What should Sharp learn from Japanese rice cooker and toilet seat companies?

Following the bad news of heavy debt, selling buildings, and layoffs, Sharp , the "Father of LCD" , is considering using capital to eliminate the accumulated losses on the books, and will announce a major restructuring plan today, including layoffs of 5,000 people. After the capital reduction, Sharp is preparing to survive as a "small and medium-sized enterprise".

Sharp is a microcosm. The once prosperous Japanese home appliance giants are now suffering from various "Waterloos". Since 2009, Japan has gradually changed from an exporter of home appliances to an importer. Former world-renowned companies including Mitsubishi, Hitachi , Toshiba , and NEC have faded out of the competition stage of the world home appliance market. In the recently announced 2015 Forbes Global 2000, among the six home appliance companies on the list, domestic companies such as Gree , Midea , and Haier are on the list, while the previously prosperous Japanese companies are nowhere to be seen.

In stark contrast, news about Chinese people going to Japan to buy toilet seats and rice cookers has flooded the WeChat Moments. Even a Chinese engineer said: "Japanese rice cooker liner materials are very innovative, and the rice cooked is crystal clear and not sticky."

Although both are Japanese products, the market reactions are completely different. Giant companies are constantly retreating, while small and medium-sized innovative companies are still emerging.

This is actually not about national boundaries, but rather about the essence of business. The biggest driving force of business is to create greater business returns and value. And there is no doubt that this can only be achieved by obtaining the needs of a large number of real users. What we see in Japan's former giant companies is that they are getting further and further away from users. Only those small and medium-sized enterprises that are considering survival will seek markets based on user needs.

In recent years, from the perspective of international competition, China has unprecedentedly carried out "Internet +" nationwide, Silicon Valley in the United States has used technology as a driving force for innovation, and the competition from Korean companies has intensified, making Japanese manufacturing companies increasingly embarrassed. Sharp, which is at the forefront of the storm, is the most obvious. At the beginning of this year, Sharp overturned the profit forecast made last year. The board of directors admitted in mid-January that the business environment had changed and the full-year performance would be lower than the company's previous expectations. It is expected that operating profit will be reduced to half of the earlier forecast, a year-on-year decrease of about 50 billion yen. At the same time, some media revealed that Sharp's home appliances and color TVs are gradually withdrawing from developed markets such as Europe and North America, indicating that the company's business crisis is getting worse.

In this context, traditional Japanese companies, represented by Sharp, are losing their advantages in terms of cost, market, channels and Internet transformation. Relying solely on past brands and process technologies to enter the market is no longer viable in the tide of home appliance brand competition. The only way is to cut off the arm and seek rebirth. But how effective is it?

Well-known financial writer Wu Xiaobo once said: "In a sense, there are no sunset industries in the world, only sunset companies and sunset people." This sentence seems to prove why rice cookers and toilet lids can attract such strong purchasing power. Both belong to traditional industries, but through the innovation of technology and concepts, the rice in the rice cooker can be made sweeter, and the toilet lid can be made more sanitary and energy-saving, which can better meet the real needs of users. For merchants, a toilet lid of 2,000 yuan can bring considerable profits. In fact, business is that simple.

On the contrary, Sharp seems to have suffered from the "big company disease" in terms of technology and philosophy. If Sharp can learn the essence of product innovation and other aspects after slimming down to a small and medium-sized enterprise, it will be closer to users after the loss of its arms, and there may be hope for rebirth.

Finally, let's get back to the core issue - users. Who are the people who go shopping crazily in Japan's duty-free shops? It's the current middle class in China. This generation is loyal to brands but not superstitious, and obsessed with products but not crazy. It's actually harder for them to be impressed by an advertisement. On the contrary, cost-effectiveness is the word they always talk about.

Therefore, when users are willing to go to Japan to buy a rice cooker that costs tens of thousands of yuan, but are unwilling to support a brand TV that tries to please users in every way, it is time for companies to change.

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.