Chinese brands opportunityl – a sister company of my agency has launched a report on the top 50 Chinese brands. The report is exhaustive and has lots of smart stuff in it that will undoubtedly make it into the PowerPoint presentations I have to churn out over the next year. Leafing through it though I was immediately struck by one aspect of the data in particular. Four of the top ten brands derived less than 20 per cent of their turnover from outside China. And nine of the top ten brands derived more more than a third of their revenues from outside the country.
In fact, it was only Lenovo that made over half its money outside China. This immediately struck me: abroad was Chinese brands opportunity. As the bulk of these brands have services that would certainly work internationally and there is an unreleased potential to create the next Shell, Citibank, British Airways or Whirlpool. Given that China is looking to move up the food chain as countries like Vietnam and the Philippines have lower cost workforces than areas like Shenzhen, international brand growth by these Chinese companies or their peers is only a matter of ‘when’, rather than ‘if’.
The biggest barrier for fulfilling Chinese brands opportunity is the ability of the management team to move past hubris and a China-first focus. This is something that ‘struggle’ or wolf culture organisations like Huawei fail to do that well.
More information
BrandZ – Top 50 most valuable Chinese brands 2013
Archived from blog posts I wrote for PR Week. More business related posts here.