Billionaire Wei Jianjun is now Jack Wey in auto branding push
MOST auto executives have reasons to feel at ease after hitting the one-million annual sales mark in China, an exclusive club that includes General Motors and Volkswagen. For Great Wall Motor Co.’s Wei Jianjun, the feat stoked fears that the SUV maker may be doomed.
That’s because history is littered with companies that grew big but eventually failed because their products became a commodity and lacked the star power to create clamour among customers, according to the chairman of the manufacturer that has kept a 14-year streak as China’s top SUV seller.
“Moving up is testimony of a company’s strength; if you can’t, you’ll disappear the way Nokia did after Apple muscled in on their turf,” Wei said during a recent interview in Hong Kong, as he recalled how the iPhone maker upended the mobile-phone industry and eventually toppled the erstwhile Finnish leader.
Wei’s paranoia signals the maturing of the world’s largest auto market, where an increasingly sophisticated middle class is no longer satisfied with cheap, metoo products. China’s more successful home- grown auto makers, also including Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. – the owner of Volvo Cars – and BYD Co., have embarked on efforts to burnish their nameplates in the belief that with more than 100 brands competing for buyers, the fight will be won by those who look beyond price competition to create income streams from products with higher profit margins.
For Great Wall’s Wei, it turns out, the effort also involves adopting the English name “Jack Wey” and creating the premium nameplate “WEY.” Sales of the brand’s first model that has features such as a warning system for lane changes were set to begin at the Shanghai auto show this week, and another three models will be added this year, Wei said.
Wei, a native of Baoding born in 1964, has built Great Wall into China’s top seller of SUVs without leaning on any foreign partners, and by offering consumers spacious models at cheaper prices than sedans such as Volkswagen’s Passat and GM’s Buick.
That strategy helped boost deliveries to a record 1.07 million units last year, outpacing industry-wide growth.
At 26 – and after several factory jobs – Wei took over a small car-modification business and turned it into a van maker. He later shifted focus to pickup
Moving up is testimony of a company’s strength; if you can’t, you’ll disappear the way Nokia did after Apple muscled in on their turf. Wei Jianjun, billionaire
trucks after witnessing their popularity in Thailand. Small business owners and farmers turned Great Wall’s Deer into China’s most popular pickup brand by 1998.
And in 2002, he rolled out the first Haval SUV model. The popular Haval H6 accounted for more than half of the company’s deliveries last year.
The idea for going upscale came just over four years ago when branding guru Al Ries, chairman of the Atlanta-based market-strategy firm Ries & Ries that counts Microsoft and Ford among its clients, advised Wei to create a separate brand. “Jack Wey” would help foreigners get around the difficulty of pronouncing Wei’s name in Chinese, Wei was told.
“A new idea requires a new brand name. To keep a company competitive in the future requires a constant launch of new concepts,” said Ries. “The future belongs to multiple brand companies, not single-brand companies.”
As Chinese consumers shift their tastes away from sedans, demand for roomier SUVs is surging, with such vehicles accounting for 37 per cent of the total sales last year, up from 5.7 per cent a decade ago. Still, the introduction of WEY comes at a time when new models are flooding the market. — WPBloomberg