Due to his recognition of YY's influence, the person in charge of Honeywell attached great importance to the interview with Li Mu. CEO Gowdy arrived in Silicon Valley the day before, hoping to meet Li Mu as soon as possible.
Honeywell and 3M were both among the world's top 500 companies. Honeywell's total market value was higher than 3M because it was heavily involved in the fields of materials, petrochemicals, aviation, and so on. Honeywell's market value was around 25 billion US dollars this year, while 3M was only worth 15 billion US dollars.
However, for Gowdy, Honeywell's problem was also very serious. More than 70% of the company's profits came from its To-Business business. To put it bluntly, the 2B business was the business for corporate users. Ordinary people were almost completely unfamiliar with Honeywell's achievements in these companies.
For example, very few ordinary consumers knew that Honeywell was one of the world's top five automobile turbocharger manufacturers.
Very few consumers knew that most oil refineries and petrochemical companies in the world used Honeywell's equipment, or even a complete set of solutions.
Honeywell's shadow could even be seen in the aerospace field. It might be an important component of some parts of Boeing aircraft, but consumers still did not know about it.
This situation basically meant that Honeywell's corporate reputation and influence were seriously insufficient among ordinary users. Honeywell's next priority was to fully expand its 2C (To-Customer) business, which was very different from the 2B business.
At the 2B level, Honeywell could sell turbochargers to every automobile company in the world, but there was no way to sell turbochargers directly to ordinary consumers. At the 2B level, they only faced a few dozen automobile companies, but once they reached the 2C level, they had to face billions of people around the world.
The serious lack of influence among ordinary people and the almost zero retail sales channels would be the biggest hindrance to Honeywell's 2C business.
However, in Honeywell's view, not only did Li Mu have a very influential YY, he also had a Taobao network that controlled the entire Hua Xia e-commerce market. If they could establish a good cooperative relationship with Li Mu, not only could they increase their corporate reputation and influence through YY, but they could also directly increase their product sales through Taobao, killing many birds with one stone.
...
The next morning, Li Mu met with Honeywell CEO Gao Dewei in the office of Makino Technology's Silicon Valley branch.
Gordway, who was 50 years old at the time, had just taken office as Honeywell's CEO last year. Before that, he had a rich resume. He had worked as a senior executive at General Electric and JPMorgan Chase, and could be considered a well-known professional manager in the United States.
However, in terms of fame, Gao Dewei was more than a level lower than Li Mu.
In the current Western world, Li Mu's popularity is almost the same as Bill Gates'. Even Steve Jobs' current popularity is not comparable to Li Mu.
Under this premise, Gao Dewei was especially polite to Li Mu.
Moreover, there was a very accurate rule in the traditional industry. Most of the companies that did a lot of secondary business were the long-term second parties, and the companies that really faced the secondary market were the unchanging first parties in the cooperation between companies.
For a company like Honeywell, although it dabbled in a lot of things, it had always been adding bricks and tiles for others. The second parties had done a lot of work, and they had also cultivated a habit of humility and politeness from top to bottom. They were much easier to get along with than those who were used to being the first parties and exuded a pretentious aura.
As soon as Gao Dewei came up, he praised Li Mu and the achievements of Makino Technology. After a few minutes of polite conversation with him, Li Mu was the first to state his purpose.
"Mr. Gao Dewei, the reason I asked you to meet this time is actually because I want to cooperate with Honeywell on some product level."
Gao Dewei nodded and said, "I heard Eiron mention it before. He told me that you are interested in purchasing a batch of daily protective equipment from Honeywell."
Li Mu smiled slightly. "That's right. We have a relatively large purchase plan in the field of protective equipment. I hope to negotiate and reach a deal directly with Honeywell."
Gao Dewei asked Li Mu, "Mr. Lee, are you planning to purchase protective equipment for sale in Hua Xia?"
"That's right," Li Mu said frankly. "Only in Hua Xia."
Gao Dewei said with some difficulty, "To tell you the truth, we already had a distributor in Hua Xia ten years ago, and we signed an exclusive general distributor. Strictly speaking, all Honeywell products sold in Hua Xia have to go through this distributor. If we bypass the distributor and supply you directly, the distributor will definitely have a lot of opinions …"
At this point, Gao Dewei hurriedly changed his tone and said, "But don't worry, if the situation permits, we can mediate. At that time, we will give the distributor a certain amount of compensation when they accept you selling our company's protective equipment in Hua Xia. After all, most of our company's sales come from large equipment."
Li Mu smiled indifferently and said, "There's no need to go through so much trouble. Your company can just give me a network agency authorization."
"Network agency?" Gao Dewei was a little surprised.
