He took the name "Hammer" with some playfulness. The "feat" of smashing Siemens refrigerators with a hammer made him famous, and he wants to make a similar move in the mobile phone circle. It seemed to herald his fate for the next few years: excitement.

Another omens occurred that summer. Hammer's office moved from Zhongguancun to Wangjing. When loading the truck, there was a sudden thunderstorm and thunderstorm. Luo Yonghao stood by the window of the old office, muttering, "Okay, okay, I know it all." After a while, the thunder stopped and the rain subsided. It seemed that the weather had reconciled with him.

"Reconciliation" is another theme of Lao Luo's hammer for six years. To a certain extent, this is the secret of his surviving from the death valley of the mobile phone, but all the gains come at a price. One of the sacrifices that Lao Luo sacrificed was the former "Luo Yonghao is so cute".

one

The press conference held by Hammer at Beijing University of Technology on April 9 did not form a trend of swiping the screen.

Some hammer fans are surprised, but the insiders seem to be normal. Apart from the price/performance ratio, the Nut 3 released that day was really lackluster. Even the always wonderful Lao Luo speech was like the magnolia flower that was defeated in this season. After the end, there was a hammer fan discussing in the WeChat group, who fell asleep longer than just now.

Luo Yonghao chose to "fight". After the press conference, he posted a Weibo: "I came back and looked at the feedback on the Internet. Many people who use Xiangxiang say they are ugly. Well, it will definitely sell well, so I can sleep at ease." The next day, he posted on WeChat again. The public account says that those who call Nut 3 ugly are idiots.

Still the tone of innate pride, but the formula seems to be different than it was 6 years ago.

At that time, the target of his crusade was Xiaomi. 2012 was a year when Xiaomi's model made rapid progress and was highly praised. By the end of November, Xiaomi's sales had exceeded 10 billion yuan. It took Huawei and Coolpad 6 years to achieve this figure, and it was at this time that Lei Jun drank the bowl of Xiaomi soup. But just 2 years.

But Luo Yonghao was not convinced.

He quickly showed his extraordinary tongue skills, mocking Xiaomi as "mobile phone futures" and "monkey marketing"... He was even proud of his sharpness, "Lei Jun was indeed forced by us to pay attention to design and pretend to have humanistic feelings. ".

But he always had to pay it back when he came out. "Productivity" became Luo Yonghao's curse in the next few years. After feeling the pain, he conveyed his apology to Lei Jun and felt that it is not easy to make products.

But that is another story. Back in 2012, there is no doubt that Luo Yonghao has caught up with the big trend of smartphones.

In the boom, many great changes have already begun to take shape.

Xiaomi is naturally the hottest star, and the hammer directly copied its early model: make ROM first and then make mobile phones. More big manufacturers haven't reacted yet. Huawei will launch the Internet brand "Honor" in 2013, and Meizu will have "Meizu" in 2014. As for Lenovo's ZUK, that is the story of being late in 2015. .

More stories of disruption play out among phone makers outside of Apple:

For 14 consecutive years, Nokia's position as the mobile phone leader was replaced by Samsung. Iron Maiden Wang Xuehong led HTC to complete the strategic transformation of high-quality products and took the second mobile phone position. BlackBerry maker RIM chose a dangerous path: the BlackBerry 10 became a hands-on product, but it was delayed from 2012 to 2013, reluctant to release a touch-screen version while arrogantly retaining the physical keyboard board.

RIM was still optimistic at the time. Then-CEO Torsten Hines said of Nokia's decline, "We now have about 80 million subscribers -- something Nokia doesn't have." But the reality is that despite the Obama-era BlackBerry , Lady Gaga and many other fans, but with BlackBerry shutting down the BB OS service on April Fool's Day this year, in the end, BlackBerry, like Nokia, left its glory to history.

In the midst of the storm, Luo Yonghao's waves seemed to be somewhat playful. There are already many people with the mentality of watching jokes, ready to watch how the cross talk actor and English teacher play, but Lao Luo also presented the material:

The ROM originally scheduled to be released at the end of 2012 was delayed until March of the following year, and many functions could not be realized due to a serious shortage of engineers. In addition, the conference site was dragged and the network was paralyzed. Bad" appearance, almost all the scolding on the Internet.

Some media said that Luo Yonghao had insomnia that night, and the next day, he remained silent on Weibo.

two

In the first few years of being a hammer, Luo Yonghao has not been able to get rid of the label of "unreliable".

He is arrogant. In 2013, when there were no mobile phones, he published an article on Weibo: "Why does it seem that only Hammer Technology is the most likely to become the next Sony (Sony in the Morita era) or the next Apple (Apple in the Jobs era)? 》——In that year, the most active role in the domestic mobile phone market was the 799-yuan Redmi mobile phone, which directly drove Xiaomi’s sales. During the “Double Eleven” that year, Xiaomi sold 100 million yuan in three minutes.

