When Hisense changed from a small local factory to one of the world's largest home appliance companies and was about to enter the world's top 500 companies, Zhou Houjian, the elder of the domestic home appliance industry, officially retired.
On the morning of March 13, the Daily Economic News reporter learned from within Hisense Group that on the afternoon of March 12, Zhou Houjian participated in a brief "Letter Seal" logo unveiling activity on the first floor of Hisense Building to express Hisense's respect for the supremacy of "integrity", and then announced that he had resigned as chairman of Hisense Group and officially retired before the group's monthly business work briefing.
During Zhou Houjian's tenure, Hisense was not satisfied with the domestic market, but set its sights on overseas early, and Zhou Houjian put forward the idea of "big heads overseas", which is now becoming a reality.
As Zhou Houjian's last full year at the helm of Hisense, in 2021, Hisense achieved revenue of 175.5 billion yuan, of which overseas revenue accounted for 42%.
Zhou Houjian resigned as chairman of Hisense Group and officially retired Picture source: Hisense Group's official WeChat
The 40-year veteran officially retires
From the perspective of resume, Zhou Houjian graduated from university in 1982 and joined Hisense until his official retirement in 2022, serving Hisense for 40 years and running Hisense for 30 years.
Hisense official evaluation of Zhou Houjian mentioned that as a technical paranoia, Zhou laid the engineer gene for Hisense, making innovation and research and development the surging blood of Hisense, and had a huge impact on the entire Chinese home appliance market.
An insider told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that looking back at his experience in Hisense over the years, Zhou Houjian is most satisfied with the autonomy of display technology.
In the face of the era of coexistence of various technologies and product routes, including LED backlight liquid crystal, OLED, QLED and laser display, Zhou Houjian firmly said that laser TV will be the future development direction.
As the world's first company to launch laser TV, Hisense has invested 15 years in the field of laser TV, gradually making "laser TV, the first choice for generation" gradually become a consensus.
In September last year, Yu Zhitao, vice president of Hisense Group Holding Company, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter: "In terms of brand and application scenario coverage, the laser TV camp has blossomed and has been compared to LCD TVs. ”
Yu Zhitao's view stems from the changes in the pattern of the mainland color TV market. In today's competitive landscape of China's color TV industry, the market is mainly occupied by LCD televisions (LCDs), and laser TVs that have been mass-produced for only 7 years can only be regarded as a new force. However, when China's color TV sales may hit a "new freezing point" in the past decade, laser TVs have fully "started" this year.
In the view of Xu Zuyan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, after solving key technical problems, mainland laser TV industry chain enterprises are upgrading and developing core components such as chips, high-quality lenses, lasers, screens, etc. In the next 3 to 5 years, mainland laser displays will achieve a leap from technological leadership to industry leadership.
Compared with technical paranoia, Zhou Houjian also left ahead-of-the-curve industrial layout for Hisense. As early as 2006, Zhou Houjian officially established the internationalization strategy of "Hisense's future development, most of which is overseas".
In the memory of a senior executive of a home appliance company, the background of Hisense's internationalization strategy is that China's home appliance industry has entered a period of shock adjustment, domestic overcapacity, fierce market competition, and China's leading home appliance companies have turned to overseas development.
In the process of realizing "localization" operations, Hisense has intensively carried out overseas mergers and acquisitions since 2015 - the acquisition of Sharp's Mexican factory in that year; the restructuring of Japan's Toshiba Imaging Company in 2018; the acquisition of The European high-end white-electric brand Guloni in the same year; and the acquisition of Japan's Sanden Holdings in March 2021.
Zhou Houjian (first from left) and his successor Lin Lan Image source: Hisense Group's official WeChat
The successor faces the challenge of B2B going to sea
On the evening of March 12, many Hisense employees shared the poster of "Zhou Dong, 90,000 Hisense people thank you" in the circle of friends, as well as the photo of Zhou Houjian and Lin Lan unveiling the "letter" plaque, which also symbolized that Zhou Houjian, who has been in charge of Hisense for 40 years, officially handed over the baton to Lin Lan.
Half a year ago, Zhang Ruimin resigned as chairman of the board of directors of Haier Group and officially handed over the baton to Zhou Yunjie. So far, two aircraft carrier-level enterprises with annual revenues of more than 100 billion yuan in Qingdao have completed the change of coaches.
Zhou Houjian did not hold a grand ceremony like when Zhang Ruimin retired. Hisense said in an internal article, "There are no flowers, no red carpets, no banners and grand conferences, only the friendship of other colleagues and long salutes." ”
As Zhou Houjian's successor, Lin Lan was born in 1958, previously held management positions in international companies such as AMWC and GE Power Systems in the United Kingdom, and did not intersect with Hisense in the early years until he joined the Kelong Group in 2002.
After 2006, Hisense acquired Kelong, and Lin Lan changed from a Kelong to a Hisense. Changing the court and re-adapting to the environment is not an easy task for most people, but for Lin Lan, this is undoubtedly an opportunity to take off.
It was also in 2006 that Hisense established a new internationalization strategy. At that time, Hisense, in addition to the need for Kelong's air conditioning business, but also needed their expansion in overseas markets, and Lin Lan was the person in charge of Kelong's overseas business, after coming to Hisense, Zhou Houjian found the most suitable candidate to develop international business.
In October last year, Hisense publicly stated that it expected overseas income to surpass domestic revenue in three years at the earliest. As the number one person in Hisense International Marketing, Lin Lan played a key role in it, obtaining the recommendation of Zhou Houjian and thus becoming the new head of Hisense.
On January 18, Hisense Group released its 2021 annual results. In 2021, the Group achieved operating income of 175.5 billion yuan, an increase of 24% year-on-year, a record high; overseas revenue of 73.1 billion yuan, an increase of 33% year-on-year; overseas revenue accounted for 42%.
However, when the "big head overseas" shines from the ideal into reality, the Management of Hisense led by Zhou Houjian has also found other deficiencies.
"Today, our monthly revenue from international marketing has exceeded $800 million, making great progress. However, we should also see deficiencies, especially the emphasis on the expansion of the B2B industry, which is far from enough. At the Hisense Internationalization Strategy Conference held in November 2021, Zhou Houjian made it clear that the next important breakthrough in internationalization is in the B2B industry.
Reporters | Peng Fei editor| Chen Junjie, He Xiaotao, Wang Jiaqi
Proofreader | Sun Zhicheng
| the original article of the daily economic news nbdnews |
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