Source: Sales & Management
Author: Zi Cheng
According to the Forbes Global Real-time China Rich List, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, and his family ranked 26th on the list with a net asset of US$16 billion (about 102.236 billion yuan), topping the richest man in Hebei.
It should be known that in the Hurun 2020 Rich List released last year, Wei Jianjun only ranked 96th with a value of 45 billion yuan, ranking third in Hebei Province, however, in less than a year, Wei Jianjun's value doubled, from third place to champion.
At the same time, the latest market value of Great Wall Motors has also crossed the 580 billion yuan mark.
01
From the "Baoding Car God" to the new richest man in Hebei
Unlike many rich people, Wei Jianjun, born in 1964, is a veritable second-generation rich man, whose father is an entrepreneur in Baoding, Hebei Province, and his family is well-off. Wei Jianjun did not study well since he was a child, and after failing the college entrance examination, he went to work in a computer factory in Beijing for a period of time. One year on his birthday, his father gave him a second-hand Soviet-made Lada as a gift, and the young Wei Jianjun once drove this car to drift around the corner, and thus won a title - "Baoding Car God". This also made him fall in love with the car and form a fate with the industry.
Lada cars
Not long after working in the computer factory, Wei Jianjun's father, Wei Deyi, gave up his Beijing hukou and returned to his hometown to start a Taihang equipment factory. At the same time, his uncle Wei Deliang founded the Great Wall Industry, mainly engaged in the car modification business, which is the predecessor of Great Wall Motors.
Unexpectedly, in 1990, Wei Deliang died in a car accident, and the Great Wall Industrial Company was taken over by the Baoding Nandayuan Township Government, but because of poor management, it soon fell into a loss dilemma, at this time, Wei Jianjun stepped forward and took over the Great Wall Industrial Company, which had assets and liabilities of 2 million yuan at the time, and he began a new journey with only 60 remaining employees.
In the early 1990s, under the two-way promotion of policy and market, the domestic automobile industry made great progress. Wei Jianjun saw the future of domestic cars, and he began to no longer meet the car modification business, but wanted to get involved in the field of automobile manufacturing.
In the early 1990s, the state began to encourage individuals to buy cars. Wei Jianjun accurately predicted the potential of the private car consumption market, traveled around to buy auto parts, and in 1993, he hand-pieced together the first batch of Great Wall cars, which were sold for only 100,000 yuan in the external market. Relying on the price advantage, it has quickly become a "hit" in the market. But the good times did not last long, in 1994, the national "Automobile Industry Policy" was introduced, cars can only be manufactured by a few designated state-owned automobile companies, this time, the Great Wall Industrial production of cars has become a "black household", can no longer continue to produce and sell.
As a bystander, when encountering the threshold of policy, it is likely that he has withdrawn and not done it, but at this time, Wei Jianjun did not think so, and the state only said that it would not let cars be built, and did not say that it would not allow the production of cars. After some thought, Wei Jianjun deliberately went to the United States, Thailand and other places to investigate the business, and found that pickup trucks were very popular in the United States and Southeast Asia.
Wei Jianjun keenly seized the opportunity of the pickup truck market, and after returning to China, he decided to attack the field of pickup trucks, and this unexpected strategic choice laid the groundwork for Great Wall Motors' subsequent take-off.
At the time, the largest pickup truck producer in the country was Field Motors. The field is in Baoding, is an old state-owned enterprise with heavy burdens, its product technology is backward, the price is high quality, and the lack of a perfect after-sales service system is difficult to meet the needs of consumers. Compared with it, the Great Wall is determined to win.
In 1996, Great Wall officially launched the first fuel-efficient and durable Great Wall Piccadil (Deer).
Great Wall Pikadir (Deer)
Due to its accurate positioning, Great Wall pickup trucks achieved sales of more than 7,000 vehicles in 1998 and 14,000 in 1999, quickly becoming the sales champion in the field of pickup trucks in China.
With a good reputation and sales in the field of pickup trucks, Wei Jianjun successfully dug the first pot of gold in the automotive industry, but what really allowed him to build the foundation of the richest empire in the future was SUV after SUV.
02
The king of domestic SUVs
Although invincible in the field of pickup trucks, it has played a world. But at this time, Wei Jianjun did not stop, he realized that Great Wall Motors must innovate to have a better future.
Wei Jianjun set his sights on the SUV segment. Fortunately, pickup trucks are very similar to SUV technology, and due to Great Wall Motors' years of accumulation in the pickup truck field, it has become smooth to enter SUV.
In May 2002, the great wall's first SUV - Saifu officially introduced to the market, compared with other foreign and joint venture brands at that time more than 200,000 pricing, Saifu 80,000 yuan of low price is really amazing, as soon as it was listed, it quickly triggered a rush in the market, and the first year of sales exceeded 30,000 vehicles.
The first SUV of the Great Wall - Seffer
In 2005, the Great Wall Haval brand SUV model was officially launched, after which the Great Wall Group made every effort to build the Haval brand.
