Geely brand to die in 2012

Last week at Geely’s newest flagship dealership in Shanghai, Geely announced that the Geely brand will slip away from the mainstream by 2012, and will allow its sub brands to pick up the slack. Geely’s sub brands include Gleagle, Emgrand, and Shanghai Englon which will be strenthened over the coming months. Gleage is Geely’s global brand and is a shortening of ‘Global Eagle’, Emgrand is Geely’s luxury brand and Shanghai Englon will be used for the LTI Taxi project and other economy vehicles.

The vice president of Geely Group, Mr. Liu Jinliang was quoted as saying “We will not push this type of dealership elsewhere in the country, except for special areas of interested such as Nanjing and Tianjin”.  The new flagship dealership covers over 1.2 acres of land and sells all of Geely’s brands under one roof.

Geely is finding slow growth in first and second tier cities, but third and fourth tier cities are seeing double digit sales growth for Hangzhou based Geely, with the fastest growth in Western China, and also North China.

Geely is going to ramp up the number of Emgrand dealerships to 200 by the end of 2010, and will increase to 250 by 2012, Geely is focusing on assisting dealerships achieve a greater profitability and increase service level, but will not increase the number of Geely dealerships, and dealerships that don’t meet the demand will be cut from the line up.

Once the Geely Freedom Ship and Yuan Jing models have been moved over to the Gleagle brand and the King Kong and Golden Eagle models moved over to the Shanghai Englon, then Geely will be retired from the market.