Geely Automobile has announced it will kill all sub-brands and go back to the Geely brand. The sub-brands Emgrand, GLEagle, and Englon will die within this year. The sub-brands were born in 2009 as part of a strategy to create more brands and thus more sales. It didn’t turn out that way as Geely didn’t differentiate, selling very similar cars for very similar money, confusing consumers and media alike.
My ‘infographic’ shows the extend of the problems Geely got itself into. Only the TX4, which is originally a British car, and the Emgrand EC8, which is basically a souped-up EC7, are brand-originals. All the other cars have brothers and sisters in the other brands. The best example of the madness are the GLeagle GX7 and Englon SX7 SUV’s, which are exactly the same, and Geely was planning an exactly-the-same-again Geely Emgrand EX7, but that one is apparently cancelled now.
The new strategy will see ‘Geely’ come back as the one and only brand of Geely Automobile. The move will eventually result in a simpler line-up that makes sense to buyers. The move will also save Geely a lot of money, especially in the marketing and sales departments, where every yuan can be used to promote the Geely brand.
I always thought this Chery/Geely “branding” thing was a dumb idea, made worse because neither company actually knew how to go about it. If I were Geely I’d keep and use the Emgrand name as it’s not quite as silly-sounding as the others, and I’d use it the way Nissan used to use the Datsun name.
Agreed. At least Emgrand sells reasonabily well, especially Emgrand EC7.
Exact! And with the EC8, future EC9 sedan and EX8 big SUV, Emgrand had a real “premium” range….
GLEagle and Englon are ridiculous names which were not suitable for export and offered no product differentiation.
Emgrand makes sense as a premium brand though and is exportable.
There is a logic in focusing all efforts at present on just one volume brand, as the Japanese did for their first few decades until they started launching separate luxury brands in the 1980s.
However having already got the brand in place it would be more sensible to keep it. Ditch GLEagle and Englon and stick with Geely (volume, full line) and Emgrand (premium, fairly small range of 3 or 4 vehicles).
Emgrand – very cool name-brand to promote auto, leave him!