In mid-January, Beijing was approaching the depths of winter.
A Gree store located outside the third ring road is a little withered, Shen Wenqiu came with curiosity to inquire about the source of rose air conditioners, she wanted to choose an air conditioner for her newlywed daughter, the salesman said in a lost tone, "There are only a few online, we don't have them here." ”
Recently, the rose air conditioner designed by Dong Mingzhu himself has been on the hot search with its earthy taste and sky-high price, and has been complained by young people that it is "expensive and ugly".
Gree Rose air conditioner (source network).
This is not the first time she has had a value conflict with young people, a few years ago, she complained that her former secretary Meng Yutong couldn't write articles, and used Gree's platform to be an Internet celebrity, and her remarks about only making money had just gone off the hot search. At a time when young people are having difficulty finding employment, the idea of "taking less money to see dreams" is not bought.
Negative topics have fermented repeatedly, but in Dong Mingzhu's view, these are just "storms in a teacup".
When the conflict of values between the old and new times becomes more and more intense, this stubborn topic queen still goes her own way, senseless and fearless. But the wind and rain in the outside world are actually more violent, and the ace Gree Electric in her hand seems to have entered a dark moment.
The queen of news, the iron and blood are still there
Since becoming Gree's No. 1 position in 2012, Dong Mingzhu is Gree's best spokesperson.
Under her helm, you can see the combination of blood and controversy. Replace the veteran spokesperson Jackie Chan and go into battle by himself, bet 1 billion with Lei Jun, and use ** photos as the boot screen of Gree's mobile phone, promising that the group employees have one suite for one person, and they will train Meng Yutong to become "the next Dong Mingzhu"...Her image of a straightforward, tough, and resolute female entrepreneur is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
There is never a shortage of topics and supporters from investors, largely because Dong Mingzhu did have a good record at that time.
In the early stage of joining Gree, Dong Mingzhu was an out-and-out iron-blooded champion, with no high education, no complicated family background, and no opportunities such as Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong and others who had stood on the cusp, her success was the result of personal struggle and tempering, and almost represented the ceiling of ordinary people's career development.
At that time, Dong Mingzhu was still a high-level model for migrant workers, and she was also "her own person" in the eyes of most visitors, and she also claimed that she was "just an ordinary air conditioner seller".
Her subordinates commented that she understands the market very well and knows how to judge the situation. Unlike theorists on paper, Dong Mingzhu is a practical person, she will not apply Sun Tzu's Art of War, all decision-making and management methods come from the market experience day after day, and the thinking precipitated in the process is finally internalized into business intuition.
Dong Mingzhu likes to read books about struggle, and she has tried her best to "just" many reform nodes in the history of Gree Electric Appliances. When there was a problem with the channel, she kept the dealer representative and set up a new dealer team; When focusing on the quality of the group, Fang Xiangjian, who often offended people because of this, was also promoted by Dong Mingzhu and became an executive; Whenever Gree Electric is approached by soldiers in the city, Dong Mingzhu's sentence "The sky falls, first of all, I will stand up", which is the best footnote to stabilize the morale of the army.
Looking at every march in Gree's history, you will find that Dong Mingzhu's business thinking is constantly changing, and many entrepreneurs are used to sleeping on the credit books of the past, but she never sticks to empiricism. If it weren't for the recent news, it can be said that she has never been out of step with the times and has never made fatal mistakes.
*After Gree, Miss Dong said that she would create another Gree in five years, and she did not break her promise. It took six years for Gree to double its revenue, and 2018 was a milestone, with its revenue reaching nearly 200 billion yuan for the first time and its net profit tripling. Until now, Gree's annual income has stabilized at more than 200 billion, and after fighting for half a lifetime, Dong Mingzhu, who is nearly 70 years old, considers the problem of being the best person.
Meng Yutong was appreciated by Dong Mingzhu in a workplace variety show, "she was the only one out of nine people". mentioned the reason why he liked this 98-year-old girl, because Meng Yutong made it clear that he didn't care about the salary, as long as the monthly salary reached 4,500 yuan, he was satisfied, and he cared more about personal growth. ”
The two did have a honeymoon period. Dong Mingzhu tried his best to cultivate her, let Meng Yutong be his secretary, attend with him on large and small occasions, and even rumored that Meng Yutong was her ** person, and he would be the "second Dong Mingzhu" in the future.
Since 2020, the trend of live streaming has begun, and Miss Dong has not been left behind by the times, in addition to going into the live broadcast room in person, she hopes that Meng Yutong can take on the burden of the live broadcast business. In addition to doing a good job as a secretary, Meng Yutong opened a live broadcast of the "Pearl Yutong Select Store" on Douyin to sell small household appliances.
