Introduction to the Stone: On the road to success, only by looking for stronger opponents can we continuously arouse strong fighting spirit. As the world-renowned management expert James Morse said: "The only advantage in sustainable competition comes from the ability to innovate beyond competitors."

Jinmei | Text

1984 In 2009, Ruan Liping, who graduated from Wuhan Institute of Water Resources and Electric Power, was assigned to Hangzhou Hydropower Machinery Factory and began a ten-year career within the system.

Three years later, in 1987, Lei Jun was admitted to the Computer Science Department of Wuhan University, completed the university course in two years, and began to enter the computer industry.

Two seemingly unrelated people met in 2015.

In March 2015, Xiaomi launched a socket with three USB interfaces, preparing to continue its previous sales miracle in refrigerators, washing machines, signature pens, headphones and other fields. Lei Jun said: "China sells 400 million sockets every year, but the sockets on the market are ugly, messy, and rough." Xiaomi's art-quality sockets are priced at only 49 yuan, and nearly 250,000 were sold on the day they were released.

The "spoiler" Lei Jun inserted himself into the hinterland of Ruan Liping's company. At that time, Ruan Liping's Bull Socket was already the industry leader. The revolutionary Xiaomi made Ruan Liping restless. He held an emergency meeting of senior executives and set out to fight head-on. In order to ensure victory, he also introduced partners at the cost of 2.2 shares to help the Bulls resist Xiaomi.

The final result of this battle was that Bulls defeated Xiaomi, and more importantly, Lei Jun "awakened" Ruan Liping and opened up a new world of the Internet for him.

Lei Jun is not the first "strong opponent" Ruan Liping has encountered. From his early years, he fought against domestic shoddy socket manufacturers, to competing with Coca-Cola Company to sell sockets like daily necessities, and then to trying to match the big foreign socket brands. And actively caught up, and then fought hard to catch up after being attacked by Xiaomi... Every step Ruan Liping took to become a "monopoly giant" in the industry was thanks to these opponents who made him stronger.

1

Survival from desperate situation

In 1964, Ruan Liping was born in Guyaopu Village, Cixi, Zhejiang. Ruan Liping, who has followed his father to the sea since he was a child, has seen the difficulty of life early on, but it has also sharpened his perseverance. When he was 10 years old, he was inspired by the story of the engineer in the revolutionary movie "The Age of Fire" who overcame many difficulties to make "Qi Qi Steel" and determined to do a career when he grew up.

In 1984, Ruan Liping, who graduated from university, entered the Hangzhou Hydropower Machinery Factory. But with the deepening of reform and opening up, people's suppressed dreams of getting rich began to explode, and Ruan Liping was eager to try. In his spare time, he sold pork and walnuts, and was the first person to bring strawberry cultivation to his hometown of Cixi. Unfortunately, these attempts were not very successful.

As household appliances began to enter ordinary people's homes, Cixi became a major socket production town. Ruan Liping's relatives and friends all started the business of reselling sockets, including his younger brother Ruan Xueping. At that time, Ruan Liping's dormitory in Hangzhou was a transit point for his younger brothers and relatives. It's just that the quality of the sockets they sell is very poor, 3 or 4 out of 10 are broken. Ruan Liping helps them repair the sockets every day after get off work.

"Why can't we make a socket that lasts forever?" In 1995, Ruan Liping simply quit his job, and the two brothers used the 20,000 yuan they had saved to start a business, with the two brothers sharing the equity equally.

The socket designed by Ruan Liping is several blocks away from the sockets produced by rural old men in earthen workshops. He registered the socket as the Bulls brand, hoping to continue to improve and win first place like the NBA champion Bulls!

Colleagues were very shameful about this product that was ruining their money. "The socket lasts forever. Who will you sell it to in the future?" But Ruan Liping firmly believed that he was right. He said: "There is no money in the world." There are two kinds, one is money now and the other is money in the future.

If you only focus on the present, your company will have no future. "In 1996, he also developed and produced the industry's first socket with a switch.

