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Under the environment that the domestic automobile market has experienced a year-on-year decline for two consecutive years, the sales growth of the major car companies appears to be very weak, and even a small number of car companies have been able to achieve growth in the past year. For luxury brands, it is a different situation, with growth against the trend in 2019, but at the same time, the polarization of luxury brands is also very serious.

A few days ago, there are media reports, affected by multiple factors, the second-tier luxury brand Infiniti is recently carrying out large-scale layoffs. It is understood that this layoff plan only involves the adjustment of domestic market institutions, including the four regional divisions of Dongfeng Infiniti, and the East, West, South and North districts will all be abolished, and it is planned to cut more than 50% of the staff in the domestic market. So far, the number of employees has been laid off from 300 to 170, and there may be further layoffs.

At the same time, the offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu will be closed, leaving only the relevant personnel of the Beijing headquarters, and it is planned to move the headquarters to Huadu in Guangzhou and merge it into Dongfeng Nissan head office.

Regarding this matter, also has the media to carry on the verification to it, but so far, Infiniti also has not made the reply.

In fact, the layoffs of Infiniti have never stopped. Dongfeng Infiniti has been left by a number of executives since 2016. In December 2018, Lu Yi, the general manager of less than three years, finally chose to leave. It was not until March last year that a new general manager, Mao limin, was welcomed, which was equivalent to a "gap" of the general manager position for three months. Not only the general manager, but also many former employees' positions have been vacant for a long time and have not been filled, which undoubtedly has a certain impact on Infiniti's operation. And last year, the company planned to cut 20% of its jobs, from nearly 300 to 240.

For Infiniti, layoffs, the closure of multiple office areas and the relocation of headquarters are nothing more than greater resource savings and significant reductions in staff costs, office costs and communication costs.

According to the performance of the overall automobile market and the luxury car market in 2019, the luxury market is obviously better than the entire passenger car market, compared with the 2019 automobile market released by the China Automobile Association, the trend of decline of 8.2% compared with the same period last year, the luxury market can achieve 9% year-on-year growth, so both first-tier luxury brands and second-tier luxury brands have a good performance.

Among them, the sales data released by Dongfeng Group in 2019 show that Infiniti sold a total of 33400 units for the whole year. Although the sales volume is relatively small compared with the first-tier second-tier luxury brands, it has achieved a year-on-year increase of 18.1%. It is obviously superior to the passenger car market and the luxury car market.

However, according to the "2019 Automobile Dealers' satisfaction Survey report", Infiniti's annual performance is at the bottom of the annual industry, with most dealers making annual losses ranging from 10 to 5 million. It means that the contrarian growth in sales did not help dealers bring huge profits throughout 2019. In fact, not only because of the performance of annual sales of only 30,000 vehicles, it is impossible to support the large investment of dealers in the early stage, after all, the establishment of a 4S store moves tens of millions, and it is difficult for dealers to return to the capital with a very small volume of sales. how can we talk about making money?

Moreover, Dongfeng Infiniti is still a marginalized second-tier brand in the entire luxury market, compared with the head of Cadillac and Volvo and other brands have carried out "price for volume" means, then Infiniti, which does not have an absolute advantage, needs to achieve market competition through greater price reduction, otherwise it may even be difficult to achieve sales of 30,000 vehicles. Therefore, models that do not have an advantage, coupled with substantial profits, how can not become the fatal factor of Infiniti, either live or lose. According to the mass production domestic models owned by Dongfeng Infiniti, QX50 and Q50L have been given huge discounts, including QX50 discount of more than 80,000 yuan and Q50L discount of more than 70,000 yuan.

In the face of the worsening automobile market under the epidemic in 2020, Infiniti, which is already in a difficult situation, will undoubtedly make things worse. If it does not continue to change, it will inevitably become the next Dongfeng Renault. Therefore, the continued layoff plan will enable Infiniti to achieve a certain cost reduction, and through the relocation and merger of headquarters, Infiniti will also be able to better coordinate with Nissan under Nissan's larger sales network, dig deep into potential users, and achieve a certain increase in sales.

The current development does not have many advantages for Infiniti. Since its establishment in 2014, China's auto market is still in a period of stable development. At the same time, luxury brands are only a fledgling market, but Infiniti missed the best time. With the frequent departure of senior executives, they are in a bad situation, which leads to the slow and backward launch of product plastic surgery, resulting in a growing gap with other luxury brands.

In fact, in the domestic market, Infiniti is not the only one in this state, such as Acura and Lincoln brands in the second echelon of the second camp of luxury brands. After all, luxury brands that cannot be recognized by domestic consumers can only step into the situation of second-line joint venture brands. I do not know whether Dongfeng Infiniti will follow in the footsteps of Dongfeng Renault.

According to the latest figures from Dongfeng Infiniti, only 884 vehicles were sold in March 2020 and only 1766 in the first quarter, compared with the 28000 sold by Lexus in the first quarter.

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