An engineering buyer from Ethiopia in Africa came to Sharjah Building Materials Street in the United Arab Emirates to purchase Chinese honeycomb panel products. After several understandings and comparisons, he identified the largest honeycomb board dealership in the region, the Eastman Boutique Building Materials Center. This can be called a “leading company” that focuses on the sales of high-end branded honeycomb panels in China. However, because some products are not represented by Eastman, but in a nearby honeycomb store, the buyer asked the chairman of Eastman, Wu Jianfa, “Can I buy those products from Eastman and then sell them to We? You can earn a certain price difference."
Wu Jianfa was surprised to see this situation for the first time. However, after three or four similar situations, he understood: The customer is looking for a sense of security. Eastman’s professionalism and reputation in the market It has become a trusted brand in the local area, and customers have filtered out the risks in this way.
If we said that the Chinese honeycomb panel brand in the Middle East was still in the conception, now, after three or four years of brand-building practice, the Eastman Boutique Building Materials Center has provided a successful example, which provides a reference for overseas brand operation. experience of.
Export sales as "International Porters"
On November 25th, the 34th Middle East (Dubai) BIG5 International Expo will be held.
As seen in the past three years, at Dubai International Airport, in Dubai, Sharjah, in important building materials shopping malls, in the coastal gold port, Eastman uses TV commercials, outdoor image advertising, etc. The three-dimensional marketing of “sea, land and air” has made enough momentum for advertising.
Today, the Eastman model appears to be a non-replicable model in many Dubai counterparts: it has thousands of square meters of Eastman boutique building materials center in Sharjah, a high-end store in Dubai Dragon City Phase I, and in Ethiopia. In Kenya, Algeria and other state-owned offices, there are branches in Oman and a large exhibition hall of 1000 square meters. Eastman has become a proud fleet of honeycomb panel building materials, creating a phenomenon in the Middle East building materials industry. At present, Eastman's cellular panel channel consumption ratio is roughly 20% in the UAE market; 40% in the surrounding Gulf countries; 40% in Africa and Eastern Europe.
Many of his peers admire Wu Jianfa's success, but he knows that this kind of success has objective conditions such as "time, place, and people". More importantly, in a place where everyone dares, does not want, does not insist on branding, he Just dare to think, dare to do, but still insist.
In the Middle East building materials market, building materials mainly come from Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea, China, India, Pakistan and local enterprises. The quality and design level of building materials in developed countries is the highest, but the price is also high; Chinese products have higher cost performance advantages, product quality is in the middle and low level, only a few comparable to Europe and the United States, but the word of mouth is very poor.
According to a survey by the reporter, there are more than 5,000 honeycomb panel sanitary wares in Sharjah, of which Chinese products account for more than one-third, but the prices of similar products are generally only one-third or even one-quarter of Italian and Spanish products. For example, the Italian product has a minimum price of AED 70 per square meter (the UAE currency is about 1:1.7 for the RMB exchange rate), while the Chinese product has a minimum price of AED 20 and the general price is between 30-60 Dirhams.
The price of Chinese products is getting lower and lower, with the result that profits are continuously thinning. Four years ago, a honeycomb container shipped from China could earn thousands to 10,000 yuan. Now, many merchants earn even six or seven hundred yuan.
As early as the 2016 financial turmoil in Dubai, Wu Jianfa saw the dilemma of selling low-end products: profits are as thin as blades, but there is always a lower price in the market than you. He was deeply angry at the image of "International Porter" and vowed to change. In the following four or five years, Wu Jian’s thoughts were always the word “brand”.
