When Can Chinese Clothing Brands Be Made On Behalf Of The Country? Get Rid Of The "Bitter Smile Curve"

　　 A former Japanese Prime Minister once said in his speech that Toyota is my left face and Panasonic is my right face. The importance of these two brands to Japan can be seen.

But in China, few industries have produced a brand that can represent the face of the country.

At both ends of the famous smile curve, design and brand mean higher added value, but in made in China Here, most of the time, the situation is a "bitter smile curve", and the design and brand are hidden under the huge shadow of manufacturing.

Trapped in low-end industries?

Even if you enter the big brands such as Messi and Lafayette, you can also see the branded "Made in China" goods. Unfortunately, the "Made in China" brand, which has made great contributions to the prosperity of the world market, has not been able to "enter the room" in the international market and enjoy the courtesy, but almost all the high-end brands Marketing Keep the place away. "Made in China", which is not big enough, often appears in 99 US stores and low-end supermarkets in the international market.

Chinese brands that have been excluded from overseas are also suffering the same fate in high-end shopping malls in China. In Beijing Wangfujing Street, in the high-end shopping malls of Nanjing West Road and Huaihai Middle Road in Shanghai, you can see LV, Prada and other high-end brands from various countries, but it is still difficult to see the figure of Chinese domestic brands. A boss of a clothing enterprise in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, who wanted to enter a high-end shopping mall in Shanghai, was rebuffed because the mall is positioned as a high-end and luxurious international famous brand.

"Shopping malls are profit oriented, and there is no mistake. But Chinese enterprises need to have more brand awareness and enhance their value as an international brand," said Yu Ying, associate professor of Antai School of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

In the past three decades, Chinese enterprises have mainly undertaken foreign trade orders year after year, worked overtime to produce products processed with supplied materials, and exported them to foreign countries, earning "hard money". This kind of hard work is sometimes accompanied by the cost of resources and environment.

The controversial Foxconn is also at the lowest end of the smile curve. An American market research organization has provided such data: Apple sells each iPad computer for $499 and costs $260, while Foxconn assembles it for $11.2, accounting for only 4% of its cost and a little more than 2% of its price.

According to the survey, only 20% of Chinese export enterprises have their own brands, and their own brand exports account for about 1% of the country's total exports. In China's huge foreign trade volume, processing trade accounts for half of the country. In the large-scale export of foreign-funded enterprises, China's real gains are not high.

"As the foreign party controls the design, research and development, brand and other links with the highest income, and relies excessively on the export and processing trade of foreign-funded enterprises, it will not bring corresponding benefits to the Chinese economy, but will make the domestic industry hollow." Yan Changlei, Deputy Secretary General of the Brand China Industry Alliance and Chairman of Behans International Public Relations, believes that, This mode of economic growth may trap China's economy in low-end industries.

Light R&D, light design, light brand, light service, the smile curve has become a "bitter smile curve" for Chinese enterprises who only focus on manufacturing.

Behind the "bitter smile curve"

Although China has become the second largest economy in the world, the brand research institute Interbrand released the 2010 "World's Best Brands List", and Chinese brands are still not on the list of the world's best 100 brands.

In Yu Ying's opinion, if a brand wants to become an internationally influential brand, it must first become a strong domestic brand. However, China's current economic structure and distribution structure have kept the domestic consumer market at an inappropriate level, and consumers have no ability to pay the premium of the brand.

Although China's luxury market is also growing, it also shows that China's distribution mechanism is not balanced, and although the growth of the Chinese market is high, its share in the global consumer market is still too small.

On the other hand, brand expert Ai Feng also believes that the imperfect legal and regulatory system conducive to the growth of independent brands also hinders enterprises' enthusiasm for brand investment. No matter in the macro or micro system, there is no mechanism to make the independent brand grow and develop more smoothly. Large state-owned enterprises do not attach importance to brands, and private enterprises often feel like "children without mothers".

In fact, many enterprises know the benefits of brand creation for enterprises, but this journey is too hard.

"The country should create an innovative environment and support enterprises with technological reputation." Yu Ying believes that, for example, in terms of capital market access, more support should be given to enterprises with core technologies and brands. Only in this way can we promote the emergence of independent knowledge products and brands.

According to his understanding, there are quite a number of listed enterprises in the domestic securities market, which are affiliated enterprises attached to state-owned monopoly enterprises. Enterprises that work hard to build their own brands cannot get support from the capital market. An average investment of more than 50 million dollars is required to build a brand with commercial value abroad.

He believes that the reason why the United States can become the world's largest scientific and technological country and economic power is that it has the most perfect capital market system in the world. The NASDAQ stock market has produced representatives of new economy and innovative enterprises such as Microsoft, Intel and Apple. China's capital market should also support more brand enterprises with core technologies.

How to make the brand powerful {page_break}

The transformation of Chinese enterprises living in the low profit manufacturing end of the "bitter smile curve" is the general trend, and the only way is from "Made in China" to "Created in China". Looking back at the history of economic development, this transfer is really difficult, but it is not impossible.

In fact, Europe and the United States in the West have followed this path, and Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea in Asia have also followed this path. These countries and regions have experienced painful transformation processes, but the final results are relatively successful.

For example, the United States basically completed the industrial revolution around 1900, becoming the largest and strongest manufacturing center in the world. With the industrialization of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the United States gradually lost its competitiveness in many manufacturing fields. However, even since then, the American economy has quietly undergone another revolution. The information and communication technology industry represented by computer software and the Internet has sprung up, profoundly changing the economic structure of the United States, completely refreshing the American economy, and continuing to become the leader of the global economy.

Look at Interbrand's enterprises on the "Global Best Brand List" in 2010. American technology brands continue to lead the list, IBM、 Microsoft, Google, Intel and Hewlett Packard account for half of the top ten companies. However, Apple (No. 17) has seen its brand value soar by 37% due to its well controlled information dissemination and the continuous hot discussion with the release of new products.

"Do Chinese people always do the dirty work that costs too much resource pollution and energy? No. So we need a brand revolution!" In Ai Feng's view, the brand revolution is not to overthrow and exclude foreign brands, not to complain that consumers are unpatriotic, but to reform their own lives, change themselves and improve themselves.

For example, in terms of quality, Chinese products have not yet got rid of "low-end manufacturing", and Chinese famous brand products often have regrettable defects in reliability; Technically, most of the manufacturing equipment is imported from foreign countries, and the manufacturing technology lacks independent intellectual property rights. The "copycat phenomenon" popular throughout the country has exposed China's weakness in intellectual property rights; From the market point of view, there is no sales channel of its own in the international market. The repeated prohibition of fake and shoddy goods in the domestic market and the "exclusion phenomenon" of worshiping foreign countries and fawning on foreign countries have seriously hindered the growth of China's independent brands.

Aifeng believes that Chinese brands include national brands, regional brands, industrial brands, enterprise brands and product brands. Their rise in the world is not only the most important lever for China's development in the next 30 years, but also the most important task and the most important symbol.