"Divorced" with Huawei for 211 days, Glory faced a lasting battle

Whether it is the market or the supply chain, Honor will not be given too much trial and error time and tolerance.

More than 8,000 employees of New Glory, hundreds of suppliers, and thirty or forty major distributors that have purchased shares of Glory are holding their breath and waiting for the launch of the Glory 50 mobile phone.

"Honor 50 is also a life-and-death battle for Honor." On the eve of the launch, a new Honor employee explained 36Kr. After the show that the United States is known to have a "stuck neck" on the supply of chips to Huawei, for this reason, Huawei split up Honor and sold it wholly-owned. As an independent company, 50 Honor was placed with high hopes, and the first version was released offline. The flagship machine of the meeting.

The Honor 50 and the Huawei P50 that were glimpsed at the Hongmeng conference look so similar, but everything is not like before. When the price of Honor 50 "2699 yuan" appeared on the screen, the audience's exclamation was like waves-this is indeed a low price that no one expected.

Glory 50 must become an explosive product. This goal turned into unprecedented pressure, permeating every layer of the entire body of Glory. According to insiders, a week before the launch, the leaders of Honor China were still hesitating: Should the price of Honor 50 be increased?

Channel dealers stared at the performance of this phone, and many of them became Glory shareholders in that spin-off. A related person told 36 krypton that many major channel vendors have invested in shares, with a small investment of 10 to 20 million. What surprised him was that one of them put his wealth and life on the channel of glory and invested more than 100 million. "We can only bet it can be, and there is no choice."

Qualcomm attaches importance to Honor to an unprecedented level. Related sources told 36Kr that the support team provided by Qualcomm to Honor has reached 80% of Xiaomi's, surpassing OPPO and Vivo. Colleagues from different cities and different projects are all transferred to the Glory project team, and some of the staff in Beijing come from Shenzhen.

But Qualcomm has its own plans. According to an industry insider, Qualcomm initially gave 8 million chips. If Honor 50 is a blockbuster, this kind of resource tilt will continue. If it is not satisfactory, the special treatment will be withdrawn.

Glory has been silent for too long, and it desperately needs a meaningful return.

Many of the technical teams of the Honor 50 come from Huawei’s past nova 9 and P50 project teams. They have always been known for their desperate efforts. After the Honor 50, their morale is exaggerated. A person in the supply chain who has cooperated with Glory said that he can only think of one word to describe the feeling of being tracked by the Glory person every day-"aggressive". One day he went to the bathroom late at night and glanced at his watch when he was sleepy and reminded that an email from Glory flashed on the screen at 3 a.m. During the Huawei period, he only received an e-mail reply at 11 or 12 o'clock in the middle of the night.

At the beginning of June, the gradual blue banners with the words "Strengthen the armor and fight hard, wait for the battle; the long wing is in hand, the wind and the flag collect Kyushu" appeared in various cities branches. Distributors should have shouted this slogan loudly and imposingly in the mobilization video, but the slogan was too long, and there were unrecognized uncommon words. Many people could only chant from Jane: "xx city sales".

Uncertainty about the future is carefully hidden under the aura. "If the Honor 50 is sold this time, everyone will be fine. If the machine does not sell well, it will be uncomfortable. The first possibility is the problem of chip supply. The entire team does not need so many people." An employee Represented for 36 krypton.

More urgent than stabilizing the military spirit is that glory is in desperate need of cash. When a channel dealer went to a meeting, the leader of Honor discussed with him whether he could stop the house replenishment: "I really have no money. I will look at the supply of better in the future, and I will give you more."

Although the start of New Glory has surpassed many self-made companies-after that 100 billion acquisition, on June 6th, the state contractor Ai Shide announced that the company and the team will jointly spend 660 million yuan to participate in the joint acquisition of Glory, becoming The channel business has the largest shareholding ratio-but for a company like Honor, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars in human resources every month, cash is the most urgently needed resource.

"The money that shareholders throw-in is almost spent. If the new products are not available, it will be even worse. If you don't make money, the company will not be able to burn it." A related person told 36 krypton.

The soaring pressure is not just because of the pressure of survival, but also from the self-expectation of glory.