Unfortunately, Gree's consumers are reluctant to pay for Meng Yutong, and in half a year, the total sales of Mingzhu Yutong's selected live broadcast room did not exceed 4 million yuan, which is less than the one-minute data of Dong Mingzhu's live broadcast. For Gree's hundreds of billions of income, it is like a needle sinking into the sea.
Sales were weak, Meng Yutong naturally fell out of favor, and the identity of the anchor was quickly replaced by Wang Ziru, the original ** person who joined Gree.
Later, Meng Yutong's resignation was not surprising, but Miss Dong repeatedly beat in the following public lectures, completely breaking the peace of the pair of master and apprentice.
Five months after Meng Yutong's resignation, Dong Mingzhu said in a high-profile interview, "Internet celebrities don't look at the quality of Internet celebrities, and advertising outside in Gree is not compliant." Talent training is a joke, whether the person I fancy is a talent or not is determined by his own behavior, and choosing the wrong talent is the biggest problem. ”
From sarcasm to ridicule, from ** people to negative examples, Miss Dong's words are obviously full of emotion, and the words that used to directly target young people have also been turned out: "It is recommended to legislate to charge training fees for employees' job-hopping", "Just thinking about making more money is no different from the walking dead", "Money should not be the dream of college students, money is the result of struggle", she recognized every word, but it almost caused public anger and completely pushed her to the opposite side of the worker.
Someone said, "Miss Dong, what age is it, still painting cakes?" "I'm out to work, isn't it just for money? ”。No matter how Gree explained the response, the clash of values was inevitable, and the scene was ugly for a while.
But Dong Mingzhu never thought that she was wrong, on the contrary, she still felt that she would not look at the wrong person, the wrong company, and the wrong era.
The fog of diversity
The stock price of other people's chips has risen, because it is just talking; Dong Mingzhu's stock price fell when she made chips, and that was because she really did it. ”
Looking back at the new industries that Gree Electric has tossed, most of them are anticlimactic and have not made a splash, which seems to be ridiculed by netizens, but I didn't expect it to become a prophecy.
The latest acquisition action caused a loss of real money to shareholders, which made Dong Mingzhu much criticized.
On December 20 last year, Gree announced that it would increase its holdings in its holding subsidiary Gree Titanium New Energy Co., Ltd., which fell by more than 7% in the capital market on the same day, erasing the year's gains.
The predecessor of Gree Titanium is Zhuhai Yinlong, and its main business is lithium titanate batteries, which can be used in new energy vehicles. In 2016, when Dong Mingzhu tried to acquire Yinlong, he once called it "gold buried in the sand", which was an important way for Gree to achieve the next 100 billion revenue.
The acquisition process did not go smoothly. Whether it is to completely win Yinlong with 13 billion yuan, it is strongly opposed by the "ministers" and gives up, or it is "saving the game" Wang Jianlin, Liu Qiangdong and other bigwigs to get Yinlong 22 with 3 billion yuan39% equity, this five-year story, with the Yinlong thunderstorm and become more and more absurd, the financial situation is beyond the means, arrears of the first commercial payment, factory shutdown, suspension of listing, Yinlong is almost devastated.
Compared with the value of lithium titanate batteries, which has not yet been confirmed to the outside world, the focus of testing the patience of shareholders is that the snowball of Yinlong's debt is getting bigger and bigger. Public data shows that at the end of 2020, Yinlong's asset-liability ratio exceeded 78%, and even Dong Mingzhu had to admit that "I didn't know how big Yinlong's hole was until later".
But as stubborn as Dong Mingzhu, even though Greti has initially shown twilight, she still starts blindfolded. In August 2021, Gree Electric participated in the judicial auction public bidding method to a total of 182.8 billion yuan ** bid for Yinlong 30With 47% of the equity, Yinlong became a holding subsidiary of Gree Electric Appliances and officially changed its name to Gree Titanium.
In their opinion, Greti's successive losses are no longer high-quality assets, and they have voted with their feet. Now, the value of 100% equity of Gree Titanium is 413.8 billion yuan, which has fallen 69 percent from the peak valuation of about 13.4 billion yuan seven years ago1%。
Gree Electric also revealed in the announcement that in the next 12 months, Gree Electric will choose the opportunity to carry out the company's agreement to transfer the remaining 27 of Gree Titanium53% of the shares, which will be fully recruited in the future. Affected by this news, the market value of Gree Electric Evaporated 13.2 billion on the same day, and the total market value as of the date of publication was 18752.6 billion yuan, only the old rival Midea Group 3723Half of the market value of 0.4 billion yuan.
Now, giants such as Wanda and Jingdong have begun to admit losses and leave the market, only Dong Mingzhu is still insisting, she hopes that everyone will give Gree Titanium some more time, "There is a process of filling the pit, but I think new energy is the future and the world a starting line running industry, but also China's largest manufacturing industry transformation is an excellent opportunity." So I'm going to vote, I'm going to bet. ”
Gree, it's time for a change
Miss Dong's persistence may be due to the fact that Gree in her hand began to have no cards to play.