He is casual, and he doesn't change his character even in front of investors. "He even looked at his mobile phone while chatting, ignoring investors," Huang Zhangjin, a media person, once commented. Luo Yonghao, who talks a lot on the podium, is actually a little social phobia, and he doesn't know how to say half-truths when talking about cooperation.

Not long after the "bad" ROM launch in 2013, Luo Yonghao burned out the 9 million that Momo and Tang Yan gave him. For the first time, he faced the problem of money. However, many investors are taboo against this madman who once smashed the refrigerator. A venture capitalist of a well-known fund once said, "I admire Lao Luo very much", but he turned around and told his colleagues: "We are one cent. The money won't be given to him either."

The trouble the hammer encountered on the production line gave Luo Yonghao a "hammer".

In May 2014, the Hammer T1 was released. For Luo Yonghao, who has never set foot in hardware production, this is undoubtedly a historic step. In the product promotional image, he called it "the best smartphone in the Eastern Hemisphere". Perhaps because of concerns about touching the new "Advertising Law" regulations, it didn't take long for the slogan to become "the second most useful smartphone in the world".

At the press conference, Luo Yonghao raised his eyebrows, straightened his back, and laughed at the entire mobile phone industry, even though the T1 only had a 3G version for the first time.

The supply chain backhand slapped him. Due to the low yield rate and other reasons - some media quoted the judgment of industry insiders, the yield rate of Hammer mobile phones will not exceed 50%, while the normal value should be above 93% - T1 cannot be supplied normally for several months after its release. Goods, Luo Yonghao was so anxious that he ran to Foxconn to stand guard.

The momentum created by the press conference has cooled down in the long wait of subscribers. In the following 3-4 months, the T1 evasion rate soared from the initial 2% to nearly 90%. Those who only got the purchase code through the employee channel also ran away, and the reason is very simple: in the past few months, I have been afraid of watching the negative news of the hammer every day.

Luo Yonghao carried it until October, and had to announce that the price of the hammer was reduced by about 1,000 yuan. After the price cut, the cheapest 16G 3G version is priced at 1980 yuan.

This angered a lot of hammer fans. Five months ago, Lao Luo said, "I am particularly disgusted with the practice of some mobile phone manufacturers setting a high price when a new product is launched, and then reducing the price soon after." in stock. In order to appear convincing, he also said harshly: If it is less than 2500, I am your grandson.

Ultimately, T1's total sales in 2014 were more than 250,000 units. That year, China's smartphone shipments were 420.7 million units, of which Xiaomi shipped 61.12 million units.

This result is undoubtedly frustrating. Luo Yonghao thinks that his outspokenness has affected the company.

In December of that year, he gave his last personal speech "An Entrepreneurial Story of an Idealist" at the Beijing Exhibition. He choked and bowed at the scene, saying that he would seriously learn to be an entrepreneur, and announced that his personal Weibo account password was handed over to the company's public relations. Ministry, every word spoken in the future must be reviewed and released by the company.

Since then, the Weibo nickname of "Luo Yonghao is so cute" disappeared.

three

Facts have proved that Luo Yonghao's choice to enter 2015 with a low profile is a wise choice.

The theme of the mobile phone industry that year was: No one was spared.

The danger has already begun to appear in 2014. According to the monitoring report of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the shipments of smartphones in the first 10 months of 2014 fell by 10.4% year-on-year, of which domestic mobile phone shipments totaled 286 million units, down 25.4% year-on-year. Clearly, this is an increasingly saturated market.

Therefore, for small mobile phone manufacturers established in a hurry, 2015 is the Valley of Death. Da Coke, which had released three mobile phones in a row in the first year, remained silent this year, and declared bankruptcy in March the following year.

Under the downturn in the industry, upstream companies have been implicated, and many mobile phone foundries in the Pearl River Delta have closed down and the boss jumped off the building.

The days of big companies are not easy. As the growth rate slows down, the voices of bad Xiaomi come one after another.

At the beginning of that year, Huawei's Yu Chengdong judged the cruelty of the situation: in the next 3-5 years, there will be only three major mobile phone manufacturers left in China. Of course, he did not forget to cheer himself up, "including Huawei". The CEO who made his name in battle with the P6 once mocked himself as Huawei's CHO (chief brag officer) - "I learned to brag, bet and deal with wars of words."

In August, Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo also wrote on Weibo: Lenovo is facing severe challenges at the moment. In the first year, Lenovo acquired the Motorola mobile phone brand for $2.91 billion, which directly led to a loss of $292 million in the 2015 Q1 financial report. Judging from the story behind, this move also failed to stop the decline of Lenovo's mobile phone business.

Under such a situation, the life of the hammer is not easy.

That year, Hammer released the Nut phone and T2 successively, but failed to make a comeback. In the end, Hammer Technology lost 462 million in 2015.

Money became a big issue. Innate pride seems to be vulnerable in the face of reality. By 2016, there were only two rounds of financing announced by Hammer, and the highest financing amount was the RMB 180 million in April 2014. Therefore, when the hammer could not pay wages in 2016, Luo Yonghao could only make up a reason: there was a problem with the banking system, and it would be paid again in a few days.

