The founder of American General Motors Corporation.
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William Crapo Durant, the founder of American General Motors Corporation. Born in186165438+February 8th, died in1March 94718th. He is regarded as the first legend in the history of world automobile development. When he had a good insight into the development prospects of automobiles, he made decisive use of the funds and resources in his hand to create the world-famous General Motors Company today. He is a super salesman, a tireless operator and a self-made millionaire. Unfortunately, due to over-expansion, Durant got GM into trouble many times, and he was forced to leave the GM he built himself twice.
Chinese name
William Clapaud Durant
Foreign name
William Crapo Durant
nationality
United States of America
date of birth
186 1 year 65438+February 8th.
date of death
1947 March 18
TA said that in his early career, making cars plunged GM into a downturn and revived its glory.
Early career
Durant was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. His grandfather Henry H. Clapaud was the governor of Massachusetts at the end of the American Civil War and the beginning of the war. However, Durant was abandoned by his alcoholic father and mother since he was a child, and he began to live with his mother at his grandmother's house at the age of 10. Despite the superior family conditions, Durant is not restless. 1878, Durant dropped out of school at the age of 17 and worked as a clerk in grandpa's firewood factory. Leaving the boring school life, Durant is at home in the firewood factory. He not only finished his work well, but also quickly grew into a business manager and a successful salesman. After accumulating some experience, Durant was not satisfied with staying in the firewood business, and soon he expanded his business to more profitable industries such as patented drugs, cigars and real estate. In the next few short years, his career flourished. At the age of 24, the young Durant has become a partner of Flint Insurance Company.
William Clapaud Durant
1886, Durant was very interested in carriage manufacturing, so he invested 1500 USD and J. Dallas Dort to set up a carriage manufacturing company in Flint. Engaged in the carriage manufacturing with high profit margin at that time, Durant was really able to exert his fists and feet. With his excellent sales experience and talent, he made the business of the carriage company advance by leaps and bounds and the benefits climbed steadily. After development, his car manufacturing company can produce cars of Eclipse, Standard, Victoria, Moline, Diamond and other brands at the same time. At the same time, Durant kept buying other carriage manufacturers, and the companies he bought were as far south as Atlanta and as far north as Toronto. After 15, he sold carriages of various styles and colors all over the United States, and the carriage business went global and became the largest carriage manufacturer in the United States at that time.
From the initial firewood business to patented medicine and cigars, and then to the carriage business, Durant has repeatedly demonstrated his outstanding sales and management skills. In this regard, his friend commented: "Durant can sell sand to Arabs, and then he can sell them a sieve to screen sand."
Make a car
At the beginning of the 20th century, cars were still a novelty. At that time, cars had low horsepower, loud sound, bad smell, poor equipment and no guarantee of safety. Many drivers can easily die while driving. Because of this, many people boycott cars, and it is generally believed that the development of cars has no future.
William durant in his youth.
At that time, the development of the automobile industry was also quite difficult. As one of the most important automobile manufacturers in the United States at that time, Buick Motor Company had gained the reputation of producing high-quality engines, but there were problems in its operation: not only was there a shortage of funds, but suppliers also stopped supplying them. 1903 In the summer, Buick owner david buick had to announce the sale of his company.
Durant was once not optimistic about the development of cars, and even prevented his daughter from driving cars. 1904 In August, when Durant heard that Buick, which had been able to produce excellent two-cylinder 12 horsepower engines, was expecting others to buy them, perhaps from a commercial point of view, Durant planned to find out. By testing the performance of Buick in the potholed soil in the suburbs, Durant completely changed his original ideas and attitudes and made up his mind to take over Buick, a car manufacturer with unsalable products and heavy debts.
When Durant stepped into the automobile industry, many people, including his friends, expressed great surprise. They all think that Durant has made brilliant achievements in carriage manufacturing, while engaging in the automobile industry has nothing to do with carriage manufacturing, and there are even some conflicts in the market. Why did he enter a car industry with no future?
Durant didn't take these surprises and objections seriously. He insists that cars will be the means of transportation in the future, and it is only a matter of time before carriages are replaced. Later, it proved that his choice was very wise, and it was this attitude that made him the most successful entrepreneur in Michigan.
Shortly after taking over Buick, he was elected as a member of the board of directors of Buick Motor Company in June 1 904165438+10/,holding 65% of the shares of Buick Motor Company. Due to Durant's participation, Buick's share capital increased from $75,000 to $500,000. Since then, Durant began to build his own business empire in the automotive field.
After entering the Buick brand, Durant once again fully demonstrated his specialty in sales. He took Buick to the new york Auto Show and brought back an order for 1 108. This figure was amazing at that time, because all the "Buick" sales at that time were only 37. In order to meet more and more product orders, Durant quickly opened an idle car factory in Jackson area to fully support Buick production.
