Chinaway Autoparts, the leading distributor in China, joined NEXUS on 1st of October 2021. So, what is NEXUS’ strategy and vision in the Chinese market? James Zhang, NEXUS Business Developer Manager in China, reveals more about our plans and initiatives.
Chinaway Autoparts has just joined the group, what is the vision and strategy for the company to grow within the NEXUS Community?
When talking with Mr. Guangyong Huo, CEO of Chinaway Autoparts, there are some key factors that emerged and for which we are particularly proud of in this market.
Firstly, NEXUS is recognised as a transparent and honest group by distributors in the country. This is very important, as doing business in China is not always as easy as it might be in other countries.
Chinaway also saw a lot of potential opportunities, not only to strengthen its relationship with N! Suppliers but also participating in our core services, such as the NEXUS Academy.
Chinaway is very much interested in collaboration with our worldwide community of distributors and manufacturers and to explore new ways of doing business, for example, by joining Marketparts.com.
Together with the announcement of Chinaway Autoparts, NEXUS was declared “Most Valuable Purchasing Group” by the fourth Auto Aftermarket Industry Westlake Summit in recognition of Nexus’ work over recent years! What is the secret of the N! success story in China?
I might be repeating myself, but the key success factor in China for NEXUS is exactly its transparency, loyalty and cooperation with local distributors and manufacturers. There’s a fundamental, mutual ambition to grow business and projects and we all work together on these targets.
Nexus is an international group with fantastic value offers to its global community. To make things happen in China, we tailor-make these offers to the local market, still respecting global principles and rules but being more flexible to enable the China community to accept and use them.
We successfully launched a “Leading Star Camp” initiative under the guidance of the N! Academy with 6 strategic suppliers and offered 800 participants more than 20 technical trainings already since June.
We are actively exploring the opportunities to launch other value projects such as marketparts.com, DR!VE+…etc, with a Chinese adapted version of course!
Finally, Innovation is in the DNA of the local NEXUS team as well – we are investigating the feasibility of a potential digital smart sales/promotion platform called N! Choice to fulfill the needs of local members/suppliers’ to ‘sell-out’ activities to workshops.
How many members does Nexus have, and what is the reason for launching NEXMENTO in addition to N!
With an incredibly fast rate of growth, today NEXMENTO is composed of more than 70 members. China is a very big and fragmented market. There are around 300,000 distributors/retailers there. In NEXUS’ China community we have top-level wholesalers located in Tier-1 cities and they have significant business with N! suppliers already. But if we want to further develop our business in the Tier 2,3 and 4 cities, we need to deep-dive into these smaller cities and find regional leader partners.
These regional leaders are always Tier-2 wholesalers or retailers serving workshops directly. Their business model is quite different from traditional wholesaler members. So, considering the potentially large number of members that we are going to develop, and to better manage them from an operational standpoint, that was why we set up Nexmento. Another important mission of Nexmento is to develop new projects from a 100% local perspective, under the guidance of NEXUS International.
What are your dedicated N! China projects you were referring to?
Knowledge/skill is always a hot topic for China IAM. To fully adapt to Chinese usage scenario, NEXUS CHINA developed a WeChat-based e-learning platform in accordance with N! Academy’s global deployment. The idea is to join the forces of different N! suppliers who are specialists in certain product categories, and to deliver quality online and offline hybrid trainings to N! members’ workshop customers.
The 1st session, which Valeo, Mahle, Philips, ZF, Hella and Bosch joined, launched in June. Till now Nexus China has organized over 20 technical trainings for over 800+ participants. We will organize an award ceremony before the end of November to close the 1st training session. We are developing more functions besides live broadcasting, and we welcome more suppliers to join this meaningful initiative.
Are you working on new projects?
We are currently investigating the feasibility of a digital platform called N! Choice, aiming to facilitate the sell-out activities for N! members and suppliers. This smart sales/promotion focused platform will enable members to launch multiple brand promotions in a digital way while building their workshop customer loyalty system. Suppliers who join this project, will have clear sell-out statistical data, and monitor the effect of sell-out activities carried out by the distributor. This will strengthen market insight for suppliers.
