A horse will never gallop without another horse chasing after it and overtaking it.
Wen / Ba Jiu Ling
In 1904, St. Louis, USA, hosted the World's Fair.
At that time, the Qing government sent a delegation to participate, and circled 50 square meters of space to make a Chinese village. At that time, they brought tea, antiques, jade, silk, and 4,000 fans of various colors. What do other countries bring? It is the Siemens telegraph, the Mercedes-Benz car, the first car of the United States General Motors, and the Coca-Cola.
After participating in the World Expo, the Qing government opened a persuasion field in a building outside the front gate of Tiananmen, hoping to promote the development of domestic products and promote the people to engage in commercial activities. In this year, the Qing government announced the abolition of the imperial examination.
Counting up, the awakening of the awareness of domestic goods in Chinese is only a short period of more than a hundred years. In the past hundred years, the economy has changed and history has changed, and Chinese set off three waves of domestic goods movement.
A domestic goods movement is the adolescence of national commerce. The history of the domestic goods movement is also a "side history" of the country.
The recommended book today is "The New Wave of Domestic Goods: Chinese History in the Commercial War" prepared, planned, and visited by Blue Lion as the general consultant. This book uses time as a clue to observe the rise of local brands in China in the past hundred years, takes the story of the business war in the three domestic goods movements as the context, builds a growth model of domestic goods, and tells the wave of domestic goods that are closely related to our lives.
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For a long time, China's products were in a state of one-way export in isolation, and with the rise of the industrial revolution, China was involved in global production and consumption, and all values faced reconstruction. In the traditional China of "soldiers, peasants, industrialists, and merchants, and businessmen are the last business," people of insight shouted out the slogan that "it is better to learn from soldiers than to study business wars."
In 1905, the Qing government set up a persuasion field in Beijing. The so-called persuasion field is equivalent to the current shopping mall. After leasing, the persuasion field has stationed more than 140 shops, integrating department stores, catering and entertainment. In the years that followed, the Chengdu Business Persuasion Trade Union, the Nanjing Persuasion Industry Association, the Nanyang Persuasion Association, the Wuhan Persuasion Industry Award, the West Lake Expo, etc. were successively opened, and the whole of China became a common practice.
Scene when chengdu persuasion field opened in 1909 (Source: Centennial Chunxi Album)
Also in 1905, the U.S. government rejected the requirement that the Chinese Exclusion Act be automatically repealed at the end of the term, and a huge "boycott of American goods" campaign was launched in China. Three years later, the "boycott of Japanese goods" movement went further, and the "sense of national self-identity" was unprecedentedly high during this period, which set off the first domestic goods movement. In this context, domestic products spew out thin.
Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s was one of the main battlefields of the first domestic goods movement. Shanghai businessmen set up national commercial organizations such as the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, the Shanghai Machinery Federation, and the China National Goods Maintenance Association to cheer for domestic goods.
Countless Chinese businessmen joined the battlefield. Shanghai businessman Huang Chujiu "just wants to fight with the Japanese", if Chinese boycott Japanese goods, but do not have their own products, boycott Japanese goods will not become an empty phrase? To this end, he founded the Dragon tiger company, the development of dragon tiger ren dan, in order to fight against the Japanese production of "beard ren dan", in the fierce competition, he would rather subsidize, but also to sell the dragon tiger ren dan, and posted "Chinese people please take Chinese Dan, home travel do not forget to Chinese Dan" slogan. In the end, Dragon Tiger Ren Dan won a great victory, and today, Dragon Tiger Ren Dan is still one of China's most well-known products overseas.
"Supporting domestic goods for the country" is the background of the first domestic goods movement, and Chinese entrepreneurs have also declared the location of "Chinese power" to the outside world.
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The second domestic goods movement began in 1984, which was also the "first year of the company" in China. This year, a large number of entrepreneurs such as Liu Chuanzhi, Zhang Ruimin, Li Dongsheng and so on opened the "sea of stars" of China's manufacturing industry.
They grew up barbarically, started a business in difficulty, killed blood in the OEM, and founded their own brand. When they have a certain amount of confidence and capital, they try to challenge foreign brands.
One of the most representative is the "price war" in the field of color TV.
In the early 1990s, China's color TV market had huge profit margins, domestic factories have entered the market, hundreds of local TV factories have been established across the country, and international brands have also entered the Chinese market.
For a time, homogeneous products flooded the market, and the industry competition reached a white-hot level, and a big war was inevitable. TCL's Li Dongsheng took the lead in launching the TCL "price reduction war", and subsequently, Changhong and Konka also joined in succession, and a "price war" without seeing the smoke of gunfire was launched. Foreign-funded and joint venture brands are forced to fight.
