Brand value can be regarded as the net economic income that the brand owner obtains by licensing such brand on market. The contents and value that brand conveys to customers have somewhat played an essential role in the competition of semiconductor industry gradually.

Song Shiqiang is a private economic researcher of the Economic Development Center of the State Council, a member of the electronic information expert database of China Association for Science and Technology, and a commercial research expert of Huaqiang North. Mr. Song used to be a CEO of an international real estate listed company for years. He invests and manages Shenzhen SlkorMicro Semicon Co., Ltd. & Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd., and builds "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" brands.

Song has paid much attention to the building of both brands above and studied the underlying logic of brands. Song shared his personal understandings of “brand” with the journalist. According to Song, brand should be focused on the following several points:

A. Brand means historical inheritance. The very famous film Titanic starts with a suitcase fished out of the bottom of sea, which belongs to Ms. Ross. The brand of the suitcase is LV (Louis Vuitton). Besides its high quality that could avoid decay, its remaining special charm appears vividly. The soft ads and brand placement of LV can be said very providential and natural and even much better than our brand “Slkor” and “Kinghelm”, both of which are purposefully associated with Huaqiang North. Another example is National Pits 1573--- A famous liquor from Sichuan Province. If the wine is publicized by highlighting its long history of inheritance since 1573, its price and sales volume must be undoubtedly high. The French-based Hennessy XO wine has opened its franchise store in Champs Elysees, Pairs. According to its publicity, the brand has a long history of over 150 years, which must be one of the reasons why it is so popular among customers. The black horse on the logo of Porsche and Ferraricould best interpret their history!

Photo: Slkor’s clean office and standard Cis system

B. Transform a general brand into a famous one. Similar to fruit tree grafting, brand could also become popular through the same way. A pair of very common chopsticks becomes much more valuable than others, once they were used by the US president Nixon while paying a visit to China. By associating with “Leica”, a Germany-based optical lens giant and then “Prosche”, an Italy-based sports car brand, Huawei directly enhanced its brand popularity at last. At the beginning when Huawei started to explore the mobile phone market, it tried to associate with “Leica” and “Porsche”, both of which are the top brands in their fields with a history of several decades or even a century and finally, Huawei Porsche mobile phones designed with Leica lens were sold out in Huaqiang North Commercial Area. The above is a typical example of brand grafting.

C. Brand means value enhancement. In comparison to general products, products with a famous brand will yield a higher profit, which means the price of these products will double. Our semiconductors are produced based on and by learning from LRC Leshan Radio Factory in electronic component industry, which was the OEM factory of one Japanese semiconductor plant. Using the same product materials and technique as well as personnel organization and management mode, the OEM factory sells the products via its own trademark LRC at a price much lower than that of the Japanese brand. The situation above also applies to the OEM factories in Zhejiang Province and Dongguan City, which process sports shoes for overseas brands, after they started to build their own brands. According to Mr. Song’s experience of working as a CEO in a real estate enterprise, the rule above also applies to real estate industry. That’s why the real estate that Vanke develops sells well at a price that is about 10% higher than those of the same grade and in the same location!

D. Brand and logo mean culture and attitude towards life. Brand and logo supplement with each other, because they convey the same information for the mass. For instance, the logo Maserati vehicles is a trident placed on the leave-shaped base, which is also the city emblem of Bologna City, where the company is headquartered, Italy. It was said trident is a weapon of the Sea God Neptune (or Poseidon, according to another version of legend), which demonstrates the God’s paramount power. Maserati vehicles best combine noble quality and sports spirit. Its brand and logo also try to convey one kind of artistic conception and lifestyle. The logo of BMW is propeller of blue sky and white cloud, which means high taste and leisure life!

E. Brand represents corporate culture and ethnic. It gives strong support and power for enterprises spiritually and also conveys positive energy and universal value for the whole society. The logo of Nautica, a Spain-based sports leisure wear brand, is a simple wind surf, which connotes Nautica’s spirit of daring to challenge and human’s exploration and desire for the unknown world as well as salute to Spanish seafarer Columbus! We could deeply experience the precise and powerful connotation of these brands after studying them seriously! To protect wild animals, some leather enterprises decided to replace traditional leather or crocodile leather by nylon and fiber for some products in order to advocate and lead the trend of environmental protection.

F. Brand means fashion and trend. Big brands always lead the latest trend. Upon its launch on the market, LV’s retro bucket bag has been imitated by other brands and as a result, women wearing various kinds of bucket bags could be seen everywhere on streets. Other brands start to follow Chanel, which launched its Coco perfume. How interesting! The repellent floral water at my home even has the flavor of Coco! Burberry’s grid has been printed on many clothes.

