On December 27th, the 36Kr Hard Krypton Consumer Technology Brand Globalization Conference was successfully concluded in Qianhai, Shenzhen. The conference invited a large number of first-line brands, investment institutions, technology companies, experts and scholars in the industry, and set up a total of 13 keynote speeches and 3 round tables, covering topics such as offline channel construction, product force building, brand launch, user interaction, hardware supply chain management, etc.
On the morning of the 27th, 36Kr analyst Wei Wen held a roundtable discussion on "Capital & Channel & Marketing" with Han Yi, Senior Vice President of Strategic Investment Department of Mango Media, Han Zongbo, Head of Global Brand Marketing of Creality 3D, Zhang Lin, Director of CMC Capital Investment, and Tang Weijing, Head of Global Emerging Business of Meixun iMpact, on "Capital & Channel & Marketing".
Roundtable scene
Wei Wen: Hello everyone, I am very happy to be the moderator of the roundtable forum, I am Wei Wen from 36Kr, many of you are old friends, the first link is to invite the guests to introduce themselves.
Han Yi: Hello everyone, I am Han Yi from the Strategic Investment Department of Mango Media, which is a value management platform, stock asset capitalization platform and strategic investment platform of Hunan Radio and Television Group's listed companies. At present, on behalf of the group, he holds two listed companies, one is Mango Supermedia, whose core assets are Mango TV, an Internet video platform, and the other is TV and radio media, which you may also be familiar with, and its main business is cultural tourism and investment sector. Mango Media is the link between Hunan Radio and Television Group and its market players, and is a strategic planning and capital operation tool to promote the high-quality development of the Group.
Han Zongbo: Hello everyone, I am Han Zongbo, the head of the brand marketing of Chuangxiang 3D, our company mainly produces 3D printers and 3D printing related ecological products, mainly serving individuals, families, enterprises, schools and other fields, and I am very happy to participate in such an event today.
Lin Zhang: I'm Lin Zhang from CMC Capital, which was founded in 2010 and invests in consumption, technology and entertainment, which is highly consistent with today's theme consumer technology brand, and I look forward to having some meaningful exchanges with you today.
Tang Weijing: I am Tang Weijing from Meixun, during the epidemic, I contacted nearly 400-500 cross-border enterprises, and served nearly 100 enterprises to do overall brand business localization work overseas. We are talking about brands going overseas today, including how to help enterprises do a good job in the localization of overseas markets and localization layout from a global perspective, and I am very happy to be here to share with you today.
Wei Wen: Thank you, all the guests, there are not only 3D printing that is hot this year, but also the capital side, as well as the service provider Meixun, which can be described as a gathering of big names. Now let's move on to the first question, from your own perspective, what are the changes in the market this year, or what significant changes have you found in the process of brand globalization?
Han Yi: There is a popular perception this year that the market is in a cycle of contraction. But in the case of Mango, our confidence and perception are positive. This year, Mango Investment has made a major strategic adjustment, mainly focusing on investing in Mango's core business, which is based on confidence in the market and systematic opportunities in the "culture + consumption industry". Next year, we will comprehensively promote the implementation of this strategy, and promote the in-depth integration of culture and the consumer industry with the 2C logic of consumer investment to expand content monetization.
I would also like to take this opportunity to discuss with all the guests here how to combine the consumer industry with culture in the exploration of going overseas, especially with the potential energy of high-quality content to go overseas. Because our current culture goes overseas, in Southeast Asia and along the Belt and Road, we have formed a relative output advantage from IP content to creative ecology, and this potential energy gap can empower the consumer industry to go overseas, such as consumer electronics, daily chemicals, clothing, food, housing and transportation and other consumer industries. When the consumption goes overseas combined with such cultural potential energy, whether it can produce a very good synergy is a question worthy of our cross-border thinking.
Han Zongbo: We all know that the economic and political situation abroad this year is quite complicated, and we have been challenged a lot, and of course there are many opportunities. As of yesterday, our company has achieved the growth target set at the beginning of the year, which is relatively good. From our point of view, the change this year is that it was better to have a product in the past, but this year we need to effectively combine products and brands, go both ways with users, and listen to their voices. In previous years, we wanted to cover everything, whether it was products, marketing, or channels, but now this way is not feasible, we can only take a more segmented, scenario-based route, which is the general trend.
In previous years, I paid more attention to online traffic, but now we must pay attention to and increase investment in content, and pay more attention to the assessment of the core. In the past, due to the epidemic, online thought was more considered, but this year we have put more energy into offline, and we have invested a lot of energy in South America, Central Africa, Australia, Japan and South Korea, hoping to achieve the effect of complementing each other online and offline.