Yang Yichen of a channel team in a certain city of Honor received the mission goal of Honor 50 at the end of May. When he saw the string of data in the email, the sudden increase in pressure made him almost scolded. It was an ambitious plan: let the Honor 50 series account for 50% of the products in the same gear.

"Honor 50 goal is similar to the goal when nova 7 reached its peak." He has experienced the apex of Huawei's nova 7 series. Last year, the nova 7 series won first place in the country’s mobile phone sales in the third quarter, adding 5 million yuan a month. Above users. Yang Yichen found it incredible, "When the nova7 is so strong, they didn't say that they had such high requirements for customers before going public, and their expectations were so high."

Yang Yichen tried to piece together the ideas of the leaders. His leaders are all senior executives from Huawei, who have tasted invincibility. In 2019, Huawei's shipments increased by 35%, overwhelming opponents, and the share of OPPO and Vivo directly fell below 20%. When Huawei was out of stock due to lack of chips, and Honor obtained a lot of human, capital, and supply chain resources when it was divested from Huawei, Honor's "target of fixed proportions is to conquer OPPO and Vivo, and grab Huawei's lost market."

But at least market data shows that today's opponents are not what they used to be. According to analysis data, in 2021, OPPO plus Vivo accounted for 46%, and Vivo shipments increased by 79% year-on-year.

The market will not give New Glory too much tolerance and time.

A related person stated to 36 krypton that after the sale of Honor, a three-year performance gambling period was set. The above-mentioned people said that Honor's target sales this year should be 100 billion yuan, which is about half of Huawei's consumer business in 2019. 21tech also reported earlier that Honor plans to ship 70-80 million in 2021. Entering mid-June, Honor did not have any explosive products, and the burden was actually concentrated in the second half of the year.

New Glory had to fight back.

Wall in the park

The separation wall suddenly appeared in Huawei's North Research Institute after the New Year's Day holiday. It is the kind of PVC fence often seen on subway construction sites. It is taller than a person, with bright blue walls and gray steel reinforcement. It lay there abruptly, like some kind of strange object falling from the sky. It majestically divided the park into two parts, with Huawei on the one hand and glory on the other. It went all the way into the dining hall from the outside, separating the food stalls.

On January 1, 2021, Honor officially operated independently, but it was not until he saw that wall that Lin Fansen felt that they were no longer part of Huawei. Later, the employees jokingly called the not-heavy wall the "Berlin Wall."

What happened during that time is related to this wall.

Employees began to discuss the future of Glory very early. Many people speculated that some people might be laid off until the dust settled in the conference room one day. The leader announced: Glory will be separated from Huawei's independent operation and the handover will be completed within one month.

From that day on, unfamiliar projects quickly appeared in the emails, unfamiliar colleagues came from outside to copy data, and many people became familiar with businesses that did not belong to them in the past.

"When I came out, I said that we shouldn't break things." This is Huawei's decision. With a single knife and two paragraphs, the feeling of alienation immediately began to appear. At some point in the handover, both parties will have their own minds and keep things that are currently unusable and may be useful in the future. "At that time, there was a little bit of competitor meaning." Lin Fansen told 36 Krypton.

The company was filled with an atmosphere of turmoil. Some were sad, some were worried, and some were excited. Lin Fansen belonged to the last group of people. She has stayed at Huawei since she graduated, squeezed into small grids, and the leader was unsmiling. The inspirational classic she told them was that the Red Army walked the Long March across the grass.

Suddenly, they separated from the patriarch and became a company with sole responsibility, "have more autonomy. The degree of freedom will be high, and it feels like they can do their best."

She still remembers when she first became independent, “Everyone feels that they can earn as if the freedom of wealth is right in front of them.” The familiar "3-year listing" that countless employees of new companies are familiar with is just commonplace. The more certain scenario is: Huawei vacated a blockbuster. The market, who else can it be filled without glory?

But the reality soon became skinny, and it hurt them.

In March, a post was circulated on the Glory Intranet, Glory Home. "The distance between us and the worlds No. 1 is probably equal to the sum of the length of all electronic flows... and employees don't really trust this vision." The employee wrote mockingly.

When that post came out, it happened to be the most lively spring in the mobile phone industry. Everything was reborn. The press conference was chasing after me. It was so lively, and this spring was obviously different.