Durant not only requires high reliability of his products, but also makes great efforts in marketing. In order to establish an image in the field of racing, he formed a champion racing team and recruited many of the best drivers in the country. Among them, Luis Chevrolet, who helped Durant make a comeback, won more than half of the American road races before 1909.
After four years of hard work by Durant, Buick has become the top American automobile manufacturer in 1908, and Buick products have also become the best-selling automobile brand in the market at that time. Durant changed from the "king of carriages" to the "automobile genius" in people's minds at that time, which not only made his business a great success, but also made Flint the fastest growing city in the United States.
Create a universe
With the vigorous development of Buick automobile business, Durant began to draw a more magnificent blueprint for himself, a bigger acquisition plan. This acquisition plan is exactly the same as his business philosophy in the carriage manufacturing industry. He intends to set up an automobile group that can carry many brands, so that consumers can have more product choices and make the company stronger and bigger.
William durant related books
1September, 908 16, GM was formally established under the operation of Durant. On September 28th of the same year, Durant attended an internal meeting of GM and suggested selling Buick to GM. Three days later, GM bought Buick for $3.75 million.
With the development of GM's business, Durant began to consider acquiring the largest automobile company in the United States, hoping to control the whole industry through merger. These manufacturers include Reo, Ford, Maxwell, Chrysler and Oldsmobile. As a result, he merged more than 20 automobile manufacturers, automobile parts manufacturers and automobile marketing companies by exchanging stocks for stocks.
But I had trouble buying Ford. Henry Ford agreed to sell for $8 million, but he had to pay cash. In the end, the deal was not reached, because bankers, including JPMorgan Chase, were not optimistic about the development of the automobile industry. Although the acquisition of Ford failed, Durant successfully acquired Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Northway and Auckland (the predecessor of Pontiac Automobile Company) through one year's efforts. By 1909, 22 companies have merged into GM. At this time, GM was founded less than 16 months ago. [ 1]
After the establishment of General Motors, Durant, based on many years' experience in manufacturing and selling carriages, believed that automobile products needed to provide various styles and brands like carriages to meet the different preferences of different income classes.
As he thought, in just two years, GM has produced more than ten different styles of cars, such as Cadillac, Buick, Oakland and Cartwright, providing consumers with more choices. It is this that makes GM surpass the "identical" model of Ford and its founders at the beginning of its establishment (the Ford Model T can best represent this model). 19 10, GM's profit in that year exceeded 10 million dollars, which is very amazing for such a young company.
Fall into a trough
Although GM's multi-brand strategy was successful at the beginning, by 19 1 1, due to the rapid expansion of GM, all its subordinate enterprises were independent business units, and Durant did not establish the necessary company management organization or cash reserve, so the company had serious financial problems.
At this time, the Model T produced by Durant's main competitor Henry Ford is more popular because of its low price and no decoration, which undoubtedly adds insult to injury to GM. In order to tide over the difficulties, Durant had no choice but to turn to the consortium for help. The consortium accepted GM's debt request, but they thought that the loss was caused by Durant's reckless risk-taking, so they asked Durant to resign and control GM through trust. In order to save GM, Durant had no choice but to leave and his life fell into the first trough.
Revive the glory
Nevertheless, Durant is not easily defeated. He raised money and technology from friends, and together with former Buick team champion Louis Chevrolet, he founded the Chevrolet car. This economy quickly occupied a large share of the market. Durant skillfully changed part of his Chevrolet shares into GM shares, and regained GM from bankers on 19 16, making it a subsidiary of Chevrolet. Later, Durant established a new joint-stock general motors company, and exchanged the shares of the new GM for the shares of the old GM, and obtained all the shares of the old GM. 1 965438+August 20071day, the new GM completely replaced the old GM and the old GM was dissolved. During his second term, Durant bought Fisher Body and Frigidaire and joined his Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Buick camps. In four years, GM expanded to1965438+8 times that of 2006. So Durant became complacent again. He doesn't want to accept the leadership of the board of directors and runs the company entirely on his own. He does not study the internal management of the company, but is keen on the expansion of the company's scale; He didn't coordinate the relationship between various business departments, which led to the fragmentation of the branch; He doesn't care about the company's overall product strategic planning, so that the products of all branches are repeated, and the market competition pattern of "consistent external" cannot be formed ... Durant's series of mistakes led to the serious crisis of GM during 1920- 192 1 year. Due to the decline in product quality, car sales have dropped sharply, and the raw materials originally ordered have been continuously delivered, resulting in an increase in inventory and a serious shortage of liquidity, and the company is on the verge of bankruptcy. In June 1920 1 1, Chairman Pierredou Ponte once again stripped Durant from the company and arranged to buy his shares in General Motors.
Senile william durant
When the Great Depression came, Durant exhausted all his energy and struggled to support his company's business, but eventually he declared bankruptcy in 1936 because of the difficulty in cash flow, and died in 1947. Although Sri Lanka is gone, General Motors, which he founded, has survived successfully. After the successful operation of Si Long and others, it started the era of General Motors, making it the largest automobile company in the world.