The second is differentiation, which will focus on the layout of localized talents and localized services this year.
Finally, the brand, we have been talking about the brand for many years, and we used to only consider it from the perspective of marketing, but this year from the company's R&D and design, the concept of the brand has been injected, including marketing promotion, channel sales and after-sales service experience. I believe that this is the only way to cope with the more volatile environment that will follow.
Zhang Lin: If we put the concept of going overseas relatively broadly, there are actually two dimensions: the entry of overseas companies into China and the internationalization of Chinese companies. From the perspective of recent years, overseas brands that used to be high now pay more attention to the information feed of Chinese partners, whether it is in China's market trend perception, or in China's reconstructed channels, how to do more suitable for China's new generation of consumers' product selection, user connection, All service systems, in terms of the Chinese business of overseas brands, there is a good opportunity for the capital to empower a systematic team to build a service platform for the consumer industry.
In the second aspect, even if there is a certain amount of friction and resistance, we want to emphasize the opportunity. At present, whether it is a platform, a brand or a model, it is showing a situation of blossoming everywhere. For example, Pinduoduo's overseas business TEMU has made great achievements, and China has led the trend of product perception while further exerting its own supply chain advantages, and better interpreting the role of a global and intelligent product factory. From the perspective of model, Tik ToK has opened up the channel of content e-commerce, and the output of the celebrity model launched this year has also brought opportunities to the brand side. As far as the process of branding China's own consumer goods is concerned, the previous traffic model has come to an end, and companies that practice long-termism have ushered in a good opportunity, branding to drive better repurchase, and truly integrate the concept of Chinese brands, as well as China's perception of new consumers, China's good and flexible supply chain capabilities, and even good quality control and data, to achieve more long-term opportunities on a global scale. This is an opportunity for us to see China's new generation of consumer brands gain a better position in the global value chain.
The last point is that traditional consumer chains have also begun to put their good models overseas, just like the Southeast Asian market mentioned by Mr. Han, our brand output, whether it is milk tea, catering or other chain brands, channels have a good development. For example, KK Group, which we invested, has a significant increase in stores in Southeast Asia this year, and the Indonesian market has also brought us good data feedback. Therefore, in general, consumption and technology are the tracks that we are very concerned about, and the brand and culture and people are also very related, this line is the direction that we are very concerned about, and we also look forward to the opportunity to meet more industry entrepreneurs today and find opportunities for cooperation in the future.
Tang Weijing: Speaking of the process of brands going overseas, I settled in North America in 2018, and in the past five years, I have been fortunate to witness the process of some Chinese companies starting from going overseas to having a relatively large growth trend last year and this year. In the early stage, I will regard the whole Chinese enterprise overseas model as 1.0, mainly the product to go to sea, as the two just talked about, the first step to go overseas is to sell goods on an independent online station, and the foothold of Meixun is how to reach users and sell more goods, which is the first aspect;
Since last year, the process of going overseas has become a brand-oriented thinking, and everyone has become more and more aware of the importance of branding. In the early days, China's model was that the supply chain had an advantage, so the price had an advantage, and we used this advantage to enter the overseas market and quickly occupy a certain market share. However, when selling goods to the bottleneck period and testing how the brand can really cultivate the overseas market, it is necessary to have a brand added value and premium to do the incremental market, which will be a big change. From the perspective of Meixun, we encourage global localization more internally, and we don't put forward the concept of sea thinking, but whenever we say that we go overseas, the focus is on China. As an enterprise that wants to do a global layout, we hope to do localized business overseas from a global perspective, and at this point, we use China's business model and supply chain products, but all the future layout, localized operations, teams, sales, and promotion, are overseas. Therefore, at this point, we will pay more attention to our global vision and do the work of localization in overseas markets.
As far as Meixun itself is concerned, the customers we received in the early stage were traditional media PR, and now we are more willing to serve a customer from a diversified perspective. At present, we have formed a 5R service theory: taking PR as the starting point, service GR, that is, government relations, and how to build a good relationship with the local government when we do the market HR, how to recruit a localized team in the localization process, how to establish a good image of overseas employers, then IR, investor relations, most enterprises, especially technology companies need investment and financing, and finally BR, when we do overseas, how to better make the business land, how to do business better, how to sell goods better, online platforms, offline channels are very important, how to expand the relationship between partners, and even the relationship between channels, or media relations. There is also CSR ESG, which is corporate social responsibility, if you are overseas, you need to get a good person card, so that you can better integrate into the local community and do business overseas in a way that is acceptable to them. Therefore, on how to do a good job of localization overseas, Meixun has these 5R, and you can focus on different R to expand according to different stages of going overseas.
