It's not just the core technology that gets stuck.
Literature | Chinese businessman strategy Bi Yajun
When this goal is achieved, "Made in China" is truly powerful.
If this goal is achieved, China will not be so worried about the so-called capacity transfer, and should even take the initiative to transfer some of its own capacity.
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Dongfeng Auditorium.
Xie Gongxing on the podium, facing the big words "the past life and present life of the moon" on the PPT, tears rolled in his eyes.
After choking several times, he said shyly that after hearing the deeds and spirits of the astronauts, I was embarrassed to explain the moon, but even if it was not easy, so I felt the greatness of the astronauts even more.
At dinner, I asked Xie Gongxing if he remembered the situation when he set up the stall and was charged with debts. He said that although he thought of it, what he thought more about was the difficulty, happiness, and satisfaction of changing from factory to brand in recent years.
Xie Gongxing, a Wenzhou native, and his brother Xie Gongwan have entered the glasses industry since they were less than 20 years old. In the early 1990s, they had borrowed more than 40000 usurious loans to do glasses wholesale, but they lost their money. At the time when 10000 yuan households were rich, this was a big number.
"I dare not go home. My brother once wanted to commit suicide."
This experience makes the two brothers feel more crisis, and they are constantly prepared for danger in business and strive for more initiative.
"I have long recognized that we must do our own research and development, build factories, and make products in order to have more initiative."
In 2007, Mingyue, which was transformed from wholesale and retail to processing and manufacturing, has become the only lens enterprise in China that is self-sufficient in key materials and independent in core technology. However, they worked hard to become the national invisible champion of lens manufacturing, but the initiative did not follow.
"We attach great importance to research and development, and our products are not inferior to those of foreign brands, but they cannot afford to sell and are difficult to sell. Customers do not recognize domestic brands," Xie Gongwan said.
When more domestic lens factories are established, price war becomes the main theme of peer competition, and Mingyue's situation is even worse than before.
"R&D has increased the cost, but it can't be realized in the market, even the fake factory can't compete. The fake factory has a cost advantage."
At this time, a foreign giant gave a premium to buy Mingyue. The condition changed from absolute holding to 50 to 50, but Xie brothers still disagreed.
"The more we look at it, the more we understand that they want Mingyue to be the OEM factory, but we have made up our mind to be our own brand."
Xie Gongwan said that the same products sold well after being labeled with foreign capital, which made them not satisfied and forced them to think. "There has been a huge change in thinking. In order to truly grasp the initiative, we must also make brands and let consumers recognize that winning consumers is the ultimate secret of sustainable manufacturing."
After realizing this goal, Mingyue began a new climb while cultivating a higher level of technology and products.
In Xie Gongwan's words, the whole operation system was reconstructed: "In the past, it has always been production oriented. Everything is done around production. Branding is to change the direction of work, from production oriented to consumer oriented."
Xie Gongwan said, "R&D is difficult, product is difficult, and brand is even more difficult."
Mingyue's transition from production oriented to consumer oriented is also full of pains.
For example, after refusing to purchase, dealers and supply chain partners were threatened by foreign capital to cut orders. "If the acquisition is not successful, he will suppress and stop up. For a long time, we have been thinking every day how long we can live like this."
For another example, brand creation requires a large amount of capital and energy, but also takes a long time to produce results, which makes the transformation to the bright moon at the beginning of brand creation more face the pressure of testing its will and strength: brand benefits cannot be realized in the short term, operating costs continue to rise, and price war cannot be fought, but peers continue to seize the market with price war.
This process is like the ascent of a rebel climbing a peak. He tries his best to go up, but feels that the whole environment is dragging him down.
Xie Gongwan said that when it was really difficult to support them, they also thought about either selling, or returning to the previous volume model, or even OEM, "but still not reconciled, and felt that China should be able to make its own brand in such a large market."
Persistence is worth it. After experiencing the pain of transformation, Mingyue wins the transformation of rebirth.
At the beginning of 2021, Mingyue landed in A-share market, and launched "EasyControl" and "EasyControl Pro", which are more in line with Chinese characteristics, in the year of listing. They not only fill the domestic weakness in this field, bring more choices to Chinese consumers, but also foster new growth poles of the company.
Today, Mingyue is not only the largest lens brand in China, but also continues to expand its market share and drive the branding of the entire domestic lens. In 2022, China's lens market will occupy the top 10, and there will be three local brands, the leader of which is Mingyue.
Mingyue holds the reins of fate in her own hands, but in retrospect, Xie Gongwan is still in a cold sweat: "If we had not made up our mind to change the development model with consumers as the center at the beginning, but continued to fight for low prices and take OEM, we would be sad today."
"It may be sad to compete for low prices and take OEM", which is not Xie Gongwan's assumption.
Mingyue production headquarter is located in Danyang, Jiangsu, the world's largest glasses industry base.
The annual output of lens frames here is more than 100 million pairs, accounting for 1/3 of China's total; The annual output of optical glass and resin lenses is 320 million pairs, accounting for 75% of China and 50% of the world.
