By Gu Yang, Liu Cheng
"We have created an Olympic record as well!" In the laundry of Beijing Olympic Village, several golden service engineers of Haier, who were busy with the final test of the laundry equipment, said proudly.
This is the largest laundry in the history of Olympic Games. 200 Haier "double-driver" washing machines and 400 dryer machines are placed orderly in the 1280 square meters hall. During the session of Olympics, this batch of washing equipment, representing the highest level in the industry, will offer the first-class cleaning service for the 16 thousand attendees from all over the world.
As the first white household appliance sponsor in the history of Olympics, Haier Group has supplied over 60 thousand products in 31 classes like washing machines, air conditioners and refrigerators etc. into all of the 37 Olympic stadiums including the National Stadium, the Water Cube and Tsingtao Olympic Sailing Center. The number of environmental protection home appliances is the highest in the history of Olympics.
"To some extent, the Olympics is the competition of not only sports, but also brands. In the past, we had been striving for getting the qualification of this Game. Now our goal is to achieve the gold medal!" said Zhang Ruimin, the president of the Board of Director and the CEO of Haier Group.
Realize self-breakthrough by cooperating with Olympics
In 1984, when the shooting athlete, Xu Haifeng, won the first Olympic gold medal for China, Haier was just established.
24 years have passed. The collective small factory which was once in the red in those days has developed into a large international enterprise with over 50 thousand employees and a sales network covering more than 160 countries. In 2007, Haier's turnover through the world reached US$16.2bln.
"The reason to choose sponsoring the Olympics falls on the identical idea of Haier and the Games." Zhang Ruimin responded to the reporter's interview. The Olympic spirit is "Faster, Higher, Stronger". This is quite the same with the culture core of Haier "endless pursuit of challenge, breakthrough and creation". "In the view of Haier, the basic quality of Olympic spirit is just the spirit that companies have to own when facing the severe competition in the globalization era."
"As the top-level sport event in the world, Olympics will provide a precious opportunity for Haier to exalt the brand influence throughout the world." Zhang Tieyan, the Olympic spokesperson of Haier Group, said, Haier wished to show the world its new image of "globalized brand" through the Olympic stage, and at the same time continuously stepped towards the goal of globalized brand by providing Olympics with products and services.
Popularize Olympic spirit and fulfill company obligation
"We promise for each gold medal China athletes win on the Beijing Olympics, Haier will set up a hope elementary school which will be named after the Champion's name." At the beginning of this year, this news announced by Haier Group had attracted much attention from both home and abroad.
"Introducing Olympics to the children in Hope Project is an important measure Haier is taking to deepen and popularize the Olympic spirit. Olympic Game is a sports occasion participated by all. We can not and should not neglect weak groups." Zhang Tieyan, the Olympic spokesperson of Haier Group, said so.
From 2007, Haier joined hands with CCTV to carry out the activity of "Haier Olympic Tour": select the "Olympic living champion" by holding locally-featured activities with Olympic themes; travel to the Olympic Game holding cities in the world, to pass the passion and confidence of Chinese people in Beijing Olympics to the whole world.
In April this year, Haier started up the activity of "Haier golden Olympic families" in over 40 cities in China, to build a platform for people to experience the Olympics. The family of Qianhong, the gold medal winner of women 100-m butterfly stroke on the 25th Barcelona Olympics, was the first golden Olympic family of this activity.
Service Olympics with sincerity and change life by creativeness
A new model of refrigerator called "natural cooling medium" produced by Haier attracted most people's eyesight. The cooling medium in this model is all made from the CO2 in the nature, which effectively prevents damage on the ozonosphere caused by traditional cooling medium. It's a real green refrigerator. At present, 5353 such kind of green refrigerators are servicing in each Olympic stadium.
Another "detergent-less" washing machine is also a highlight of Haier green Olympic home appliances: with electrolyzation of water, perform the function of cleaning by alkalescence water and sterilization by weak acidic water. Though using no washing powder, the cleaning capacity of this machine increases by 25% over ordinary machines and at the meantime it can save 50% of water and electricity.
Inside the Olympic stadiums, we can also find a series of green products owning independent IP right such as the solar-energy air conditioner which can save electricity of 2.4mln kilowatt-hours each year, the noise-less refrigerator which is cooled by semiconductor, and electricity leakage defense water heater with many patent technologies. "Now some products have not been put into the market. These will be successively provided to the consumers after Olympics, to enable ordinary people to share the life of green environment." Cao Chunhua, the vice president of Haier Group said, through self-creation, the development trend of Haier is to combine consumers'' need with social environment protection obligation and persist in developing and producing energy-saving and environment protection products. This is also the competitiveness of Haier.
"At the same time of servicing the Olympics, we are also enhancing our competitiveness. Though the global economy is facing many pressures and difficulties, the current export profits and total sales volume still have increased greatly." Zhang Ruimin told the reporter, Olympic Games speeded the globalization process of Haier. After this Games, what Haier has to do is to integrate the R&D centers and marketing centers in overseas markets during the past ten years, in order to realize the smooth flow of logistics, information and funds.