Xiaomi has held two press conferences in succession. On the Xiaomi 11Pro and 11 Ultra posters, the words "Android Phone King" were displayed on the posters, and the atmosphere was inevitable.

OPPO Liu Bo said in an interview: "We hope that there will be three (brands) in the market above $600 in the future, and OPPO can enter the TOP3."

OnePlus’s newly joined Vice President Li Kaixin used to be the Vice President of Sales at Honor. He posted on Weibo: “You (Liu Zuohu) will build the best product, and I will be responsible for the sales of tens of millions!” June 16, On the day the Honor 50 was released, Liu Zuohu announced that OnePlus had officially merged with OPPO and became an independent brand of OPPO.

Lin Fansen woke up like a dream. Those press conferences were like slaps on the body and felt pain. "You can clearly feel that competitors are also targeting Huawei’s fat left in the market, and suddenly realized that it’s not. Competitors are all idiots, keep this market waiting for you to use."

Glory looked at the excitement in front of him, but he was a little helpless. Before Qualcomm obtained the official license, although it had some technical exchanges with Honor, it did not dare to supply it. The leaders have been comforting everyone that the supply chain is under discussion and there is no problem with the supply. But Lin Fansen will check various gossips to verify or falsify the confidence of the leaders.

What frightened her most was a brief reply on Maimai. A signed Qualcomm employee wrote: You don’t know anything about this industry, and the chip shares of each company have been determined in the next three years.

Lin Fansen watched the word "Glory" gradually disappear in the hot news, and she began to worry whether the company would be marginalized, or when it would be forgotten?

At the internal cheering meeting, the protagonist of the story of walking the Long March across the grass became Huawei: Now it is the same situation as Huawei's XX, and the difficulties will surely pass.

On the side of the wall, it seems difficult to cut the nutrients flowing in Huawei's "umbilical cord" in a short period of time.

"(We) came out with 8,000 people." Zhao Ming said in an interview with 36 krypton. Leaders above level 15 are basically from Huawei.

But compared to its competitors, Honor is indeed just a winged Weifeng startup company. At the end of 2020, Xiaomi's total number of employees has exceeded 20,000.

Lin Fansen has become accustomed to the abundance of people on the big platform. Yu Chengdong revealed in an interview in 2019 that there are more than 20,000 employees in Huawei's consumer business. The pre-research department gives them a lot of room for development. For example, once Lin Fansen and his colleagues start discussing a certain plan, they will soon have pre-research colleagues to follow up to do a feasibility study.

This landing became a luxury after the glory of independence. The application process for her has become shorter, but it takes more time to persuade the leader to tilt resources. Sometimes she feels that some of the actions that are close at hand are difficult. Everywhere is busy dealing with short-term, immediate goals, "This is not a mistake, the company just wants to live."

Glory CEO Zhao Ming does not shy away from this point. "All the things I used to be familiar with have to be re-established,... I have to do the budget center, etc., and all have to be rebuilt." According to him, the first financial statement after Glory's independence was made manually by the financial staff.

Lin Fansen's gap also comes from the gap in the work sense. At Huawei, their target is Apple, and when it comes to glory, they must first deal with Xiaomi OV. "I have done large projects, and I think I can do bigger ones in the future. Now I am doing something that is benchmarked against OV Xiaomi. I really don't want to do it."

The cruel reality is that it is not easy to "cope" with Xiaomi OV.

An industry insider told 36Kr that in the first week of June, Xiaomi sold 1 million units on JD.com. In contrast, the data provided by the above-mentioned industry insiders to 36Kr shows that the single-day sales volume of Honor on JD in the first quarter was less than 10,000. After the release of Changwan 20 in May, it reached 14,000, which is about one-third of Xiaomi.

Yang Yichen's biggest headache is how to tell a story to the mall's investment promotion office. "Data can't compare to Huawei, and Xiaomi's to the flow of people. So what do you talk about? You talk about the facts and smash yourself in the foot. Then if you talk about it based on perception, Huawei is indeed a big brand. What do you do?"

He became the one who picked up the remaining positions of others. "They (shopping malls) assume that Huawei is the same as Xiaomi, and it belongs to the brand's own traffic. If the mall must have communication, OV can be less, glory can be less, Huawei and Xiaomi must not be less."

