On the day of the interview with Zhang Huachun, the cold wave caused Chengdu's temperature to hover around zero. At the headquarters of Meijing Comfortable Home, however, the temperature maintains at comfortable 20℃. In the office of General Manager Zhang Chunhua, even if the floor height is as high as 6 meters, the one-piece floor-to-ceiling window and the heating system hidden inside the space give people a comfortable feeling as if being embraced by warm spring breezes.

In this sunny office, Zhang Huachun had a two-hour dialogue with Sina Home, with topics ranging from start-up to development, from persistence to determination, and from craft to brand. Many plans that have not yet been announced to the public and some long-standing doubts from the outside world were elaborated one by one in this dialogue.

Value runs through the whole dialogue and forms the core of Zhang Huachun's business logic. It is this word, value, that takes him 20 years to define a concept and create an industry.

System Makes Value

When he quit his teaching job in 1993, Zhang Huachun made a five-year plan for himself—find a job and stay with the company or industry for more than five years. In his view, five-year is a transition period from quantitative change to qualitative change, and it is also a necessary time for experience to transform into value.

This rule, set when he first entered the workplace, has not been broken. In 1998, Zhang Huachun was employed by a company as a grass-roots employee. In five years he managed to become a sales manager with annual sales exceeding 4 million yuan. At the end of the fifth year, he submitted his resignation to the company and was determined to go solo.

He rented a shop in the building materials market in western Chengdu. Right on Mid-Autumn Festival of that year, after finishing the decoration and distribution of goods, his savings of several years were reduced to a littel more than 900 yuan.

Zhang Huachun, however, was not worried, because he has accumulated 5 years of experience in the building materials company, which is enough to turn into value. The first batch of leisure bathtubs was sourced from a Guangdong customer who he once served.

Five years of sales experience has brought Zhang Huachun not only customers from the sales channel, but also business thinking. He found that even though products of a single category can be completely cover products of the category in all levels, the "low-frequency consumption" attribute of building materials itself makes it impossible for products to be re-consumed and even the very important market interaction in modern retailing would be lost. This thought was confirmed in the feedback given by his customers of leisure bathtub. When he found that most of his customers mentioned the extremely low utilization rate of the leisure bathtub after they bought it home, he decided to look for a better alternative, namely, "products with systematic characteristics".

In 2000, Chengdu's first heating boiler was on display in Zhang Huachun's exhibition hall. The first regular customer was an executive from a company. Due to the influence of year-round field work on his health, Chengdu's wet and cold winter made him very uncomfortable. When he went to Zhang Huachun's store to buy a sauna room and a leisure bathtub, he found the heating boiler placed in the last row and immediately paid a deposit to move the boiler home. Zhang Huachun asked the water and electricity master who he had cooperated before to draw the installation drawing of the boiler and to carry out the construction and installation. The transactions of the second and third order all come from the customers' special demand for "winter heating". As he is the only in Chengdu who can supply the product and offer relatively professional service, Zhang Huachun won over these regular customers' recognition. Up to now, Meijing Comfortable Home has more than 120,000 regular customers in Chengdu, with 60% of the turnover coming from referrals of regular customers. Zhang Huachun said that this is the sense of value brought by "products with systematic characteristics".

If the heating equipment and installation process are viewed separately, it is not difficult to find that the two sets of systems contain more than 10 links, and the connection between the links is where value comes from.

Positioning Consolidates Value

Compared with products of a single category, heating system requires more cooperation. Whether it is the design of heating lines, boiler installation, on-site measuring, erection or even later debugging, it requires rather professional technology and deeper communication with customers. The "value" that Zhang Huachun expected comes from this. "The creation of value is recognized by customers in the form of money." Therefore, he did not think that the definition of "expensive" of Meijing Comfortable Home products was "negative", but rather the market's recognition of Meijing Comfortable Home products and services.

"When I put forward the idea of 'a little more expensive, a lot better', I wanted to establish an image of high quality and high price," Zhang Huachun said. "If we consider it from the customer's perspective, 'expensive' is not a disadvantage as well. It is not that the customers can not afford the high price, but that they want their money to produce the maximum value." Meijing Comfortable Home provides customers with better quality assurance and more professional service process.

