After more than 100 years of development, this well-known company has not yet become an enviable century-old shop, and even experienced seven bankruptcies, with debts as high as 10 billion US dollars.
Among them, the huge impact of China shanzhai store is also one of the reasons.
The following two trademarks are more like true and false Monkey King, which not only affects Simmons' market share, but also dilutes its brand influence.
▲ The left side is true.
But in fact, Simmons is not only synonymous with mattresses, but also the name of an American furniture owner-Zalmong. Simmons.
1870, in the post-war reconstruction stage, Zalmon Simmons opened his own factory in a county town of Wisconsin, mainly producing wooden insulators and cheese boxes.
A customer was unable to repay due to poor management, so he gave a patent to Simmons to pay off his debts-this is the patent of wire mesh spring that later affected people's lives all over the world.
Since then, Zalmon Simmons has been deeply involved in the field of mattresses and made a generation of legends.
At first, he heard customers complain that the bed board was too hard to sleep. To this end, he thought of many ways, such as stuffing thick cotton in the mattress, but it didn't take long to compress it. Once at work, he saw a spring made of iron wire and was inspired. So, he invented a comfortable and not easy to collapse spring bed.
The first spring bed appeared in 1876. Later, Mr. Simmons established the brand of spring bed with his own name: Simmons Simmons.
With the patent and manufacturing technology of spring bed, Simmons became the largest spring bed manufacturer in the world at 1890.
All aspects received rave reviews, and then Simmons mattress became an instant hit, and everyone praised his mattress for sleeping well.
Henry Ford, wife of American President Roosevelt, automobile king, inventor Edison, investment banker Morgan Belmont, playwright Bernard Shaw. At that time, celebrities from all walks of life around the world were users of Simmons. It is said that even Empress Dowager Cixi was a fan of Simmons.
At that time, Simmons was not just a piece of furniture, but a kind of "social currency" and became a symbol of aristocratic status and status.
1925, in order to meet the public demand of the market, Simmons introduced the first machine that can be mass-produced, which changed the manufacturing history of the spring bed. 100 years ago, Simmons could transport mattresses directly from the warehouse to guests' homes within 24 hours.
By 1929, Simmons' annual sales of mattresses reached 9 million, almost dominating the bedding market in the United States.
1935, Simmons was also very popular in China market, and once became synonymous with spring mattresses, especially advanced mattresses.
In 1960s, the performance of Simmons Company increased rapidly, reaching 1970, and it has become a Fortune 500 multinational company.
Considering the large size of the mattress, the difficulty in turning over and the health of customers, in 2000, Simmons Company introduced a single-sided non-turning mattress, which was imitated by peers. In 20 13 years, Simmons' revenue reached 8.7 billion yuan!
There is an old saying in the field of marketing: third-rate companies make products, second-rate companies make brands, and first-class companies make categories. Simmons' ultimate spirit of making mattresses makes it a representative of a category.
I thought Simmons would feel more secure in the hearts of users after becoming a representative of a category, but this is not the case.
True and false Simmons
There is a saying in China: Trees attract the wind; This sentence is changed to business: brand red is a cottage.
Earlier, Weibo's unannounced visit to the mattress video "American Simmons" also exposed Simmons' fake scam on the land of China.
The cause of the incident was that a netizen turned to the blogger who shot the video for help, saying that the Simmons mattress he bought for 8,000 yuan might be fake, and I hope he can investigate it. Therefore, the blogger came to a Simmons store in a furniture monopoly market for an unannounced visit.
After entering the store, I saw a big Simmons trademark, and there was a very bluffing advertisement in the store: not all mattresses are called "Simmons".
In addition, the price is also a high-end route: a mattress is 48,800 yuan, which makes people feel that it is definitely genuine.
After listening to the introduction of the salesperson of this "American Simmons" store, the unannounced blogger inquired on the trademark registration website in the United States and found that this is actually a trademark registered on 20 14, and the brand registrant is still from China.
Obviously, this so-called American Simmons is fake.
But the fake Simmons is far more than this one. At present, among the brands with the words "American Simmons" that can be found on the Internet in China, the names of registrants are all Chinese names.
An address of American Simmons in official website is in Chinese.
It's not terrible if it's only for the cottage products. The most terrible thing is that the cottage company has successfully registered a trademark with the words Simmons, so it dares to be openly fake and shoddy.
But in fact, this method is not uncommon in the business world.
In order to prevent others from malicious competition, many large companies and groups usually adopt a unified strategy: register all similar trademarks.
Alibaba trademark registered an "Ali family": Grandpa Ali, Grandma Ali, Aunt Ali, Uncle Ali, Aunt Ali, Uncle Ali and Baby Ali. ...
The hammer company in Luo Yonghao also provided a nail.
Xiaomi Company collects all kinds of rice: black rice, purple rice, orange rice, green rice ... and even registered rice noodles and popcorn.
The reason why these companies register so many similar trademarks is that they are good at catching business opportunities and loopholes and seizing every opportunity to blow themselves into genuine products.
They saw the great potential of these brands and directly harvested the "brand premium" with the local cheap production system.
For example, Simmons began to advertise in Shenbao in the 1930s. The brand value accumulated in the world over the past 100 years is immeasurable, and now these brand premiums are directly harvested by China shanzhai manufacturers. This makes people wonder: How many families in China think they have bought their dream brands, but they turn out to be knockoffs?
Nowadays, facing all kinds of cottage shops in the market, Simmons has fallen behind the times.
Because of his failure to keep pace with the times, Simmons suffered a heavy blow in the business and capital circles. In the past 20 years, Simmons went bankrupt seven times and reorganized seven times, and now the debt is as high as 1 100 million dollars. The legendary Simmons of the previous generation was poisoned by the cottage many times, which not only directly harmed the rights and interests of consumers, but also made the whole industry face a "crisis of trust". For more trademark information, please visit Bajie Intellectual Property Trademark Transfer Network!