More than 10,000 time-honored brands have developed so far, only more than 1,000 registered trademarks remain. Inheritance and innovation are the two keywords
How to inject "longevity genes" into time-honored enterprises?
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It is not simple for time-honored brands to effectively balance the relationship between tradition and innovation, stability and change.
Inherited are the unyielding business ethics and the craftsman spirit of excellence, and innovation means that the old marketing methods can no longer be used in the current market.
What is always changing is that the needs of consumers must be the core.
Time-honored companies have natural advantages in terms of historical inheritance and brand reputation. However, in recent years, many century-old shops have encountered life and death "catastrophes" in the market... In this case, how to inject "longevity genes" into time-honored companies?
Recently, a reporter from the Workers’ Daily visited two “innovative” time-honored enterprises in Jilin Province to find out.
Break the family workshop style operation
Beginning in 1908, Jilin Province’s time-honored halal food brand Laohantou, which started from selling tofu, almost lost its battle in the increasingly fierce market competition due to family management, small workshop-style production, and the mentality of keeping the wealthy Come.
"The biggest problem in the development of time-honored enterprises is the issue of inheritors. If the inheritors do not have pioneering spirit and do not understand modern business methods, they will go downhill." Chairman of Changchun Laohantou Halal Food Co., Ltd., Laohantou fourth Hui Chunwei said.
In 2005, when he was about to take over the family's processing plant, the company's relatively important positions were almost occupied by relatives, and management was chaotic.
After persuading his parents, he decided to "scrap the bones and treat drugs". The first step is to let all relatives withdraw and establish a new management team.
The process of defamily reform is not peaceful. In the worst case, relatives even have to fight with kitchen knives.
After repeated communication, Hui Chunwei finally gave everyone a compensation and asked them to go out and start a second business.
Subsequently, he spent nearly 5 years building and polishing an efficient team.
Some of them are elites dug from the outside, and some are directly promoted from young people inside, with an average age of 25.
"To make cooked food, channels are very important. The original business method of the company was to open stores naturally and wait passively. In our new team, everyone performs their duties. There are special teams for investment promotion, e-commerce, location selection, etc. , Channel expansion and refinement of areas, the old management model was completely subverted." Hui Chunwei said that under the development of this team, the number of stores in Changchun City has increased from a dozen to more than 100 in less than two years.
With the fission-type expansion of the market, the lack of corporate production capacity and product innovation capabilities has become increasingly prominent.
In order to expand production capacity, in less than 5 years, Huichunwei moved the processing plant twice, and directly bought a 20,000 square meter land for the second time, and built a 15,000 square meter factory building in accordance with professional industrial design.
For this reason, he was under tremendous pressure to sell his family's house and tried every means to collect the funds.
However, all efforts are worth it.
Under Hui Chunwei's reforms and innovations, Lao Han's sales in the first year have reached about 160 million yuan, which is 8 times that of when he first took over.
Establish a customer-centric marketing model
Originated in 1812, the time-honored Chinese brand Yushuqian liquor. At the beginning of the 21st century, due to sticking to the traditional marketing model and other reasons, it fell into the dilemma of market shrinking, operating difficulties, shortage of funds, and technological lag.
"The advantage of time-honored brands is that they are old, and the problem is that they are old. The market environment is constantly changing. If companies still use the old methods to do business management and sales, and derail the actual needs of consumers, it will definitely not work." Yushu, Jilin Province Said Chen Wei, general manager of Qian Liquor Co., Ltd.
In 2009, Golden East Investment Group Co., Ltd. wholly acquired the troubled Yushuqian wine industry.
Soon after, Chen Wei, who has years of experience in liquor brewing, brand building and marketing, was appointed by the group.
After in-depth analysis of corporate development issues, Chen Wei put the strategic focus on brand building and innovative marketing models.
"If you want to find consumers who belong to us again and build hard-core fans, you don't need to spend money on a few advertisements like the advertising is king. It is necessary to dig deeper into the brand around consumers' product quality needs, cultural needs, and consumer needs. Value, everything is built around the core of consumer demand and service, to build a brand." Chen Wei said.
At that time, it coincided that the domestic liquor industry began to undergo in-depth adjustments, and many small and medium-sized enterprises were unable to adapt to the development of the market and fell one after another.
Yushuqian bucked the trend and invested 1 billion yuan in Yushu City to build "the first experiential liquor estate in northern China", which expanded the production capacity of Yushuqian wine industry by 10 times, and built wine culture experience halls in many places across the country. Attract hundreds of thousands of consumers to visit and experience.
At the same time, centering on the concept of focusing on consumers, Chen Wei also planned a series of brand marketing activities for privately owned Fengtan Liquor, Baijiu Bank, etc. that meet market needs, and used Internet technology to develop small programs, explore e-commerce operations, and I have done a lot of articles on improving the added value of consumers' purchases.
"In the manor and the experience hall, consumers can integrate visits and experiences, systematically learn the cultural knowledge of liquor, and even make a bottle of unique and exclusive liquor by themselves." Chen Wei said, a good product must first Have good quality, and let consumers have a sense of participation, create a high-quality environment that can fully experience wine culture, let consumers experience quality and wine culture first-hand, adhere to the three parallels of quality, brand and culture, to form consumption The brand value recognized by the readers.
After many innovations and attempts, the elm money has come back to life.
In 2020, Yushu Qianjiu Culture Manor was rated as a national AAAA-level tourist attraction and became the industrial tourism business card of Jilin Province. The mid-to-high-end series of liquor produced by it has become the representative of the province's liquor.
Respect tradition without rigidity
"Inheritance and innovation are the two key words for the sustainable development of time-honored brands. The inheritance is the old craftsmanship and good quality. For example, the winemaking technology of Yushuqian and the wine sea craftsmanship were explored by seven generations of technical teams. These must be passed on and passed on. Do better. Innovation means that you can no longer use the old marketing methods to do the current market. Only trendy things can continue to be favored by consumers in different eras in order to make the brand invincible." Chen Wei said.
Statistics show that when New China was first established, there were more than 10,000 time-honored brands.
But so far, there are only more than 1,000 registered trademarks left in the list of Chinese time-honored enterprises, and only 20% to 30% of the total are growing.
"All time-honored enterprises know the importance of inheritance and innovation, but it is not simple to effectively balance the relationship between tradition and innovation, stability and change. This requires managers to have a keen vision, innovative thinking and the courage to reform. No. Blindly innovate, change the technology, craftsmanship, quality and other good things beyond recognition, and can't just stick to the old production, operation, and service model." Chen Wei said.
The market is still changing, and the future competition may become more and more fierce. Chen Wei told reporters that what will never change is that consumer demand must be the core.
Yushuqian not only has its own market research team, but also hires third-party companies to carry out research work, and regularly visits and learns from companies in the same industry.
Collecting market information, studying consumer psychology, and consulting fans at any time have become an extremely important part of the development of the enterprise.
"The time-honored business ethics and the craftsman spirit of keeping improving will not be outdated at any time, but the operation and management must always seek innovation and change to meet the needs of the development of the times." Hui Chunwei told reporters that in terms of inheritance, Lao Hantou has done a lot of intangible cultural heritage protection work, such as establishing Lao Hantou to enter the Guandong Museum and regularly carry out related social and cultural activities; in terms of innovation, he is exploring and perfecting the construction of platform-based enterprises, and trying to establish equity with a sound entry and exit mechanism Management methods and so on.
Reporter: Liu Shanshan