Over the past 8 years, 30 Chinese brands of auto manufacturers have entered Chile’s market. As one of the Chinese brands that successfully entered Chile’s market, Chery has sold 30,000 cars in Chile since it started exporting to Chile for the first time in 2007. In the past few days, Hugo Castro, excutive manager, distributor of Chery in Chile received an interview from the newspaper El Sur. In this interview, he gave a particular introduction about the Chery, the company’s history and the brand transformation in recent years.
According to Hugo, there are about ten brand car manufacturers from China only having a monthly sale of less than ten. It’s estimated that some manufacturers among them will withdraw from the market in the predictable days ahead in accordance with the data.
Chery has operated in Chile for eight years since it started exporting cars to Chile before the 2008’s world financial crisis. After the crisis, China’s strong demands revived the global economy, it boosted the economic expansion of Chile, and also boomed of the passenger cars’ market of the country. Therefore, various world auto giants started to expand their marketing network in Chile one after another. Meanwhile, the huge import also tremendously exceeds the requirements of the local market.
For this, Hugo expressed that if one brand strives for a stable and sustained development in a medium and long term, its sales must reach a certain scale,all of its general agencies and dealers must be able to share the profit. That’s what we intend to do.
Hugo stressed: “it’s unsustainable for a brand with too low sales in the long run. However, Chery Group had showed medium and long term strategic insight. We are constantly perfecting the brand orientation of Chery in Chile’s market, and this also makes our brand more and more successful. The favor of our customers is the best prove.”
Concepcion, the metropolis in the southern part of Chile, is the home of Bruno Fristch- Chery’s strategic major dealer. “There exists a mature cooperation between us, and we have formed a special tacit agreement and understanding between the distributor and the professional dealer.”
Ever since Chery entered to the market of Chile, until the current car parc of 30,000 and a monthly sale of over 300, Hugo pointed out that the outstanding achievement could reflect Chery’s specialty and dedication.
Over the past 30 years, there was an annual economic growth of 10% in China every year, which means the average income of Chinese consumers has increased, the consumption habits has changed, and their consumption level also got improved. The similar situation has appeared in Chile. What the customers concerned about is no longer just a car, it’s the car brand and the identity the brand has brought them.
In China, the giant in Asia, Chery opened its brand strategic transformation and made customers return to independent brand once again.
With the strategy been confirmed, Chery began to its design for a new auto logo, which not only for the image’s concern, but also transferred the quality of Chery and the international ideas for research and development. On top of that, Chery established an international standard design team and built an all-new core technology platform of iAuto. The new platform is consisted of the CHERYSMA, ACTECO-the latest Euro V power assembly, and CLOUDDRIVE, which made Chery become one of the earliest passenger cars sold in Chile with Euro V emission standard.
Four years ago, Chery had recruited James Brain Hope, the former experienced designer of Ford, the few talented developers and designer ever recruited by the three major auto groups of North America joined Chery, he was once employed by Daimler-Kreisler and Opel. Nowadays, Hope is the chief inspector of the automobile modelling of Chery and takes charge of the general design for the brand and products. Finally, Hakan Saracoglu also joined Chery. He had served as the experienced designer for Porsche for 14 years and took charge the design for Caymman Boxter, the 911 series and the latest Porsche 918 Spyder. He is now directly in charge of the Shanghai Design Center of Chery as a design director for appearance design.
The new team devoted themselves to possess its own DNA in the design for Chery cars, which made it ahead of other Chinese brands’ design concept. Hugo points out that: “If Chery wants to become a world-class automobile brand, it needs its own design and products. More importantly, it needs the consistent DNA with high identification degree in the design innovation among various car models. As you can see, Chery lacked the consistence among its car models in the past concerning the previous vehicle products, and the situation of the lagged design idea has been changed gradually nowadays. Further, the appearance of Tiggo 5 is the start for Chery to transform into a world-class automobile manufacturer.”
Currently, Chery is walking in the fast track aiming at building an international brand. In Chile, Chery has accelerated its step to exploit market. Hugo expresses that Chery is planning to further enlarge the import of the vehicle models and types of Chery in Chile and constantly perfect the service standard of terminal network to provide more excellent products and services for consumers.
