The Great Wall focuses on building good cars, not building mobile phones, and not going to heaven. Recently, this sentence of Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, has been hotly circulated on the Internet, especially in connection with the press conference of a new power brand on October 24, forming an interesting contrast.
Among the leaders of many car companies in China, Wei Jianjun has always felt serious, capable, decisive and focused. Such a personal personality also directly determines the corporate personality of Great Wall Motors. Therefore, so far, the Great Wall has always been known for its "focus", and it has also achieved great market success because of its focus.
Clausewitz said in his book The Theory of War that the most important and simplest criterion in strategy is the effective concentration of limited forces. Buffett has also said that successful people avoid distracting themselves from the things that seem to have potential, and instead focus on the things that matter most.
“Less is more！” Many times, knowing what you can't do is far more important than knowing what you can do. Therefore, Focus focus is the business principle pursued by Wei Jianjun, and it is also an important source of Great Wall Motors' competitiveness.
Focusing on SUVs, revenue has doubled 12 times in ten years
"The father of positioning" Ai Rees once analyzed in the book "Focus - Decide the Future of Your Enterprise" that enterprises have two business development models, one is represented by Microsoft, Intel, and Dell, which is characterized by being very focused, focused and in-depth; the other is represented by Fujitsu and Sony, with diversified business and blurred boundaries. Although both types of companies can achieve great success in the market, in terms of average profit margins, the former is dozens of times that of the latter.
So Ai Rees believes that focus will determine the future development of the company, and he also cites the three major U.S. automakers to support his view, the 2008 financial crisis swept the world, GM and Chrysler both filed for bankruptcy protection, and Ford, relying on focus - the advance implementation of the "one Ford" strategy, was spared.
In 2008, although Great Wall Motor established a complete business line and production chain such as pickup trucks, SUVs, MPVs and cars, it did not establish enough influence in any market segment except pickup trucks. According to the statistics of Gaz Auto Network, the cumulative sales of Great Wall Motors that year were less than 80,000, ranking outside the top 20, not as good as Chery, Geely and BYD, or even less than Brilliance.
Soon after, Wei Jianjun and Great Wall Motors made a decisive choice, cutting off the car and MPV business, focusing on SUVs, and concentrating the strength of the whole company to build the Haval brand. In 2011, the Haval H6 was officially launched, and since then it has begun its "god car" journey.
The success of Haval H6 and Haval series SUVs not only cast Great Wall Motors' industry position in the SUV market, but also made it earn a lot of money, with annual revenue growing from 8 billion yuan to more than 100 billion yuan in 2020, and the average price of bicycles was higher than 90,000 / vehicle for several consecutive years, not only surpassing Geely, Changan, and even surpassing Korean cars.
"Concentrate superior forces to fight a war of annihilation", Wei Jianjun is also well versed in this way.
Focus on the main business and win the high trust of the capital market
But after the enterprise becomes bigger, it will inevitably face a new choice, whether to continue to focus on the main business to dig deep into the moat, or to broaden the business line and seize the new market share?
In the 1960s, Sony, which was successful in the field of hardware manufacturing such as radio and television, began to diversify its business, successively involving music, games, movies, insurance finance, information technology and other fields. As a result of the blossoming on all sides, Sony was once invincible in the global market, becoming the business card of Japanese companies, and was praised by former Prime Minister Yasushi Nakasone as his "left hand" (the right hand is Toyota) in international exchanges.
However, the long-term "inaction" has also brought disastrous consequences to Sony. Due to the excessive expansion of the business sector, the advantages of the main business were weakened, and sony broke the news of huge losses in 2003. In 2005, in the "Global 2000 Companies Ranking" released by Forbes, Sony slipped from the second place in 2004 to the 23rd place, and the then CEO Nobuyuki Iwai was forced to "leave the class".
Of course, from the historical perspective of enterprise development, it is understandable to achieve multi-line and multi-line after becoming stronger, but the grasp of scale is very critical. Sony's example also tells us that multi-line simultaneous expansion can be achieved quickly, but it is also easy to cause the main business to slip down and the goal is blurred.
So Jobs did three big things after returning to Apple: first, lay off employees; second, streamline the product line from 60 to 4; and third, create a flat organizational structure. The purpose of this is only one: to shift corporate goals from financial figures to products, strategic focus, strengthen internal communication and employee cohesion, and continuously achieve innovative breakthroughs in products and technologies.
This is also what Wei Jianjun has done and is still doing. In an interview with the media, Wei Jianjun once said: "Great Wall Motors has not crossed the business that is not related to automobiles for so many years, such as some people investing in real estate, some people investing in finance, but we have been working hard in the automotive field. ”
Focus, so that Great Wall Motors continue to do fine and strong in SUVs, pickup trucks and related business sectors. Today, Great Wall Motors has become the strongest SUV manufacturer in China, and also occupies half of the domestic pickup truck market, and continues to create market performance overseas.
For the capital market, enterprises that are focused, stable and occupy a leading position in the segment are the best investment targets. Although Great Wall Motors has incubated new brands such as WEY, Euler, tanks, and beams in recent years, and has continuously developed into 5G information technology, Vehicle Networking, new energy and other fields, it has never departed from the main line of automobiles.
Therefore, Great Wall Motors has always been favored by the capital market. As of 15:00 on October 27, the total market value of Great Wall Motors has reached 620.521 billion yuan, ranking second in the market value of domestic car companies, second only to BYD.
Focus on "2025", decisive transformation and look at internationalization
In July 2020, Great Wall Motors released the 30th anniversary micro-film, in which Wei Jianjun made the most alternative "summary" of the company's car-making process with a sentence of "Will Great Wall Motors survive next year".
Immediately after, the Great Wall began a series of changes from the inside out. Internally, it is called "de-generalization", creating a flat organizational structure, releasing a new corporate vision of "Green Wisdom Tide Playing Hi World", the core corporate values of "Honest Faith Creation and Sharing", and the enterprise spirit of "Making a Little Progress Every Day"; externally, releasing the three major technology brands of "Lemon", "Coffee" and "Tank", further realizing strategic cooperation with Tencent and Xiandou Intelligence, and so on.
Looking back now, it all seems that all this is prepared for June this year - on June 28, 2021, Great Wall Motors released a grand "Strategy 2025". By 2025, Great Wall Motors will achieve annual global sales of 4 million vehicles, of which 80% will be new energy vehicles, with operating income of more than 600 billion yuan, and the cumulative R&D investment in the next five years will reach 100 billion yuan.
Great Wall Motor said that it is transforming a global technology travel company, focusing on the "2025 Strategy", accelerating the low-carbon intelligent upgrading of enterprises, and making saturated and accurate investment in the three major fields of pure electricity, hydrogen energy and hybrid, and striving to fully achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
In the past two years, Great Wall Motors has also increased its global development efforts, acquired overseas factories of many car companies such as General Motors and Mercedes-Benz, successively released brand strategies in Russia, ASEAN, Europe and other places, and the development planning of Brazil, India and other markets is also advancing rapidly.
It is understood that next year, Great Wall Motors will usher in a big year of products, there will be a number of new models, and the new car will have outstanding performance in intelligent and new energy technology, which is worth looking forward to.
In a media interview in 2012, Wei Jianjun said: "As an automotive product, it must be international, the product must go international, so we have been operating and operating this enterprise for so many years, and have been doing it in accordance with internationalization (standards), so we dare not get involved in other (fields) and focus on our six words: focus, professional, expert." ”
Today, Wei Jianjun's strategic determination has also shaped the competitiveness of Great Wall Motors.