Wei Wen: The next question I would like to ask Mr. Han, as a brand, you just mentioned that Creality 3D has made a lot of business adjustments this year, what is the core demand for capital and channels for localization?
Han Zongbo: Our company has also raised a round of capital, which should be in 2020, when the company did not have a strong demand for funds, and we pay more attention to three aspects: first, what kind of changes can the injection of capital bring to the company and what kind of things can help the company do, which is what the company values the most. Second, our company has developed from the grassroots, without a strong halo, what kind of resources can capital bring to us to help us accelerate growth, which is also what we value. Third, I hope to be able to give us some plus points, the company has entered a certain stage of development, in the direction of business may be unreasonable, or there is a deviation of the place, the capital will see more, we hope that they can show us the direction, in this way, the company will go more stable.
Wei Wen: Mr. Tang also mentioned localization and offline channels just now, do you have any experience that you can share in the process of localization?
Han Zongbo: Our real localization started last year. In the past, during the epidemic, more attention was paid to online, and only began to go this way in the second half of last year, and now we have set up our own companies in the United States and Germany, we Chinese used to manage, recruiting local colleagues, who are mainly responsible for sales and sales channel management, and local market colleagues to help us do content and localization promotion. The last is to do technical services, because this part involves more technical support. At present, in addition to the United States and Germany, we also have 15 offices in other countries, mainly in countries with relatively large growth, such as Argentina and Brazil in South America, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey in Central Africa, and South Korea and Japan in Asia. Of course, at present, except for Russia, the rest of the personnel in Europe are concentrated in Germany.
We have also done a lot of things offline, as of today, more than 10 user meetings have been held, face-to-face activities with fans, each of which is about 50-100 people, and users are also the first time to communicate face-to-face with the brand, and they are still relatively happy. When I was in the United States, many colleagues wore company shirts, and some users recognized us, and we used to communicate online, but now we can also communicate offline. We also held several media salons to communicate with them face-to-face, and we also did some IP co-branding in the United States and Germany, which achieved good results.
In terms of content, the previous content has been complained about overseas for a long time, not only in Europe and the United States, but also in other small language countries. We used fans to do some proofreading, but the effect was not particularly good, this year we chose local employees to make their own, we also found a group of representative users, sent a domestic team and overseas teams to do user shooting cases, and now achieved relatively good results.
Wei Wen: Thank you, Mr. Han. The next question, I want to discuss with the two capitalists, both say that this year is a year for institutions to lie flat, I want to ask what is our actual state, where is our money spent, and have we invested in some good projects?
Han Yi: This year is not a flat year for Mango Investment, we are particularly confident in consumption, and we have initiated the establishment of a 1 billion new Mango Consumption Investment Fund through its Houwei Capital. When we look at consumer investment, it is necessary to identify and find the categories that still have room for growth in the next ten or twenty years, such as the subdivision of many consumer goods verticals, micro-innovation, product improvement, and the ensuing redefinition of the market structure. Not only is the consumer market large enough, but the factors that support the development of China's consumer industry are also very strong, such as infrastructure, the Internet, and supply chain capabilities, which can actually incubate consumer goods, especially brands in consumer goods, and even global consumer goods brands. Therefore, at present, the arbitrage logic is actually an industry opportunity for investment and consumption, and we want to find long-term partners to grow together, rather than from the perspective of capital market or policy arbitrage, we are based on industrial cooperation to find investment opportunities. Among the world's top 50 consumer brands, only 5 are Chinese brands, and most of the top 50 FMCG brands are food and beverage brands. From this perspective, we feel that there is an opportunity for China's high-quality cultural and creative content and China's high-quality consumer brands to combine and empower each other to become bigger, better and stronger.
