By Allen Liao
Great Wall Cigar Factory (GWCF) of China Tobacco Chuanyu Industrial Corporation (Chuanyu TIC) in southwest China – the maker of the famous Great Wall brand cigars – is vigorously developing its time-honored Great Wall trademark hoping to turn it into China’s premier cigar brand.
In the mind of many people, a brand is just a symbol or the pronoun of a product. However, what a genuinely outstanding brand conveys should be the forcefulness of the brand to enable consumers to feel its powerful shock effect rather than mere information on its products. The GWCF’s Great Wall is just such a brand.
Over recent years, GWCF has managed to demonstrate the forcefulness of its Great Wall brand through its cohesive force and publicity capacity.
Technology transformation completed
First-rate quality will definitely give rise to a first-rate brand. For Great Wall as a rapidly developing famous Chinese cigar brand, its product quality is the most essential part of its life. The most fundamental reason for Great Wall to become the representative cigar brand of China lies in the powerful backing of the basic strength of GWCF.
GWCF was incorporated on September 4, 2007 on the basis of the cigar-making sector of Shifang Cigarette Factory in southwest China’s Sichuan province. Since its incorporation, GWCF has attached great importance to the development and introduction of high-quality raw materials for cigar production.
On the one hand, GWCF has stepped up efforts to establish exclusive high-quality leaf tobacco production bases for its cigar production. In this endeavor, it has made the best use of available resources from the local government, commercial enterprises and the tobacco industry, establishing a number of exclusive high-quality leaf tobacco production bases under joint management leading to an all-win situation.
On the other hand, GWCF has actively and steadily sought to establish raw materials supply bases in leading countries that grow tobacco suitable for cigar making in efforts to increase the stability and lower the costs of high-quality raw materials imports. With a view to upgrading its cigar-making technology, GWCF has separately signed economic-technological cooperation relations with Agio of The Netherlands and Altadis of the US – two leading transnational cigar makers.
On April 27, 2011, a grand ceremony was held in Shifang City to mark the completion of the project of relocation and technological transformation of GWCF in the wake of a devastating earthquake that hit southwest China in May 2008. Started in the same year, this project had a total investment of RMB1.2 billion (US$185 million). The new site of GWCF covers a total area of 450 mu (30 hectares). With the completion of this project, the new GWCF now has a designed annual production capacity of 5 billion cigars. It is expected to be capable of generating RMB1.5 billion in annual sales income, including RMB800 million by the end of the 2011-2015 five-year period. As a result, the new GWCF has become the largest cigar-making base in Asia. Besides, GWCF has built a new cigar leaf-making line, a leaf tobacco-cutting line for making cigars and a stem-cutting line. It has also imported a large quantity of world-class cigar fillers and cigar-wrapping equipment. 
Historical background
Sufficient storage of raw materials and possession of first-rate production technology, advanced production lines and a great production capacity are the basis for GWCF to produce premium cigars. For GWCF striving to turn Great Wall into China’s premier cigar brand that will be able to take its due shares of international markets, it requires combined development of Great Wall with the essence of China’s native cultures and historical values. Meanwhile, the factory needs to make its cigar products more relevant for consumers in order to develop a stable relationship of personal association between its products and consumers.
Danish marketing and branding expert Martin Lindstrom once said that the greatest reason for consumers’ faithfulness and even addiction to a brand lies in the movement and attribute of emotions. Chuanyu TIC has appropriately grasped this idea. In the course of developing its branding cultures, the corporation has attached great importance to tapping the value of its history. For example, Shifang City – home to GWCF – has a history of nearly 100 years making cigars. The story of Great Wall’s veteran worker Fan Guorong hand-making special cigars reserved for the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) is a much-told anecdote in the tobacco industry of China. The great cultural basis and glorious history of GWCF will definitely generate a positive impact on the development of Great Wall brand.
Moreover, Chuanyu TIC has also managed to hold sensory activities designed to arouse the emotions of consumers.
At the end of 2010 in Sichuan’s provincial capital city of Chengdu, the corporation held a cigar appraisal fair known as Easy Cigars in Tour of Sichuan. At this fair, professionals with the corporation demonstrated to visitors the high quality of Great Wall cigars and managed to arouse their desire to smoke cigars by explaining the technological characteristics of Great Wall cigars, cigar smoking techniques and the best way to store Great Wall cigars, etc. Through such appraisal activities, GWCF strives to make its cigar products better known and more influential, hoping to turn them into a new type of local Sichuan tourism products that are well-known across China. Meanwhile, Chuanyu TIC has invested in establishing user experience stores in north China’s Hebei province and other Chinese regions where consumers can take a glimpse of the cigar making process and freely enjoy happiness from cigar smoking.
For Chinese consumers, Great Wall is no longer a mere cigar brand. It represents the supreme level of cigar-making technology in China. It is a pronoun of the cigar culture in China and is recognized as a glorious part of domestic cigar manufacturing history while taking on the difficult task of globalizing China’s cigar making sector.
Through development over the past many years, Great Wall has become a famous and influential cigar brand in China’s tobacco industry. Great Wall is now a powerful cigar brand family.
