Stick To Your Brand Name, Jinjiang People

In September, Xiamen was still full of sunshine and wandering on the long island road. The sound of waves was intertwined with old banyan trees and ancient buildings.

Crossing the Xiamen bridge to the East, it took only 1 hours to arrive at another city, Jinjiang.

The Xiamen Island behind is already a distant memory, and the Jinjiang business billboard, which can be seen every few kilometers along the way, is always reminding Jinjiang that it is a brand capital with manufacturing as its pillar.

Heng An, Anta,

In mid August, the top tenth counties ranked the top 100 counties in terms of economic competitiveness, and Jinjiang ranked seventh last year.

Faced with such a beautiful pcript, Wang Jindun smiled at the reporter, "Jinjiang is a blessing."

Not a man's story

Before Xu Zhi Hua Zi inherited his career as CEO of PEAK group in Fujian, he was an ordinary senior student. He did not have a special understanding of the footwear industry in Jinjiang at that time.

However, Xu Zhihua appreciates Ding Zhizhong, a 8 year old city entrepreneur.

When Ding Zhizhong graduated from junior high school, he bought 600 pairs of Jinjiang shoes with more than 10 thousand yuan, and sat alone on the train from Fuzhou to Beijing.

After 4 years of hardship, Ding Zhizhong returned to Jinjiang with the 200 thousand yuan earned in Beijing and founded the "Anta" brand.

Today, Anta has developed from a small shoe factory to a leading domestic comprehensive sporting goods listed company.

Xu Zhihua did not expect that the name of Ding Zhizhong, Jinjiang shoe king, was taken away from her own head. What he never thought of was that Ding Zhizhong once looked up to his own father, Xu Jingnan.

In 1983, Nike, an internationally famous sports brand, began investing in the construction of the first shoe factory in Quanzhou. Xu Jingnan is the partner for their matching processing.

5 years later, Nike moved from Quanzhou to Putian, and 80% of its technicians and workers chose to stay in Xu Jingnan's company.

Visionary, in 1989, Xu Jingnan registered the "PEAK" trademark.

"In manufacturing, we started at a high starting point. When many enterprises were in manual factories, we were already doing assembly line work."

10 years later, Peak Sport Products Co Limited has been listed successfully in Hongkong, and its performance has maintained 60% growth over the past 3 years.

In the late 80s of the last century in Jinjiang, all the streets were small sports shoes workshops.

Statistics show that the footwear industry produces more than 3000 enterprises and 350 thousand employees, and the products are exported to more than 80 countries and regions in the world.

In the thousands of shoe companies, the rise of Anta and PEAK is not a case in point. Behind them, a large number of Jinjiang brands have been born and quickly emerged: XTEP, 361 degrees, hi dragon, noble bird, Ali, HOSA, del Hui, Golden Lake, Jordan...

Some media have commented that every five pairs of shoes in the world come from Jinjiang.

As early as the rise of Jinjiang's sports shoes brand, Lining has firmly occupied the status of China's first sports brand, while Adidas and Nike, the two world sports giants, have also firmly occupied the domestic high-end market.

Jinjiang people do not seem to care much about it.

"This may be related to Jinjiang's natural character."

A foreigner who worked in Jinjiang for more than 10 years told reporters that "Jinjiang people are always sticking to their own brand."

As Ding Zhizhong said, "do not be China's Nike, be Anta of the world."

What Jinjiang enterprises need to do is not to shadow others but to surpass themselves.

This persistence was particularly valuable during the 2009 financial crisis.

At that time, Nike and Adidas both suffered from weak growth in performance and even a negative growth in performance. However, the turnover of most sports brands in Jinjiang was against the trend.

Anta, for example, increased its turnover by 27.7% in the first half of 2009.

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Competitive strength comes from brand names.

Since the beginning of reform and opening up, the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia have started large-scale reflux, which brings not only information flow but also capital flow to Jinjiang.

