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Over the past half century, the bus and coach industry has expanded tremendously from its humble origins. In recent years, with accelerating economic globalization, the domestic bus and coach industry has become increasingly saturated. In response to mounting competitive pressure in the industry, domestic bus and coach manufacturers are adjusting their respective development strategies, setting their eyes on the overseas market and working to identify new areas of corporate growth.
While broadening its domestic market during its early years, Xiamen Golden Dragon Bus Co., Ltd., a leading force in the domestic bus and coach industry , formed an overseas market research team and deployed a significant number of personnel well-versed in the overseas market and international trade operations to launch an export initiative in high-priority areas such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Over recent years, Xiamen Golden Dragon has successfully tapped into markets in nearly 40 countries and regions, including Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America; as a result, its export volume has skyrocketed: its sales in the overseas market have soared from just a little over USD 1 million in the beginning year of its overseas sales to USD 143 million in 2007. The volume of exports has also experienced a renewed surge. During 2006 ~2007, Golden Dragon secured a sizable order from Russia for nearly 1,000 public buses, bringing the share of the Russian market controlled by Chinese-made buses to a new record level. In the same year, Golden Dragon’s cooperation with South Africa reached new heights, with more than 8,000 Buss bound for South Africa, a new record in the export of Buses was set.
With all of these, in 2007, Golden Dragon’s overseas sales soared 10,000 units and its exports leapt 626 percent over the previous year, making Golden Dragon one of the top manufacturers in the domestic bus and coach industry in terms of the volume and sales revenues of exports.
The history of Golden Dragon’s penetration into the overseas market is replete with market tests and successful breakthroughs, demonstrating that Golden Dragon has identified a path for internationalization by bringing its products and operations up to international standards and by taking inventory of its extensive experience.
Locating Partners around the World
In a bid to further tap its potential in the international market and to constantly optimize and innovate its product quality in response to ever-changing market demand, in 1995, Golden Dragon embarked on technological cooperation with Japan’s Toyota and introduced Toyota’s “Hiace” products, which became a huge success in the overseas market thanks to their reliable performance and stylish appearance. In 1997, Golden Dragon initiated new cooperation with Toyota to introduce its coaster technology, embarking on the production of mid-sized bus and coaches; combining some of its existing infrastructure, Golden Dragon partially modified this introduced model; for example, Golden Dragon adopted advanced cathode electro-coating processing, allowing the model to gain a distinct showing in market competition. In 2006, Golden Dragon teamed up with Sweden’s Scania, the world’s leading commercial vehicle maker, and Bonetto, a renowned Italian design firm, to develop the XML6125S3 model, a high class-3 large-sized luxury bus and coach product. In 2008, Golden Dragon entered into an agreement with Hyundai Automobile Co., Ltd. in South Korea to procure bus and coach chassis and power systems from the latter. Golden Dragon hopes that the cooperation with Hyundai will accelerate Golden Dragon Bus and coaches’ pace of becoming the highest-class buses and coaches in the Chinese market.
Years of cooperation with overseas partners has allowed Golden Dragon to draw upon its partners’ core corporate culture, superior technologies, and managerial modes to achieve a comprehensive quality upgrade and to boost its strength in tapping into the international marketplace.
Researching Overseas Market for Accurate Positioning
Faced with competition from leading domestic and overseas bus and coach manufacturers in the complex international market, Golden Dragon has made consistent exploratory efforts, developed sharp insight into the overseas market and identified the direction and strategy for the company’s overseas expansion.
Firstly, Golden Dragon is tapping into the international market through multiple channels and from multiple angles. On one hand, Golden Dragon sends representatives abroad to gain first-hand insight into the overseas market and to identify needs and locate potential clients by communicating with local bus and coach operators. On the other hand, Golden Dragon analyzes information and data to gauge market demand for imported buses and coaches in different regions and investigates the performance and prices of bus and coach products in these regions in order to identify potential markets for exports.
Secondly, Golden Dragon vigorously promotes its brand. Golden Dragon is a regular participant at the annual International Bus Expo, and capitalizes on the expo to release its new products, promote its brand and corporate image and increase its name awareness abroad.
