OPPO has been keeping a low profile for 15 years: What is the Green Factory?

Wang Xing likes to write on Fanfou, especially in the evening when it is quiet and no one is around.

On March 6, 2019, he posted this: "Yu Chengdong, the head of Huawei's mobile phone business, was born in the same year as Lei Jun, both in 1969. Chen Mingyong of OPPO was also born in 1969. I couldn't find out who Shen Wei of vivo was, but there are reports online that he is a little younger, but he should be about the same. After all, when Duan Yongping left Subor to start BBK in 1995, he took both Chen Mingyong and Shen Wei with him."

Later added: "Shen Wei was born in 1972."

Some media combed through big data and gave Wang Xing two labels: an entrepreneur who writes poetry late at night and a curious middle-aged baby.

Poets love to write songs about generosity, entrepreneurship is a life-and-death struggle, and curiosity kills the cat. Such a complex brain can see different ways. 1969 and 1972 have become the most important years in the history of Chinese mobile phones. The four people born in those two years are now industry leaders.

Xiaomi was the first to stir up the water, leading to a series of battles among major manufacturers. Yu Chengdong relied on the huge Huawei system, OPPO and vivo both originated from BBK, and Lei Jun could be said to be "Lü Bu fighting three heroes", which was quite heroic.

Nearly ten years have passed in the blink of an eye, and now the general trend has been determined, with Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi dividing the world into three parts.

Huawei and Xiaomi have been high-profile for a long time. In comparison, OPPO seems to be flying close to the ground.

If Huawei has woven a battle armor of hard-core technology and Xiaomi has dug out a moat of Internet marketing, then how should the story of OPPO be told?

If you think about it carefully, this company is very "different". Whether it was making VCD/DVD in the early days, then MP3/MP4, or now making mobile phones, it was not the first to enter the market, but it always managed to rank among the top three in the end.

Success once may be accidental, but continuous success must have a methodology to be consistent. Business researchers attribute this to genes.

To explore OPPO's genes, we have to tell a story that is neither long nor short.

No one likes to be preached. But in China, there are two companies that particularly like to be preached.

One example is Alibaba. Employee performance appraisals include self-evaluation of values. At first, the outside world ridiculed it as "brainwashing," but it turns out that Alibaba's corporate culture is quite successful. Wang Huiwen, the second-in-command of Meituan, criticizes Alibaba whenever he gets the chance, but he still has to say admiringly, "Among today's Chinese Internet companies, only Alibaba has established qualified organizational capabilities. The rest are unsatisfactory, including Meituan."

Another company is OPPO. Internally, everyone from CEO Chen Mingyong to security guards knows that the company has four core values, with "duty" being the first. Externally, everyone from provincial channel agents to husband-and-wife shop owners also mentions "duty". This situation is unique.

Jack Ma has a natural PR personality, and Alibaba's "Six Meridians Divine Sword" is well known to the outside world. Chen Mingyong rarely stands in the spotlight, and OPPO's "duty" seems to be kept in the boudoir and unknown to the world.

The truth is invisible, but there are traces to be found. OPPO's "duty" comes from Duan Yongping.

Duan Yongping is a strange man.

After graduating from Zhejiang University with a bachelor's degree, he was assigned to the Beijing Electron Tube Factory, which was a good job. The factory was once the largest and most powerful electronic component factory in China, and was once the largest electron tube factory in Asia. But he found it boring, so four years later he went to Renmin University of China for graduate studies. After graduation, he actually joined the Zhongshan Rihua Electronic and Electrical Equipment Factory, a small local factory with an annual loss of 2 million yuan.

Many years later, he said: "Beijing is not a good place for me to succeed. I want to go to the south where people are open-minded and in urgent need of talent."

In less than a year, Duan Yongping became the factory director. He set his sights on the electronic game console market and began to imitate the Famicom of Japan's Nintendo. The finished product was comparable to the Famicom, but the price was only 1/4. Later, he creatively added a keyboard to the game console, which became the all-time popular Subor.

In 1991, Xiaobawang bought the prime time slot of CCTV for 400,000 yuan, and the advertisement endorsed by Jackie Chan became popular all over the country.

Here we can see two of Duan Yongping's unique skills: being good at imitating but also innovating, inviting celebrities to endorse products, and occupying the minds of users.

