He is a master of Go, always able to strategize and settle in the game between inches; he is also the golden phoenix that flew out of the countryside, single-handedly founded the once proud Jin Li mobile phone kingdom, but also personally pushed it to destruction.
He is Liu Lirong, a former generation of heroes, but in the end he was labeled a "crazy gambler".
In the chess game of life, he originally took the lead and showed his strategy and foresight everywhere, why did he lose in the end?
Born in 1972 in a small mountain village in Yiyang, Hunan Province, Liu Lirong achieved excellent results from an early age, either first or second in his class.
At that time, many of his peers in the village went out to work after graduating from junior high school, but Liu Lirong chose to continue his studies, so many people often teased him behind his back that he could only read and did not earn money.
But Liu Lirong never paid attention to it, still buried his head in hard reading, he clearly knew that a diploma that he could get his hands on would be his passport to the world in the future.
In 1990, Liu Lirong was admitted to Central South University with excellent results, became the first college student in the village, I don't know whether it was because he ate enough of the hardships of learning when he was a child, or he rebelled when he grew up, Liu Lirong did not continue the brilliant achievements of his childhood after entering the university, but did not do the right thing to play Go, and became more and more addicted, and finally became a chess master.
Around this time, Liu Lirong's competitive spirit was planted, and it also laid the groundwork for his future career and fall.
After graduating in 1994, he was assigned to work at the Tianjin Nonferrous Metals Research Institute, not only working stably and professionally, but also with a good salary of 500 yuan per month, which made those villagers who had made fun of him envious.
But the boring and stereotypical system work is not the life That Liu Lirong wants, and a year later, in the surprise of everyone, he resigned, and in the face of all kinds of regrets, he did not regret it in the slightest, because he clearly knew that no matter how well he did in the research institute, he would at most be a director.
After coming out of the research institute, he went directly to Guangzhou, and soon joined a well-known Japanese-funded zipper factory, engaged in grass-roots management work, with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, and his salary suddenly doubled by 6 times, which is a rare good job in the eyes of others.
But the high salary still failed to keep Liu Lirong, he wanted a passage that allowed him to change the class, obviously the zipper factory did not have the opportunity he wanted, so he chose to leave soon after.
In 1996, Liu Lirong entered Zhongshan Xiaobawang Electronic Technology Company as a technician. Here, he finally met the Bole and the nobleman Yang Minggui in his life, and began to move step by step towards the peak of his dream life.
Soon after entering the company, Yang Minggui noticed Liu Lirong, not only has a high education and a flexible mind, but he always has a kind smile, and there is a natural affinity in interpersonal communication, and this social advantage does help him a lot in his future success.
Under the promotion of Yang Minggui, Liu Lirong was soon promoted from the position of technician to the director of production management. In 1997, Yang Minggui decided to leave Xiaobawang to set up his own company, and the only person he took away when he left was Liu Lirong, which was enough to see his respect and trust in Yang Minggui.
After Yang Minggui left, he established The Jinzheng Company, specializing in the production and operation of DVDs, and Liu Lirong was appointed vice president of the group, only 25 years old this year.
Without any special family background, he can sit in such a high position at such an age, and I have to say that Liu Lirong's insecurity with the status quo and the courage to explore new things have made every step of his life start right, and it also makes him leave his peers far behind at a young age.
At the same time, Jinzheng Company was also in full swing, when it was in a period of great improvement in people's living standards after the reform and opening up, everyone's demand for entertainment and leisure was increasing, and the market demand for DVDs was also increasing.
Jin Zheng stepped on this rhythm, the company's business developed rapidly, and it is precisely because of this that Liu Lirong met a large number of dealers engaged in electronic products, and accumulated rich network resources for his own business in the future.
Of course, with these, Liu Lirong in this position of vice president is also doing a smooth job, if it is not accidentally involved in an "accident" afterwards, perhaps there will be no later Gionee mobile phone.
It's just that the misfortunes and blessings of fate depend on each other, and sometimes it is unclear and unclear. In 2001, Ye Xiaofan, a smuggler wanted by the police, was arrested, and during interrogation, it was discovered that Jin Zheng had used his smuggled DVD decoding chip.
By this time, Yang Minggui, who knew it, had already heard the news and left Canada, and Liu Lirong, the company's vice president, became the subject of police surveillance until April 2002, when he regained his freedom.
After such a toss, the internal management of Jinzheng Company was chaotic, coupled with the increasing market competition, Liu Lirong decided to leave Jinzheng and reopen his own business.
In 2002, it was Liu Lirong's year of establishment, borrowing the meaning of "and the year of standing out of Jinzheng", Gionee Communication Equipment Co., Ltd. was formally established.