Although the information is relatively fragmented and the size of the fund is not large, the "outside world" awakens the sense of business and sense of adventure in Jinjiang's bones.

At the beginning, it was to make OEM, a village, a village and a town. By the middle and late 1990s, the development mode of raw materials processing, sample processing, matching and compensation trade has become a common phenomenon in the local area, and is known as the "Jinjiang mode".

However, the unique historical accumulation and regional culture made Jinjiang entrepreneurs bury the seeds of their own brands from the very beginning.

Speaking of the Wenzhou model, people like to talk about their unique capital strategy, while Jinjiang is carrying the banner with the brand, even if the brand's light almost conceals the city itself.

"Brand is actually Jinjiang's business card."

Wang Jindun told reporters that there are many brands in Jinjiang, such as "the world jacket capital", "China Shoes Capital", "China Umbrella capital", "China zipper capital", "China's underwear town", "China's leisure clothing town", "China's weaving town", "China's sports clothing town" and so on.

Some analysts believe that Jinjiang's success is actually not a small probability event. Its rapid rise depends mainly on Jinjiang's strong cluster industrial advantages.

In Jinjiang, the whole process of raw material purchase, production, processing and sales channels can be completed without stepping out of the city. Moreover, every process has clusters of enterprises to complete supply, and logistics costs are almost zero.

At the same time, the "three zones and three bases" that Jinjiang has built in recent years, namely, Binjiang business district, export processing zone, economic development zone and national sports industry base, provincial key equipment manufacturing base and packaging printing industry base, have also built many platforms for brand development.

Jinjiang's brand utility has been most effective in the wake of the financial crisis.

In 2009, Jinjiang achieved GDP775.86 billion yuan, an increase of 11.9% over the same period last year.

Jinjiang's investment, exports and consumption have all increased in the "three carriages" of boosting the economy.

According to the data, Jinjiang's fixed assets investment increased by 20.7% in 2009, the investment in manufacturing industry increased by 27.6%, foreign trade increased by 12%, and consumption increased by 15.2%.

Contrary to the situation in many export-oriented economies, such as Dongguan, which face large reductions in production and layoffs, Jinjiang enterprises are still worried about labor shortages as usual.

Transformation will win

People in Jinjiang do not like to get nothing for nothing. They love singing in Southern Fujian dialect to win.

Daring and daring to fight is a factor that melts into their blood, and is also the thrust of their development.

Moreover, the heaven is so blessed that they have a good head for business and have a long view.

They understand that spelling is not enough, they need to know how to change.

The first change in Jinjiang came from the massive licensing movement of the 90s of last century.

While many manufacturing industries are struggling to get rid of the "OEM" label of local businesses, many enterprises in Jinjiang have entered the stage of OEM production.

"Brand = celebrity endorsement + CCTV advertising + channel expansion" has become a brand marketing mode for Jinjiang enterprises to imitate each other. NBA star endorsement PEAK, sports star endorsement Anta, Hong Kong and Taiwan star endorsement XTEP......

At that time, CCTV sports channel was once dubbed "Jinjiang channel" because of too many advertisements in Jinjiang.

"Despite the fact that there are many first-line brands in Jinjiang, most brands rely on the single mode of celebrity plus advertising, and the internal driving force of enterprises is not strong."

According to the insiders, the lack of details of Jinjiang brand and the lack of its own unique design make it difficult for consumers to establish long-term brand loyalty.

Ding Zhizhong does not deny that he believes that advertising strategy is only part of the corporate strategy. Advertising can enhance brand awareness.

To truly win the hearts of consumers, brands need unique brand connotations and stable and strong market networks to support them. These are all cumulative processes.

A local entrepreneur who has witnessed the process of Jinjiang's reform and development tells reporters that in the abnormal period of financial crisis, Jinjiang brand has reflected its value and the trend has risen. But in the post crisis era, whether Jinjiang brand can continue the myth is the problem that Jinjiang enterprises need to think about.

"Although pformation and upgrading are much more difficult than we think, we must pform."