Editor's introduction: The products on the two tuyeres of Blue Mountain and Gaoshan have not met the expectations of the Wei brand. From the "three cups of coffee" to the two-car strategy, from Yan Si to Chen Siying to Liu Yanzhao, 7 CEOs in 7 years, I can't stop the marginalization of Wei brand.
The high mountains open low, and the blue mountains are cut down
A few days ago, the news that the Great Wall is going to build a high-end brand quickly attracted the attention of the industry under the official intentional or unintentional release, and the key points such as D+ class sedans and direct sales made the Great Wall's brand full of highlights. At the same time that the new brand attracted attention, WEY brand, as a representative of the high-end of Great Wall Motors and a high-end brand named after the chairman's surname, gradually lost its voice in the market.
"In just two hours after its launch, the WEY brand Gaoshan MPV has won more than 5,000 large orders. This is the rendering of Gaoshan's achievements in the official statement when the Wei brand new energy MPV Gaoshan was launched a few months ago. On October 18, 2023, the first MPV model of the WEY brand, Gaoshan, was launched at the Guangzhou Auto Show, with a total of three models with a price range of 335,800 to 405,800 yuan, and it will be delivered immediately after listing.
At that time, for the sales expectation of Gaoshan after its listing, Wei brand executives once mentioned in an interview with the media, "In the early stage of listing, the first goal is to achieve monthly sales of more than 5,000 and achieve monthly sales of more than 10,000 together with Blue Mountain." ”
Unfortunately, Gaoshan did not meet the expectations of the Wei brand, in November and December last year, Gaoshan sales of 612 vehicles, 713 vehicles, in terms of terminal sales, in the four weeks of January this year, Gaoshan sales were 156, 109, 128, 217 vehicles, still did not show a large-scale volume.
Another Wei brand executive also said that Wei brand spent 4 years polishing Gaoshan, hoping to become a "talker" in the new energy MPV segment: "If you can't become a 'talker' in this market, I think the future will be very difficult." So our goal is definitely very high, and our goal is to be a 'talker'. ”
However, it is not difficult to see from the comparison of data that there is an obvious gap between the ideal of Wei brand "talking people" and its realization. As a strong rival to the high mountains, the Denza D9 was the best-performing new energy MPV last year, with a cumulative sales of 119,000 units.
Gao Shan's failure to meet expectations also marks the failure of the Wei brand two-car strategy in 2023. After struggling to maintain the scale of 5,000 units for 4 months, the sales volume of Blue Mountain will be halved in September 2023, and from September to December, it can only maintain the scale of 2,000 units. Blue Mountain's sales were cut in half, and Gaoshan's start was low, which made the voice of Wei brand in the high-end market lower again.
Defeated again and again Wei card
It must be pointed out that Blue Mountain and Gaoshan are two models above the tuyere, Blue Mountain focuses on the positioning of daddy cars, while Gaoshan is a new energy MPV, which is the two major market outlets in 2023.
At the beginning of the listing of Blue Mountain in 2023, some Wei brand insiders also told CRRC.com, "This car is the positioning of daddy car, and now this market segment is very hot, we feel that the product power is very good, and the internal expectations for this car are very high." ”
"Standing on the tuyere, pigs can fly. Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, once said. Judging from the results, in the face of the two major market outlets of daddy cars and high-end MPVs, and with the support of the Great Wall Motors system, WEY brand still has not been able to completely change its own decline.
The object of Blue Mountain's calibration is the Ideal L8, which has sold a total of 117,000 new cars in 2023, with an average monthly sales of nearly 10,000. On the whole, the sales volume of the three models last year has exceeded 300,000 units, which is a typical positioning to win, and the same is true for the new energy MPV market, the biggest winner in the new energy MPV market in 2023 is Denza, and the executives of DENZA clearly told CRRC that "technology, product definition, and market demand" are the key to the rise of DENZA D9.