The two companies, i.e., “Kinghelm” and “Slkor”, created by Song Shiqiang, have done a great job in the antenna microwave radio frequency connector of Beidou navigational positioning and “domestication” of semiconductor in recent years. Its two brands, i.e., “Kinghelm” and “Slkor”, become more influential and are developed so vigorously that they really astonish the peer in the industry.

Mr. Song’s personal IP, Kinghelm and Slkor are very popular on the Internet and support with each other. They have formed a publicity matrix with Kinghelm’s website (www.bds666.com) and Slkor’s website (www.slkormicro.com). Kinghelm and Slkor have established closed cooperation relationship with Internet platform companies such as www.szlcsc.com, ICKey, www.ichunt.com, ALLCHIPS, www.elecfans.com and www.sekorm.com to make Kinghelm products and Kinghelm (www.bds666.com) brand popular among the R & D engineers of electronic component industry via PC desktop screens and mobile phone screens quickly.

“Slkor” and “Kinghelm” brands shall be recognized by clients and dealers comprehensively. First of all, we should lead customers to know about our products, their quality, our technical services and product image. The internal factors that we need to consider also include enterprises’ R & D and technical invention capacity, which has always been highlighted by us. Then, product quality, company’s services, etc. also matter. Only by doing well in all these three aspects can we enhance product competitiveness and realize further development.

In 2021, Slkor realized a compound growth of quarterly turnover by 40%. As for the differentiation competition, Mr. Song said that the company planned to enrich product variety, intensify control over customer services, R & D of new products and quality and would challenge the giants in the industry after becoming more powerful.

Beidou navigation positioning module and Beidou GPS antenna, the earliest products of “Kinghelm”, could replace the GPS module and navigation positioning GPS antenna of the US directly. Under the leadership of the founder Mr. Song, “Kinghelm” has made great contributions to the “domestication” of China’s Beidou system BDS in the vehicle-mounted and missile-borne application markets.

Photo: Kinghelm’s corporate culture background wall and slogan (Kinghelm connects Beidou)

The slogan of Slkor” is to become “a leader of domestic semiconductor industry”. As said by Mr. Song, the essential role in brand building lies in product quality and service, professional talents and teams, technological innovation and launch of new products. As an innovative company powered by R & D, Slkor is engaged in product manufacturing by following the same standards of Texas, the US. The potential for domestication is huge at present and the sales volume of our new brand is small, most of which was used for R & D. Our R & D proportion decreases along with the increase of our sales volume but the absolute value of our financial investment is still rising. Slkor is making every effort to become a company with rich variety of products and high brand value.

With more feedback data about products from terminal users, Slkor has accumulated more experience. More mature products mean higher profits, which is also companied by a higher investment of new generation of R & D. By catering the latest development trend of technology worldwide, Slkor has never stopped technological innovation in order to upgrade products and penetrate the medium and high-end markets subtly. Technical R & D is critical to all semiconductor enterprises that pursue long-term development. Powerful R & D of new products and solid technical guarantee also contribute to Slkor’s higher popularity among customers!

After years of painstaking efforts, Kinghelm and Slkor have seen the achievements regarding product “domestication” preliminarily. Song Shiqiang, together with his team, created the corporate culture of Kinghelm and Slkor in 2022. By following the code of conduct of “Integrity, Progress, Toughness and Detail”, the teams of Kinghelm and Slkor have created a team with wolf spirit with sincerity and perseverance by focusing on details in a down-to-earth manner. May Kinghelm and Slkor achieve better performance in 2022 under the correct leadership of Mr. Song!


About the Author

On top of being a private economic researcher of the Economic Development Center of the State Council, Song Shiqiang is also a member of the electronic information expert database of China Association for Science and Technology, and a commercial research expert of Huaqiang North. Mr. Song was the former CEO of an international real estate listed company. He has invested and managed a list of companies such as Shenzhen SlkorMicro Semicon Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd., building the "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" brands. Both "Slkor" and "Kinghelm" are national high-tech companies and they have obtained dozens of invention patents and software copyrights. In addition, Slkor is one of the fastest-growing semiconductor companies in China, and its vision is to become "the leader of the domestic semiconductor industry".

 "Kinghelm Connecting Beidou" is the slogan of Kinghelm company. Beginning from the development of Beidou antenna, Kinghelm has developed and produced microwave antenna, RF connection line and electrical signal connector and other products, embracing the intelligent era for Internet of Everything.  Song Shiqiang has a wide reputation and influence in the semiconductor, Beidou positioning and navigation industry. As one of the renowned business leaders in Huaqiang North Commercial Area of Shenzhen, Mr. Song is striving to make his best efforts to improve the business environment, hoping that Huaqiang North will become a catalyst for reform and opening the window of Shenzhen's economic development.