In September 2017, a luxury casino in Saipan was engaged in a game known as the "gamble of the century." Most of the gamblers present were business tycoons who often appeared on the economic pages of newspapers, including Mr. Liu Lirong, the founder of Gionee Mobile Phone.
Everyone had piles of chips in front of them, and unlike the tense atmosphere of the scene, each gambler had a relaxed look on his face and even smiled as he talked to each other.
After the dealer dealt the cards, everyone placed bets, and the chips on the table were billions, and the scene was extremely spectacular. Liu Lirong also invested hundreds of millions of dollars, but unfortunately, he has lost many games, and he has been losing money since he sat at the table.
Mr. Liu's gamble terrified his friends. A Gionee shareholder who has a deep friendship with Liu Lirong sighed: "In the last hand, I lost 700 million US dollars, which is really shocking. ”
It was a fateful card, and Liu Lirong was unlucky in the subsequent gambling game, so he chose to give up the table and leave gloomily. After the gamble, Gionee fell into a serious debt crisis.
Although Liu Lirong can be regarded as a powerful wealthy businessman in my country, even the richest man in my country cannot afford tens of billions of gambling debts, let alone Liu Lirong, who is worth only a billion on the Forbes list.
Therefore, Liu Lirong's gamble directly led to the crisis of Gionee mobile phone company. At the shareholders' meeting at the end of 2017, Liu Lirong faced stern questions from shareholders: "Where did all that money go?" ”
In the face of the emotional shareholders, Liu Lirong always bowed his head and remained silent, not knowing whether he was looking for a solution or reflecting on his mistakes.
Liu Lirong lost hundreds of millions of dollars in Saipan's gamble, and the news spread within the company, making the company panic. There are also reports about Gionee, saying that Gionee has a problem of broken capital chain, and the debt has reached billions.
Liu Lirong was silent, and the shareholders began to ask: "Did you really go to Saipan to gamble?" Did you really lose hundreds of millions? "Didn't you say that the lack of funds was caused by the decline in sales?
Do you have any solution to this problem? "Our money is all staked on you, should you give us a reasonable explanation?" The shareholders' questions made Liu Lirong feel a lot of pressure, and he had to rush to end the shareholder meeting and think about how to deal with it.
However, after the meeting, a subordinate told him that a shareholder had called the police. At this time, Liu Lirong had no choice but to temporarily abandon the problem and take refuge in Hong Kong.
When Mr. Lau first lived in a Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong, he still had expectations for his business empire, so he was actively looking for a solution to the crisis, even though he was hiding from debt.
Gionee's predicament is not limited to Liu Lirong's personal situation, but also includes internal problems and a complex market environment. Therefore, despite Liu Lirong's painstaking efforts, he was unable to find an effective solution, and had to find other ways to solve his economic difficulties.
One of the quickest and most effective ways to do this is to downsize your company. Soon after, Gionee posted a "Note on the Current Situation of Gionee Industrial Park" on its official account, in which it stated that in order to ensure the normal operation of the company, Gionee will lay off 50% of its employees.
After the release of the "Explanation of the Situation", people found that the Jinli Industrial Park in Dalingshan, Dongguan, Guangdong Province, was unusually quiet and empty.
According to Gionee employees, the company has recently seen an increase in the number of people, perhaps one or two hundred. Previously, Gionee carried out large-scale layoffs, leaving only about 80 people.
The crisis was so severe that there were less than 100 employees left in one park. Liu Lirong chose to rent a house in Central, Hong Kong, and live there for a long time, but escaping did not solve the problem.
The company itself has little room for help, and Mr. Liu has been trying to get financial assistance from the outside world. However, despite the passage of more than a dozen months, he has not found the funds to bail him out, and even internal executives have tried to drive him out.
At the end of 2018, an article entitled "Review of the Mystery of Gionee's Decline: Chairman Liu Lirong Admits Gambling Debts of Over 1 Billion" once again pushed Liu Lirong to the forefront.
In the face of internal and external pressure from the company, Liu Lirong publicly said: "The main reason for Gionee's capital chain problems is that the marketing expenses and investment expenses in 2016 and 2017 are too large.
In 2016 and 2017, Gionee's marketing expenses reached more than 6 billion yuan, and the foreign investment expenses exceeded 3 billion yuan within three years, and the two expenses were close to 10 billion yuan, which had a great impact on Gionee's capital chain, resulting in difficulties in payment turnover, and then being applied for asset preservation by ** merchants. ”
Regarding the news that he lost tens of billions of dollars in gambling on Saipan, Liu Lirong resolutely denied its authenticity. "I did go to Saipan to gamble, and I did lose some money, but I only lost about a billion yuan, not 10 billion as the outside world said," he said. ”
However, despite Liu Lirong's response, due to the inability to repay the debt, nearly 20 of Gionee's leading businessmen jointly submitted an application for bankruptcy reorganization against Gionee to the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court.