The real hit of the Great Wall SUV came in 2011, when great wall launched the Haval H6.
Haval H6 this car was born to hit the soft underbelly of Chinese consumers, the space is large, leather enough, the price is not expensive, which is a bit contradictory in the eyes of many car companies, Haval H6 is all satisfied.
In August 2011, the Haval H6 was officially launched.
The first generation of the Haval H6
In September 2012, the Haval H6 topped the monthly sales with 15,068 units.
Since then, the sales myth of the Haval H6 has officially begun.
In October 2014, the Haval H6 became the only SUV model in China that sold more than 30,000 units a month, and in November of the same year, the Haval H6 became the first model in China to produce more than one million.
In December 2016, the Haval H6 set a peak of 80,495 units sold per month.
At the beginning of 2020, the cumulative global sales of Haval H6 exceeded 3 million units, once again consolidating the position of Great Wall Motor's SUV leader.
However, as the saying goes, success is also Xiao He who loses. The Great Wall started by building pickup trucks and SUVs, and so far these two models are still the absolute main force of Great Wall sales. SuVs and pickup trucks, large and heavy, are inherently disadvantaged in terms of energy saving and fuel economy.
03
High-end failure, new energy road is difficult to go
Unlike the brilliant achievements in the field of SUVs and pickup trucks, Great Wall Motors has gone slower in the field of new energy and the track of entering high-end brands.
With the increasingly competitive SUV market, Great Wall Motors urgently needs new growth points to alleviate the pressure on the low-end market and seek a higher brand premium.
At this time, a sub-brand named after the surname of Chairman Wei Jianjun appeared. WEY is a high-end SUV sub-brand founded by Great Wall in 2016, showing Great Wall's determination to enter the high-end market.
Great Wall high-end SUV brand WEYVV7
However, the reality did not go as expected. After several years of actual combat, the record of the WEY brand cannot satisfy Wei Jianjun.
After the high opening at the beginning of the listing, WEY began to decline. In 2020, WEY sold 79,000 units. Consumers do not buy WEY's account, largely due to the product force can not reach its luxury brand positioning, all kinds of small problems continue, from the transmission oil leakage, small to the door, trunk noise and so on.
In order to stabilize sales from further decline, the price of the main models, including VV6 and VV5, has fallen below the 150,000 yuan mark, and the overall premium of the WEY brand has not broken through the ceiling of 200,000.
In contrast, Geely, which lays out high-end SUVs with the Great Wall, has been growing steadily since the launch of the first Lynk & Co 01 at the end of 2017, with sales of 175,000 units in the past year and 148,000 units in January-September this year, far better than WEY.
The menacing Tesla ModelY broke the myth of the Haval H6's 99 consecutive months of sales champion in September.
Perhaps this also means that the era of new energy has arrived.
In terms of new energy, the situation of the Great Wall Group is not optimistic.
Compared with other domestic first-line automobile companies, the new energy layout of the Great Wall is significantly later.
At the 2015 Shanghai Auto Show, while BYD, Geely and other auto brands launched various new energy vehicles, the Great Wall's booth was still an old-faced fuel SUV.
The explosion of SUV has made the Great Wall focus on the SUV business, and new energy research and development has not kept up. From this point on, the new energy of the Great Wall can be said to be one step slower.
In 2016, Wei Jianjun also said that the Great Wall's development of new energy is passive. It was not until August 2018 that Euler, an independent new energy vehicle brand of the Great Wall, was established.
Great Wall's new energy vehicle Euler
With differentiated positioning, Euler has also gained a wave of female users. In September this year, Euler sold 12,000 units. However, from the perspective of positioning, Euler is more like a pathfinder, and it is difficult to carry the real banner.
Under the situation of weak growth in the fuel vehicle market and fierce competition for new energy vehicles, although Great Wall Motors has unlimited scenery in the capital market, behind it, it is also full of challenges.
04
Ambitious goals are unlikely to be achieved
In June 2021, Great Wall Motors held a press conference in Baoding. At the meeting, Wei Jianjun announced the group's strategic goals for 2025:
Wei Jianjun introduced the Great Wall 2025 strategic goals
In 2025, Great Wall Motors plans to achieve the goal of 4 million vehicles worldwide, of which 80% will be new energy vehicles, with operating income of more than 600 billion yuan. In the next five years, the cumulative investment in research and development will reach 100 billion yuan.
At present, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China have exceeded 2.1 million, and according to the forecast of relevant institutions, the total sales of New Energy Vehicles in China in 2025 are only about 5 million, while The target of Great Wall Motors is 3.2 million units, which is a bit difficult to achieve. Is it trying to eat more than half of China's new energy vehicle market? Even considering Great Wall Motors' sales figures in the international market, it is difficult to really achieve this goal.
It can be seen that this time Wei Jianjun's slogan is more like a marketing activity to promote the company, products, and pull stock price performance.
However, regardless of whether this goal can be achieved or not, the "bull" of Great Wall Motors is blown out.