Yang Yichen recalled the good days when he was a Huawei. Customers lined up to ask for authorization. “I hope we can go quickly. They said that if we don’t give it to me, we don’t give it to others. It’s very interesting.” Even in a shopping mall, Huawei will definitely be able to. Get the best location and get generous rent concessions.

Now many channel customers have become hesitant. "It feels like talking about it in the past. They have to think about it, ‘Okay, let’s honor it’, or I’ll look at it again." As for IoT products that are losing money, Huawei readily accepts them, and if they don’t, they don’t want it.

New Glory was born with a golden spoon, but now he has to grow up alone. What's even more difficult is that when New Glory is born, he is actually in the jungle.

Ferocious jungle

After several months of wandering, Shen Renyu, a dealer with Huawei for many years, returned to the old road.

For Shen Renyu, the past few months have been anxious and difficult days. In March, his inventory fell below 15% of the previous level, and his store sales were bleakly maintained. The glory of the goods is sometimes not available, and it can only continue to live like a dipper. He opened the Glory Store and once lost millions of dollars. For a time, Shen Renyu had almost no confidence. The salesman of the manufacturer has been soothing him, but in the face of the real money lost every day and every week, his words are particularly pale and weak.

Many channel dealers that Shen Renyu is familiar with are just as perplexed and uneasy as him. Some have switched to e-cigarettes or other businesses, and those who remain have experienced the ups and downs of Huawei and are still waiting to see.

At the same time, Xiaomi is aggressively expanding its offline stores, and Shen Renyu is the one they most hope to win. When Yang Yichen talks about business, it’s easy to meet people from Xiaomi in the customer’s office. They are both marketers in the industry There is no need to greet you with embarrassment.

Xiaomi was really cruel this time. On January 9th, Xiaomi planned the grand opening event of thousands of stores. Lu Weibing also stated in an open letter that it is likely to open tens of thousands of stores across the country in the future. This goal will soon be achieved. According to Xiaomi’s introduction, it has added 7,000 stores in half a year, and as of press time, the number of retail stores has reached 8,500.

Shen Renyu received the olive branch.

The person in charge of the Xiaomi Tuo store found him and started bombarding his mobile phone screen intensively. That person often sent long voices one after another, one by one, all with enthusiasm, and Shen Renyu's heart was moved: "You have to invest 20 million, with a net profit of 10 million a year", "The big customers in xx places, all currently invested The rate of return is more than 50%.” In contrast, the hottest new KFC stores invested in the past few years have a payback period of about 2-3 years. According to him, the return on investment of the large Xiaomi home is comparable to that of KFC.

It is difficult for any businessman to ignore such numbers. Sensing Shen Renyu's shaking, the other party made appointments to meet each other for three days and repeatedly lobbied Shen Renyu. And the career development person knows how to create a tense atmosphere and achieve the goal of pressured transactions. “There are so many shopping malls, and one less one.” He told Shen Renyu that the good shopping malls in his area of ​​responsibility are matched to the customer side and are already in Confirmed the rent.

Shen Renyu was skeptical. Many years of business experience told him that such a high rate of return is really unbelievable, but it is difficult to find loopholes in the other party's business model, and the data presented are self-consistent.

As time goes by, Shen Renyu still sees no hope in Honor and Huawei. The income is getting less and less, and the intermittently arriving Honor V40 also uses Dimensity chips, but it is 1,000 yuan more expensive than its peers.

Shen Renyu was really tempted. He began to find people in the industry to invest together and prepare to change the flag. Seeing that millions of dollars are about to be smashed, a friend reminded him: "You still think about it again, is it normal (such a return)?"

What made Shen Renyu completely dispelled was the statement of a well-informed friend of a listed company who had been doing physical business for many years. He told Shen Renyu: "It's a bit exaggerated. It's not that easy to make money."

At about the same time, Glory finally took action. In May, Honor gathered key channels to hold a briefing, showcased new product prototypes, and also gave a clear listing rhythm. A friend who attended the briefing told Shen Renyu that the Honor 50 looks the same as the Huawei P50, and the appearance is “stunning”.

After selling mobile phones for more than ten years, Shen Renyu certainly knows what kind of products will "sell." He also realized the ambition of glory, "They did not regard Xiaomi as a particularly important opponent, and their goal is to take over the original 30% share of Huawei." Shen Renyu settled down and prepared to expand against the trend. Open a few glory stores.

