Haima’s center of gravity continues to push the upgrade of mid-level car explorer brands in Hainan

“We have not placed our hippocampus on Zhengzhou.” In the face of media speculation, Wu Gang, the general manager of Hainan FAW Haima Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., firmly told reporters recently that Haima Motor’s development strategy is still focused on Hainan.

Earlier, the "12th Five-Year Plan" issued by the Haima Motor has been interpreted by the media as that the strategic center of gravity of Haima Motors will be transferred to the Central Plains area. Because the planning of the production capacity of the two major bases of the hippocampus, the production capacity of the Zhengzhou base will reach 700,000, and the production capacity of the Haikou base will be only 300,000. The surpassing of the former in the production capacity has brought infinite imagination to the media.

However, what Wu Gang values ​​more is the core points of the "12th Five-Year Plan" of hippocampus. “Brand upgrading is an important task for the development of hippocampus in the next few years.” Wu Gang believes that Hainan, as a production base for mid-level vehicles, will undoubtedly play an important role in the process of hippocampal brand upkeep. The challenge now facing the hippocampus is not how to balance the power between Zhengzhou and Haikou, but how to complete the "self-reliance" difficult breakthrough in the "joint venture down" surrounded.

Pathfinder midsize car "Maybe in the eyes of outsiders, the Cavaliers is just a model imported by the hippocampus into the SUV market, but in fact, it is the first car of the hippocampus B-class platform, before the hippocampus entered the B-class car sector. Technical and marketing tests."

At the Cayman 2012 launch conference, Wu Gang did not expect too much from the sales prospects of the Cavalier models. He only hoped that the Cavaliers could bring about a boost in reputation for sea horses, and that this wish alone was not enough.

In the hippocampus' product planning, in the next three years, Haima will introduce a medium-sized SUV on the basis of the Cavalier model, and at the same time take out the sedan products belonging to Haima in the B-class market and introduce commercial large-scale MPVs in the MPV field. These three new products are troika for Haima Motors to promote its “brand up”.

At the same time, Hippocampus is aggressively reducing the number of A-platform products it will bring to the market, and will stop the possibility of infinitely increasing the proportion of A-grade entry-level models in the future. For models below A0, Haima directly chose to give up. “This means that every product promotion in the future will be a pull-up process for the hippocampus rather than a downward exploration,” said Towns Automotive Marketing Minister Towns.

This is an attempt of a hippocampal car to reborn. In the face of an increasingly competitive market environment, this “upward” choice of the hippocampus seems to be the only way to maintain its survival and development in the future.

A set of data is used as a footnote for this selection of the hippocampus. In the first half of this year, the share of self-owned brand models in the domestic market was 44%, which was a decrease of 3.4 percentage points compared with the same period of last year. This not-too-significant drop is a dangerous sign in Wu Gang’s eyes.

"According to the country's "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", by 2015, the market share of self-owned brand cars will reach 50%, and narrow-minded passenger vehicles will have to achieve 40%. From the current development trend, we must achieve this goal. Difficulties.” Wu Gang believes that, in addition to policy and market factors, joint venture brands began to really go down, independent brands have not successfully rushed upwards, this competitive situation is bound to make the power of independent brands continue to weaken, so not willing to be eliminated by the market The seahorse can only develop without hesitation.

From the perspective of historical development, this selection of the hippocampus also has its own lessons. In the 2009 auto market feast, policy support coupled with consumerism led to a significant increase in the sales of self-owned brand models known for small-displacement vehicles, but Haima Motors reported unfavorable news of a loss of RMB 250 million. In the most difficult stage of development, the hippocampus made advance adjustments to the product structure in the wake of the scourge and blessing, making it possible to maintain a trend of contrarian growth in this year's auto market slowdown.

However, this strategic transformation of “abandoning small and increasing” makes the Zhengzhou base starting with “two micro” (micro- and micro-cars) rather embarrassing, although it surpassed Haikou base in capacity planning, but in the model reserve Not dominant. At present, the production base of the Zhengzhou base is still the micro-car prince and micro-car Fushida. According to its development plan, Zhengzhou will gradually develop A-class vehicles, SUVs, and MPV models in the future. Finally, it will focus on the use of mini-vehicles and commercial vehicles in the field of passenger vehicles. However, a series of models currently used for mid-level hippocampal vehicle exploration will be produced in Hainan.

Such a product layout will inevitably increase the sales of vehicles between Hainan and Zhengzhou bases. According to statistics from the China Automobile Association, in the first eight months of this year, the sales volume of Zhengzhou's Prince of Haima models was only about 5,000 units, while the sales volume of Hainan's Fumei came to more than 50,000 units, and the gap between the North and South is increasingly evident.

In addition to adhering to the “all the way up” development concept in product planning, Haifuxing has done some adjustments in the distribution channels, but the direction of adjustment is not to divide the network, but to expand on the basis of the original distributors. In the process of expansion, micro-vehicle products represented by Haifuxing have already withdrawn from the original system, and continue to develop with the underwriting model.

“The so-called underwriting model is to use the unique capabilities of existing distributors of Haima to sell Haifuxing, so this does not mean that Haifuxing has already separated from the Hainan Haima family, but uses a new sales model to find sales growth. Possibly, this is also a kind of experiment," Wu Gang told reporters.

With the adjustment of the product structure of hippocampal cars, Fumeilai has returned to the core position of the hippocampus product system. At present, the fourth generation of Fumeilai has entered the product matching stage and will be ready for listing next year. Under such adjustments, Haima believes that if the sales of Familia and Haifuxing in a 4S store are still undoubtedly affected, Haima Motor's brand promotion will be affected.

"In fact, our current network planning is in three directions, regardless of the network, sales and service integration and local conditions." Wu Gang believes that in the hippocampus "brand up" in the process, can not be at the expense of dealers to win customers. Haima’s network development model is to expand the network based on existing distributors. Even if they want to add new distributors, they will reject those dealers who have served certain brand experiences and control the speed of network expansion at any time. .

According to the requirements of the “12th Five-Year Plan” of the hippocampus, in the next few years, the annual sales growth of hippocampal vehicles will remain around 15%-20%, and the network expansion speed of hippocampus will keep pace with this. At present, the number of primary dealers in Haima has exceeded 200, and if you add secondary dealers, the number of online stores controlled by Haima is about 300. According to the original development plan, by 2015, Haima’s distribution outlets are expected to exceed 500 outlets. This number is indeed "low-key" compared to the number of BYD's current 1,000 dealership stores.

However, the sales volume of hippocampus cars was about 200,000 last year. If it grows to 15% per year by 2015, the sales figures of hippocampus will still be about 400,000. The average annual sales volume of each outlet will be 800 units. Less than 70 units, this is not an easy sales figure for Haima dealers. How to ensure the balance between the number of outlets and sales planning is still a thorny issue for the hippocampus that is still under exploration.