In 2006, the color TV in the mall was carrying out a price reduction promotion
In this battle, the pattern of foreign giants unifying the market was broken, the small and medium-sized color power plants were closed, and the industrial pattern was reconstructed, and finally a three-legged situation of Changhong, Konka and TCL was formed. At the same time, the price war has overdrawn the future of the industry, and domestic color TVs have entered the era of low profits.
Reducing production costs is a common way for Chinese brands to survive in the second domestic goods movement.
A similar price war has emerged in the auto market. At that time, in the automobile market, the profit of a car was as high as 30%, and the automobile brand was mainly joint venture and foreign capital, and there were few domestic brands. In order to break the situation of foreign capital, Li Shufu, who was still building motorcycles at that time, decided to make a catfish - to build a car.
It should be known that the automobile industry is the embodiment of a country's comprehensive strength, the embodiment of high-end talents and high-tech industries. It is not easy for private enterprises to enter the game.
In order to obtain a production license, Li Shufu said affectionately in the face of the inspection of Zeng Peiyan, then director of the State Planning Commission
Please allow private entrepreneurs to try boldly, allow us to dream of cars, and if we fail, please give me a chance to fail!
In 1998, Geely's first car was proudly listed, and the price of 58,000 yuan shocked the industry. The low price made people doubt its performance, and only a few thousand units were sold in two years. But after that, the car price war led by Geely set off a bloody storm in the Chinese auto market. "Car maniac" Li Shufu turned his dream into reality.
In 1998, Geely's first car, Geely, was proud
However, Geely also encountered the same dilemma as color TV, and Geely did not make money anymore. Li Shufu realized that Geely must transform to the high-end. Later, Geely acquired the Swedish luxury brand Volvo and exported Chinese-made cars to the world.
As the ancient Roman poet Ovid said:
For nearly 40 years, Chinese companies have lived and died in competition, casting the cornerstone of modern industry with flesh and blood. One price war after another, advertising war, patent war, capital war, let China's manufacturing step by step in the tribulation to the center of the world stage.
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In 2015, Teacher Wu's article "Going to Japan to Buy a Toilet Lid" caused a hot discussion and became the topic of discussion at the two sessions that year. From the government to enterprises to consumers, China has once again set off a huge movement, which is the third domestic movement.
This new domestic goods movement, more emphasis on the leadership of lifestyle, enterprises pay more and more attention to technological innovation, business ecology is constantly being subverted, "China's rise, national self-confidence and industrial rejuvenation" has become the trend at this time.
With the popularity of the Internet, online shopping channels have soared, and offline shopping malls have withered away. In the four years from 2016 to 2020, Walmart closed more than 80 stores in China, which is just a microcosm of the fate of offline retail department stores.
With the emergence of new online channels, the "Tao brand" that grew up with Taobao and the "broadcast brand" that was born with live broadcasting came into being, and the three squirrels and Huaxizi that we are familiar with are the representatives of this era. Pinduoduo has risen in different ways, and the vast sinking market has become a blue ocean of hot discussion.
In 2018, citizens shopped on Pinduoduo
At the same time, offline and online channels such as Hema Fresh and Mingchuang Excellent Products are deeply integrated, and a conquest called "new retail" has begun.
After years of accumulation of manufacturing industry, Chinese enterprises have been relatively sufficient in technology, capital and talent reserves at this time, and have formed their own methodologies. They have found another way, overtaking in curves and quickly out of the circle, with their characteristics of high quality and low price, rapid iteration, and in line with the needs of Chinese living habits, they quickly occupied the market and began to challenge the super brands that dominate the global market.
The awakening of consumer sovereignty is a remarkable feature of the third domestic goods movement.
The new middle class is the mainstream consumer group and potential stock of this era, and they have put forward higher requirements for culture and aesthetics. Under the role of the Internet, communication channels are more flat, and the consumer demand of this generation reverses the role of brands and channels, and brands and channels produce and innovate due to consumer needs.
National tide, face value, blind box, Hanfu, two-dimensional, one-person economy... Consumers in the third domestic product movement are more recognized and favored by domestic products, which is the embodiment of cultural consciousness, cultural identity and cultural self-confidence.
From the three domestic goods movements to the future of new domestic goods, "The Wave of New Domestic Goods: A History of China in the Commercial War" shows us the development and rise of domestic goods, and through cases and reports, it has opened up a corner of the future of the development of new domestic goods.
"The Wave of New Domestic Goods: A History of China in the Commercial War" is a mook book in China that describes three new domestic goods movements in a panoramic manner, and has been subscribed to 10,000 copies before it was officially published. Next, Blue Lion will continue to observe the new wave of domestic goods that is happening.
Theme planning | Xu Tao | Audio curated | Wang Zhenchao
Audio Operations | Chang Xiujuan | Editor-in-Chief | Zheng Yuanmei