1.Liu Lirong had hinted that Gionee might face bankruptcy and restructuring, but the plan was suspended due to disagreements with the restructuring party on the issue of equity. Excessive marketing has made Gionee a "vase".
2.According to a Gionee shareholder, Liu Lirong may lose more than 10 billion yuan in gambling, and the amount of misappropriation may be about 6 billion, but he denied this statement.
Gionee's operational problems have gradually emerged in the past few years. 3.Gionee used to be the leader in China's mobile phone market, and since 2005, the company has grown rapidly through a series of operations, such as hiring spokespersons, expanding the market, releasing new phones, and entering overseas markets.
Founder Liu Lirong's initiative has contributed a lot. In the era when traffic was not paramount, Liu Lirong began to actively seek endorsements, and Gionee's first brand spokesperson was Andy Lau, and Feng Xiaogang personally produced promotional advertisements for him.
Andy Lau's influence goes without saying, supplemented by high-impact advertising, Gionee successfully got rid of the "copycat" label and became a high-end brand. Since then, Gionee's development can be described as smooth sailing, no matter how to go to the top can trigger a boom, sales have also soared.
However, the success behind it is often a sign of crisis. After tasting the sweetness of inviting celebrities to endorse, Liu Lirong even invited many first-line celebrities to help.
Gionee Mobile is not only involved in the field of film and television, sports and aerospace, but also takes sports as the focus of brand optimization. Liu believes that sponsoring entertainment programs is no longer in line with the era of branding, and masculine sports such as football and basketball are favored by Gionee's target audience.
Therefore, Gionee signed a contract with the men's football team, which was still quite competitive at that time and successfully qualified for the Asian Cup qualifiers. At the same time, the successful launch of Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2 also allowed Gionee mobile phone M6 series to travel in space with them, showing a very high brand influence.
At that time, only a very small number of mobile phone brands in China were able to enjoy a good reputation at home and abroad like Gionee, and half of the scenery was due to the spokesperson hired by the first company.
However, behind this practice of asking spokespersons and making naming names, there is an increasingly empty financial situation and an unsustainable capital chain of Gionee. I don't know if you still remember the classic slogan of Gionee mobile phone: "Gionee M2017, the standard configuration of success"?
Many people may have heard of Gionee mobile phones and even know something about them, but few people have actually used them. This is because, although Liu Lirong has invested a lot of money in marketing to let people know about the Gionee brand, the response in the market has been mediocre.
In addition, the intelligence of Gionee mobile phone is not outstanding, which makes it seem useless in comparison with its peers, and is even regarded as a mobile phone for the elderly by young people. Over time, Gionee was gradually surpassed by other brands.
In order to reverse the decline, Liu Lirong decided to invest heavily in advertising. In the two years from 2016 to 2017, Gionee spent more than 6 billion yuan on advertising.
However, even with such a large amount of expenses, Gionee did not make much profit from the products sold. Gionee's official data shows that the company sold 27 million mobile phones in just one year after the advertisement.
What's more, the main feature of Gionee mobile phones is that they are cheap, and these sold phones are not even enough to pay for the company's advertising.
Since 2017, Gionee Mobile has defaulted on the payment of commercial goods due to the tight capital chain, which has attracted widespread attention. At the same time, because Liu Lirong loves to gamble, people have speculated that the shortage of funds may be related to his gambling losses.
Coupled with the stagnation of the smartphone market in 2017, Gionee's mobile phone sales declined, and the market environment dealt a heavy blow to it. According to Li Jun, many factories in Dongguan are operating poorly and even facing closure in the context of the economic downturn.
Gionee Mobile has not been spared, and has experienced debts, gambling, equity freezes, layoffs, shares of ** Indian company, the resignation of vice presidents, and hundreds of debts.
In one year, Gionee went from glory to loneliness and gradually faded out of the public eye. As the founder, Liu Lirong is in a difficult situation, and since the shareholders' meeting at the end of 2017, he went to Hong Kong to avoid the limelight, and his whereabouts are still unknown.
In June 2022, ** Liu Lirong's recent situation, he was listed as a dishonest person subject to execution by the Second People's Court of Dongguan City, and the amount involved was 66,786 yuan.
