With the introduction of the paint consumption policy, it has had a great impact on the development of solvent-based paint enterprises, and the development of many private enterprises is also overtaking the curve.
1. Overtaking on a curve, private enterprises come from behind
As we all know, state-owned paint companies were once the main force in the planned economy era, and they were dominant in quality, technology, market and price. But in the second half of the 1990s, the institutional constraints of the long-term planned economy made the fate of state-owned enterprises a pain of the times. The once prosperous state-owned paint enterprises have difficulty adapting to the jungle law of the market economy. A group of enterprises are facing a situation of shrinking sales, loss of profits, heavy burdens and difficulties.
Zhang Bin, manager of Shanxi Lufeng Paint Co., told reporters that due to various factors such as system rigidity, the state-owned paint companies were restructured and bankrupt, but there were basically zero companies that could continue to dominate the market.
During this period, private paint companies were emerging one after another. Until now, it can be said that my country's paint market has become the world of private paint enterprises.
"By 2000, consumers had already accepted the paint brands of private enterprises. At that time, many private enterprises had already advertised in various places, such as Hebei Chenhong, Goldfish brand, Shandong Lehua, Qilu brand, etc." Zhang Bin said .
Why can private coating companies grow into the protagonists of the market?
Dai Maozhen, chairman of Shandong Liandi Paint Industry Co., Ltd., believes that it is mainly caused by two points: first, private enterprises hired many retired technical personnel from state-owned enterprises with high salaries, which greatly improved the quality of products; second, in private enterprises at that time, raw materials The procurement management is more strict, which greatly reduces the cost of the product, thereby improving the competitiveness in the market.
Han Ming, chairman of Shandong Luniu Paint Industry Co., Ltd., believes that if you don't advance, you will retreat. At that time, the sales performance of some state-owned paint companies declined, and the competitors were actually not others but the companies themselves. Han Ming told reporters that, like some private paint companies that built factories in the 1980s and emerged in the 1990s, when they first started to develop the market, they were actually opportunistically following the state-owned paint brands in the province to gain some small market. Slowly, with the advantage of price, gradually occupy the expanding market.
At present, private enterprises have completely occupied the main position in the coatings industry, and a large number of private enterprises have stood out. Ten Billion Dreams". Moreover, these large private enterprises pay more attention to conquering higher fields with technological innovation. For example, in the field of heavy-duty anti-corrosion coatings that have developed rapidly in recent years, Jiangsu Lanling, Zhejiang Yutong, Zhejiang Tiannv, Shanghai Kailin, Wuhan Shuanghu, Pearl River Chemical, Northwest Yongxin, Chongqing Three Gorges and other private enterprises stand out.
2. "Water injection" coatings, disorderly competition gradually emerges
As China is firmly established as a major paint consumer, foreign-funded enterprises have also begun to flood in. Gradually, the living space of a large number of private paint enterprises that were once full of vitality has been compressed, and white-hot and disorderly competition has gradually emerged.
"Many people are optimistic about China's paint market, and some products are not high-tech, so a group of small workshops also joined in, with low quality and low prices, and some even began to add water to the paint. For example, CCTV and other news The Hebei paint production and processing factory exposed by the media, in pursuit of low cost and high profit, directly adds tap water to the paint. The amount of water added can be increased to 50%, and only 3 yuan can produce 1 kg of paint." An industry insider pointed out.
"Many unknown brands use the name of water-based paints, but they are still oil-based paints." Industry insiders admitted that this kind of water-added paint is actually a water-in-oil production technology, which is very immature. In the high temperature season in summer, the paint is easy to volatilize and rupture at high temperature, and it cannot contain water, which causes water separation during transportation and storage in the warehouse; in winter, due to the low temperature, the water breaks through the oil and freezes into ice. It can only keep the fresh air for more than ten days, and after more than ten days, the color fades and falls off.