A year later, Duan Yongping welcomed a favorite general, Chen Mingyong. He was born in Daxian County, Sichuan. His grandfather and father were both craftsmen. The influence of family tradition made him deeply obsessed with making good things. After graduating from Zhejiang University in 1992, he entered a state-owned seamless steel pipe factory in Sichuan, but resigned after 10 days and went to Guangdong. "This state-owned factory is inconsistent with the picture in the corporate history books of Sony, Honda and other companies that I read in college."

Another guy who doesn't follow the beaten path.

In 1994, the output value of Subor reached 1 billion yuan. Duan Yongping proposed to the company several times to reform the company's stock market and to give employees equity and dividends, but they were all rejected, so he decided to resign.

Duan Yongping took some people with him, including Chen Mingyong, Shen Wei, Huang Yihe, and Jin Zhijiang. In 1995, they founded BBK Electronics Co., Ltd. in Dongguan, across the river.

From then on, the Little Overlord never recovered, while BBK soared to the sky.

In the early 1990s, the most significant change in China was naturally the shift from a planned economy to a commodity economy, but there was actually an undercurrent.

In 1992, China and South Korea established diplomatic relations. The following year, the Korean drama "Jealousy" starring Choi Jin-sil hit the mainland screen, and the response was average. Even people with a keen sense of smell would not have thought that this actually kicked off the prelude to the "Korean Wave" sweeping across the mainland.

Four years later, a wave of Korean dramas such as "What is Love", "Dream of the Stars" and "Tianqiao" were introduced by CCTV Channel 8, and "Korean Wave" began to attract attention.

However, the most powerful advertising platform at the time was still CCTV-1, and the competition for the winning bid was extremely fierce, including BBK.

In 1996, BBK, which had only been established for a year, bid 80.12 million yuan to compete with Qinchi Wine Industry for the CCTV bid, but ultimately lost.

In 1997, Qinchi Wine Industry won the bid again.

Unfortunately, the advertising bombardment could not cover up the insufficient production capacity of Qinchi Wine Industry. When the news of Qinchi Wine Industry's acquisition of Sichuan wine for blending came out, sales volume dropped by 50% immediately, and the once glorious bid winner suddenly became a bubble.

Even so, the title of bid winner is still highly sought after.

Senior advertising professionals should have a vivid memory of the CCTV bidding competition in 1998. In the end, it was a competition between BBK and Aido, and Aido won the bid with 210 million yuan.

But not long after, Aido collapsed due to a broken capital chain, and its founder Hu Zhibiao was also thrown into prison.

The bidding champion is poisonous, but Duan Yongping did not give up and won the CCTV bidding champion in 1999 and 2000.

Bubugao broke the curse. Despite spending a lot of money on advertising, it did not follow the footsteps of Qinchi Wine and Aido, but instead grew bigger and bigger. In those years, the fleet of cars waiting to pick up goods in front of the factory could stretch for one or two kilometers, and a delivery order was sold for 400,000 yuan among distributors.

The reason is simple: BBK is obsessed with quality.

Although Aido made VCDs first, BBK came later and took apart similar products on the market, figured them out, and then improved them to make them of even better quality, especially the Blu-ray DVDs, which were sold well in Europe and the United States.

In addition, Duan Yongping learned from the lessons of Xiaobawang and gave employees equity and a flexible incentive mechanism, which made everyone in the factory work hard. He also split BBK into three parts: audio-visual electronics, communication products, and educational electronics, and developed them separately.

In 2001, 40-year-old Duan Yongping moved behind the scenes and moved to California, USA, focusing all his energy on investment and charity.

Chen Mingyong began to take the helm.

In 2004, OPPO China was established and first entered the field of music players. It launched its first MP3 in 2005 and its first MP4 in 2006. Among all the competing products, OPPO looked very fashionable and attracted countless attention. It was even mistaken for a Korean brand and had many fans.

Thanks to Hunan Satellite TV, "Korean Wave" has become a big hit in mainland China.

On January 1, 1997, Hunan TV launched its first program on satellite, marking the rise of Hunan TV. Brand programs that guarantee high ratings, such as "Happy Camp", "Day Day Up" and "Dancing Miracle", were launched.

In 2004, Hunan Satellite TV launched the slogan "Happy China" and set off a new wave of Chinese television media using the method it excels at - entertainment.

In the same year, Korean stars began to enter the Chinese market in large numbers to make money. The mainland relaxed restrictions on TV stations, allowing local stations to produce "Korean Wave" entertainment programs.