China's home appliances going to sea is undergoing a "brand-to-autonomy" butterfly change

OFweek smart home network news In recent years, China's household electrical appliance enterprises to accelerate the "sea" pace, overseas plant and acquisition of both approaches, in the global market to enhance the brand's visibility. On this road, Chinese home appliance companies experienced a transition from OEM to independent brands. They learned lessons and gained experience. Facing the foreign markets with different policies and environments, home appliance companies need to further strengthen their overall strength. To meet the challenges of the unknown.

Speed ​​up "going out"

At this year's International Consumer Electronics Show, China had more than 1300 registered exhibitors, nearly one-third of the total number of Chinese companies exhibiting, including Haier, TCL, Hisense, Skyworth, Konka, Changhong, etc. China's home appliance companies have taken home appliances equipped with the latest technology, such as TCL's Huaxing Optoelectronics to carry large-size, 8K ultra high-definition and other leading products for the first time an independent exhibition, as well as Skyworth variety of the latest OLED TV.

Li Dongsheng, chairman and CEO of TCL, said at the time that Chinese companies had a significant increase in exhibiting scale, product quality, and especially technological innovation. From "Made in China" to "Created in China", from leading industry development to technological innovation, Chinese companies are now playing an increasingly important role in the global consumer electronics field.

In recent years, China's home appliance companies have accelerated the pace of going to sea, and both overseas establishment and acquisition have taken a two-pronged approach. Under the background of declining domestic appliance market and weak demand, Chinese home appliance companies headed by Haier, Midea, and Hisense began their strategy of internationalization in succession in June 2016. Among these, Haier’s overseas plant construction has caused widespread concern. Haier has made it clear that building factories in the United States is mainly based on consideration of global strategies. The establishment of plants overseas has “reduced supply chain costs. With the continuous improvement of global manufacturing layout, Haier’s global logistics speed has been continuously improved, effectively shortening the capital turnover cycle and improving Haier’s global manufacturing competitiveness”.

In addition to Haier, Hisense also invested in factories in the United States to accelerate the expansion of the US market. In this regard, Hisense said, "We also have plans to go to the United States to build factories, mainly to close to the market. This can shorten the development cycle, supply cycle, to ensure product competitiveness in the market."

At the same time, Chinese home appliance companies have launched a number of overseas acquisitions in recent years. Since TCL took the lead in acquiring Thomson Color TV in France in 2004, Chinese household electrical appliance companies have been acquiring international household electrical appliance manufacturers faster and faster, and they have become larger and larger, especially Haier, Midea, and Hisense, which are leaders in domestic related home appliances. Location of the business.

In 2011, Haier acquired Sanyo, a veteran home appliance company in Japan. In 2012, it acquired the world's top kitchen appliance company Fisher & Paykel. In 2015, Skyworth acquired the TV business of the German TV maker Maiz, and Hisense acquired Sharp's production line in Mexico. In 2016, Haier acquired GE, the world’s top home appliance company, for US$5.5 billion. Afterwards, the United States conducted three external acquisitions, including Toshiba’s white goods business, an 80% stake in Italy’s central air-conditioning company Clivet, and the German robot manufacturer KUKA. 81.04% of the shares, the end of the same year TCL also acquired the United States Novatel Wireless's MIFI business.

OEM history

Chinese home appliance companies have undergone a process of changing from OEM to independent brands.

Chinese household appliances are emerging industries that have rapidly developed using the OEM model since the reform and opening up, forming a mature industry with a market size of more than 200 billion yuan. China has thus become the world's largest home appliance manufacturing base. In the 1990s, many internationally renowned home appliance multinational companies shifted their production to China, making China a global “household” for home appliance production. From GE to LG, from Panasonic to Toshiba, from Siemens to Electrolux, from Philips to Whirlpool, almost all world-famous home appliance brand names have products made in China, either through joint ventures with Chinese production, or from Chinese manufacturers Brand production. According to incomplete statistics, nearly 95% of the world's top 500 home appliance companies have established OEM cooperation with China's home appliance industry.

Through OEM production, the scale of China's home appliance industry has been rapidly expanded. The average annual growth rate of China's home appliance exports is 47%, and the output value of nearly 10 billion yuan. The most obvious and public secret is Galanz. This company introduced the most advanced Toshiba microwave oven production line from 1992 and began to follow the example of learning. Since then, it has surpassed Toshiba in a few years and provided microwave oven OEM co-production to nearly 100 foreign companies. The "Made in China" microwave oven has basically monopolized the market in Europe.