Wen Junyi, the general distributor of Chenhong Paint in Dongguang County, Hebei Province, pointed out that this kind of opportunistic practice is undoubtedly equivalent to the butcher pouring water into the pork when killing pigs, which is an unethical behavior. At the beginning, the coating companies concealed from the dealers for only one purpose, which is to maximize profits. The more water is added to the coating, the higher the profits will be.
"It can be said that some brands of paint companies will also add water to their products." Zhang Fengzhi, manager of Yongchang Hardware Paint Tool Store in Wuqiao County, Hebei, told reporters that adding water has reduced the price of paint, but quality and price are two important factors for winning the market. , are indispensable, and if this continues, the market and users are destined to be lost.
3. Raising prices and lowering prices, the market is brutally in a dilemma
"Every time the price of crude oil rises, the price of paint also increases, but when the price of crude oil continued to fall last year, the price of paint did not follow. This is difficult to understand." Li Jianjun, a salesperson at Anling Hardware Paint Store, told reporters . Many paint dealers have the same skepticism.
Dai Maozhen believes that the continuous drop in oil prices for more than ten years has led to a 40% drop in 200 solvent oil, which is a large amount of paint production, and other raw materials have also dropped by about 20%. At this time, the water-based coating strategy that appeared in the industry made companies claim that the cost of research and development was high, so the price reduction became a bubble. Then this year, a 4% consumption tax will be imposed on coatings with a VOC content higher than 420 g/L in the construction state, which makes price reduction a luxury for dealers.
"However, for the profit situation of paint companies and the decline in market sales, the atmosphere of acetic acid paint price reduction is still relatively strong, but for furniture paints with little profit, there is an intention to increase the price." Dai Maozhen said.
Dai Maozhen analyzed that not long ago, the 4% consumption tax was levied on coatings with VOC content higher than 420 g/liter in the construction state, and the furniture coatings companies with only 5%~10% net profit revealed that they were overwhelmed and planned to increase the price by 4%. , if the price is not raised directly, the price will be raised in a curve.
This is the case with Carborough. Zhou Shaohui, executive vice president of the company's furniture paint business department, and Zhang Jianfei, director of Huilong's furniture paint department, both said at the Dongguan Famous Furniture Fair that Carpoly paint will increase the price by 4% on the premise of conditional return, taking the lead in raising the price of furniture paint. pierced the window paper. However, if the customer's purchase volume increases by 15% year-on-year, Carpoly will return the price increase to the customer.
Industry insiders pointed out that this conditional price increase is pre-established by many coating companies. As long as one company raises its price, other coating companies will follow suit. In the face of the expected price increase, some large furniture factories said that if you want to increase the price, I will change the paint brand.
This situation is even more cruel for the low-grade acetic acid paint market. The dealers of many companies said: "If the price of the company is not lower than that of its competitors, it will distribute other low-priced brands. The products are too replaceable, and there are paint companies every day. business managers came to promote the product."
It can be seen that raising or lowering prices has become a double-edged sword between paint companies and the market. If the control is not legal, it will hurt one of the two parties.
Fourth, terminal sales, low-priced skewered goods moved cheese
The once chaotic market is also reflected in terminal sales.
"The sales management of Shandong paint enterprises is too chaotic. No matter where the products are sold, as long as you can sell them, the dealers in different distribution areas are colluding with each other, so that there is currently no market for paint and no profit." I saw the reporter , Zhang Fengzhi, manager of Yongchang Hardware Paint Tools Store in Wuqiao County, Hebei Province, has suffered a lot.
Zhang Fengzhi told reporters: "Wuqiao belongs to the Cangzhou area, and he is the general agent of Pentium Paints in Wuqiao area. After working hard to develop a certain consumer customer group locally, the general agent in neighboring areas began to sell goods to Wuqiao at a lower price. Originally, a 15kg bucket of ash-proof paint was sold for 140 yuan a barrel, but the same ash-proof paint from Dezhou was sold for 130 yuan a barrel, making us unprofitable in the Wuqiao market."
"We also encountered such a situation in Botou." Zhang Ya, manager of Huancheng Hardware, the agent of Botou Pentium paint, told reporters.
