INDUSTRY

He gave the name "Hammer" a bit joked.The previous "feat" of hitting Siemens refrigerators made him famous in one fell swoop, and he wanted to make similar news in the mobile phone circle.This seemed to foreshadow his fate in the next few years: stimulation.

Another omen happened that summer.The Hammer Office moved from Zhongguancun to Wangjing, and when loading the vehicle, it suddenly flashed and thundered and rained heavily.Luo Yonghao stood by the window of the old office, muttering, "Okay, okay, I know everything." Not long after, the thunder stopped and the rain became lighter, as if the weather had reached a settlement with him.

"Reconciliation" is another theme of Lao Luo's six years of Hammer.To a certain extent, this is the secret of his survival from the Death Valley of Mobile Phone, but all the gains come at a price. One of the victims sacrificed by Lao Luo is the once "Luo Yonghao is much cute".

one

The press conference held by Hammer at Beijing Institute of Technology on April 9 did not show any trend of flooding the screen.

Some hammer fans were surprised, but it seemed normal for the people inside the venue.In addition to the cost-effectiveness, the Nut 3 released on that day is really unremarkable. Even the always wonderful Lao Luo’s speech is like the magnolia that has failed this season, which is so wilting that it makes people unable to cheer up.After the show ended, some hammer fans discussed in the WeChat group, which was more time to sleep than who just now.

Luo Yonghao chose to "strike".He posted a Weibo post after the press conference: "I came back and read the feedback online. Many people who use Xiang said that it was ugly, well, it will definitely sell well, so I feel at ease to sleep."The next day, he said on his WeChat official account that those who called Nut 3 ugly were fools.

It's still a natural proud tone, but the formula seems to be different from 6 years ago.

At that time, the target of his attack was Xiaomi.2012 was a highly praised year for the rapid progress of Xiaomi's model. As of the end of November, Xiaomi's sales had exceeded 10 billion yuan - it took Huawei and Coolpad six years to achieve this figure, and it was only two years before Lei Jun drank the bowl of Xiaomi soup.

But Luo Yonghao was dissatisfied.

He quickly showed his extraordinary savage skills, mocking Xiaomi for "mobile futures" and "monkey-style marketing"... He even was proud of his sharpness, "Lei Jun was indeed forced to attach importance to design and pretend to be humanistic."

But he always has to pay back when he comes out. "Production capacity" has become Luo Yonghao's tight curse in the following years. After feeling the pain, he conveyed his apology to Lei Jun and lamented that it is not easy to make products.

But that's all a story. Back in 2012, there is no doubt that Luo Yonghao caught up with the big trend of smartphones.

In the craze, many huge changes have begun to appear.

Xiaomi is naturally the hottest star, so Hammer directly copied its early mode: make ROM first and then make a mobile phone.More big manufacturers have not yet reacted. Huawei will not launch the Internet brand "Honor" in 2013, and Meizu will not have "Magic Blue" in 2014. As for Lenovo's ZUK, it is the story of being late in 2015.

More stories about subversion have been staged among mobile phone manufacturers outside of Apple:

Nokia's position as the leader of mobile phones has been replaced by Samsung for 14 consecutive years. Iron Lady Wang Xuehong led HTC to complete its high-quality strategic transformation and took the position of second-class mobile phones.Blackberry Raw Manufacturer RIM A dangerous path was chosen: BlackBerry 10 became a product that could give it a try, but it was delayed from 2012 to 2013. While reluctant to release the touch screen version, it also proudly retained the physical keyboard board.

RIM was still optimistic at that time.Speaking of Nokia's decline, then CEO Tosten Hines said, "We now have about 80 million users - something Nokia doesn't have."But the reality is that although BlackBerry has Obama and Lady Gaga and other fans, but as BlackBerry closed its BB OS service this April Fools' Day, in the end, BlackBerry, like Nokia, left glory to history.

