Michael Peng: The Law of Survival in the Cracks

Smiling and energetic as usual, Michael Peng looked almost exactly the same as how I remembered him from our last meeting, except perhaps his graying hair.

I got most of my gray hair from Aston Martin. It was a joke, but it also spoke for the sheer amount of hard work put in by Michael Peng over the past two years or so.

Obviously, in the already small niche market for super-luxury cars, Aston Martin is not the only player. A law of survival in the cracks is naturally important to help cope with squeezes from other market players and so is the charge into unknown territories to let the brand live better.

Saying No to dawdling

This is for you. At 5.30 pm, the secretary handed over an ice cream to Michael Peng who was wondering around in the office, knowing well that whenever he started looking everywhere for food near the end of the workday , it must be because he skipped lunch again for being too busy.

This has been such a familiar sight in the office over the past more than two years that it’s also become part of Michael Peng’s everyday life. Being as important as the President, he treats himself the same as a common employee, trying to stay attuned to work and create value for Aston Martin all the time.

Our company has only 150 people in the core team and a sales and after-sales personnel ratio of 1:2, that it’s very hard to lazy around here. Michael Peng gave a graphic metaphor: one hole for one radish, saying that our biggest challenge is that when one part stops functioning, the whole thing will break down.

But the biggest hurdle is not how busy and straining the job is. For a brand of a limited size, resource constraint is the deadliest. Since his first day in Aston Martin, Michael Peng has been pressing for more resources from the headquarter in many aspects, such as finance, personnel and product, in an effort to beef up market confidence in the company and put its future growth on better footing.

Following DB11’s debut in the Chinese market at the end of last year, Aston Martin also plans to bring in V8 engine-equipped DB11, the new Vantage model and even DB11 convertible. This is in addition to Aston Martin’s DBX, one motor home model and one three-box sedan model set to enter China in 2019 and 2020.

One big challenge for Michael Peng shortly after taking office was the unsold car inventory. To shake off this major historical burden, he acquired the massive funds needed for producers to subsidize dealers for every car sold from the inventory by the amount of tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands. By the end of last year, Aston Martin no longer had hundreds of unsold cars in China, with marked improvements in sales performance.

We have received enough orders for DB11 to complete this year’s task.We are less than one third through 2017 and yet the sales task of the new model launched in the Chinese market last year has been over-fulfilled, with over 100 Aston Martin cars delivered in the first quarter, nearly tripling the amount of the same period last year, and most dealers reporting profits.

Having unloaded the unsold car inventory, Michael Peng now has a new worry and, that is, whether the market is getting too hot, so much as that even cars for display and test-drive have been sold by dealers. Unable to check the exhibition halls every week, he asked 15 dealers to send him photos every week to show if the displayed cars are still there.

It used to be me chasing inventors. Now it’s the other way around. Today’s Michael Peng couldn’t even have a meal without being disturbed; still less afford the luxury of lazing around.

New attempts in unknown areas

For nearly half of its over-one-century-long history, Aston Martin has been tied with 007. All the nearly all-powerful chariots for 007 in a dozen films come from Aston Martin, and the immortal legendary figure, James Bond, has driven almost all of its models for the last 50 years. It is therefore fair to say that in many consumers’ mind, Aston Martin and 007 have since long ago been packed together.

Admittedly, the 007 image does have a big influence on Aston Martin. To a certain extent, the 007 series was the making of the successful brand. It would’ve been easy to just rely on this to put Aston Martin on the map but Michael Peng didn’t want to rest on past laurels.

We won’t tie the brand to some image. 007 did play a part, there’s no denying that, and offers a good opportunity to expand Aston Martin’s business. But I hope the brand should be so much more than just standing behind 007.How to let more consumers know the brand’s deep root and distinct features? This will be next priority for Michael Peng.

Strength, beauty and soul, this is what the Aston Martin’s brand is all about. Michael Peng believes that beauty is the roof of the brand’s house and historical roots, classic products and existing achievements are its pillars. What he and his team are doing is to highlight what is special about this brand by writing their own Chinese brand book.

Because it was hard for a brand from the British culture to prosper in the Chinese language in the first place and the budget was limited, it’s been three quarters since preparation for this book started. Luckily, hard work is paying off as the book is about to come out in the near future.

One book naturally is not enough for creating more opportunity of reaching potential customers. At the end of last year, after the contract with the dealer’s shop on the Jinbao Street expired, one new idea came to Michael Peng’s mind.

We plan to turn the shop on the Jinbao Street into Aston Martin’s first global brand experience center.

After talks with new investors, Michael Peng hoped that when the old shop reopened, it would not just display cars but also bring in more new media to create space for exchanges with clients at a broader scope and deeper level, or host painting exhibitions or brand awareness workshops to underscore the brand’s uniqueness in more special ways. If this plays out well, the practice will be introduced by Michael Peng nationwide and even globally. It’s not hard to imagine a different Aston Martin before us when the shop on the Jinbao Street reopens.

Team integration, inventory integration, dealer integration, and so on, for the past two years integration has been taken as the keyword in its development. In this and the following year, Michael Peng hopes to see Aston Martin entering the take-off period when quality improvement will be completed in such areas as dealer procedure management, operating standard, training and classification, and investor selection, all work designed to lay a more solid basis for the growth period expected for 2019.

I believe Aston Martin’s brand will see significant growth in quantity in the growth period and hope to rise as the top 3, top 2 and even the top 1 player in the supercar market. As the helm-holder of Aston Martin, naturally Michael Peng has high hopes for the company’s future. When will this goal become a reality? Perhaps the day is not far off.