NVC Lighting CEO Lin Liangqi: NVC Lighting, Reborn from the Ashes

On August 18, 2020, Lin Liangqi, CEO of NVC Lighting, was invited to attend the "2020 Global Decorative Lighting Industry Summit Forum". At the event, he delivered a keynote speech titled "NVC Lighting: Rebirth from the Ashes" to scholars, media, dealers/distributors, suppliers, and other industry insiders, disclosing for the first time the changes and achievements made by NVC Lighting in the past few months, as well as its new sixteen-character business policy!

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Lin Liangqi's speech:

B2B clients in the lighting industry are becoming increasingly specialized and segmented; C-end consumers are stratifying into low, mid, and high tiers. Due to the pandemic, people treat their homes as a "nest," leading to more online user behavior and greater demand for offline O2O services. In the past few months, as the Association Chairman stated, the pandemic's impact has caused many dealer-owned mom-and-pop stores to close, significantly reduced foot traffic in professional luminaire markets, led to bankruptcies, sharply decreased orders for SMEs, and inevitably affected large enterprises, resulting in many unprecedented difficulties. The industry is accelerating consolidation and survival of the fittest; companies with omni-channel and full-category development demonstrate stronger resilience.

Against this macro backdrop, NVC Lighting, as an industry leader, needs to overcome the challenges of historically fragmented equity and dispersed interests, avoid short-termism, and leverage its brand strength and sales channel advantages; on one hand, seize business opportunities through epidemic prevention and production resumption, and on the other, achieve transformation amid the changes in digitalization, intelligence, and interconnectivity.

What has happened at NVC Lighting in the past few months?

In the past few months, KKR completed the acquisition of a 70% equity stake in NVC Lighting China, becoming the single largest shareholder and bringing a transparent, open, clean, and efficient corporate culture to NVC Lighting China.

The governance model introduced by KKR is no longer based on the owner's arbitrary decisions. Instead, it fully trusts and empowers management with opportunities for open development, establishing a CEO accountability system under the leadership of the Board of Directors. Over the past month, the management team of NVC Lighting China has basically achieved full professionalization. For the first time, corporate operations are entirely managed by a team of professional managers, emphasizing market-oriented business policies and focusing on sustainable, healthy corporate growth.

Our product services are also seeking new positioning. High-quality, high-end commercial lighting new products, premium customized home products, and a Lighting design center have been launched successively in recent times. Our e-commerce achieved rapid growth during the pandemic, and this strong online growth has laid the foundation for implementing O2O new retail offline in the future.

A brand-new NVC Lighting is gradually unfolding! For this new NVC Lighting, we have established a sixteen-character business policy: Quality First, Adapt to Trends, Integrate Top and Bottom, Align Inside and Out.

Quality First

For a brand, without good quality there is no good soul; therefore, "Quality First" is the core value of the entire system and all employees. Avoid short-term behavior and balance the relationship between profit and high quality—sacrificing either causes fatal harm to the brand. Healthy and intelligent lighting solutions will be a very important development strategy for NVC Lighting. We aim to see NVC Lighting's high quality set a strong benchmark in the industry.

Go with the "trend"

Professor Cui Yi just mentioned that we should go with the trend rather than against it, and I share this view. The "trend" can be interpreted in many ways. For NVC Lighting, first, the 34 operational centers are assets for NVC's survival and constitute NVC's momentum; we must leverage this momentum to advance. Second, new smart technologies represent our momentum; health-oriented and intelligent solutions are the new direction for NVC Lighting. Third, industry changes resulting from the pandemic also constitute a trend. Fourth, the shift from international markets to domestic sales, leading to more intense competition in the domestic market, is also a trend. Therefore, we must leverage our brand advantages and channel advantages, pinpoint our positioning, and move upward.

At the same time, I would like to share an important insight: in the early stages of a business, it is better to do as much as possible (addition), but as the company grows, learning to subtract becomes more important. Subtraction is much harder than addition. Why? Because it is difficult to let go. However, businesses must make trade-offs, and these trade-offs are closely linked to organizational changes. If a company continues to grow without streamlining and simply keeps adding, the organization will become increasingly bloated.

Seamless Integration

For a long time, the lighting industry has seen competition between online and offline channels, sometimes even within the same brand. This must change. We need to think holistically about how to excel in digital marketing and manage O2O new retail relationships, integrating the challenges brought by the new economy and new technologies into corporate development. NVC Lighting has previously experienced online-offline conflicts, with disharmony between e-commerce companies and our operational center dealers. In the future, we will face this challenge head-on and resolve these conflicts by achieving "online-offline integration."

Inner and outer "heart"

Internal and external alignment: The "heart" is the customer. With the customer as our priority, we uphold a customer-centric value system. We must avoid excessive organizational complexity and adopt a streamlined structure that makes it easy for customers to find the right counterparts. Returning to simplicity, we collaborate with partners on an open platform with equality and a strong service spirit. Most importantly, we aim for a "four-way win" rather than a solo victory: our suppliers win, NVC Lighting wins, our operation centers win, and our dealers win.

We possess top-tier brand assets, with our brand value ranking first in the industry for nine consecutive years; we operate 34 operational centers and 2,300 exclusive stores; we have four major R&D and manufacturing systems; we have the best team. United internally and externally, we aim to restore NVC Lighting to an undisputed leadership position, becoming the undisputed leading national lighting brand.

NVC Lighting must strip away the superficial, shed the burdens of the past, and embark on a new journey. For us, every transformation and change is a life-or-death battle for the future.

Upholding our business philosophy: quality first, adapting to trends, integrating top-down and bottom-up, aligning internally and externally with one heart. The future of NVC Lighting will be like a phoenix rising from the ashes, reborn!