As the wind and clouds surging, the waves caused by Luo Yonghao seemed to have some fun.There were already many people who were watching jokes and were preparing to watch how the crosstalk actor and English teacher played tricks, but Lao Luo even presented the information:

The ROM, which was originally scheduled to be released at the end of 2012, was delayed until March of the following year. Due to the serious shortage of engineers, many functions could not be realized. In addition, the serious delay at the press conference and the network was paralyzed. In short, it became a "bad" appearance, and the Internet was almost full of criticism.

Some media said that Luo Yonghao had insomnia that night, and the next day, he also remained silent on Weibo.

two

In the past few years as a hammer, Luo Yonghao has never been able to get rid of the label of "unreliable".

He is arrogant.In 2013, when there was no shadow on mobile phones, he posted an article on Weibo: "Why does it seem that only Hammer Technology is most likely to be the next Sony (Sony in the Morita era) or the next Apple (Apple in the Jobs era)?》—And that year, the most active role in the domestic mobile phone market was Redmi phones at 799 yuan, which directly boosted Xiaomi's sales. On Double Eleven that year, Xiaomi sold 100 million yuan in three minutes.

He is casual and does not change his true nature even in front of investors."He even talked about his phone and ignored investors," media person Huang Zhangjin once commented.Luo Yonghao, who was talking about the words on the podium, was actually a bit socially phobic and didn't know how to say half-true and half-false words when talking about cooperation.

Not long after the "bad" ROM press conference in 2013, Luo Yonghao burned all the 9 million given by Momo Tang Yan.He faced the problem of money for the first time.But many investors are taboo about this crazy man who once smashed the refrigerator. A venture capital investor from a well-known fund once said, "I admire Lao Luo very much," but he turned to tell his colleagues: "We won't give him a penny."”

The troubles that Hammer encountered on the production line gave Luo Yonghao a "hammer".

In May 2014, Hammer T1 was released.This is undoubtedly a historic step for Luo Yonghao, who has never been involved in hardware production.In the product promotional pictures, he called it "the best smartphone in the Eastern Hemisphere."Perhaps because of concerns about touching on the new Advertising Law regulations, the slogan became "the second best smartphone in the world."

At that press conference, Luo Yonghao was proud, straightened his back, and happily mocked the entire mobile phone industry, although T1 only had a 3G version for the first time.

The supply chain slapped him with a backhand.Due to the low yield rate and other reasons - some media quoted industry insiders' judgment that the yield rate of Hammer mobile phones will not exceed 50%, and the normal value should be above 93%. T1 cannot be supplied normally in the few months after its release, so it was so anxious that Luo Yonghao ran to Foxconn to wait.

The momentum created by the press conference has become colder during the long wait for ordering users.In the following 3-4 months, the T1 escape single rate soared from the initial 2% to nearly 90%.Those who only got the purchase code through employee channels also ran away. The reason is very simple: in the past few months, I have been afraid of reading negative news about Hammer every day.

Luo Yonghao had to hold on until October and had to announce a price cut of Hammer, with a drop of about 1,000 yuan.After the price reduction, the cheapest 16G 3G version is priced at 1,980 yuan.

This angered a lot of hammer fans again.Five months ago, Lao Luo said, "I am particularly disgusted with the practice of some mobile phone manufacturers setting a high price when new products are launched, and they will soon reduce prices." The only possibility of his price reduction is: the new generation of products are on the market, and the previous generation needs to clean up inventory.In order to appear convincing, he also made a harsh statement: If it is less than 2500, I am your grandson.

In the end, the total sales of T1 in 2014 were more than 250,000 units.That year, China's smartphone shipments were 420.7 million units, of which Xiaomi shipped 61.12 million units.

Such a result is undoubtedly frustrating.Luo Yonghao believes that his words have implicated the company.

In December that year, he gave his last personal speech at the Beijing Exhibition Hall, "The Entrepreneurship Story of an Idealist". He choked and bowed, saying that he would seriously learn to be an entrepreneur, and announced that his personal Weibo account password was handed over to the company's public relations department. Every sentence he said in the future must be reviewed by the company before being published.

Since then, the Weibo nickname "Luo Yonghao is so cute" has disappeared.

3

As it turns out, Luo Yonghao chose to enter 2015 with a low attitude, which was really a wise choice.