Ruan Liping was determined to build a good socket, but reality gave him a loud slap in the face. At that time, the entry threshold for the socket industry was very high. Low, everyone is in a price war. The price of Bull is 50-60 RMB higher than that of its peers. Consumers don't recognize it at all.

A house full of sockets cannot be sold, and the company is in trouble. This is the most difficult time for Ruan Liping. He could hardly afford to pay the 2,000 yuan utility bill.

In 1998, Ruan Liping was desperate and his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. He suddenly received a big order. An American company wanted to order 15,000 sockets. This is a big order of 400,000 yuan, but China can't find a product that meets the requirements. After receiving the order, Ruan Liping locked himself in his room for more than half a month, designing the product day and night, and then working with the workers to make prototypes. After the samples came out, the American company was very satisfied and placed an additional order of 200,000 yuan.

This incident shocked the entire Cixi. /p>

Learn from the best and become the first

Although the company has survived, how to sell good products better is still a problem that troubles Ruan Liping

Once, Ruan Liping was wandering on the street, and suddenly a Coca-Cola distribution truck came into his sight, and he instantly discovered the gap.

At that time, Bull sold the product to the owner of the hardware store. People pick up the goods themselves, but because of the short sales cycle of fast-moving consumer goods, companies like Coca-Cola deliver the goods to stores. This not only increases market share, but also allows Coca-Cola to have a deeper understanding of the market and consumers.

After understanding this, Ruan Liping turned Bull's "sitting business" into "traveling business" when he returned, seizing the market faster than his competitors. The goods in the warehouse were delivered to various hardware stores as soon as possible. , they have much more chances of being bought by consumers.

In addition, Ruan Liping also implements distribution and sales visits, sending professionals to analyze market conditions, industry conditions, customer needs, and product improvements. Carry out ground-level interviews and surveys, and quickly solve problems once they are discovered.

Because he is not strong enough, Ruan Liping has never done TV advertisements, and he basically uses wall advertisements to increase the Bulls' popularity. He suddenly thought that in order to build a brand, the billboard in the hardware store is the most accurate advertising wall. So Bull started to make signboards for the owner of the hardware store for free, and the only requirement was to put the Bull logo on it. 400,000 plaques were produced across the country, and the brand's popularity increased rapidly.

If you want channel dealers to be dedicated to helping the brand sell goods, you need to give them enough motivation. Ruan Liping gave up 50% of the profit to the channel. With excellent quality, door-to-door delivery, customer satisfaction, and high enough profits, it would be difficult for Bull to become popular.

In 2000, Ruan Liping, who had succeeded domestically, extended his tentacles to the international market, but unexpectedly suffered a setback.

Due to his experience with previous overseas orders, in order to open up a larger market, Ruan Liping spent 600,000 to introduce high-end manufacturing equipment and start export business. I thought my products were of excellent quality, but I didn't expect that this time they were returned because they did not meet European and American standards and were fined tens of millions. At that time, all Siemens sockets had anti-shock function, but Ruan Liping had never heard of this function. He didn't expect that compared with these foreign brands, he was so unsophisticated.

In 2001, Bull had become the number one brand in sockets in China, with a market share of 20%. But Ruan Liping, who had suffered a "sap" as soon as he stepped out of the country, was not convinced. He was not satisfied with being the "local emperor" in the socket industry. With an international benchmark, Ruan Liping found new motivation.

In order to keep up with these big international brands, he began to cooperate with these big brands in production, while improving his own technical level, while learning the advanced management systems of foreign companies.

In 2003, Ruan Liping spent 10 million yuan to build a professional and authoritative testing center, which passed the UL laboratory on-site witness test certification. The number of the company's patents is also constantly rising, including anti-detachment, lightning protection, anti-magnetic, low resistance, low heat, and prevention of electric shock for children... While Bull Socket strives to achieve the ultimate in "safety", the gap with domestic socket brands is also gradually widening.

