Boink Your Dealers

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Troubled BYD has even more problems: Dealers defect the Chinese car maker, because the alleged master of the electric vehicle has perfected one ancient tradecraft: The art of channel stuffing. A Beijing BYD store switched to another brand because BYD required them to carry a whopping six times the monthly selling rate on the lot. The poor dealer that moved 70 BYDs in a good month was sitting on a steadily restocked inventory of 400 units.

Even that generous inventory strategy did not help: In 2010, BYD’s sales grew only 15 percent, less than half the performance of the overall market.

Now a contrite BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu swore to the Wall Street Journal that this won’t happen again. “Our objective now is to ask dealers to carry stock that is twice the monthly selling rate.”

The result of the strategy? “Because of the dealer inventory reduction and other changes to its strategy, BYD is forecasting even less sales growth this year,” says the Journal. “The company says it sees its sales growing only around 10% to roughly 550,000 vehicles in 2011, more or less on par with the 10 percent to 15 percent growth analysts predict for the China car market as a whole.” Given past performance and overfilled lots, even that target may be audacious.

To right the listing ship, BYD also plans to slow the roll-out of new cars (not good for sales) and spend more time on quality and styling (good for sales in about 5 years.)

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Kita Ikki Kita Ikki on Jan 27, 2011

    A Toyota Corolla knockoff with a VW grille ... Is it an "authorized" or unauthorized copy?

    • Advo Advo on Jan 28, 2011

      It looks like a nondescript copy. Perhaps they should copy the past Toyota quality and the recent Hyundai styling?

  • MattfromOz MattfromOz on Jan 29, 2011

    To be fair to BYD, the F3 (a mix of old gen Toyota Corolla and Honda City) was by far the best-selling passenger car in China for the second year in a row last year with 263,947 units moved (admittedly at -26% on 2009) and their F0 (a thinly veiled Toyota Aygo) was up 44% in 16th with 148,457 sales... Certainly not big profit-making sales but it would allow BYD a strong presence in Chinese streets nowadays... If you are interested in having a look at the 200 best selling passenger cars in China in 2010 you can find the list and the Top 10 in pictures here: http://bestsellingcars.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/china-december-2010-great-wall-tengyi-3-byd-leader-in-2010/#more-2262 Enjoy! Matt

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