In order to better conform to the "expensive" positioning, Zhang Huachun upgraded the products and put forward the concept of "whole water-flowing import", that is, the ones where water flows through are all imported equipment. This is why Zhang Huachun spends most of his time abroad. "Only by understanding the most advanced technology and the most humanized life style abroad can we provide the best heating scheme for our customers and make 'comfortable home' worthy of the name."

Pricing Guarantees Value

For Meijing Comfortable Home, the value comes from the premium brought by professional services. Zhang Huachun hopes to maximize this premium.

Starting in 2013, he began to bring up pricing strategy within the company.

Zhang Huachun's pricing strategy was rejected by the team after 30 elements were outlined for SWOT analysis, but he didn't want to give up. "The seesaw battle-like bargaining will affect the customer's purchase experience, thus affecting the brand image. The customers and the sellers all focus on bargaining, while the real communication focus—heating scheme, network cable arrangement, etc.—is weakened instead," Zhang Huachun said, adding that where complaints arise is where values are presented. How can complaints be turned into values? "Only pricing sales can be the best solution."

After five years of deliberation, in 2017, the "pricing strategy" finally got implemented. "This step is driving Meijing Comfortable Home to a dead end." Zhang Huachun thus defines the on-going pricing strategy. When the customer's attention is shifted from bargaining, they are bound to pay more attention to the heating scheme design and the subsequent actual construction. At this time, the professionalism of Meijing Comfortable Home team is of vital significance. Because the higher pricing will lead to customers to believe that "the higher the price, the better the quality". This expectation will continue to be driven higher as there is no opportunity for the customer to bargain. Once there is a deviation in the experience during the whole purchase and use process, this disappointment will be multiplied and the reduction in brand trust will be greater than before the implementation of the pricing strategy.

To this end, Zhang Huachun upgraded the whole service process. Both the front-end design team and the back-end installation and maintenance team have undergone at least two rounds of professional training. The company has even launched a mobile phone APP, which allows customers to monitor the operation of the system and remotely control the equipment in their homes through mobile phones.

During the period when the pricing sales has been on-going, the sales of Meijing Comfortable Home did not decline, but maintained a growth higher than the average level of its peers. Perhaps this is the value of "eliminating complaints".

For the future, Zhang Huachun has mapped out a "3+2" strategy, and the brand will take Chengdu as the center, go global and produce greater value. In this strategy, five major sections are included such as "Meijing Comfortable Home" and "Meijing Warmer". Of which, Meijing Comfortable Home mainly focuses on Sichuan's civilian and small commercial houses, while Meijing Warmer on deluxe houses. These five major sections form an ecological chain with Meijing Comfortable Home as the core, which is also a two-pronged transformation of the brand from emphasizing asset operation to brand output management. Zhang Huachun said that he hopes the "comfortable home" industry can play a greater role in a wider market, especially helping small and medium-sized businesses that want to create value but lack the "assets" to start. "Only when the cake is big, the market is big and the value is shared can the value be maximized."

Interview Afterword:

For any enterprise, opportunity is indispensable. This is especially true for Chinese enterprises, especially modern ones.

Joining the building materials industry in 1993, setting up his own business in 1998, devoting to the heating industry in 2002, officially launching the "Meijing Comfortable Home" in 2012, redefining the "comfortable home" industry, and fully implementing the pricing sales strategy in 2017... Almost every big development node of Meijing Comfortable Home coincides with the change of national policies and market demand.

However, for an enterprise to become a leader in the industry, it must not only capture opportunities but also transform them. From people with specific needs to the improvement of life quality, Zhang Huachun keenly captured the core needs of the market and provided the best solution. Whether it is upgrading all products to import counterparts, or pricing sales, or the slogan "a little more expensive, a lot better", all these endeavors are constantly strengthening the concept of "comfortable" in all dimensions and further strengthening the positioning of "comfortable home". For any enterprise, accurate and irreplaceable positioning is the best way to occupy the market and the only way to get rid of the quagmire of low-end competition and gain the initiative in bargaining.