But such confidence is not reliable. In a sense, his choice is somewhat helpless. "You said that we are all confident that we can make money. It's hard to tell. Where are we embarrassed now? We are already on this boat. It is very difficult for you to change careers now. There is no safer thing to pick up. Also familiar, the market is also familiar."

Under Xiaomi's fierce offensive, many channel vendors who are more optimistic about Xiaomi have joined the newly added 2,000-plus store camp within a few months. In their calculations, although Xiaomi's gross profit is not high, it does excel. In addition to the rate of return at the beginning, another point that attracted Shen Renyu was that Xiaomi did not overwhelm the goods, the turnover was fast, and the inventory clearance problem was not big. Even if it is not sold out, some manufacturers are responsible for the allocation and digestion between stores. This kind of high-efficiency capital turnover is an absolute "dessert" for large channel merchants who frequently trade hundreds of millions of funds.

Xiaomi grabbed big channels, while OPPO and Vivo went further into the capillaries.

Distributor Zhang Bai's shop is in a third-tier city and is a typical local stall: Huawei lightbox, Xiaomi signboard, and also sells OV and Honor.

After Huawei's mobile phones were out of stock, OPPO's regional expansion came to the door every two or three days. The female supervisor followed a savvy style: price insurance, image support, free replacement of lightboxes, and various housing promotion subsidies. After Zhang Bai expressed her interest, her attitude was as gentle as ever: "If there is no Huawei in the future, you want to sell OV, it doesn't matter, please feel free to contact."

The glorious people are also here, and their focus is to outline the future. "You are now a specialty store, an image store, and if it resumes at that time, the first batch will be given to you to guarantee your profits." In fact, only looking at profits, Honor now has plenty of room for channels. An industry insider said, Take Changwan 20 as an example, the profit of this thousand yuan machine can reach 20%.

But in the end, Zhang Bai chose to continue to pay Xiaomi, because it has IoT products, and the "Internet New Retail" model is fresher.

Game of the Fearless

In the early days of this melee, New Glory was unable to do what it wanted.

Out of stock is the biggest weakness. At the beginning of the year, the V40 mobile phone was launched, and a large provincial agent did not exceed one million units per month. Out of stock, the Glory also shrouded Ruoyouruowu's pessimism.

Huang Quansheng, who is in charge of the channel business, has the enthusiasm of a Huawei person, and it is rare to say frustrated, but when he saw the V40, he rarely lost his confidence. "Last year's chip, I got this year's flagship machine. Suddenly this grade drops a lot, and it feels more uncomfortable." He told 36 Krypton.

V40 has become Honor's shortest-lived product, with a life cycle of less than half a year. Although the light luxury version has been upgraded, and a single unit has a gross profit of about 19%, it is difficult to escape the predicament of insufficient distribution, and it has not aroused much splash.

In fact, Glory has prepared for this transition period. Last year, they began to implement the "all the way" policy, which is also called "all the way" internally. The two major agents, Ai Shide and Songlian, cooperate to obtain goods alternately. When one party is out of stock, he can ask the one who has the goods to make adjustments to each other and make money in turn.

In the past, the division of labor between the agency and the Honor manufacturer was clear. The contract-saving was the capital platform, and the money was also responsible for the delivery of the goods. The Honor maintained the relationship between large and small customers across the country.

According to industry sources, Honor’s main sales volume is only one-fifth of Huawei. Before the divestiture, many Glory sales promotion staff came from Huawei, and after independence, only a small number of them got to Glory. This year, Glory intends to expand its offline team from about 1,000 to 3,000, but they must rely on the power of agents before 3,000 are available.

The agents and Glory employees began to sit in an office and carry the same KPI. The provincial representatives are not only responsible for the distribution of goods and fund operations, but also take on the tasks of developing customers and follow-up management.

Such cross-operations and disputes are very common. The agent thinks that it is divided into shipments and understands the terminal situation, but the manufacturer feels that the other party's management is extensive and not refined enough, "there is no set of SOPs (standard operating procedures)", and even the documents have their own standards.