But in the past two years, the pressure in Danyang has become more and more serious.
The biggest pressure is that other cities in China, as well as Vietnam and other overseas countries, are striving to develop the lens industry. They have obvious cost advantages and offer many preferential policies, Many cost sensitive enterprises have begun to think, and even deployed capacity transfer.
However, many enterprises in Danyang are either cost path of low price or OEM factory of downstream brands.
An industrial restructuring has occurred quietly. How can Danyang maintain its position as the world's largest glasses industry base, or even upgrade to a higher level? Obviously, we need to work hard to attract investment and build factories with different vision and thinking.
The challenge of Danyang glasses industry is almost a reflection of the whole China manufacturing industry.
According to the data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's industrial added value will exceed 40 trillion yuan in 2022, accounting for 33.2% of GDP; According to the data of the General Administration of Customs, in 2022, China's total import and export value of goods trade has reached 42.07 trillion yuan, ranking first in the world for six consecutive years.
Under the two sets of data, China has an absolute advantage as a manufacturing power and a world factory.
Under the absolute advantage, the pressure is also increasing.
Geopolitical games, industrial chain restructuring and capacity transfer caused by cost changes, and core technology bottlenecks are obvious pressures. In addition, compared with the development of the manufacturing industry in the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries, there are also other worries about "who is responsible for the ups and downs" in China's manufacturing industry.
First of all, a large proportion of the products made in China are actually foreign-funded.
According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, the import and export of foreign-invested enterprises in China will reach 13.82 trillion yuan in 2021, accounting for 32.9% of the total import and export value. Under the data, Zhengzhou Foxconn accounts for half of Henan's foreign trade; The foreign-funded enterprises in Shanghai contributed about 2/3 of the import and export and the gross industrial output above designated size
Moreover, foreign manufacturing is relatively at the higher end of the industrial value. In 2020, among the top 15 foreign trade export enterprises in China, foreign capital accounted for 11. Almost all of the 11 enterprises came from the electronic information industry with higher added value, and most of them could be choked by the United States with technology or market.
The second is that a large part of the products are made in China for foreign capital.
In this regard, there is a lack of specific data, but it is certain that the number is not small. From Apple and HP to Nike and Adidas, many advanced manufacturing forces in China are actually working for foreign brands.
For example, Danyang produces half of the lenses in the world, and more than 6 of them are outsourced by Chengdu to foreign brands.
The factory is owned by others, or the factory is owned by you, but the brand and consumers are in the hands of others, and the initiative is in the hands of others. Development is the main theme. Harmony generates wealth in the era of division of labor and cooperation. Hello, everyone. But once harmony turns into opposition, the passive will be beaten.
In addition to the passivity of foreign manufacturing and manufacturing for foreign capital, even Chinese brands in the manufacturing of China are still in a relatively weak position in the global market, even in the consumer competition in the domestic market, compared with American, German and Japanese brands.
The reshaping of the global supply chain and the existing scale, weakness and pressure of China's manufacturing industry can almost be summarized as follows: China cannot and should not, as in the past, strengthen the development of manufacturing by attracting more foreign capital, opening more factories and expanding more production capacity.
However, whether from the perspective of employment, people's livelihood, or sustainable economic development, China must rely more on manufacturing to drive the development of the real economy. How to solve the contradiction between impossibility and necessity? Or:
What can China hold and upgrade the manufacturing industry?
Manufacturing is for consumers.
Whoever controls consumers will control manufacturing.
Whether the proportion of foreign-funded manufacturing, foreign-funded manufacturing, or the lack of brand power of Made in China, in fact, can be summed up as:
As the world's factory, Made in China has not grasped the world's consumers equally.
Foxconn is an example.
It has the world's top factories, production lines and manufacturing power, but it does not have the initiative to manufacture, but must obey brand manufacturers such as Apple. In other words, Apple, without factories and production lines, is the real manufacturing master of these factories and production lines.
If the problem is clear, the solution is clear: if China wants to maintain and upgrade the manufacturing industry, its efforts should be outside of manufacturing and factories Beyond manufacturing, beyond factories, From manufacturing for the world to winning the world's consumers.
The core is to strengthen the development of independent brands and the construction of independent channels, so as to make the world fall in love with Made in China. What's more, it is China's independent brands, not just the "make in China" behind foreign brands.
This has long been the consensus of the transformation and upgrading of Made in China, so it is unnecessary to say more. But how to strengthen it is worth discussing and reflecting. This is also the most important suggestion and appeal in this article: We must change the production thinking that manufacturing means opening factories, and change the arrogance and prejudice against the service industry, especially producer services.
Moreover, almost all service industries are beneficial to manufacturing. They can either directly service manufacturing or drive and consume manufacturing through service scenarios.
Although made in China has some key challenges, such as sticking core technology, in most fields, it is not technology or product itself that has stuck the neck, but these backward concepts that lead to the emphasis on production, the contempt for the market and consumers, and the resulting choking by the market and consumers.
