Luo Yonghao's Craftsman Rhapsody: A Mobile Phone War Aiming at "Feelings"

A mobile phone war targeting "sentiment" has finally begun.

Four months ago, when the Smartisan T1, a smartphone that had been hyped for two years, was unveiled at a press conference, the smartphone that Luo Yonghao claimed was full of extreme sentiment was always a dream that was elusive and yet far from reality.

Although the latest report released by market research company IDC on August 14, 2014 showed that global smartphone shipments exceeded 300 million units for the first time in the second quarter of 2014, reaching 301.3 million units, in the eyes of Luo Yonghao, who thinks highly of himself, all other products except Apple phones are stupid products. "Let's create our own mobile phones!" he shouted.

Among the countless people in the world, some people are so unique, and in a distant corner of the night sky, they persistently emit their own light.

Snatching food from the tiger's mouth

After New Oriental , NiuBo.com and Lao Luo English School, Luo Yonghao actively started his new business empire. The Hammer phone is Lao Luo's entrepreneurial rhapsody against the backdrop of the great era.

Nowadays, it is not so easy to get users to queue up and order online. Hammer Mobile Phone is known for its craftsmanship, but it still has a lot of defects and the tragedy of rework and delayed launch. The industry believes that "ideals and reality are at odds" and analyzes it as a case of "eggs hitting stones".

This attracted the ridicule of Luo Yonghao's old enemy Fang Zhouzi , "Users originally bought the sentiment, the product is just a gift, don't be too picky."

Behind his unconventional approach, Luo Yonghao thought of too many tricks to snatch food from the tiger's mouth, but success did not come as expected.

This "crosstalk artist" whose speech ticket sales reached 500,000 or 600,000 yuan, and whose mobile phone brand had been advancing at a slow pace for two years, finally took a break, leaving the faces of 200,000 early buyers filled with disappointment.

When a media outlet visited the Foxconn factory in Yizhuang, Beijing, they found Luo Yonghao, who was staying at the Home Inn near the production line, with a worried look on his face. He was so exhausted by the delay in the delivery of the mobile phone that he had no intention of being interviewed.

In his opinion, Hammer Mobile Phone is about glory and dream. Just like his Lao Luo English Training School, he is determined to "exchange feelings for money".

When talking about Luo Yonghao, the word idealism is always mentioned. In Luo Yonghao's opinion, he and his speeches actually represent a kind of sentiment, a sentiment that belongs to his era. Hammer phone is the release of his sentiment. It can make him recall the prime of his 20s, the time that whizzed by.

Luo Yonghao, born in 1972, is no longer young. The Hammer phone has given him the strength and courage to pursue his dreams, despite the irreversibility of age. If nothing unexpected happens, the strong-hearted Luo Yonghao will shake off the fatigue and criticism around him with a positive attitude and get back on track.

“Live Carefully”

In 1972, when Martin Cooper, the father of mobile phones, was preparing to develop a mobile phone, Luo Yonghao was just born in Longmen Commune, Helong County, Jilin Province, China, far across the ocean.

In 1983, when the world's first mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000X, was launched, Luo Yonghao was only a teenager. No one would have thought that he would have some kind of intersection with the mobile phone industry in the future.

Luo Yonghao's initial interest in the position of English teacher was entirely due to the attraction of money. After receiving nine years of education in primary and secondary schools in his hometown, he could not forget the feeling of oppression.

"After nine years of constant conflict and struggle with this stupid system and mentally retarded teachers in school, I finally felt very tired. So I decided to drop out," Luo Yonghao wrote in his autobiography "My Struggle."

In view of the fact that he had published some articles in some domestic literary magazines, his parents agreed to let him leave school. In this way, Luo Yonghao dropped out of school in his first year of high school. He thought his parents understood him very well: "A writer obviously does not need a diploma."

What he longed for was the ability to think independently. As the youngest son of the county party secretary, he was blessed with the opportunity to stay at home and read books for three years, including the high-brow book "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". This was unlike his future boss Yu Minhong . Before entering Peking University, Yu Minhong worked and took the college entrance examination three times in the three years before entering Peking University. His sister was worried that he would achieve nothing, so she took him to Tianjin. Luo Yonghao rarely mentioned his days living in Tianjin. One day in the new millennium, a friend was impressed by Luo Yonghao's enthusiasm for "tireless teaching" and suggested that he apply for a job at New Oriental School in Beijing?