The defeat of Blue Mountain and High Mountain is not the first time that Wei has lost. The brilliance of the WEY brand is the initial period of 2017 and 2018, when the WEY series products had just been launched, and with the reputation of the Great Wall and the well-received appearance design, the sales of the WEY brand climbed rapidly, and reached a sales peak of 140,000 units in 2018. But the good times did not last long, during this period there were not only the reasons for the stripping of tanks, but also the reasons why the Wei brand entered the product switching period, and the sales of the Wei brand then plummeted.
Around 2021, the whole WEY brand turned to the "coffee series". The follow-up performance of the "coffee series" has also become another failure of the Wei brand in the transition period, the main "three cups of coffee" Wei brand, in 2021 sales of 58,000 units, still a year-on-year decline of 25.65%, in 2022, after the transformation of the new energy brand, after the launch of the plug-in hybrid model, sales plummeted by 37.5% again, leaving only 36,400 units sold.
Although Great Wall Motor's production and sales report shows that the cumulative sales of WEY brand in 2023 will be 41,000 units, an increase of 14.35% year-on-year in 2022, this is more related to its low base in 2022, and the performance of 41,000 units in the domestic new energy market is still facing the problem of marginalization.
Liu Yanzhao "Second Entrance to the Palace"
Regarding the crux of the Wei brand, a number of industry insiders have pointed out to CRRC that the brand positioning is not clear, or the SUV dividend has faded. In Wei Jianjun's view, the problem of Wei brand lies in marketing.
"There is no problem with Wei brand's products at all, which technology is leveraged; Wei brand has no shortage of products and technologies, and it is right to take the path of PHEV category; traditional car companies rely on performance to speak, and new forces rely on concepts; Wei does not sell well after the transformation, just because marketing is not in place. We must learn from Wei Xiaoli in this point, and the key to the next step is to improve marketing. This is the criticism that Wei Jianjun left on Wei Pai at the beginning of 2022.
After Wei Jianjun's words, the successors of Wei Pai, such as Li Ruifeng and Chen Siying, performed aggressively in marketing, and "porcelain" and "exaggerated" marketing techniques abounded, but the results were still not ideal. At the end of September last year, Chen Siying said that he resigned as the general manager of the Wei brand for personal reasons, and the outside world attributed it to the poor sales of the Blue Mountain, but the Blue Mountain has been called the best performing item of the Wei brand in recent years after the VV series.
It is worth mentioning that Chen Siying's departure also means that WEY has replaced 7 leaders in 7 years, and WEY CEO has been called the most "high-risk" position in the industry. The first Yan Si served from October 2016 to September 2018, and the 23-month tenure was the longest-lived CEO of Wei Pai, after Yan Si, before Chen Siying, Liu Yan, Li Ruifeng, Hu Shujie, Yu Fei, Liu Yanzhao and others were also replaced, and the shortest Yu Fei even only took office for 4 months.
A month after Chen Siying's resignation, Liu Yanzhao entered the palace for the second time and returned to Wei Pai (the first term from August 2022 to March 2023), concurrently serving as the general manager of Wei brand and tank brand, responsible for the overall management of Wei brand and tank brand. Li Ruifeng said that he "has a good understanding of WEY brand product development and technical accumulation".
During the Guangzhou Auto Show last year, it had said, "Next year, we will make efforts from the intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, and continue to deepen the high-end and intelligent brand image of the Wei brand." ”
In terms of overall planning, Liu Yanzhao also said that in 2024, a full-size SUV will be launched on the basis of Blue Mountain to meet the needs of higher-end users for long-distance travel. In terms of MPVs, we will continue to launch customized products. In addition, the third sedan will also be strategically released in 2024. In addition, there will be a new Mocha 4WD, a new latte, and a model equipped with urban NOH.
2024 has kicked off, and whether Liu Yanzhao can bring new changes to Wei has also become a major attraction of Wei this year.