However, Glory has no time to wait for the team to integrate happily. In extraordinary times, it must use "heavy codes". Glory resets KPIs, including more detailed customer management indicators. Such resets naturally have the cruel side of survival of the fittest. Some people leave, and only those who are left can be regarded as the real "Glory Team".

Honor cannot be like Huawei. All businesses are embedded with a set of perfect processes, each part is in place, and the switch will run steadily. Glory is like a new machine that has just been assembled, acting somewhat in a hurry with improvisations.

For example, the first launch of new products in the mobile phone industry is usually ready for the customer's warehouse two days in advance. Changwan 20 must be sold in time for the May 1st holiday and should be delivered to the customer's warehouse before April 30. However, some channels only received the goods on May 1st, and a small number of them missed the first day of sale.

Glory had to take these hustle and bustle forward and stubbornly move forward. The first step is to return to the place where it belonged.

Zhao Ming took over Honor in 2015. Two years later, Honor sales reached 49.68 million, becoming the number one brand in the domestic Internet channel. This is the highlight of Honor.

Objectively speaking, they have such conditions. After inheriting Huawei's technology, New Glory is indeed a daunting opponent. "If they really get the goods, and those people know how to trade, it is actually the most dangerous thing and can't be underestimated." A friend of the business employee said to 36 krypton.

Xu Baihong, who works in technology at a supply chain company in Glory, has a first-hand experience of such "not to be underestimated". He met with the same group of people from Huawei, but changed the company name, and put forward the same high requirements.

In Xu Baihong's eyes, this is a group of people who have a deep knowledge of technology. When communicating, they clearly know what the supply chain can do and what can be done by themselves. "For example, it was very hot to shoot the moon at the time, and Huawei was discussing how to achieve it together. Other manufacturers might ask if you have a plan to shoot the moon. We buy it, or if I want to shoot the moon, you have to give it to me."

A person familiar with Huawei's supply chain said that, as far as the camera is concerned, Huawei debugs the scene from the hardware side, while Xiaomi OV is more through software analysis. It’s hard to say which of these two paths is better, but it’s undeniable that Huawei has tuned thousands of scenarios, and it’s difficult for other manufacturers to surpass it by spending money on people in the short term. “We can’t see the specific technology, and it’s done. Good." Almost all of this technology was handed over to Honor. "Huawei is mainly left behind by those who do the operating system."

And the ambition or pride of New Glory will never stop at returning to the past. Zhao Ming declared that Honor "will surpass Huawei Mate and P series in the future." Insiders said that the high-end magic 3 that will be released in the next two months will use Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 888 plus, and the price will touch the 6000 yuan gear.

Therefore, many of the actions of Glory seen by the outside world are actually preparing for the impact of high-end.

In the original Huawei system, Honor did not have high-end phones, and naturally, it could not do narrow-channel distribution. Channel vendors could only get the same models, but the number was different. But now, many industry insiders have told 36Kr that Honor 50 Pro will become the first narrow-channel product of New Honor, and only the top-rated provincial key customers (PKA) can get it, and some of the key points with high coordination are small. Shop (mini KA) can be divided into a small number of models. In the future, the Magic series may further shrink to the level above PKA.

This is also Huawei's distribution method. Different levels of channels take different goods. The highest-end P and Mate series will only provide core gold seeds, top368 and other channels. They have also raised the barriers to entry for the experience store. According to a channel dealer, the Honor Experience Store now needs to be more than 120 square meters, opened in a shopping mall, and the single store investment exceeds one million, which is the same as Xiaomi.

On the eve of the release of Honor 50, Lin Fansen gave birth to some expectations. In her opinion, "Huawei is still the people who work hard and have strong abilities, no problem."

Half a month before the release of Honor 50, Zhao Ming returned to his alma mater Jiaotong University to give a speech. He looked confident. Two months ago, the gray sideburns turned black again. In the Q&A session, he told everyone: We will be the first domestic and global brand. Glory defines its opponents as Apple and Samsung.

"The darkness before dawn is over", at the launch of the Honor 50 mobile phone on June 16, these words were typed on the PPT. Under the white letter is a smiling curve, and Honor's market share has slowly risen from 3% to 9.5%. However, this is still a long way from Huawei's record of 41% share and Xiaomi OV's rapid growth.

This coming summer may be the starting point for the achievement of the new glory vision, or it may be a more rugged road ahead.