Thirdly, Golden Dragon establishes and operates local marketing systems. In view of the market characteristics of different countries, Golden Dragon has undertaken development and expansion by region and on different levels, teamed up with local marketing agencies and professionals, secured resourceful overseas agents and built a corporate marketing network. Thanks to these efforts, Golden Dragon has rapidly expanded its share in the overseas market and earned a significant international reputation.
Pursuing Technological Innovation and Boosting International Competitiveness
As the spearhead in penetrating the international market, Golden Dragon makes consistent efforts to pursue excellence of workmanship and innovation of technologies and constantly turns out products befitting regional market conditions in an effort to increase its share in the overseas market.
Firstly, in response to regional requirements, Golden Dragon modifies existing products and technologies in order to pass rigorous testing by vehicle certification authorities in various countries. To date, Golden Dragon has obtained more than 55 certifications in radio interference, maximum speed limit, interior and exterior noise, and front and rear-end collision and side rollover. It has successfully penetrated the markets in more than 40 countries and regions, including Iran (EU certification), Russia (GOST certification) and the Middle East (GCC certification). On August 17, 2006, Golden Dragon was named a “National Complete Vehicle Export Base Enterprise” by China’s Ministry of Commerce and National Development and Reform Commission.
Secondly, Golden Dragon has been strengthening the innovation and introduction of technologies in an effort to bridge the gap with advanced foreign bus and coaches. As early as 2004, Golden Dragon recognized that integral bus and coach bodies would be the future development direction of bus and coach bodies. Thus, Golden Dragon’s Technology Center began introducing technologies and teaming up with experts from the Department of Vehicle Bodies at Jilin University to study the load transfer characteristics of integral bus and coach bodies. By making and testing sample vehicles, Golden Dragon has designed an integral bus and coach body with proprietary technologies. In addition, Golden Dragon has developed proprietary core technologies in hybrid-power buses and coaches, low-entry public buses, and clean-energy buses and coaches. Moreover, Golden Dragon has broken new grounds in the research of bus and coach energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, and safety technologies.
Thirdly, Golden Dragon has been making great efforts to optimize its production process and improve its product quality. To evade “homogenization”, which is common among bus and coach manufacturers at present, and to avoid being caught in vicious price competition, Golden Dragon has further improved its product quality to boost the competitiveness and market shares of Golden Dragon Bus and coaches. In early 2007, Golden Dragon committed more than RMB 100 million Yuan to build China’s first large-sized complete bus and coach body pretreatment and cathode electro-coating line, and renovated and expanded its original coating, welding, general assembly and chassis assembly lines. With a comprehensive upgrade of its processes and product quality, Golden Dragon has brought its bus and coach body quality up to international standards. The opening of the cathode electro-coating line marks the beginning of the efforts of China’s large-sized bus and coach manufacturing industry to ultimately bring its coating and body corrosion and rust resistance levels up to the standards of mid-range sedan cars and to first-class international bus and coach manufacturing standards.
Efficient After-sales Service System Helping Golden Dragon to Project a Shiny
Image Abroad
To ensure the highest quality of overseas after-sales services, Golden Dragon has engaged overseas dealers to provide product maintenance and regularly sends domestic after-sales personnel abroad to train overseas dealers to enrich their after-sales personnel’s maintenance experience and to enable them to provide better services for customers. Moreover, Golden Dragon regularly invites the after-sales personnel of the overseas dealers to the Xiamen head office for training; in this way, these personnel are able to gain first-hand insight into the manufacturing process in the workshops, which enhances their skills and improves their ability to pinpoint vehicle troubles and resolve problems as fast as possible. With years of practical experience in providing domestic after-sales services, Golden Dragon has developed an efficient domestic after-sales service system and acquired a series of methods for building and managing an after-sales service network. This mature after-sales service experience is valuable for the improvement of the quality of after-sales services in the overseas market. With the full guidance and support of domestic after-sales service operations, spare parts depots and after-sales service departments have been established at the head office back at home and in some overseas regions, which has further promoted the standardization of management systems, spare parts supply and information feedback.
Golden Dragon’s strenuous endeavors over the past half century have enabled China’s bus and coach industry to constantly break new grounds. As a leading force of China’s bus and coach industry , Golden Dragon is spearheading the pursuit of the aspirations of China’s bus and coach industry to serve the global market and is going from strength from strength on its journey of overseas expansion!
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