Zhang Lin: I very much agree with Mr. Han's sharing, at least the institutions that came here today are not lying flat. We've had some small results this year. For example, on the investment side, we have a number of portfolios this year that have won follow-up financing or achieved IP, and new investments have also invested in clean energy projects; at the same time, on the fundraising side, we have actively embraced the RMB market and the A-share market, established a RMB industry fund in cooperation with local governments, and are more determined to start from entertainment and turn to the strategic combination of "consumption + technology two-wheel drive". From the perspective of how we do things, on the consumer side, we maintain a state of active exploration in the market and embrace new opportunities. On the one hand, we are more active in working with consumer companies and cooperating with them to do a good job in capital market planning, including hoping to use our resources to empower Chinese consumer companies to build their brands, and at the same time, we can also understand to a certain extent how a start-up company can reach a consensus with consumers on the brand side, and continue to promote our strong capabilities in the direction of "media + consumption", which is also actively carried forward by us. In addition, as a "RMB + USD" dual currency fund, we hope to actively promote the cross-border globalization of Chinese enterprises, and we are actively acting as a bridge to promote the globalization of Chinese brands in the Greater Bay Area, and even to the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Han Yi: I would like to add that in the era of linear communication, Hunan radio and television advertisements sold very well, but now due to the changes in the pattern of the audiovisual field, the 2B logic of content value realization in the entertainment industry has been seriously challenged. In this case, we will embrace the 2C logic of content monetization from both strategic and emotional aspects, and the C-end content monetization is naturally combined with the consumer industry, which is why we continue to invest in cultivating Xiaomang e-commerce, and this year Xiaomang e-commerce will complete the first round of external financing. What are the advantages of Mango as a platform for Xiaomang's e-commerce? I personally understand that it is because of the keen perception and accurate control of the emotional value of the audience in the Mango content creation ecosystem. For example, "Going to a Windy Place" keenly grasped the value of slow variety shows that everyone longed for emotional release during the epidemic, and the emotional value of the audience can be transformed into the emotional value of the product when it is exported to consumer companies, thereby generating a brand premium.
Wei Wen: Thank you, Mr. Han. Just now, the brand side and the capital side have mentioned things about overseas, and everyone has some doubts in their hearts, what pit has been encountered this year, such as Meixun, when serving the brand, overseas, in the process of serving enterprises, do you have any experience to share?
Tang Weijing: When going to sea 1.0, everyone was on the line, and they focused more on how to attract traffic to sell goods on independent stations. And the big trend this year is that offline is a very large market, especially in North America, where offline channels have a very large market. Online sales account for only 15%-20% of North America, and offline sales can account for 80%-85%. Whether it is cross-border e-commerce, or enterprises that want to do a global layout, the incremental market will go offline, and Meixun has also started last year to help customers open up services to expand offline channels, because this will be everyone's incremental market.
What are the points to note?
First, everyone consults with Meixun, first with a goal, such as whether you can enter Wal-Mart, etc., you may know that you are familiar with the North American market, these are very mainstream national channel chains in North America, of course, if you can enter, the flow of merchants will be very large. However, according to our understanding of the local market and the communication with the purchasing officer, it is difficult to enter the top chain, and the process of getting the results is relatively long for companies that have just entered the overseas market. For example, Wal-Mart's official entry cycle is 18-24 months, and if you want to enter the offline, you have to wait for at least one year, or even two years, for these channels to enter the market, which is a very long cycle. The second is that the head channels have a particularly large voice in the mouth, these large channels have a long account period, and their entry terms are also relatively harsh, and in recent years, there have been bottom-up agreements. When many companies come to consult and want to enter offline and Wal-Mart, we hope that customers will understand the current situation of overseas markets and offline channels, including the head channels, and what kind of companies can enter. If it wants to be at the top of the list, it needs to be at the top of the mature product segment throughout the North American market. First of all, we need to have data verification, if there is very beautiful data in the North American market, we can better convince the buyer when communicating with him; secondly, product differentiation, the product has functional differences for the North American market, and the product has a lot of mainstream media endorsements and media reviews, and has been certified by the North American market. To sum up, it is possible for us to obtain the right to negotiate with the head channel. For enterprises that want to enter offline channels, we should first evaluate what the standards of these mainstream head channels are, whether the current status of the enterprise is qualified to settle in, and whether our cash flow can reach these account periods.
Second, in addition to the head channel, there are many mid-waist channels in the North American market, which are more friendly in comparison. They are regional, not necessarily thousands of national chains, but there are dozens or hundreds of chain stores in the United States, the number of chains is small, but the volume of a single store is very large, and it also has a certain reputation in the local area, which is more suitable for enterprises that have online sales and want to go offline. If you can't go through the head, you can try it in the middle and waist, because the entry threshold is not so high.
