From leader to a footnote

The closing down of the century-old match maker Botou marks an end of a glorious era, says an article on xinhuanet.com. Excerpts:

Founded in 1912 in Hebei province, Botou filed for bankruptcy recently and an auction was held at the same time to sell its assets. Once Asia’s biggest match maker has now become history.

Besides business considerations, the company’s closure also takes away part of many Chinese people’s memory of their childhood, when matches were not only an important household necessity, but also a plaything for children.

Botou once made China proud by becoming the first domestic company to make matches on its own and ending the country’s dependence on foreign matches. Now Botou’s bankruptcy plea turns the once proud company into a historical footnote.

Some people have said Botou is China’s Kodak, both of which dominated the market for decades but declined fast when new technologies gave birth to easier-to-use and cheaper products.

To some extent, becoming a market leader was easy for Botou and Kodak both, because there were few alternatives or better products. The lesson that enterprises should learn from their experience is that even market leaders need to innovate continuously to survive the increasing competition of today’s world.

If Botou had upgraded its products to compete with lighters when they first hit the Chinese market — and it was possible, given its funds and capacity then — it would have been a thriving company with diversified products today and its century-old brand would have become equally popular among today’s consumers.

Alas, that was not to be. But if our domestic brands want to avoid meeting the same fate, they need to keep on innovating better products.