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, overseas orders from 5,000 socket manufacturers in Cixi dropped sharply, and 40% of them went bankrupt due to a break in the capital chain. Under Ruan Liping's guiding ideology of "how to sell milk and Coke, how to sell sockets", Bull has expanded its sales outlets nationwide to 1.1 million, and has absolute say in the channel. Sockets with sudden and emergency purchase scenarios have always been those who win offline. Therefore, during the crisis, Bull's sales rose instead of falling, increasing by 40%. Even Walmarts in the western United States have sold out of Bull sockets.

Because he has strong channels, many channel dealers have advised Ruan Liping to diversify his business and produce some small household appliances for sale together. Ruan Liping once thought about making energy-saving lamps. But after some investigation, he found that if he wanted to make absolutely high-quality energy-saving lamps, the cost would be very high. Moreover, he assessed that he could not be the first in energy-saving lamps at that time, so he would simply not do it for the time being, and he would still make a solid breakthrough in the socket industry.

"Are there any giants in the industry? Is there room for innovation? Can it be the first?" This is Ruan Liping's criterion for entering a new field. In 2007, Bull, which had established an absolute leading position in the socket market, fully entered the field of wall switches (hereinafter referred to as wall switches).

Through detailed market research and user research and analysis, Ruan Liping found that more than 70% of consumers like "fashionable wall switches", so he captured users' demand for "flowered shirts" in the "white shirt era" ”, establishing Bull’s strategic positioning as a “decorative switch”. Since then, Niu Niu has developed 33 series of switches with more than 3,000 varieties based on installation problems, gap problems, and difficulty in distinguishing multiple buttons.

The sales channels opened on the wall are not exactly the same as those of sockets, because in addition to hardware channels, To B channels such as decoration and engineering are also important. Therefore, Bulls cooperated with more than 20 TOP real estate companies and more than 100 national decoration companies, allowing Bulls to gradually establish its advantages in B-end channels, and laid the foundation for future performance takeoff.

After 2010, Bulls has grown rapidly at a rate of doubling every two years. In 2014, Ruan Liping continued to lead Bulls into the field of LED basic lighting. In 2015, Bulls' wall-mounted business became the first in the country. .

3

Xiaomi opens a new era for the Bulls

Leaving its opponents behind one by one, the Bulls seek defeat alone in the field of sockets and wall switches. Before the emergence of Xiaomi, Ruan Liping probably never thought that he would encounter a company that sells mobile phones on the Internet.

On April 8, 2015, Xiaomi Socket was released. This pure white socket with beautiful appearance sells for only 49 yuan. On the first day the Xiaomi socket was launched, sales reached 247,000 units. Xiaomi, which has a large number of users and has made great achievements in the field of IoT, uses a USB socket to remind Bull that the era of digitalization and intelligence is coming.

Facing Xiaomi's products, Ruan Liping woke up from a dream and realized that he had always been a slow-moving giant. The Bulls launched a USB socket in 2010, but no one took notice of the product. However, Lei Jun's Internet channel suddenly opened up a new world for Ruan Liping. The transformation of the socket industry has become unstoppable. Niu, which has always focused on offline sales, quickly established an e-commerce company, which is responsible for e-commerce channels.

Bull’s USB socket is quickly mass-produced and priced at 48 yuan, which is 1 yuan cheaper than Xiaomi.

Xiaomi seems to have never lost when it comes to "cheaper", but this battle was completely won by Bulls. The price of Bull is 1 yuan cheaper than that of Xiaomi, but the cost of Bull USB socket is only 7 yuan, while the cost of Xiaomi USB socket is as high as 30 yuan due to the use of OEM.

Under Xiaomi's "catfish effect", Bull has made a lot of money, and it has been brought to a new world.

Without the obstruction of rocks, where would the gorgeous waves come from? The USB socket is called Bull's "awakening work." After this cross-border competition, the activated Bull discovered more possibilities for sockets and quickly developed new products such as the "Magic Cube Series Sockets", "Desktop USB Sockets", and "Anti-overcharging Series".