However, OEM production is not a permanent solution, and OEM production has also given China's home appliance companies a hard lesson. In November 2003, TCL Group and the French Thomson Corporation formally signed an agreement to reorganize their color TV and DVD businesses. The joint venture company named TCL Thomson Corporation, or TTE Corporation. As a result, TCL became the world's largest color TV manufacturer. At the time, Thomson's color TV and DVD business suffered a loss of 254 million euros. However, mergers and acquisitions not only did not bring TCL Europe and the United States market opportunities, but to TCL brought a huge loss.

“That was the toughest time for TCL. When the acquisition began, we were blind and confident.” Li Dongsheng recalled this merger. He attributed the failure of this acquisition to an eagerness for success and insufficient international talent reserves, which became the epitome of China's home appliance brand exploration in the sea.

Over the past few years, China’s home appliance brands have basically been separated from the era of simple foundry and have independently designed and developed into the mainstream of the industry. At the same time, under the opportunity brought by the “One Belt and One Road” initiative, China’s home appliance brands will further focus on overseas markets and enhance their localized operating capabilities. Today, China has firmly established itself as a major household appliance in the global market. In 2014, China’s home appliance exports accounted for about 37% of the global export market.

Road is not easy

Independent research and development has laid a more solid foundation for the export of Chinese home appliance companies.

According to reports, Haier received praise in Russia, and Russia's largest home appliance chain channel MVIDEO's end-of-year selection results showed that Haier's Italian three-door refrigerator won the Best Product Design Award in the year with a good reputation and high sales volume among consumer groups. "Municipal home appliance window" MVIDEO channel main push high-end refrigerator brand. This means that in the Russian refrigerator market, Haier refrigerators have gained heavyweight recognition based on original products invented by users. According to data released by Haier refrigerators, sales in the Russian market have quadrupled in the past three months. In the Americas, Haier air conditioners have created the quietest air conditioners and have been rated as consumers' most worthwhile products for six consecutive years. In Europe, Haier refrigerators have obtained Germany's most stringent and highest-level VDE-QTM certification.

Hisense sponsored the European Cup for the first time last year. Although it can't be said that foreign consumers can fully accept Hisense, consumers will be labelled with television labels. Because Hisense TV ranks third in the world, this kind of label is actually very beneficial and helps consumers understand Hisense more specifically. According to industry insiders, Hisense is a touchstone. Having opened up a good situation through the European Cup, it still cannot be said to be successful, but at least Hisense has found a way to approach European consumers.

However, the existing achievements do not represent the future. Industrial watcher Hong Shibin pointed out that since the development of the Chinese home appliance brand for so many years, from infancy to maturity to the rapid expansion of today, many experiences have been summed up and a certain amount of overall strength has been achieved. At present, global integration is a major trend. Under this background, it is still not enough for China’s home appliance companies to have only a “definite” overall strength in the world. If they want to go further and fly higher, they still need to go further. To strengthen its overall strength, after all, foreign markets and domestic market environments are different, policies are different, and many challenges faced are unknown. It is necessary to have “very powerful” integrated manufacturing capabilities, promotion capabilities, and product strength before they can be on the world stage. Glowing shine.

"There is a big difference between the international market and the Chinese domestic market. The international market is heavy on technology and the domestic market is priced heavily," said Hong Shibin. It is precisely because of this difference in philosophy that internationalization has suffered setbacks. At the end of last year, the US Department of Commerce announced anti-dumping investigations on large-scale household washing machines produced in China and determined that there are dumping practices in Chinese-made washing machines. This was the first anti-dumping investigation against Samsung and LG, which ultimately affected the entire Chinese washing machine industry.

The data shows that in 2015, the scale of home appliance product exports fell for the first time since the financial crisis, and the scale of exports in 2016 has not seen any increase. In terms of external service trade, there are three ridges that are inevitable to be encountered by Chinese household electrical appliance companies: trade protectionism risks brought about by obstacles in multilateral and bilateral negotiations; exchange-rate risks brought about by adjustments to world economic and monetary policies; and cycles of world economic fluctuations Commodity "stuck" risk. The industry believes that with the adjustment of economic structure, China's household electrical appliance industry will also enter the transition period. In the period of transformation and upgrading of 3-5 years or more, the scale of home appliance industry, especially exports, will continue to be dynamic.

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