The theme of the mobile phone industry that year was: No one was spared.

The danger has begun to appear in 2014.According to the monitoring report of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the year-on-year decrease of smartphone shipments in the first 10 months of 2014 was 10.4%, of which, the total shipment of domestic mobile phones was 286 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 25.4%.Obviously, this is an increasingly saturated market.

then,For small mobile phone manufacturers that are in the forefront, 2015 is Death Valley.The Da Coke, which released three mobile phones in the first year, remained silent this year and declared bankruptcy in March of the following year.

In the industry's recession, upstream companies were implicated, and many mobile phone OEM factories in the Pearl River Delta went bankrupt and their boss jumped off the building.

Life is not easy for big companies. As the growth rate slows down, the voices of Xiaomi are slandering one after another.

At the beginning of that year, Huawei's Yu Chengdong judged the cruelty of the situation: there are only three major mobile phone manufacturers left in China in the next 3-5 years.Of course, he did not forget to cheer himself up, "including Huawei."The CEO, who became famous by P6, once dubbed himself as Huawei's CHO (Chief Bragging Officer) - "I learned to brag, bet and deal with war of words.”

In August, Lenovo's Yang Yuanqing also wrote on Weibo: Lenovo is facing severe challenges at this moment.In the first year, Lenovo acquired the Motorola mobile phone brand for US$2.91 billion, which directly led to a loss of US$292 million in the Q1 2015 financial report.Judging from the later story, this move has not stopped the decline of Lenovo's mobile phone business.

Under such a situation, Hammer's life is not easy.

That year, Hammer released Nut Mobile and T2, but neither of them made a comeback.In the end, Smartisan Technology lost 462 million yuan in 2015.

Money became a big problem.The feeling of being born with pride seems vulnerable to reality.By 2016, Hammer announced only two rounds of financing A and B, with the highest financing amount being RMB 180 million in April 2014.So, when Hammer could not pay his salary in 2016, Luo Yonghao had to make up a reason: something went wrong with the banking system, and he would pay it again in a few days.

A year later, when the crisis resolved, Luo Yonghao shared this matter as a joke at the Geek Park conference, which made the audience laugh.He kept talking about the bitterness during the period, including going to Xiaomi to discuss acquisitions for money and pledging equity with Alibaba. In the end, he failed. He had no choice but to open a column, go to Momo to do live broadcasts, and "selling himself" to exchange for money.

Later he said:A true strong man dares to look at a bleak life.Another characteristic of a macho man is to hide when crying.

There was also help during this period.Zheng Gang, an early investor of Smartisan Technology and founding partner of Zihui Venture Capital, said that during the Hammer's funding crisis, Jia Yueting once lent Luo Yonghao 100 million.Jia Yueting started making mobile phones in 2015 and once planned to invest in Hammer, but considering that the transaction takes time, Hammer urgently needs money. In the end, without pledging equity, he directly lent 100 million yuan.

Later, Luo Yonghao used a set of data to review 2016: it was rumored to have gone bankrupt 6 times, it was rumored to have acquired 5 times, it was exposed to have a capital chain dilemma 3 times, and it was sued by users once.

Lei Jun also tasted a similar taste this year.Xiaomi began to experience double drop in shipments and market share in 2015. By the Spring Festival in 2016, Lei Jun announced the cancellation of KPI. Subsequently, making up lessons became the theme of the year. He invited Li Wanqiang back to rectify the supply chain, find celebrity endorsements, and lay out offline and overseas.

The sizes of the two companies are very different, but at a critical moment of life and death, the desire to survive is enough to let them go of their past and even introduce a pattern they once despised.After all, in the business world, survival is the biggest challenge.

They all made it.

In 2017, Xiaomi's shipments returned to the top five in the world, and IPO entered the process.Luo Yonghao also announced that Hammer has received a new round of 1 billion financing.Surprisingly, 600 million of them came from the Chengdu Municipal Government.

It was also in this year that the headquarters of Hammer was moved to Chengdu and Nut Pro was released - this mid-range model is the first product of Hammer with a production of over one million.When Luo Yonghao choked up at the press conference: If you are using a hammer phone in the future, you must remember that this phone is for you, and you seem to be able to see the shadow of his former arrogance and sentimentality.