More importantly, Ruan Liping is determined to lead the transformation of Bulls, comply with Internet trends, and take the initiative to embrace intelligence. He wants to be a company that is as close to users as Xiaomi, and uses the Internet to truly reach out to users and embrace young people.

In 2016, Bull entered the tens of billions market of digital accessories, which has no leader, and successively developed products such as data cables, anti-overcharge chargers, and car chargers. With the endorsement of the brand, product sales are rising steadily.

4

Capital assistance, landing in A shares

But to compete with Xiaomi, Ruan Liping knew that relying only on himself was not enough. Therefore, in 2017, the Ruan brothers decided to introduce partners at the cost of 2.2 shares to help the Bulls resist Xiaomi. This hot potato caused an explosion in the capital market. Funds and consortiums came up with various tricks in the hope of buying shares in Bulls. It wasn't until the end of 2017 that Zhang Lei from Hillhouse Capital had a secret chat with the two brothers for an afternoon, and the next day he quickly bought 2.24% of Bull Group's shares for 800 million, and the matter came to an end.

The Bulls have changed dramatically since then. The company began to provide unsecured borrowings to the channel. After years of accumulation, Bull Channel has 2,333 dealers across the country, 730,000 socket online stores, 109,000 wall-open online stores, and 136,000 digital accessories online stores... Among them, there are more than 200,000 hardware stores across 300 cities and terminal outlets. The coverage extends to counties, towns and even villages. Loans to channel dealers to purchase goods can not only improve the company's performance, but also further enhance the company's channel advantages.

After Zhang Lei became a shareholder of Bull, he brought new ideas to the company, and also brought new contacts and technology to Ruan Liping. Bull soon launched a series of innovative products such as portable travel adapters with WIFI function, anti-lightning sockets, and rain-proof power strips, further consolidating its technical advantages in the field of power strips.

In 2018, the market shares of Bull sockets and wall switches on the Tmall platform were as high as 66.39 and 26.08, and the overall market shares exceeded 50 and 13 respectively. The two businesses contributed more than 80% of the company’s revenue in total. revenue and profit.

Ruan Liping followed Xiaomi IoT’s ideas and boldly expanded its business. He gives full play to the company's brand and channel advantages, focusing on the pre-completion stage of users' home decoration, including wall switches and sockets, LED lighting, bathroom heaters, circuit breakers, and electrical lighting products such as smart door locks, smart clothes dryers, and smart curtain machines to satisfy consumers. The growing demand for packaged and one-stop purchasing. And provide diversified solutions for B-side and C-side users in different channels and different consumption levels.

Ruan Liping also established the "Bull Smart Home" APP control system, started to develop intelligent modules and Bull Cloud, and realized cloud-to-cloud connection with IoT platforms such as Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, and Xiaomi.

In 2020, Bull also achieved a breakthrough online. Its converters and wall switches and sockets ranked first in sales on Tmall. Its revenue for the year reached 10.051 billion yuan and net profit was 2.313 billion yuan. In February of this year, Bull Group was listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and the company's development reached a new level.

After its listing, Bull continued to make technological breakthroughs around user pain points and began to develop new energy, automobile, and electrical connection businesses.

In the first half of this year, Bull launched a car charging gun that can be directly connected to a home socket, creating a convenient and safe car charging experience for users.

Under the leadership of Ruan Liping and with the support of capital, the future of Bull Group is full of imagination.

5

Conclusion

As Ruan Liping led the Bulls to grow, he kept looking up for stronger opponents and constantly aroused stronger fighting spirit. "What does not kill me make me stronger" (What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger), especially the direct confrontation with Xiaomi opened a new world for Bull. As the world-renowned management expert James Morse said: "The only advantage in sustainable competition comes from the ability to innovate beyond competitors."

However, from the past focus to today's diversification, Ruan Liping's Bulls must be wary of the disadvantages caused by being unable to "make a hole". It is important to keep an eye on your opponent and force yourself to work hard, but it is even more important not to lose your position because of your opponent.