Wang Qiufeng, the senior executive of Extreme Fox, resigned, resigned or dismissed？ Intriguing ＂personal reasons＂

Recently, the news that Wang Qiufeng, a senior fox executive, left the company came from the industry, and then this news was verified in Beiqi Blue Valley. Wang Qiufeng’s departure became a foregone conclusion. In recent years, there have been quite frequent personnel changes in the top management of Polar Fox. Before Wang Qiufeng, Yu Liguo, the president of BAIC Polar Fox Division, left in September 2021, and the head of BAIC New Energy changed again and again, from Zheng Gang to Mafenglie to Dai Kangwei. The initial statement of Wang Qiufeng’s departure was dismissal. Later, regarding Wang Qiufeng’s departure, the unified foreign language changed to "resignation for personal reasons". What kind of extreme fox is hidden behind the vague "personal reasons"?

Career Waterloo of Auto Media People

Wang Qiufeng graduated from Beijing University of Technology majoring in automobile, but her development direction is that the media is not making cars. Wang Qiufeng, who has successively joined Automotive Knowledge magazine, Economic Observer, China Business News, Sohu Auto News Center and Tencent Auto, is a professional auto media person. She knows how to build momentum better than building a car. From Wang Qiufeng’s resume, it can be seen that her career is quite smooth. Before joining Extreme Fox, she moved to the automobile sector of various media organizations. In 2020, she moved from the position of general manager of Tencent Automobile to vice president of Extreme Fox Automobile. Wang Qiufeng, during his tenure at Extreme Fox Automobile, seemed to be on the promotion accelerator. In 2022, he was successfully promoted to the president of Extreme Fox Automobile.

Wang Qiufeng, a newcomer to Extreme Fox, is mainly responsible for brand marketing affairs. In fact, Wang Qiufeng is really very hard in the marketing part of Extreme Fox, which can be seen from the super-high "heat" of Extreme Fox Automobile this year. In the first half of 2022, two concerts led by Wang Qiufeng were held with great fanfare. The attendance of Cui Jian and Tayu Lo brought surprises to the fans of the two singers as much as the Chinese New Year, which brought billions of traffic exposures to the polar fox car and made the name polar fox active in the eyes of the world.

However, the marketing with such huge traffic is actually a complete failure, and the huge traffic caused by the high concert investment has not been translated into the sales figures of Fox. According to the statistics of the first three quarters of 2022, the total sales volume of polar fox cars in the three quarters was 8,138 units, and the embarrassing fact that the average monthly sales volume was 3 digits, coupled with the sky-high marketing expenses and the huge losses created by polar fox for a long time, made polar fox cars in 2022 always trapped in the whirlpool of negative public opinion. In 2022, the annual sales target of polar fox cars is 40 thousand units. Now, unless a miracle happens, this task can basically be declared a failure. In 2022, Wang Qiufeng, who was promoted to president of Extreme Fox Automobile, created a huge brand image crisis on the one hand, and failed to complete the sales task on the other. BAIC may consider that Wang Qiufeng’s year-end debriefing report is too difficult to do, so it was given an opportunity to resign for "personal reasons".

Extremely poor sales of Fox continue to lose money.

Although Wang Qiufeng has left, this big pool of mud of the extremely fox car is still there. As a listed company, the revenue report and personnel changes of Fox Auto are made public. Frequent personnel changes are not conducive to the work, and the revenue report can be described as horrible. According to public data, the operating income of Extreme Fox Automobile in the first three quarters of 2022 was 5.707 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 6.41%, which brought a net loss of 3.5 billion yuan to shareholders. At present, it is said on the Internet that the loss of polar fox has been continuous for two years, and now it is the end of the year. It is inevitable that the loss of polar fox will reach a new high. Together with the loss of 6.476 billion yuan in 2020 and 5.244 billion yuan in 2021 and the temporarily unknown fourth quarter of 2022, the cumulative loss of polar fox in early 2023 can reach nearly 17 billion.

If you only look at the financial report, you may feel that there is still some hope for the extremely fox car. After all, this loss is getting less and less every year, which is worth encouraging. However, if we look at the brand action and vehicle sales, things are not so optimistic. At present, the polar fox models on sale have the brand-new HI versions of Alpha T, Alpha S and Alpha S, which are essentially two models, or three models. The first release of Alfa T appeared in October 2000, and the subsequent Alfa S came out in April 2001. The new HI version of Alfa S and Alfa S use the same model, which can be understood as the fact that the polar fox car has not updated its products since April 2001. The investment in new products of an automobile brand has basically stopped, so shouldn’t the loss drop?

According to Kang Wei’s speech, we can see that in the next step, the focus of polar fox’s work will shift to the lower-end market, and it will spend a lot of energy to accelerate the laying of channels and increase the number of sales stores. Here, the thinking of BAIC’s top management is very strange. Is it because there are not enough stores that the fox car can’t be sold? Is it really worthwhile to focus on channel construction in the current price segment when the monthly sales volume is less than 1,000 units? Of course, it is a good decision to turn to the low-end market. However, if Extreme Fox does not realize the problems of its own products, no matter how the general direction is changed and how many offline stores are opened, the mess of BAIC Extreme Fox will always be a mess.

Who will take over the "mess" polar fox?

It is natural for someone to fill the vacancy when the president leaves office. At present, it is still inconclusive who will hold the position of President of Fox Auto, but there are two possible candidates, one is Fan Jingtao and the other is Zhang Guofu. Fan Jingtao was very active after Wang Qiufeng’s departure, and repeatedly expressed his confidence in the brand. From all kinds of reports, we can extract Fan Jingtao’s core viewpoints, one is to focus on R&D and innovation, and the other is to update products and broaden channels mentioned by Dai Kangwei. Compared with other senior leaders, Fan Jingtao’s pursuit of product strength is still slightly more. However, Beiqi Blue Valley has invested less than 2.2 billion yuan in R&D in the past two years. I wonder if Fan Jingtao is confident to raise more funds for R&D in the predicament of hopeless profit of Extreme Fox, and I don’t know if Fan Jingtao can take care of product strength if he takes over Extreme Fox.

Zhang Guofu is a veteran of BAIC. It is embarrassing that most of Zhang Guofu’s resume is not in the field of passenger cars. Regarding Zhang Guofu’s entry into Polar Fox, we need to consider more about his understanding of new energy, passenger cars and the current situation of Polar Fox. Everything about Zhang Guofu is unknown, but whether it is Fan Jingtao or Zhang Guofu, there is nothing they can do in the face of the super "mess" that is so hard to return.