Li Mu nodded and said with a smile, "The agency rights you signed with the distributors in various places are defined for the traditional sales channels. Those are all offline transactions. You can separate the online transactions and authorize them to me. I also promise that I will only sell online on the e-commerce platform in Hua Xia. This way, there will be no conflict with your distributors."
E-commerce had only been developed for a short period of time. So far, besides eBay and Amazon, the only e-commerce platform that had really developed was Li Mu's Taobao. However, eBay mainly traded second-hand goods in C2C, while Amazon started with books and was now transforming into a B2C platform. However, it was still in the exploratory stage, so the concept of 'network agency' had not really come out yet.
However, Gao Dewei quickly understood what Li Mu meant. With the continuous development of society, the definition of many meanings was bound to become more and more refined. After the birth of e-commerce, online sales channels were derived from traditional sales channels. Traditional distributors did not understand e-commerce, so it was necessary to redefine the agency rights of online sales.
After Gao Dewei figured this out, he was very interested in Li Mu's proposal. He said, "Mr. Li, I think we can follow your proposal and authorize Honeywell's online sales agency rights in Hua Xia to your company."
At this point, Gao Dewei said awkwardly, "But to be honest, Honeywell's current 2C product line is too few. Although we are also actively transforming, it is really not easy for a manufacturing company to change from 2B to 2C."
The reason why Gao Dewei wanted to meet Li Mu was that he hoped to reach a cooperation with Li Mu in terms of promotion. He did not care how many products Li Mu could help Honeywell sell in the e-commerce market in Hua Xia in the future. He hoped that Li Mu could help Honeywell spread the company's reputation and lay a good foundation for the company's future 2C business.
Li Mu could roughly guess Gao Dewei's intention. After all, he was the CEO of a large company with a market value of more than 20 billion USD. If it was really for tens of millions of USD in sales, there was no need for him to personally come to Silicon Valley. The only possibility was that he had something to ask of Li Mu.
After hearing what he said, Li Mu could sense his current biggest need from his words.
Therefore, Li Mu asked him with a smile, "Honeywell's next step of development, are you interested in increasing the proportion of the 2C business?"
Gao Dewei nodded. "In my opinion, although the 2B business is our foundation, the 2C business is very important. Whether the company can really have a big development basically depends on the development of our 2C business. It's just that we currently lack enough driving force in the 2C field, so I really hope to be able to reach a cooperation with your company in this area to help us promote the development of the 2C business."
Li Mu frowned slightly and said seriously, "Actually, the 2C business is more important. It's the complete product and solution behind the 2C business. You have to have a 2C product first before you can open up the 2C market. It's far from enough to just cooperate with me. You can't just take an aircraft control system to do the 2C business. The consumers won't buy it, and they can't afford it."
As he said that, Li Mu continued, "Among the world's top 500 companies, most of the manufacturing companies focus on the 2C business. In last year's top 500 companies, the top manufacturers should be automobile manufacturers, right? From what I remember, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Honda are all in the top 50. Other than these, there are also Siemens, General Electric, and Hitachi. They are basically 2C companies. Their products include automobiles, home appliances, medical equipment, and so on. They are all 2C products. "
In Li Mu's opinion, it wasn't difficult for 2B companies to become 2C companies in the Internet field, but it was really difficult for the manufacturing industry to go from 2B to 2C.
The world's famous automobile companies, including General Motors and Toyota, actually integrated a large number of 2B suppliers like Honeywell, and then came up with the final 2C products.
Companies similar to Honeywell included Bosch, ZF, Aisin, Takata, and so on. Among them, the most powerful was probably Bosch. Not only did they have many automobile parts lines, but they also had a large number of patented technologies. Among them, the famous ESP was invented by Bosch. But even so, it was difficult for Bosch to transform from 2B to 2C in the automobile manufacturing field.
For example, ZF and Aisin, which specialized in the production of gearboxes, and Takata, which specialized in the production of airbags, it was even more difficult for them to complete the transformation from 2B to 2C in the automobile manufacturing field.
Honeywell was also facing the same situation.
Although 2B was very good, it was not enough to support the company to make a big leap in the current foundation. If they wanted to make a bigger leap, they must make a breakthrough in the 2C business.
Gao Dewei agreed with Li Mu's point of view and said seriously, "Mr. Lee, we have actually started to try 2C products. For example, we acquired a water purifier company some time ago and have started to produce our own household water purifier. The next step is to produce household air purifier. We have a lot of technology in these fields, and we can ensure that we can produce better products."
Li Mu nodded and said seriously, "Since Honeywell wants to do 2C business, why not give the network agency to Taobao first? Hua Xia has a population of more than one billion. I can use Taobao to help Honeywell open up the Hua Xia market."
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