Liu Lirong gave up his familiar DVD business and began to fully devote himself to the completely unfamiliar mobile phone industry, and he concluded that mobile communications will be the hottest business field in the future.
At the beginning of the establishment of the company, Liu Lirong's large number of contacts accumulated in Jinzheng's many years of work gave him great help.
At that time, he not only received the support of more than 150 suppliers, but when raising the original capital, many people sent money one sack after another, so he raised more than two hundred million in just one week.
Of course, Liu Lirong, who took the money, did not disappoint everyone, and he finally handed over an excellent performance table. In 2003, the sales volume of Gionee mobile phones exceeded the million mark, and the sales reached more than 800 million yuan. The following year, the following year was also a continuous success, with mobile phone sales reaching 1.7 million units, and sales doubled.
However, at that time, domestic mobile phones did not have core technology, they were imitations of foreign mobile phones, so they were called "cottage machines".
But even if it is to do "cottage machine", Gionee who killed halfway out will soon be famous in the domestic mobile phone industry, but at this time Liu Lirong has a greater goal, he is no longer satisfied with only doing cottage machines, so he decided to design and produce a brand machine that truly belongs to Gionee.
2005 was a brilliant year for Liu Lirong and Jin Zheng. This year, Gionee's self-developed brand machine came out, with its long standby time and Chinese input method two trump cards, Gionee mobile phone once put on the market has won the favor of a large number of consumers.
At the same time, Liu Lirong also increased his marketing efforts, he invited Andy Lau as a brand image spokesperson, and the production of advertising films was also produced by Feng Xiaogang himself.
At that time, The image of Andy Lau holding a Gionee mobile phone appeared on the TV screen, making the advertising slogan of "gold quality, standing in the world" deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and also pushing the Gionee mobile phone to a hot high point.
In the following three years, the sales of Gionee mobile phones have been rising year after year. In 2006, it sold 4 million units, 8 million units in 2007, and up to 10 million units in 2008, while Gionee also became the NO.1 unmatched domestic brand mobile phone in this year, and its sales volume ranked third in the sales list after Samsung and Nokia.
In just 6 years, Liu Lirong has stood from a novice to the peak of the domestic mobile phone industry and has become the absolute winner who controls the chessboard.
When some media asked about Liu Lirong's successful experience, he concluded that in addition to advertising and marketing strategies, the core is the continuous accumulation of the sinking agency system over the years.
Of course, Liu Lirong's expectations for the future of Gionee are also extremely high, he once laughed that Gionee and other brands are never better than who lives better, but than who lives longer, he hopes that Gionee is the one who can laugh and go on.
Unfortunately, the changes in the mall have always been rapidly changing, 2008 is still a feature phone scenery unlimited good mobile phone market, in the blink of an eye to 2009, smart phones have begun to emerge.
In fact, the iPhone3 released by Apple in June 2008 has already brought consumers a new experience and impacted the domestic traditional mobile phone market.
Subsequently, OPPO, VIVO and other domestic machine brands that once supported half of the mobile phone market with Gionee have endured the pain of cleaning up inventory and turned to the research and development of smart machines, and Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, also joined the front battle of grabbing the market at this time.
But at this time, Liu Lirong, who was immersed in the joy of great success, had not yet had time to catch his breath and had to face a new market crisis.
Only this time, in the transformation of smart machines, the wandering of the crossroads made him a little late, and the chess game that had a chance of winning fell into a puzzle.
With the rise of new domestic brands such as Xiaomi, ZTE, and Huawei, coupled with the step-by-step siege of Apple and Samsung, Gionee's market share has been shrinking, and sales have been surpassed by the later Millet step by step.
At this time, Liu Lirong realized that if there was no more broken arm, Jin Li's survival would be difficult.
In 2013, Liu Lirong carried out a drastic reform of Jin Li. He first cut the production of Gionee's smart phone within 1,000 yuan, and took the high-end mobile phone of 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan as the company's main position.
At the same time, Jin Lirong also shifted from the previous "machine naval warfare" to the "boutique war", reducing the number of new machines launched every year, basically maintaining within 10 models, but the number of corresponding R & D personnel has increased to 3 times the original.
In addition, Liu Lirong, who has been willing to spend money on marketing, has opened a carpet marketing model, not only inviting Feng Xiaogang, Xu Fan, Yu Wenle, Liu Tao and other big-name stars as spokespersons, but also sponsoring 12 variety shows such as "Smiling Proud of the River", "Crossover Singer King", "Four Famous Assistants" and so on.
Using media and star effects to promote the sales of products seems to be a law that Liu Lirong firmly believes in, but such a heavy gold layout also lays the groundwork for the future defeat of Jin Li.
After several years of all-out pursuit, Gionee finally caught up with the rapid pace of the mobile phone market step by step. In 2016, gionee mobile phone shipments reached 40 million units, and returned to the third position in the domestic mobile phone sales market.