Although this amount may not be difficult for Liu Lirong to repay, along with other outstanding arrears, the total amount he owes has exceeded 1.2 billion yuan.
This makes it quite difficult to repay this huge sum. Liu Lirong has changed from an elegant gentleman to a "brainless gambler", which is a fact that many people can't believe.
He comes across as too serious and elegant in life and in the mall, making it difficult for people to associate him with gambling. Having been in the communication circle for many years, I have a good impression of Liu Lirong, a fellow from Hunan, and the Gionee mobile phone he leads.
I expect Gionee to become a backbone and even a banner in China's smartphone manufacturing field, just like domestic mobile phone brands such as Huawei. In addition to the factor of hometown, I also appreciate Liu Lirong's knowledge, vision and steadiness, and he is a model of success through his own hard work.
Although Liu Lirong's recent situation surprises us, his past and future still deserve our attention and anticipation.
Liu Lirong graduated from Central South University, located in Changsha City, Hunan Province, which is a key university of China's "985 Project" and "211 Project". In that era when college students were still relatively rare, Liu Lirong, who was able to graduate from such a high-quality university, was undoubtedly more prominent.
Subsequently, Liu Lirong was assigned to Tianjin Nonferrous Metals Research Institute for internship, mainly engaged in scientific research and research, including superconducting materials, nuclear materials, bioengineering materials and other high-tech new materials.
Generally speaking, such scientific researchers are highly valued and respected in our country. However, Liu Lirong did not have much interest in this profession, and after only two years of work, he chose to jump to Zhongshan Xiaobawang Electronic Technology to continue his studies in electronic technology.
Liu Lirong's experience in Zhongshan Xiaobawang Electronic Technology Company was not long, and he joined Guangdong Jinzheng Group in 1997. This turnaround was a key starting point in his life, as he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Group, accumulating a wealth of management experience and important network resources.
All these laid a solid foundation for his later establishment of Gionee Communication Company. After working in Kingjee Group for four years, he successfully founded Gionee Communications Company with his own efforts.
Liu Lirong has a great vision. At that time, there were very few domestic mobile phone brands in China, and even brands such as Huawei (which began to expand its mobile phone business in July 2003) and Xiaomi (which entered the mobile phone market in July 2011) were not yet born.
At this time, Gionee has become a leader in the industry. At first, Liu Lirong focused on OEM, and Gionee's annual sales were as high as 800 million yuan. In 2005, he boldly invested money to support the company's independent research and development of mobile phone business.
At that time, China's mobile phone market was like an uncultivated blue ocean, so Gionee mobile phones swept the country as soon as they came out. The following year, Gionee won the national domestic mobile phone sales championship in one fell swoop, which undoubtedly made Liu Lirong full of confidence in his career.
From 2006 to 2009, Gionee has been the sales champion of domestic mobile phones, Gionee also hired celebrity endorsements, and named some variety shows, promoting sales to the peak.
In 2010, Liu Lirong began to enter the Indian market. Gionee phones are also quite popular in the Indian market due to their inexpensive and durable value.
After Liu Lirong successfully tested the waters in India, he set his sights on Nepal, Bangladesh, Russia, Turkey and other places, and even included South America and Eastern Europe into the international map.
In 2012, Gionee's internationalization journey has begun to take shape, and global shipments have grown steadily. In 2014, Gionee's annual global smartphone shipments reached 28 million units, far exceeding domestic shipments.
Liu Lirong made it clear that domestic mobile phones must go international, and the global strategy is Gionee's choice, and they began to lay out overseas early and position themselves in the mid-to-high-end market.
His foresight has allowed Gionee to have a smooth sail in overseas markets, and he has already achieved low-key success in the Indian market when Huawei and Xiaomi were still struggling to enter India.
However, fate seems to play a joke on him, and despite his intelligence, sagacity, and vision, he is infected with bad habits. Some say he gambles to relieve stress, but his gambling style only seems to cause him more trouble.
Rich for a while, gambling for a lifetime. As the founder of Gionee, Liu Lirong lost all the money in gambling games again and again, not only bankrupting himself, but also plunging Gionee into a debt crisis.
Now, in the face of sky-high debts, he can only avoid Hong Kong. Regarding the past, Liu Lirong deeply regretted that he had publicly given up and wanted to become an invisible person.
From a gentle gentleman to a brainless gambler who is addicted to gambling, such a transformation is deeply regrettable. Gionee's shareholder, who had been good friends with him, also said that although he did not want to believe that the news was true, he was lucky and hoped that it was just an Internet rumor.
Gambling can be harmful, not only to yourself, but also to the people around you who trust you.