On 7th November, Zhu Ping, President of Huawei’s consumer business in China, led a team to Sanpower Group for a visit and a talk over in-depth cooperation. Yuan Yafei, Chairman of Sanpower Group, extended a warm welcome to the guests together with Cheng Xueyin, Vice President of Sanpower Group, Xin Kexia, President of Hisap, and Zhu Wei, President of Funtalk Telecommunications. Other related leading figures attending the talk included Liu Xiao, Vice President of Funtalk Telecommunications, Yang Fan, COO of Hisap, Wu Qiang, Assistant President of Funtalk Telecommunications, etc.

Zhu Ping visited the Showroom of Sanpower Home where Zhu Wei made a detailed introduction to the Group’s gradual development, Party building work, corporate culture, social responsibility fulfillment and so on. In the Group’s concept store Brookstone, Xin Kexia showcased to the visitors a variety of novelty gadgets that were introduced into the domestic market after the Group’s acquisition of Brookstone, an American fun and novelty products provider.

Zhu Ping expressed his acknowledgement of Sanpower Group’s development and achievements in the past 23 years and his admiration of the Group’s global outreach and insightful international business that featured “consumption, health and finance”. Meanwhile, he was also impressed by the hardships Sanpower Group had undergone as a private enterprise in order to create today’s prosperity. He noted that the Group’s corporate culture and belief that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation calls for great Chinese enterprises” chimed in with Huawei’s ideas.

Yuan Yafei said that Chinese state-owned enterprises took pride in Huawei, a truly great company and that its perseverance and expertise were worth learning to every company. Besides, he analyzed the development of consumer electronics in the past 20 years and its likely trend, adding that in the future only those dedicated incumbent brands would have the last laugh.

Yuan also expounded the real causes of the chill felt by the brick-and-mortar retail stores. Firstly, suppliers failed to keep pace with the changing demands of consumers while the technological revolution had already led to radical changes in both products and business models. Secondly, the reform in business models didn’t keep up with the changing technologies and products. Thirdly, the retail industry continued a haphazard development. Finally, the off-line retail outlets failed to assume their most essential role as value providers for consumers. Retail businesses needed to embrace the changes of the Internet and the market and fulfill its most essential function through informationisation means. Faced with the chilling real economy, Sanpower together with Funtalk, Hisap, Brookstone, House of Fraser, Hamleys and its other subsidiaries will strive to meet and also guide the needs of consumers and meanwhile explore the way for the turnaround of Chinese business, following its version 4.0 business model of “house brands + buyer system + scene-based sales + O2O + consumer finance”.

Through the talk, the two parties reached a consensus on plenty of issues revolving around the cooperative strategies of Sanpower’s several platforms. According to their joint announcement, in 2017 Huawei would build a strategical partnership with Funtalk’ smartphone arm and Hisap and together they would develop a retail outlet system; besides, Huawei also would start cooperation with Brookstone. As the Mate 9, Huawei’s upcoming flagship phone will be first released in China on 14th November, Sanpower Group will put on a light show using the lights of three skyscrapers in the Sanpower Plaza at Xinjiekou to offer its congratulation at that time.