottage car is very much in need of courage, especially when the narrow road meets the genuine car, it is estimated that even if you open your eyes to see people, everyone shouts and beats like a street rat. In this case, the cottage road is bound to be getting narrower and narrower.
A rat spoiled a pot of porridge
In addition to harming itself, the copycat behavior also brings indelible harm to the overall autonomous camp. The behavior of individual cottage enterprises has affected the image of the overall independent brand, such as Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan, which is the black sheep of the independent camp and has unprecedentedly smeared Chinese brands.
In 2008, Shijiazhuang Shuanghuan once brought the CEO of the cottage BMW X5 to the Paris Motor Show, which instantly caused a sensation in Europe, and journalists from Germany, France, Britain, and Italy frantically reported on the King of Chinese Cottages, and the news spread throughout Europe in an instant.
This directly led to two consequences, the first led to the Europeans' extremely bad impression of Chinese car brands, believing that it was copycats and plagiarism; second, more seriously, it provided a pretext for China's infringement of intellectual property rights, resulting in a sudden increase in obstacles and doubts in our foreign negotiations.
An infuriating result is that the export of these cottages with poor quality is essentially to wipe the face of the overall independent brand, is to drink and quench the thirst in the way of ruining the reputation of the overall Chinese brand, Zotye, Lifan and Shuanghuan did sell a part of the car overseas, made a part of the money, but also greatly smeared the overall independent brand, to the later Great Wall, Changan, Geely and Chery to the sea brought great difficulties, the Great Wall had to wipe the of the cottage brand on the Chinese face first, Then you can re-sell the car.
Write at the end
Fortunately, "out of the mix, sooner or later always have to pay back." Today, the three major cottage masters have collectively come to the end of the road, not by accident, but inevitably, there is no way out for opportunism, and there is no future for the cottage.
When the cottage masters die one by one, Chinese brands will have a new beginning.