[PConline chat] Speaking of the brand Vertu, I believe many mobile phone users know that this is a luxury mobile phone brand. A machine is priced in 10,000 yuan as a unit, and there are many models worth hundreds of thousands of yuan. Vertu has always been a place in the high-end mobile phone market because each of them is handmade in the UK, ensuring that every mobile phone meets craft standards, luxurious materials and live Siri services.
But recently, according to foreign media reports, employees of the luxury brand smartphone manufacturer Vertu said that the company began to owe employees' wages last Wednesday, and about 200 employees currently claim that their wages have not been paid. In addition, the employee also revealed that Vertu has been withholding employee pension insurance since February this year. Vertu has struggled to pay for the material costs of making luxury phones, owing more than millions of dollars in debt to partners including suppliers and service providers.
Vertu As a luxury brand mobile phone, its products are sold at almost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the profit margin of mobile phones is significantly higher than that of ordinary mobile phone manufacturers. However, why can such a company default on employees' wages? Let me take a look at the reasons for you.
Personal Assistant is weaker than Voice Assistant
Vertu’s true uniqueness is the unique personal assistant service. Each Vertu mobile phone is equipped with a button on the side of the body, which can call the personal assistant with one click, let it help book air tickets, hotels, restaurants, etc. However, the emergence of Siri and other various voice assistants has lowered the threshold for personal assistant services to a certain extent.
cannot make calls, the voice assistant can help you complete these things, whether it is booking a plane ticket, staying in a hotel, or even sending text messages. Moreover, siri and other voice assistants do not need to be charged an additional fee, while the personal assistant service of Vertu mobile phone costs RMB 20,000 a year. Perhaps the smart voice assistant service is not as good as a personal assistant, but most of the basic needs of users can be met. It is not surprising that users make such a choice after weighing the costs.
stores in China are expanding too quickly
Vertu has more than 80 specialty stores around the world and 38 in China. 38 Maybe you don’t have a concrete understanding of this number, let’s take a look at the number of stores in Vertu in other countries. Vertu has only 3 stores in the UK and the US, while neighboring countries do not have one store.
As we all know, Vertu's market strategy in China is no different from traditional luxury brands, and mainly relies on major luxury stores distributed in first- and second-tier cities, but some are also distributed in some second- and third-tier cities. Vertu hopes to expand to second- and third-tier cities, which is understandable because any product requires marketing, and store marketing has played a very important role in China's business activities since ancient times. After all, many consumers only make purchasing decisions after seeing the product. Moreover, China has developed rapidly in recent years, the living standards of people are getting higher and higher, and the savings of ordinary people are increasing.
But Vertu did not consider that these cities are actually different from first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. First, there is a certain gap in consumption capacity. Vertu mobile phone positioning is a high-end product, and its users are actually middle-class and above. Although the living standards in second- and third-tier cities have been improving in recent years, most people's living standards are still well-off, so the consumption capacity of second- and third-tier cities is far less than that of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Second, it is difficult to seize market share. Among the second- and third-tier , Jinhua OV accounts for a large proportion of in second- and third-tier html. Luxury brands such as Vertu mobile phones will not attack and promote like domestic mobile phones, so they still cannot go deep into second- and third- and fourth-tier cities.
In short, Vertu is eager to achieve success and expands blindly. Store expansion is not only about opening a store locally, but also requires in-depth understanding of local channels, connections and consumption capacity.
core competitiveness has declined
Vertu mobile phone positioning has always been a high-end mobile phone, or even a luxury mobile phone.One psychological need for consumers for luxury mobile phones is that they can become a symbol of my identity. Vertu mobile phones have its niche characteristics due to their expensive price and exquisite craftsmanship, which can meet the psychological needs of consumers. This is its core competitiveness. In recent years, traditional luxury brands have always had the ambition to enter digital products. In addition to luxury products jointly created with mobile phone manufacturers, they have also continuously launched popular digital products in gold or diamond versions.
iPhone Princess Plus
Take Apple as an example, from iPod to iPhone to iPad, and even MacBook notebooks have become cooperative promotions for luxury brands, such as the Crystal 24k gold version of iPad launched by Austrian jewelers and the Crystal 24k gold version of iPad created by Swarovski . Among them, there are also some luxury car manufacturers, such as the BlackBerry Porsche launched by BlackBerry , and the Asus Lamborghini launched by Lamborghini . These mobile phones show the temperament of a successful person in terms of appearance design, brand and connotation.
BlackBerry Porsche P9983
Compared with Vertu, a brand that focuses on mobile phones, the cross-border luxury brands such as Ferrari , Porsche, Lamborghini are more well-known. Therefore, for some "rich people", this type of product is more recognizable and to a certain extent symbolizes identity than brands such as Vertu.
Competitiveness from other mobile phone manufacturers
There are more than Vertu that makes high-end mobile phones, and other brands are also involved in this type of products. These products are positioned as high-end business mobile phone , such as Samsung W series and BlackBerry Porsche customized products. Such high-end business jets are not inferior to luxury products in service. They have a clearer positioning than Vertu and also focus on business attributes. Moreover, the products of high-end business mobile phones are updated more quickly, such as the iteration of one model of the Samsung W series every year, thereby avoiding technical lags and user experience.
Samsung W2017
When Vertu wants to change this dilemma, it can only seek this path of transformation. However, under the current circumstances, Vertu's transformation is also difficult. First of all, operators have huge data and natural advantages in distinguishing high-end business people, which plays a role in adding icing on the cake to the vertical marketing of luxury mobile phones. Secondly, the customized private services of luxury mobile phones cannot be separated from the support of operators, which is also the key to the high-end business mobile phones' love for operator channels. Vertu has almost zero in operator channels, or whether there is enough capital to be favored by operators is still a question mark.
Finally, since Vertu was previously positioned as a luxury mobile phone, general luxury consumption often has the following characteristics: showing off, imitating, following the shelter and pursuing self-realization, but the ultra-high-end one is more targeted at the business people, more or less "noble plot", and more value the brand's sense of social responsibility. Vertu has always been a pure luxury electronics brand. This image is very suitable for traditional luxury goods channels, but it still needs to overcome several hurdles to promote it to business channels.
After-sales cost is too high and the experience is lagging behind
In recent years, Vertu has been repeatedly criticized for being "good-looking but not easy to use". Although VERTU has also launched touch screen phones and smartphones equipped with Android systems, industry insiders believe that compared with domestic mobile phones that are also positioned as high-end phones, VERTU product configuration has lagged behind at least half a year, and cannot have top-level configurations at high prices, and the consumer experience is poor.
Vertu's price is not only expensive, but its after-sales cost is also amazing. Some consumers said that the repair fee alone cost more than 20,000 yuan in a year for Vertu mobile phones that cost 153,000 yuan. The first repair was due to the problem of the up and down buttons. I could only turn down, not up. When I went to a specialty store for repair, I was told that I would pay more than 6,000 yuan and promised a one-year warranty. But not long after the repair, the same problem occurred again. During the repair again, the clerk told me that the keyboard must be replaced as a whole, including the up and down key repair, which cost about 15,000 yuan.
Summary
In any case, Vertu is no longer the Vertu that year. If Vertu wants to change this embarrassing situation, it can only seek the path of transformation. Technology innovation and product polishing are more valuable than luxury decoration supporting sky-high prices. The brand recently signed a $40 million contract with China TCL and will use the latter technology to produce mobile phones. But I think this behavior is a desperate act, because Vertu is facing a debt crisis now, which may further aggravate its debt, and ironically, TCL itself is not a luxury mobile phone manufacturer.
