Article|Longxi
Source|Business Legend
Would you use your own name as the name of your company? In other words, do you dare?
Many century-old brands have clear logos. One of their characteristics is that they are named after their own surname or first name, such as Wang Zhihe, Lee Kum Kee, Zhang Xiaoquan, etc. Many famous foreign brands also come from the names of their founders, such as Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Ford, Toyota, etc.
Everyone will cherish their reputation. Using your own name as a company name is equivalent to permanently binding yourself to the company, and permanently binding your own reputation to the credibility of the company.
Nowadays, it seems that small businesses prefer to use names such as "Li Ji XX" or "Zhangjia XX", while large companies tend to use names such as "Heng X" and "X Da".
However, there are also several founders who have used their own names and have become billionaires.
In the past two years, new energy vehicles have been highly sought after. Among them, Xpeng Motors, as one of the "new car-making forces", has been familiar to many people.
The brand of Xiaopeng Automobile comes from the founder He Xiaopeng. He is from Huangshi, Hubei.
When he first started his business, he did not use his own name as the business name. After graduating from South China University of Technology, He Xiaopeng worked for AsiaInfo for many years before resigning to start his own business and established UC. UC has little to do with He Xiaopeng's name.
In 2014, UC was sold to Alibaba at a record price for mergers and acquisitions in China’s Internet industry. He Xiaopeng joined Alibaba with UC. At the same time, he, Xia Heng and others founded a new energy automobile company, originally named Guangzhou Chengxing Intelligent Automotive Technology Co., Ltd.
At that time, I thought of many names, and they were all registered. Xia Heng once suggested calling it "Xpeng Automobile". But after He Xiaopeng discussed it with his family, they all objected, so he registered the trademark "Orange Auto".
It can be seen that everyone is generally cautious about using their own names as business names and trademarks.
In 2017, He Xiaopeng resigned from Alibaba and served as the company's chairman. He devoted himself entirely to the new energy automobile industry before renaming the company and trademark "Xiaopeng".
Today, Xpeng Motors has achieved considerable success. It has been listed on Nasdaq and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and its market value ranks among the top 10 automotive companies in the world. In the latest rich list, He Xiaopeng's wealth reaches 71 billion yuan.
There is also an old company named after its founder, namely Shaanxi Buchang Group. It was founded by Zhao Buchang and his son Zhao Tao.
Zhao Buchang was born in 1942. He is a native of Chang'an County, Shaanxi Province (now Chang'an District). After graduating from university, he worked as a doctor in Xinjiang, Shaanxi and other places for 20 years. His wife Wu Haiqin and son Zhao Tao, his daughter Zhao Jing and others all studied medicine and practiced medicine. While working in the hospital, Zhao Buchang once established a company with a foreign company. Due to various reasons, not only did it not succeed, he and his wife were both expelled from the hospital.
In 1992, he and his son Zhao Tao went to Singapore to attend an academic seminar on traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Zhao Tao's live treatment performance caused a sensation in the local area.
The next year, Zhao Buchang and his son Zhao Tao founded Buchang Group, originally called Xianyang Buchang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., which mainly produced traditional Chinese medicine preparations for the treatment of heart disease. The most famous one is "Buchang Naoxin" Pass".
Its success was achieved in Shandong. In 2001, Buchang Group invested and established Buchang Pharmaceutical in Heze, Shandong. In 2016, Buchang Pharmaceutical went public and its stock price soared, becoming the first company in Shandong to have its stock price exceed 100. As a result, Zhao Tao briefly surpassed Zhang Shiping of Weiqiao Group and became the richest man in Shandong.
Today, the Zhao Buchang family is on the rich list with the name Zhao Tao, with the latest wealth reaching 30.5 billion yuan.
There is a fishing tackle manufacturer in Shandong that is very familiar to fishing enthusiasts. The name also comes from the founder, but many people do not associate it with the name of the person.
This company is called Guangwei, and it is the world's largest fishing tackle manufacturer.
The founder of Guangwei is Chen Guangwei, who was born in a peasant family in Weihai, Shandong. In 1987, he took over the Weihai Petrochemical Scientific Research Equipment Factory, a local township enterprise that was on the verge of bankruptcy.
After becoming the director of the factory, Chen Guangwei decisively switched to fishing rod production and soon became the largest fishing tackle manufacturer in China and even the world.
Five years later, he named the company after himself and established Guangwei Group.
In fact, his greatest contribution is not the production of fishing rods and other fishing gear, but doing a major matter related to national security.
A kind of material is used in the production of fishing rods, called carbon fiber. This material is widely used in aerospace and other defense fields. For a long time, carbon fiber has been monopolized by foreign countries. From products to production technology to production equipment, developed countries have implemented strict blockades on China.
We don’t have any say. Whether the other party sells the materials to Guangwei and the price is entirely up to the other party. The other party also visits Guangwei’s site from time to time to check whether the materials are completely used in the production of fishing rods.
Later, the country set up a special 863 project with the intention of conquering this technology. However, after a period of research, the researchers found no progress, so they approached Chen Guangwei. Chen Guangwei said "we must do something for the country" and invested a lot of manpower and financial resources in the research and development of carbon fiber. It was ultimately successful, making China one of the few countries in the world that has mastered this technology.
It is for this reason that Chen Guangwei is called a "national hero."
However, Guangwei paid a heavy price for this. The company was almost unsustainable due to the break in the capital chain many times. When Chen Guangwei was seriously ill, he also felt guilty that the company had "escaped wealth and became poor".
In 2017, Chen Guangwei passed away, and Guangwei Composite Materials went public a few months later. He did not see the day when the company would usher in glory.
In the latest rich list, his wife Wang Yanqing and son Chen Liang are on the list together, with a wealth of 12 billion yuan.
There are also many companies named after individuals. The more famous ones include Longping Hi-Tech and Denghai Seed Industry, named after two agricultural scientists. Yuan Longping and Li Denghai are known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice" and "Father of China's Compact Hybrid Corn" respectively; there is also a Shaanxi Photovoltaic LONGi company. The shares were founded by Li Zhenguo and several other Lanzhou University alumni. They agreed when they were in college that their future venture would be named after Jiang Longji, the distinguished old president of Lanzhou University.
In sharp contrast, there are also many people who use various methods to hide their relationship with enterprises.
What do you think of these two completely different approaches?