The consensus in the industry is that China's home appliance market has entered a relatively fierce stage of stock competition, the market is extremely saturated, and there is serious overcapacity, especially in the air conditioning industry, and the growth is approaching the ceiling.
Compared with the old friends Midea and Haier, the revenue of Gree Electric Appliances is still highly dependent on a single product of air conditioning, taking the first half of 2023 as an example, Midea's air conditioning business revenue accounts for only 3277%, and the revenue of non-home appliances business has accounted for more than 30%; Gree's air conditioning business accounted for 70% of its revenue54%, and other businesses have not yet taken shape.
The more bloody reality is that Gree, the elephant, has a hard time dancing and is not living an easy life.
In 2019, the year-on-year growth rate of Gree's revenue was only 002%, compared to 33 in the previous yearThe growth rate of 61% is far from it, and in 2020, Gree's revenue will decline by 14% year-on-year97% to 16819.9 billion yuan. In the past two years, Gree has only held on to the basic plate.
Dong Mingzhu knows very well that at present, Gree Electric must strive to diversify its income to ensure that it has more advantages in market competition, otherwise Gree's next 100 billion can only be empty talk. For this reason, she has been planning for a long time.
When the mobile phone industry broke out, Gree expected to build high-rise buildings on the ground, set up a mobile phone team on a large scale, and poached people from Lenovo, Coolpad, and Gionee. At the beginning of 2015, Dong Mingzhu threatened: "I want to make a mobile phone, it is a matter of minutes, it is too easy, and it will definitely surpass Xiaomi." A few months later, Gree's first generation of mobile phones came out.
But she underestimated the involution of the mobile phone market, looking at the history of Chinese smartphones, people who can survive usually have accurate time points and excellent product ideas, and Gree mobile phones do not have these two points. As a mobile phone industry analyst said, Gree mobile phone entered the market late, and the product power is not enough to play.
Since its inception for 8 years, relevant sales data has never been disclosed, and since 2022, in the financial report of Gree Electric Appliances, the mobile phone business has become more difficult to find, which has shown from the side that the performance of the business is not impressive.
In May 2023, the Gree mobile phone team was revealed to be disbanded, the official website of the mobile phone was offline, and the official *** stopped changing, and in November 2021, after the sixth-generation new Gree machine TOSOT G7 came out, there has been no new work released for two years, leaving a lot of chicken feathers.
From mobile phones to prefabricated dishes, to chips and automobiles, Dong Mingzhu's successive ventures, and the flowers gradually became charming, which made Gree completely fall into the fog of diversified growth, and never ran out of the second leading industry like air conditioning.
This is also very easy to understand Dong Mingzhu's dedication to Greti, ant soldiers, always have to correct one, and new energy and energy storage are the most investment hotspots at present, containing infinite tension. Dong Mingzhu repeated in many interviews, "The new energy sector represents the future of Gree Electric. ”
In her expectation, through the development of energy storage technology, Gree's air conditioners, motors, and automobiles will increase application channels and extend the thickness of Gree's industrial chain. Under her imagination, "everyone sat in the car made by Gree, held Gree's mobile phone, controlled the temperature of the air conditioner at home, and enjoyed the delicious food brought by Gree." ”
Now, looking back on the picture outlined by Dong Mingzhu, it is even more embarrassing. In the six years of betting on Greti, if not a complete failure, it is far from a success.
In the Fortune Global 500 released in August last year, Gree failed to make the list. In the face of ** question, Miss Dong said that she was not sad at all, "It's still the same sentence, I know best how my body is." Although Gree has grown slowly in the past two years, it is still a very good enterprise and a company with steady development. ”
The only problem is that Dong Mingzhu, the iconic symbol of female entrepreneurs, has slowly changed from a complete compliment to a slightly derogatory meaning, young people are afraid of her harshness, and they can't get used to her mother's taste, and then they don't recognize the products she leads, because the times are changing, and the excellent qualities that an outdated rich man cares about, as well as the design of supervision, are the last of the strong crossbows in the current young world.
Although there is no distinction between right and wrong, such a general value conflict is likely to become a lingering thorn in Gree's heart when the old and new worlds are replaced.
Seeing Shen Wenqiu's eyes disappointed, the salesman of the Gree store opened the window of "Gree Pearl Selection" in Douyin to see if he could place an order online for her. Among them, the price of hanging rose air conditioners is 13,529 yuan, and the number sold is 1; Cabinet rose air conditioner, inverter two horses, three horses of ** are 27,999 yuan, 29,999 yuan, the number of sold is 4. This "love" designed by Dong Mingzhu himself does not seem to have reached the hearts of users.