So far, when many people mention the manufacturing industry, they just open factories and let people enter the factories. When they talk about the service industry, they always wear the hat of "empty head". They even regard the service industry as opposed to the manufacturing industry. They regard brand marketing, public relations consulting, etc. as liars, and the pursuit of brand premium through these practices as collecting IQ tax.
The former "young people would rather be riders than enter factories" is a typical example of the opposition between service industry and manufacturing industry.
The subconscious of this kind of thinking is express delivery or take away, which digs the corner of the manufacturing industry and weakens the manufacturing industry. But in fact, express delivery or take away is strengthening, rather than weakening the manufacturing industry. Without them, various products would not be delivered to consumers so efficiently——
Without consumption, who does the factory manufacture for?
Unfortunately, it is not a few people, or even ordinary people, who look at manufacturing in such a narrow sense, but the manufacturers themselves, or even the big people in the manufacturing industry.
The manufacturing industry has so far been pinned on high hopes of promoting employment.
In terms of employment, "Made in China" also urgently needs to surpass manufacturing and factories, and needs to put efforts beyond manufacturing.
Under the trend of intelligent manufacturing, even if China's manufacturing industry is further improved, the manufacturing sector will only reduce, rather than increase employment demand.
Under this premise, only Based on manufacturing, but beyond manufacturing, make the independent value of manufacturing stronger and the independent value chain longer, Can provide more employment and drive the overall expansion and development of the real economy.
Its core is still to strengthen the service industry, especially the productive service industry, such as R&D design, brand marketing, public relations consulting, logistics services, etc., and promote the deeper integration and development of the service industry and manufacturing industry, To form a two-way drive and a two-way rush between the service industry and the manufacturing industry, In the new development pattern with the domestic circulation as the main body and the domestic and international double circulation promoting each other, seek higher and more initiative industrial value and space.
Taking Mingyue lens as an example, under the wave of intelligent production, its own production capacity has increased from 36 million in 2017 to 40 million today, but the number of employees has decreased from 1600 to 1000.
However, if Mingyue turns from production oriented to consumer oriented, and therefore the brand value chain is deeply integrated with the service industry, the situation will be greatly different.
According to preliminary calculation, After Mingyue turned to brand management, the production capacity of one worker in one year can support 160 new jobs, Its more than 10000 distribution networks in the country alone have led to at least 100000 jobs, a hundred times more than the number of factories opened in the past.
More importantly, an industrial ecology greatly different from OEM has also been formed.
In this ecosystem, Mingyue has driven the development of service industries such as R&D design, brand marketing, public relations consulting, and even finance and law, and these service providers have also made Mingyue better developed with their innovative creativity and professional ability, thus forming a virtuous circle of sustainable development.
When this ecological virtuous circle from manufacturing to consumption is established, manufacturing and services can also achieve scale and value improvement through innovative development, thereby driving healthy economic growth. Mingyue's factories can also improve costs into value innovation, thus ensuring more sustainable development, rather than being subject to the same restrictions as the OEM factories.
In short, Mingyue is able to better defend and upgrade her own factory because she has done a good job of writing outside the factory. And if there are more such enterprises in the whole China, the position of the world factory will be more difficult to shake.
Woodruff, the former chairman of Coca Cola, once said, "Even if the production plant of Coca Cola Company in the world is burned down overnight, as long as the brand of Coca Cola is there, I can soon rebuild a new kingdom of Coca Cola".
Brother Xie, who once thought that as long as the technology and products were well done, the factory would be able to operate well, also concluded that: "If you can't connect directly meet Consumers can't win consumers, they just focus on opening factories, and they may not be able to keep factories in the end. "
After long-term tracking and comparing the development of China's manufacturing industry over the past few years, I have always had an idea that we should look at the manufacturing industry from a different perspective, and we should look at the manufacturing industry from the perspective of surpassing manufacturing and factories:
If our definition of manufacturing industry is only the production capacity and scale, China is definitely the world's largest manufacturing country far ahead; But if we expand the definition of manufacturing to earn the maximum value by creating and mastering products, then China's manufacturing industry may be another situation.
It's like——
If only the manufacturing industry is regarded as a factory, then the world's most powerful manufacturer should be Foxconn; If the manufacturing industry is regarded as creating and mastering products and earning the maximum value, the world's most powerful manufacturer may be Apple.
And——
The apple was burned and could be rebuilt soon.
Foxconn is burned. If it is burned, it will be burned.
From the perspective of creating and mastering products to earn the maximum value, the current "Made in China" needs to do more outside of manufacturing and capacity, rather than worrying about the so-called capacity transfer - from opening factories to manufacturing products for the world, to strengthening and growing the independent value chain of the manufacturing industry, to directly serve and win the world's consumers.
When this goal is achieved, "Made in China" is truly powerful.
Once this goal is achieved, China will not be so worried about the so-called capacity transfer, and should even take the initiative to transfer some of its own capacity, so as to better use global resources to serve global consumers more closely.
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