If this development momentum can continue, Gionee is likely to have the opportunity to re-climb the top, but in the next 2017, Liu Lirong pushed himself and Gionee into a dead end game without a turnaround.
In 2017, just when everyone was expecting Gionee to make a new breakthrough, Liu Lirong, in addition to continuing to spend a lot of money on marketing, launched a high-end model priced from 6999 yuan to 16999 yuan for business people, but this move was not recognized by the market, and the sales of Gionee mobile phones began to decline after soaring in the previous year.
Since then, I don't know whether Liu Lirong has lost confidence in dominating the mobile phone market again, or wants to reopen a new career, when other major brands of mobile phones in the market focus on upgrading technology, he has turned his mind to the development of real estate and built the Qianhai Jinli Building in Shenzhen.
At this time, the news on the Internet about "Gionee's capital chain is broken, and the debt exceeds 20 billion" has emerged in an endless stream.
At a shareholders' meeting in the second half of 2017, Liu Lirong, who always liked to put a smile on his face, could no longer laugh, and several major shareholders of the group slapped the table and asked him, where did the company spend so much money? Liu Lirong bowed his head and answered wordlessly.
On December 10, 2017, Liu Lirong participated in the second "Business Chess Championship" in Beijing, but after receiving a phone call in the middle of the game, he gave up the game and rushed to Hong Kong.
Subsequently, on January 16, 2018, Liu Lirong was exposed that 41% of Gionee's shares had been frozen, and Gionee and many of its subsidiaries were sued for debt disputes.
The crisis of Gionee's capital chain broke out in full swing, and the relevant media learned from the relevant personnel that Gionee's creditors included 34 banks and more than 600 business partners, with a total debt of 21.1 billion.
As soon as this news came out, it caused the public to strongly question, how could Gionee fall into such a huge debt dispute? In the midst of huge public opinion, in late January 2018, Liu Lirong, the focal point of the incident, finally appeared in Hong Kong.
He was interviewed by Securities Times, and his explanation for the company's huge debt was that Gionee invested more than 6 billion yuan in marketing in 2016 and 2017, plus more than 3 billion other investments, which led to the rupture of the company's capital chain.
However, such a reason did not dispel everyone's doubts, and there were more and more rumors about Gionee's debt.
Finally, on November 23, 2018, an article published in Interface titled "The Mystery of Jin Li's Death" unveiled Liu Lirong's hiding in Hong Kong.
The article pointed out that Liu Lirong, who lost the mobile phone market in 2017, was addicted to the adventure of gambling, and he went to Saipan twice to gamble.
He lost 2 billion yuan the first time, but he did not stop there after losing a huge amount of money, but flew to Saipan again for excitement shortly after.
Only this time he lost even worse, and it was said that several of his best friends at the time flew to Saipan the next day to try to pull him back from the table.
However, after they arrived, they were stunned, Liu Lirong had already gambled red-eyed, his face was full of chips, the last card alone lost 700 million US dollars, and what was even more shocking was that it was said that this time he lost a total of several billion, plus the last blockage, Liu Lirong lost a total of tens of billions of dollars at the table.
After the article was published, Liu Lirong was immediately labeled as a "crazy gambler" by the outside world, and everyone was shocked and deeply sorry for him.
He studied hard from the mountain village to the outside world, and relied on his vision and courage to become a legend in the Chinese mobile phone industry, but now he is deeply trapped in the quagmire of gambling, all the glory has become the past, and his life has been decided.
On the same day that the article was published, Gionee Group issued a statement saying that the article was untrue and asked relevant media and personnel to delete the article and clarify the facts.
However, on the third day after the article was published, Liu Lirong, who had not appeared for a long time, was once again interviewed by the Securities Times in Hong Kong.
In this interview, he admitted to the fact that he went to Saipan to gamble, and when the reporter asked him how much money he lost, he was silent for a while and then replied softly: "Not as much as the Internet rumors, more than a billion!" ”
Specifically, how much Liu Lirong lost at the gambling table, we do not know, but his life lost at the gambling table is already an indisputable fact, and at this time Liu Lirong is only 46 years old, and his life is only more than halfway.
At the end of 2018, Gionee Group declared bankruptcy, and Liu Lirong has never been heard again, and later there were rumors that he is now in the United States, but has not been confirmed by any media.
A generation of legendary figures in the business world, finally ended in this way, or a bit of a lament.
In the chess game, one wrong step may lose all the games, and Liu Lirong, who is well versed in chess, does not understand. It's just that when reason is destroyed by crazy gambling, he is powerless to turn the tide of life, in addition to losing the glory of half a life, he must face the unbearable weight of life.