Manager Wang of Hebei Yanshan Daewoo Hardware Paint Mall told reporters: "In 2014, 500 tons of Lehua paints were sold, but there was basically no profit. The reason is that Lehua paints are seriously mixed, and the dealers in the nearby Shandong area are all here. The two sides are fighting for each other. End customers have started a price war."
Why does paint have such vicious smuggling behavior?
Liu Lingjie, the manager of Chenyang Water Paint Shandong Region, told reporters: "The company presses the dealers to increase the sales task by 15% every year, especially for the regional dealers whose sales volume reaches more than 3 million yuan, an increase of 15% is 450,000 yuan. If At the end of the year, if the sales task signed with the company cannot be completed, the manufacturer will not be able to get 4% of the rebate, so every year until October in the second half of the year, in order to complete the task, many dealers start to sell goods on a large scale."
"It's not only the dealers who are chasing the goods, but even the business managers of some companies." Huang Yue, the regional manager of Jiren New Materials Co., Ltd., said that whenever some downstream consumer manufacturers are buying from local dealers After purchasing the product, it will call the customer service department of the company according to the number on the packaging barrel. If the staff of the customer service department of the company happens to be the friend of the business manager, they will inform the friend who is the business manager, and then the business manager will contact the customer service department. Changing users to sell goods at low prices can be said to be commonplace in Shandong paint companies.
Industry experts pointed out that, in order to obtain abnormal profits, paint dealers deliberately dumped products in markets outside their jurisdictions, and malicious collusion is formed for no more than five reasons: the market in this region is saturated, the preferential policies given by manufacturers are different, and the development of channels is not. Balance, the brand pulling force is too large and the channel construction has not kept up, and the transportation cost is different, which causes the dealers to be opportunistic. If paint companies do not deal with collusion as soon as possible, they are actually shooting themselves in the foot. Therefore, paint companies must deal with cross-selling as soon as possible, seize opportunities, repair their internal strengths, and create their own paint brands in order to occupy a place in China's huge paint market.
5. Strict laws and regulations, environmental protection and energy saving are fully accelerated
The "Environmental Protection Law" officially implemented on January 1, 2015 is known as the "severe" environmental protection law in history. The introduction and implementation of the new regulations have had a profound impact on all walks of life, especially the coatings industry. From February 1st, a 4% consumption tax will be levied on coatings with a VOC content higher than 420 g/L in the construction state. This policy has a great response in the industry; at the same time, the long-awaited downstream of coatings such as automobiles and ships , container, coil, furniture, steel structure and other industries to levy VOC pollution charges are also likely to be introduced and implemented in the second half of this year. The implementation of these policies will inevitably lead to large waves of paint companies, upgrading and transformation.
"Whether coating companies can develop low-carbon and environmentally friendly products and whether they can adhere to a low-carbon and environmentally friendly production model not only determines whether coating companies can actively respond to the national call, but also whether they can gain a firm foothold in the upcoming market. It also determines whether a coating enterprise can effectively fulfill its social responsibilities and obligations. Reducing energy consumption in the production process, reducing pollution, and developing environmentally friendly coating products are issues that require deep thinking for coating companies. Therefore, many Large-scale coating companies are already actively transforming and focusing on green coatings. Today, when the coating market has fully realized environmental protection, whether coating companies can realize the greening of their own products has become the key for companies to seize market share. "Many coating companies have realized that to the urgency of environmental protection.
In fact, the international use of water-based coatings is relatively early, and the utilization rate in Europe has reached 80% to 90%. However, in China, the utilization rate of water-based coatings is still very low, with a market share of only about 7% to 8%, and less than 25% in developed areas such as Beijing and Shanghai.
However, industry insiders pointed out that with the introduction of a series of strict regulations, the market share of water-based coatings in my country may reach 30% or even higher in the next five years. Looking back at the development history of water-based coatings in Europe and the United States and other countries and regions, policies and regulations have played a crucial role in it, and the introduction of the new "Environmental Protection Law" in China this year is making more coating companies transform and embark on the road of water-based coatings.