After careful preparation, he wrote "a job application letter of more than 10,000 words" and "painstaking effort" to Yu Minhong. In order to prepare for the trial lecture, he practiced facing the wall more than 30 times, recorded the lecture more than ten times, and then listened to it repeatedly until he was satisfied.

Unlike now when his speeches are sure to excite the audience and enjoy the warm applause, Luo Yonghao at that time "had a very poor mental quality, trembling all over, a stiff tongue, a straight back, and cold sweat all over his body", he self-deprecatingly said in the book "My Struggle". He failed in two trial speeches.

He didn't want to give up the opportunity, so after knocking on Yu Minhong's office door, he begged him to give him another chance.

After three years of being an award-winning teacher at New Oriental, he began to wonder: Why did it go public? In this regard, the movie "Chinese Partners" strives to present Yu Minhong's inner conflicts and entanglements. Luo Yonghao has since believed that this is inconsistent with his values. After enduring for three years, he decisively left in 2006. The wave of the Internet made him extremely excited. In 2006, Luo Yonghao and several partners founded Niubo.com, which was eventually closed down due to management problems. Luo Yonghao was heartbroken and had no job, but he was still thinking about education all day. After a few months of rest, the idea of ​​Lao Luo's English training school matured, which he called a "burn the boats" move.

He joked: "I actually live very cautiously. Many people only hear about my arrogant and domineering side on the Internet, but they don't know that I am actually a rough but meticulous, brave and resourceful person. It would be difficult for people like us who are ugly to survive if we don't do this."

"Craftsman" makes the machine

When Smartisan Technology was founded in 2012, its registered capital was already at the level of 20 million yuan. On April 14 this year, Luo Yonghao announced that he had obtained a round B financing, and the company's overall valuation exceeded 1 billion yuan. In June 2013, Smartisan Technology completed a round A investment of 70 million yuan at a valuation of 470 million yuan, of which 40 million yuan came from Zihui Venture Capital.

According to official data from Smartisan Technology, the company has received advance payments of up to 80 million yuan for orders, with an order volume of approximately 200,000 mobile phones.

Last year, Luo Yonghao only served as a "guest performer" to promote his mobile phone, but this year he made his real debut.

When others are committed to making arcade machines, those mavericks are always looked up to, at least they bring freshness to the mobile phone industry.

However, from a business perspective, the mobile phone industry is not just about sentiment. The economic chain behind it is complex and long. Even Luo Yonghao, who was born as a teacher, sees this very clearly.

At the press conference on May 20, Luo Yonghao listed no less than 20 international big-name accessory manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments OPA2604 chip, Qualcomm Milbeaut Mobile•image processing solution, Acutelogic 4.0 automatic white balance algorithm, and Arcsoft scene recognition and night scene noise reduction technology.

But is that enough?

Industry insiders analyzed that what domestic mobile phones can do is to combine these components together in their own way, and the only way they can take a chance is "I installed this component and you didn't", or "I installed a new component and you installed an old one".

In fact, when an entrepreneur enters an industry, there must be an accumulation period, which cannot be skipped. Some industry insiders analyzed that the delay in the launch of the Hammer phone due to rework showed that Luo Yonghao lacked experience in the mobile phone industry: Luo Yonghao had very high requirements for the design of mobile phones, but he outsourced the appearance design and the internal structure design of the mobile phone, and this is where the problem lies. Second, marketing is the key to success and failure: although Luo Yonghao used "feelings" and "craftsman spirit" to make the brand famous, blaming Foxconn put himself in trouble.

Many people have noticed the core points of Luo Yonghao's response this time: there is no question of changing the OEM factory for the Level 5 production line of the Hammer phone; the production capacity is a dedicated production line, not a spliced ​​line; it is unreasonable to produce 48,000 units and return 40,000 units. If the return rate is really so high, wouldn't it be a "suicide attack" to continue producing the Hammer phone?

Who is right and who is wrong will become clear when Hammer goes public again.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.