Nippon "Intrigued" and Yang Mou

“More market share, greater brand awareness, and more active social engagement... We use the 'brand upgrade' to communicate, and it is very serious and very big intention to do this thing.”

More than two months ago, when interviewing the media, Wee Siew Kim, CEO of Lippo Paint's parent company, Timo Group, mentioned the Nippon brand escalation strategy, which revealed its “attempts”.

On August 8th, Nippon China held a brand upgrade media meeting in Shanghai to describe Huang Shoujin’s “attention”, including brand identification updates, painting system and product system integration, and opening a new era of brushing services. Corporate social responsibility upgrades and other four major content. Nippon expects to achieve the transition from paint production to service operation through the brand upgrade plan, and further to the goal of “all-around paint service providers”.

Looking at the various actions of Nippon in recent years, from the "refreshing flagship store" in the terminal market to the acquisition of related companies to expand the product line, it is not difficult to see that it is actually laying the groundwork and preparing for this "attention." The positioning of its “all-around paint service provider” is actually another expression that should open up the level and distance with competitors, further expand market share, and consolidate the position of rivers and lakes.

The hard work and achievements of the Chinese market for more than 20 years have given Lippon's “attention” a strong tone. It does not need to be rumored that this goal is difficult because competitors can copy its development path or block it in the short term. Approach to this goal.

"Brandy" market

"Nippon is now frantically opening stores in the third and fourth tier markets, which puts great pressure on our small and medium-sized (paint) companies."

Just a few months before Huang Shoujin’s “attention”, the person in charge of a small and medium-sized paint company in Shunde, Guangdong, expressed his concern to the painter. He pointed out that in the market, it was discovered that Nippon began to arrange stores in the third and fourth line markets. This made it possible for small and medium-sized paint companies, such as him, who mainly develop three- and four-wire channels, to feel a strong impact.

"For brands like Nippon, the price is lower than ours. Plus, consumers nowadays have become more and more inclined to brand consumption. What advantages do we have?" he said frankly, the first quarter of 2014 The sales performance is very bad.

"We can really feel their aggression and expansion." Another person working for a well-known private paint company told the Finishing Business Reporter that she was not worried about Nippon's low-price strategy but worried about the major events of the country. The ability to respond, "the sinking of channels, low-cost strategies, the management of dealers, the control of sales, the density of outlets, and the details of the design, (these) will be more difficult for small brands."

In any case, Nippon’s distribution network has “sneaked into the village”. The painting business reporter visited the market and found that its specialty stores have even appeared in some township markets. This is in line with the situation described by the aforementioned person in charge of the coating company.

The profit of the agent Nippon Paint products is not high. An Nippon Paint dealer told the decoration business reporter that “I sell one hundred million products a year, not as good as the profits of others selling a small and medium-sized brand of 10 million.” But he also admitted that selling Nippon is relying on “take the amount”. , accumulate profits through high sales. Even some dealers stated that in the third and fourth tier markets, dealers often take profits when they make promotions while maintaining low-price tactics, and then sell them at normal purchase prices to earn a promotional spread. As a profit.

In spite of this, Nippon is still driving sales with its high brand awareness and attracting dealers through the “take the volume” model. It has been reported that since entering the Chinese market in 1992, Nippon China has developed a huge sales network of 1,600 dealers, 3,600 specialty stores, and 18,000 distribution stores, and has even reached five or six-tier cities.

It is worth noting that Nippon Band's layout of third-to-fourth lines and even lower-level channels is not as simple as expanding the sales network. This is just one step in building a service network. Since 2012, Nippon has laid “refresh flagship stores” in China’s first and second-tier cities, aiming to “provide a complete product display and service” for consumers. These refreshing flagship stores are also the image projects of Nippon, often appearing in the form of “big shops”, of which the refreshed flagship store in Zhengzhou, Henan, covers an area of ​​more than 700 square meters. The rapid emergence of these refreshing flagship stores once caused the industry's attention.

Relying on refreshing its flagship store, Nippon launched a refresh service for the “recoating” market in China. Huang Shoujin said that Nippon launched a “refresh service” that can customize a special brushing program for consumers. By focusing on the research and development of various environmental protection paint products and matching with professional accessories and tools, Nippon Steel built a “professional coating system”. It is to provide value-added services to consumers.

“This year will be promoted in 44 cities nationwide (refresh service). At present, the daily business volume in a city like Shanghai is probably 100 cases. This is an initial stage.” But this obviously cannot meet Huang Shoujin’s expectations: “I hope that In the future, we can use 200 or even 1000 refresh service usages a day."

Refreshing the flagship store and refreshing the service can be seen as an experiment for the implementation of the product sales and service model to the channel. Zhong Zhonglin, president of Nippon Paint China, once said, “Although the current proportion of brushing services in the proportion of business is still very small, but this will be an important business direction in the future.”

It can be imagined that once the time is ripe, Nippon will be able to promote this model to the third and fourth line market, so as to build the same huge service network relying on a huge sales network.

Acquisition "a small step"

In addition to the crazy layout on the channel, Nippon also changed its previous single product composition model and began to work hard on diversified product lines. This provided Nippon with a rich product base for the transformation of “all-around coating service providers”.

How to quickly expand the product line? The method Nippon chose was acquisition. In December 2013, Nippon Construction Coatings Group acquired approximately 57% of the shares of Guangzhou Xiubing Chemical Co., Ltd. ("Xiupo Chemical") (through subsequent acquisitions, Libang will eventually receive more than 70% of Xiupu Chemical.) Even 100% of the equity). Relying on the outstanding performance of the latter in the fields of floor paint and waterproofing, Nippon has filled its gaps in the field of floor paint and waterproofing. In July of this year, Nippon China issued a message on its official Weibo microblog, adding the word “Nippon” in front of “Supei polyurea technology” that has been proud of by Showpe Chemical.