A year later, when the crisis was resolved, Luo Yonghao shared it as a joke at the Geek Park conference, which made the audience laugh. He did not talk about the bitterness during the period, including going to Xiaomi to talk about acquisitions for money, and pledged equity with Ali. In the end, it didn’t work. As a last resort, he ran to get a column, went to Momo to do live broadcasts, and “sold himself” for money.

Later, he said: A real macho, dare to look directly at the bleak life. Another characteristic of a macho is to hide when crying.

There was also help during the period. Zheng Gang, an early investor in Hammer Technology and founding partner of Zihui Ventures, said that during the capital crisis of Hammer, Jia Yueting once lent Luo Yonghao 100 million yuan. Jia Yueting started making mobile phones in 2015, and once planned to invest in Hammer, but considering that the transaction takes time and Hammer urgently needs money, he finally lent 100 million directly without pledged equity.

Later, Luo Yonghao used a set of data to review 2016: it was rumored to go bankrupt 6 times, it was rumored to be acquired 5 times, it was revealed that the capital chain was in trouble 3 times, and it was sued once by users.

A similar taste Lei Jun also tasted this year. In 2015, Xiaomi began to experience a decline in both shipments and market share. By the Spring Festival of 2016, Lei Jun announced the cancellation of KPIs. After that, supplementary lessons became the theme of this year. He invited Li Wanqiang back to rectify the supply chain and find celebrity endorsements. Layout offline and overseas.

The size of the two companies is very different, but when life and death are at stake, the desire to survive is enough to make them let go of the past and even introduce a model they once despised. After all, in business, survival is the biggest challenge.

They all boiled out.

In 2017, Xiaomi's shipments returned to the top five in the world, and the IPO entered the process. Luo Yonghao also announced that Hammer has obtained a new round of financing of 1 billion yuan. Surprisingly, 600 million of them came from the Chengdu Municipal Government.

It was also in the same year that the Hammer headquarters moved to Chengdu, and the Nut Pro was released - this mid-range model is the first product of the Hammer with a production volume of over one million. When Luo Yonghao choked at the press conference: If all fools are using hammer mobile phones in the future, you must remember that this mobile phone is made for you, and it seems that you can see the shadow of his arrogance and sensibility in the past.

wantonly

Making cost-effective mobile phones, producing air purifiers, and laying out ecological chains... After the hammer survived, many actions were evaluated by the industry: more and more like Xiaomi.

In fact, since his last personal speech in 2014, Luo Yonghao has been working hard to turn himself into a normal entrepreneur and the hammer into a normal company. When he announced the billion-dollar financing last August, he said with a smile:

"If there is no accident, starting from the fall, we will have about 1.9 billion operating cash in our hands. This means that we will be like a regular mobile phone manufacturer from next year, with three tiers of high, medium and low, launching every year. 5~6 products.”

There is no trace of anger, pride, and contempt for everything in the words.

It is these qualities that turned many fans who followed "Luo Fat" into hammer fans. As a friend, Feng Tang once analyzed why the Hammer had such a bad start but did not die prematurely. One of the important reasons is probably the fans, "For another lunatic and paranoid to do it, without Lao Luo's fan base, he may live a year. not going down."

In the eyes of different hammer fans, the six years of the hammer have different meanings.

Some people are happy that this company has survived the difficulties and survived until now. Even if there were M-series phones with bad reputation in the middle, the plastic feel made them unable to believe that "this is Lao Luo's aesthetic"; some people have turned away because Lao Luo The pride of the past no longer exists, and the hammer has become a popular commodity for everyone.

For example, the Nut Pro, this mobile phone priced at 1499, 1799, and 2299, the shipment volume is the sum of all the mobile phone products of Hammer Technology in the past five years.

This is a commercial success, but young literary and artistic people care more about intuitive feelings. Zhihu user Slender Man wrote:

"A company needs to swipe reviews on third-party shopping sites, a company needs to spend a lot of money to praise tempered glass as a mobile phone accessory, and a company brags about the so-called craftsmanship rather than improvement on unpractical features like 'virtual calls' When people still criticize the system, this is probably the biggest stain on 'feelings'."

But Luo Yonghao, who has survived the juncture of life and death, has obviously surpassed these. He sighed last year, "Do you know how I survived in the past five years? Every time I have to be cheeky and persevere."

His changes are obvious.

He rarely shows up, and those labels, such as sturdy, sentimental, and craftsmanship, are no longer strengthened over and over again. In the 8.5-hour "Long Talk" with Luo Zhenyu, he said that he was very fortunate, because now there is no need to use storytelling to raise funds, "They (investors) don't need to see how I am, Luo Yonghao, and I don't want to either. Talk to them, and everyone will see the performance directly.”

He began to understand a lot of behavior that he didn't like before. "In the past, if I saw a well-dressed guy at the airport holding a copy of "Winning: Welch's Lifetime Management Wisdom", I would think the idiot was helpless, but now I also hold such a book hard Scalp finished reading."

And at the press conference of Beijing University of Technology on April 9, Luo Yonghao's