Third, some companies feel that offline channels are very important, and as long as they rely on organic traffic to sell goods, everything will be fine, which is a bit biased. Settlement is the first step, and our goal of entering the channel is to sell the goods, but how to sell the goods, we should not be too optimistic about entering the line. It has a lot of post-settlement operations, including after-sales, return and exchange policies, etc. The return and exchange policy in the overseas market is very relaxed, how to manage returns, and how to formulate corresponding supporting marketing strategies after entering the market, how to help offline channels sell goods, how to drain traffic to do overall brand communication, and understand this set of play, so that enterprises can increase sales after entering the line. In fact, in our opinion, it is part of the layout of the North American market, and its existence will even affect what goods are sold online, what kind of SKU they are, what kind of price they sell, and how much profit they leave into the line. At present, offline is a very good sweet spot, but in terms of settlement and later operation, it is actually a very global layout.
Wei Wen: Thank you, Mr. Tang, there are indeed many steps in overseas localization, which is very cumbersome. From the perspective of brand communication, CMC and Mr. Han have both been senior investors in the field of culture and creativity.
Zhang Lin: From the perspective of investment institutions, they have a wider range of resources and information than entrepreneurs, especially US dollar funds have LP resources, and these LPs have local businesses, which may be local sovereign wealth funds, or government funds with a certain investment attraction nature, which also has certain similarities between overseas investment and domestic investment. Therefore, investment institutions are a bridge that can graft some local resources and achieve better links with entrepreneurs, which includes both regulatory policies and local culture, which are the natural responsibilities of investment institutions.
Another logic is how to make a completely independent model of going it alone into a community that connects or goes overseas, and the perspective of investment institutions is the role of a bridge. There is also the perspective of brand communication, just mentioned this year's trend, that is, the content to e-commerce logic brought by Tik ToK, this model can be said to be invented by the Chinese, that is, how to discover local KOCs, KOLs, or potential talents, use them to spread information, build a network in the air, and finally achieve delivery and fulfillment. The offline network, how to coordinate the resources of all parties in the existing offline channels, find a breakthrough, from a node model, to the chain system whether it is the United States or the world, this is also some of the offline play, this point from our observation, domestic and foreign offline logic, the two models are similar.
Han Yi: I just repeatedly mentioned that the potential energy to go to sea, the culture to go to sea, the manufacturing capacity to go to sea, and the consumption to go to sea are all in line with national policies, and they are also common in terms of market logic, which can be described as the right time and place. We are now going to sea, the infrastructure has changed very much compared with that year, one of the earliest industries to go to sea should be the game to go to sea, the payment environment and other problems faced by games going overseas have now changed to a very large extent, whether it is Africa, or Southeast Asia, the basic environment has been paved. The content supply side, the consumer industry, Internet marketing and other relevant parties should form a community of interests in accordance with the logic of the market and combine their respective advantageous resources, and take advantage of the potential energy of high-quality advantageous culture to promote the industry to go overseas and form an international premium for the brand.
Wei Wen: Last question, Mr. Han, 3D printing is a hot track this year, what are your strategies and ways of playing for next year's outlook or Chuangxiang 3D?
Han Zongbo: 3D printing is now more concerned overseas, and the market is also fiercely competitive, which is a good thing for us. From this year's point of view, the entire market has amplified the needs of consumers, which is a good opportunity for us. At the same time, this year's market scale is also expanding, and there are more possibilities for scene exploration, for the marketing team, whether it is marketing, promotion, or channels, in 2024, we hope that they can work hard and do everything deeply.
From the point of view of products, this morning we held a conference on brand upgrading overseas, we hope that next year the brand can run through every chain of the company's operation, I will promote the research and development system from the perspective of the product to deeply understand the value of the brand, in the past is to spread the function of the product, next year will change the direction, from the functional value to the emotional value of the change, after the Spring Festival you can send colleagues out, return to the company, from the perspective of users to do communication, our users are still very interesting, I want to dig them out, so that they really like our brand, of course, this also requires the company's products to continue to make breakthroughs and innovations on the basis of updates。
This year is the 9th year of the company, the advantage is the channel advantage, we have a number of channels overseas, the focus of next year is first of all the digital management of the channel, followed by the channel optimization, which channels can go with the brand, let them go with us.
Of course, from the perspective of the market, there are great opportunities next year, whether it is the incremental market or the stock market. Next year, 3D printing in the stock market will face a comprehensive replacement wave, which is a good opportunity for us. Whoever is close to the user will be able to take the lead, so next year we will be infinitely close to the user. In the incremental market, there are still many ordinary consumers who have no feeling for 3D printing, which is our focus, and we will explore scenarios. That's probably it, if you add another one, the content will be the top priority next year.
Wei Wen: Thank you, Mr. Han, because of the limited time, this roundtable forum has come to an end, and I believe that what we have discussed will be beneficial to you.