生

Making cost-effective mobile phones, air purifiers, layout of ecological chains... Many of the actions of Hammer after surviving were evaluated by the industry: they are becoming more and more like Xiaomi.

In fact, since the final personal speech in 2014, Luo Yonghao has been working hard to turn himself into a normal entrepreneur and a hammer into a normal company.When he announced the 1 billion financing in August last year, he said with a smile:

“If nothing unexpected happens, we will have about 1.9 billion in operating cash starting from autumn.This means that starting next year, we will launch 5 to 6 products every year in three levels: high, medium and low.”

The angry, proud and look down on everything was completely gone in the words.

It is these characteristics that have transformed many fans who followed "Luo Pang" into hammer fans.As a friend, Feng Tang once analyzed why Hammer's start was so bad but did not die. One of the important reasons is that of fans, "If you change to another lunatic and paranoid, you may not be able to survive for a year without Lao Luo's fan base.”

In the eyes of different hammer fans, the six years of hammer have different meanings.

Some people are happy that this company has survived the difficulties and survived until now. Even if there is a M-series phone with a bad reputation in the middle, the plastic feel makes them unable to believe that "this is Lao Luo's aesthetic";Some people have turned around and left because Lao Luo’s former pride no longer exists, and Hammer has become a big deal that is nothing but everyone’s.

For example, Nut Pro, this mobile phone priced at 1499, 1799, and 2299 is the total shipment volume of all mobile phone products in the past five years.

This is a business success, but literary and artistic youth care more about intuitive feelings.Zhihu user Slender Man wrote:

"A company needs to comment on third-party shopping websites, a company needs to spend a lot of money to praise the tempered film as a mobile phone accessory, and a company boasts about the so-called craftsman spirit rather than improving the system that has been criticized for being criticized, this is probably the biggest defilement of 'feeling'.”

But Luo Yonghao, who survived the critical moment of life and death, has obviously surpassed these.He sighed last year, "Do you know how I survived the past five years?"Every time I just stick to it.”

His changes are obvious.

He rarely appears in appearance, and his labels, such as toughness, sentiment, and craftsmanship, were no longer strengthened over and over again.In the 8 and a half hours of "Long Talk" with Luo Zhenyu, he talked about his gratitude because he doesn't need to use storytelling to raise funds now. "They (investors) don't have to see how Luo Yonghao is like, and I don't want to talk to them. Everyone just look at the performance."

He began to understand many behaviors he had looked down upon before."In the past, if I saw a well-dressed guy at the airport holding a book called "Win: Welch's Lifetime Management Wisdom", I would feel that this idiot was helpless, but now I will also read it with such a book with a bit of bullet.”

At this press conference of Beijing Institute of Technology on April 9, Luo Yonghao's performance became more and more like a mature businessman.

He was unexpectedly only 5 minutes late, and then hurriedly displayed the Thousand Yuan Machine Nut 3 in 1 hour;

He denied some of his previous overly paranoid statements - when talking about "why affordable machines are launched all day", he said: "Design is important, but it is only part of it... Beautiful is important, but beautiful in the technology industry is not that necessary.”

At this may be the most deserted press conference in Hammer's history, he also honestly explained the reason why Nut 3 was launched at this time: it was very difficult to make flagship phone products, and had to make mid-range products and higher cost-effective products.

Only when it comes to the press conference to be held at the Bird's Nest on May 15, Luo Yonghao seemed very excited again.

He likes to use the vulgar word "pissed" to describe the shock brought by good products, so he said that afternoon: I once thought of giving everyone who enters (Bird's Nest).

At such a wild moment, entrepreneur Luo Yonghao seemed to reunite with the old Luo who was covered in thorns but fragile inside.

This is a happy moment belonging to the survivor, even if Luo Yonghao paid the price of "killing Lao Luo" for it.But this is how business is, as he sighed that afternoon - there are no century-old stores in the technology industry.“As long as you can’t beat others, no matter what the reason is, it’s useless.”