In recent years, revenue of tens of billions has been a hot topic among ceramic people, and has long been a goal pursued by leading ceramic companies, including listed ceramic companies.
Compared with tens of billions of revenue based on huge scale, although "small and beautiful" contains the word "beautiful", it is always disliked by some people because they prefer "big and comprehensive".
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In order to become bigger and stronger and achieve the revenue target of tens of billions as soon as possible, several leading ceramic companies have made a series of big moves in the past few years: on the one hand, they have made full efforts to focus on real estate fine decoration projects and complete decoration channels. On the big B side, multiple channels are developed simultaneously, and all high-end and low-end products are taken care of; on the other hand, capital investment is increased to expand production capacity through technological transformation, acquisitions or new construction. Even in 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 epidemic, they still maintain a posture of making rapid progress. It is impossible not to believe that the construction and ceramics industry will soon form a tens of billions revenue corps, and the market concentration will definitely increase significantly.
However, who would have thought that under the influence of unfavorable factors such as repeated epidemics, economic downturn, rising prices of raw materials and energy, especially the "thunderstorm" of real estate companies, in just a few months, those companies that are sprinting towards tens of billions of revenue will Many listed ceramic companies have "misfired" one after another. Not only their revenue has shrunk significantly, but their profits have also plummeted.
If this is the case for the top ceramic companies listed on the market, one can imagine the plight of a large number of low-end ceramic companies that follow the same "big and comprehensive" development path.
In more than half a year, long-lasting bankruptcies and closures have occurred one after another in the construction and ceramics industry. Production suspensions, holidays, salary cuts and layoffs are also common. When it comes to the latter situation, there are some relatively strong ceramic companies.
Looking at the essence through phenomena, factors such as repeated epidemics, thunderstorms in real estate companies, and rising prices of raw materials and energy are only superficial or direct reasons for the occurrence of these phenomena. Demographic dividends, high economic growth dividends, urbanization dividends, and real estate finance The gradual disappearance of chemical dividends is the deep or fundamental reason behind it.
With the disappearance of the four major dividends and the continuous thunderstorms of real estate companies, the construction and ceramics industry has long said goodbye to the era of high growth and high profits, and the market size has also slowly dropped from the peak to the trough. Many low-end ceramic companies without clear positioning and core advantages, lack of brand accumulation and capital support, have to compete fiercely with leading ceramic companies on multiple tracks. It is difficult to become bigger and stronger. “If you don’t advance, you will retreat if you sail against the current””, it is only natural for them to fall into a life-and-death dilemma in the current difficult situation.
Until this time, some people in the industry made a profound reflection on behalf of the entire industry: If ceramic enterprises want to survive and develop, they must forget about scale and numbers, actively adjust business strategies, reduce scale, reduce production capacity, and transform from large-scale, low-cost Costs will shift towards differentiation and branding, and value innovation and value growth will be achieved by improving R&D and innovation capabilities. In the future, the "small but beautiful" model will be the inevitable choice for most ceramic companies.
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However, for most ceramic companies, is "small but beautiful" really beautiful? And is it worthy of being beautiful?
“For the complete decoration and hard decoration channels, the era of ‘small but beautiful’ brands seems to be far away. But it feels like it will definitely come, or is coming.”
"For now, 'small but beautiful' is nothing more than two paths: either give up the original positioning, give up differentiation, style, design and other things, sink downwards, and become a mediocre mass seller. The brand has fallen back into the fate of "scale". But obviously, this is a road of no return. If it does not maintain its strategic focus and continue its original narrow market positioning, it may not survive in the short term. It’s very difficult, but in the long run, as long as we get through the current ‘black hole’ and the era of personalized decoration and personalized fine decoration begins, the ‘small but beautiful’ brand will eventually usher in its own period of popularity.”
This is what a senior media person expressed about "small but beautiful" three years ago. Three years have passed, and the era of "small but beautiful" brands has clearly not yet arrived.
A few days ago, an industry insider "broke the news" to the author, saying that a "small but beautiful" ceramic company that had always been developing very well had a sharp decline in performance this year, and its boss was extremely anxious because of this. He also told the author that another "small but beautiful" ceramic company that has been in the limelight in the past two years may not be doing well at the moment, but when the author responded that this was unlikely, he smiled and said nothing.
In his view, although "small but beautiful" ceramic companies have certain differentiated advantages, after all, their sales volume is only so large, but the work they do is still indispensable, and the scale of their teams is larger than that of "all categories" The pottery enterprise is not much smaller. To sum up his point of view in one sentence, "small but beautiful" ceramic enterprises are not large in scale and have large expenses.
It is inevitably biased and arbitrary to deny the "small but beautiful" model based on individual phenomena. However, the author believes that the above point of view is not unreasonable. Of course, it is not to deny the development prospects of "small but beautiful". I just want to explore whether "small but beautiful" should become the inevitable choice of most ceramic companies in the future.
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What is "small but beautiful"?
This is a concept formally proposed by Jack Ma at the Internet Business Conference in 2012. Small means market segmentation; beauty means the extension of the product to be beautiful. It touches the users in the details and allows users to identify with it. Pursue the ultimate and return the business to the origin of consumers, whether it is product creation or marketing. The personalization and bidirectionality of services and services all reflect the direction of getting rid of roughness and pursuing meticulousness.
It can be seen from this that "small but beautiful" although small is in the front and beauty is in the back, beauty is the key point. It is not beautiful because it is small, but it is both small and beautiful. Small refers to scale; beauty refers to characteristics and perfection, which refers to a state of operation. You have it, I have it, and everyone has it, we call it homogeneity; you don’t have it and I have it, you have it and I am superior, you are superior and I am special, you are special and I am special, that is called beauty. In a sense, a "small but beautiful" enterprise is an enterprise with a distinctive brand and a professional brand.
Judged according to this standard, or looking further in the direction of "specialization, specialization and innovation", in the construction and ceramics industry with overcapacity, product and marketing homogeneity that has become extremely serious, it can be called "small but beautiful" ” In particular, there are not many ceramic enterprises that are “specialized and new”. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are only a handful.
For a ceramic company, whether it creates a new category or a new product from abroad, it can only lead the way for three or two days at most. It won't be long before other ceramic companies will catch wind of this and swarm in, either imitating or directly plagiarizing, making such categories or products overwhelmingly flood the entire ceramics industry, and then being ruined in a reckless price war. .
To put it bluntly, in the building ceramics industry where most ceramic companies mainly rely on upstream color glaze companies and machinery and equipment companies for product innovation, there is basically no technology that cannot be bought with money, and there are not many real technologies. "Small but beautiful", not to mention truly "specialized and new".
The "small but beautiful" enterprises in the building ceramics industry are not mainly reflected in product innovation and process innovation, but more reflected in the category track, brand positioning and all narrow and broad brand marketing based on this. superior.
Therefore, for ceramic enterprises to follow the "small but beautiful" development path and build core competitiveness, the key lies not in product innovation and process innovation, or even in whether they choose the right segment at the earliest, but in whether they can formulate Develop a brand positioning strategy that suits you and implement it unswervingly. On the road of "small but beautiful" development, what ultimately matters is the strategic determination of ceramic enterprises and the necessary talents to support the execution of the strategy.
If a ceramics company lacks strategic focus, lacks necessary talents, and cannot withstand the temptation of the outside world, it might as well not follow the path of "small but beautiful".
