Reverse Engineered to success - Shan Zhai

One of the above phone is a hiPhone and the other an iPhone but you can hardly make the difference especially when you see someone holding a hiPhone. There is a clone for Nokia called Nokla, samsung is samsong, Motorola is motorora, blackberry is b1ackberry.

Its a Chinese Lexus clone, and there are clones for BMW, mercedes, Toyota, Mitisbishi, Rolls Royce you name it they have got. Its a chinese company BYD and the sales of its cars is on the rise.

Chinese have the cloning force with them, it would come as no surprise if they have human clones too(but again with their population they don't need to clone humans thankfully). This phenonmon of making look alikes is referred to as Shan Zhai in chinese. And it is becoming a huge threat for a number of companies. The companies who make these look alike products have an edge over the global players, these local companies are able to customize and localize these products better than the global companies. These products are cheaper and often of low quality but again today's generation looks for the most upto date gadgedary and believes in use and throw and buy more and more. For such a profile these chinese products fit the bill. Sometimes these are products turn out be better innovations and there are many examples where the company copying the original grew big and made a place for itself in the market.

These products are not just being sold in the Chinese markets but they are also being flooded in all thrid world countries and the sales in these countries are on the rise. Such cloning companies are becoming a huge concern for even the gaints in the industry. That is the reason product based companies should have a strategy to combat such disrruptive forces.

So what can a company facing competition by cloning companies do? One is to spot your future competitors early, its easier to stop the look alike making companies in their nacent stages than when they have made huge grounds. Companies needs to have a leen and efficient distribution and supply chain management system. The smaller competing companies capitalize on the fact that most bigger companies end up having slugguish distribution systems. Companies need to react to the market early, these early indicator are well taken by the cloning companies than the bigger companies in most cases. And thats when they really begin to rise and beating the original companies in the same areas where they use to rule before.