Why is it that after the Saab brand is sold out, it may not be able to turn a profit? First of all, let¡¯s talk about Saab¡¯s losses. Although GM was partially blamed, GM¡¯s sales system all over the world also helped Saab sell a lot of cars! Suppose a less well-known car company in Europe, a company that does not have a strong sales system like General Motors, Ford, or Volkswagen, acquires Saab. Even if General Motors sells all the technology and factories of Saab's R&D center, , then once the car is built, how can it be sold to make money? No matter how GM lost money through platforming in the past, the problem now is that Saab cannot sell its cars! No matter who takes over this brand, they will face this problem! At the same time, what we need to think about is that even a company like General Motors cannot sell millions of Saab cars. Can other car companies do it?
At the same time, in order to make Saab bigger in the past few years, General Motors must make Saab's factory in Sweden bigger and invest various funds to lay the foundation for Saab's development and growth. However, if it suddenly changes hands now, these foundations will be lost. It will keep costing money! For example, the production line can be stopped, but the workers can't be laid off, right? After all, no one knows how long this financial crisis will last. What if it gets better next year? Will we recruit workers again then? Moreover, in a Nordic country like Sweden, because it was close to the Soviet Union, the risk of becoming red was too great, so the government was frightened and hurriedly increased various welfare benefits! Or should we say that modern Northern Europe is all socialist? They had no choice but to be coerced by the Soviet Union! If they don't improve the treatment of the common people, and the common people see good welfare and high pay in the Soviet Union, then why not start a revolution?
So it¡¯s actually really difficult to fire workers in Nordic countries like Sweden! In the United States, workers' unions are similar to black unions. In France, there are all kinds of exaggerations. There are workers who go on strike and blockade factories to confront the police. When the police want to enter and fight with the police, the Swedish side is sure to be even more exaggerated. Even the government may side with the union! So the problem arises, if you buy the Saab brand, and then find out that GM spent money to expand the production line. A lot of workers were hired. As a result, the production line can now be shut down, but not only can the workers not be fired, they can't even be paid less! Either let the workers come to work with full wages, or give them full wages and let them rest at home. How much will it cost in a year? In addition, the world is not good and not many cars can be sold. How can we turn a loss into a profit?
Jia Hongjian remembered that in history, a Dutch car company called Spyker bought a brand like Saab from General Motors. As a result, after two or three years, I was so sorry that I begged my grandpa to call me grandma, so I hurriedly found a home all over the world! Finally, we found a Chinese owner and wanted to resell Saab to the Chinese. Who knew that GM would come out and cause trouble again? GM said that when it was sold to Spyker, there were provisions in the contract. , in order to prevent the leakage of technical resources such as platforms that GM once spent a lot of money on research and development. So it¡¯s okay for Spyker to use Saab¡¯s technology for himself, but it¡¯s not allowed to be sold outside! And if Spyker wanted to sell it, it would naturally have to sell the Saab brand and its technology together. So GM came out and called it quits. In the end, the Saab really didn't sell, and it ended up in the hands of Spyker. Spyker went to the United States with red eyes and suppressed his energy to sue GM, demanding that GM pay them US$3 billion This was of course impossible to succeed.
Since Spyker who bought Saab has been so miserable in history, Jia Hongjian wants the people below to contact GM to see if he can buy Saab? Isn¡¯t it a bit sb-like to buy a Saab, whose English name is saab? No! Spyker does not have a strong sales system. Moreover, their main battlefield is Europe, which has been affected by the US economic crisis. Of course, they cannot sell much. But what if the main battlefield is China? Don¡¯t forget that China¡¯s car sales have increased rapidly in recent years. Within two years, it will surpass the United States and become the world¡¯s single market car sales country. How about bringing Saab to the Chinese market? Don¡¯t say anything else. For SUVs that cost hundreds of thousands, how many people in China knew about Jeep a few years ago? Before, many people thought it was a Jeep when they saw it, and thought it was a model rather than a brand! As a result, within a few years, Jeep cars were everywhere on the streets, but at least sales were not low, right?
For example, the sales volume of Jeep in the United States in 2012 was only more than 400,000, but its sales growth in China reached 107%! It has become the second largest market for Jeep in the world after the United States! Apart from anything else, if we can operate a Saab like a Jeep, let alone more, the annual sales of 50,000 to 60,000 vehicles in China in two or three years, plus the traditional European market, the global sales of Saab will not be that big. Just got up? And for a brand like Saab, we can completely focus on Nordic quality in China and completely import it. For example, all the components will be imported from Sweden and assembled in China. Wouldn¡¯t this make it more competitive? At the same time, the tariffs on the import of spare parts and the tariffs on the import of complete vehicles are incomparable!
If you hit the advertisement or something, come to a "Swedish military quality"?Slogans such as "designing cars with fighter jet concepts" and "the pioneer of automotive turbocharging" have brought Saab's positioning closer to the likes of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Are you worried that the market won't be able to do it? In the past few years, the number of wealthy people in China has increased rapidly. Especially since 2008, housing prices have skyrocketed. Many people will make a lot of money from demolition, and many people will make a lot of money from house flipping. In this case, you can buy There are more and more people who can afford good cars, so if we bring Saab, a car with noble Swedish origin, into their sights, how can we get a share of the pie, right? Therefore, in Jia Hongjian's view, if nothing else, just buying a brand like Saab and focusing on developing the Chinese market is still very promising. There is still hope for turning losses into profits in two or three years!
Of course, the main reason we buy Saab is because of their technology. For example, if we introduce Saab's own 9-3 and 9-5 platforms, let's not copy them. At least we can learn from GM's previous platform design ideas. How will it be beneficial to the development and technical reserves of China Automobile? There are benefits! At the same time, if we buy a brand like Saab, it will be able to turn losses into profits in two or three years and make us money. Then we will definitely not lose money, and we will have both face and face! How great it is to have both technology and money! However, this is only the most ideal situation, and various problems may still be encountered in actual operation, such as the Nordic labor unions coming out to make trouble, and the fear that the Chinese will take their technology away to nourish other Chinese auto brands. If we really can't do this, we can still invest money in going to Sweden to set up a R&D center or something! It can be said clearly that it wants to absorb technology from Saab, but isn't it also good to turn Saab into a design and high-end technology research and development and pioneer identity? At the same time, we still have the confidence to say this like Tesla, so with our support, isn¡¯t this great? We didn¡¯t dismantle Tesla and bring it back to China, right?
But after thinking of this, Jia Hongjian's thoughts started to diverge. Now that we have more brands, how do we distinguish between sub-brands? Why should we learn from P&G? P&G Head & Shoulders is for anti-dandruff, Rejoice is for natural smoothness, and Pantene is for repairing damaged hair. These are all functional distinctions and product image distinctions. We must do this too, otherwise the products will be on their own. Let¡¯s fight instead of joining forces to compete with others for the market! Judging from the existing brands within China Automobile, there is no doubt that Tesla is taking the sci-fi route of electric vehicles. Under the control of Jia Hongjian, the Tesla brand represents the future and various high technologies! So any high technology that consumers can¡¯t imagine must be installed on Tesla!
What kind of head-up display is it? It diffracts the satellite route navigation directly on the transparent glass directly in front of the driver's sight. What kind of super large central control touch screen? What kind of car can directly connect to the Internet with 3G? Anyway, it is so sci-fi! When consumers see the name Tesla, they think of cars that only appear in science fiction movies! This is the positioning of the Tesla brand, and this is the positioning Jia Hongjian gave Tesla! Of course, the price of this car must be quite sci-fi. You get what you pay for. It gives consumers a sci-fi experience and gives them this kind of coolness. Why should we make money?
On the other hand, existing brands, such as the Zhonghua brand, are positioned as local high-end cars or simply as high-end official cars. After the Zhonghua brand was given to Huaxia Automobile, when our heads of state receive foreign heads of state, they all drive Zhonghua cars, okay? Then for all kinds of government procurement, because the head of state rides in Zhonghua cars, what is good for the top and what is good for the bottom must be very different. Naturally, many government official cars use Chunghwa, and a lot of the market belongs to Audi. . In fact, the Audi brand not only has an official car market in China, but is also a common official car in Germany. As for Jia Hongjian's positioning for China, it is China's local version of Audi, at least in terms of cars! It is to highlight the stability and atmosphere, it is to highlight the heaviness!
For example, the overall brand of Tesla is relatively young. Relatively speaking, it is for those young and wealthy people to have fun, or for those who are old but want to feel the future, and when they go out to drive, they can show off and go for a drive. As for our Zhonghua, it is opened by rich middle-aged people and rich old men when they go out to discuss business. What they pay attention to is a calm and solid one! It needs to have a business or official style, it needs to be basically black in appearance, and it needs to be more old-school!
¡°Then, like Luofu and MG, these two brands have basically been completely digested by Huaxia Automobile, and they have not become brands themselves. Let¡¯s talk about Huaxia Automobile¡¯s own brand. Huaxia Automobile¡¯s own brand is relatively common, covering a class ranging from 50,000 to 200,000. It can be said that it is the class with the largest sales volume of domestic passenger cars. Such a Chinese car brand includes mini cars, A-class cars and even B-class cars. To put it simply, it is heading towardsThe public's image of such a brand in China is getting closer! Then there are our van brands, which are vans and buses.
So in this case, if we buy Volvo and Saab, how will we position ourselves? (To be continued.)