On February 25, 2024, an obituary shocked the FMCG circle, and Wahaha officially announced that the life of Zong Qinghou, the founder and chairman of the group, stopped at 10:30 on the morning of the 25th at the age of 79.
In fact, a few days ago, when it was revealed that Zong Qinghou was treated in the ICU, there was a lot of speculation in the industry, as an old entrepreneur who has worked hard all his life, it is said that long-term fatigue made him suffer from lung cancer, and everything happened unexpectedly.
Not confused years of self-made
Whenever we talk about this generation of entrepreneurs who have accompanied the reform and opening up, including Zong Qinghou and Liu Yonghao, most of them have one thing in common, that is, they started from scratch.
In that era of poverty and whiteness, how to make the family live better, or even find someone to stutter, became the starting point of their struggle, and at the same time, they also had extraordinary diligence and thinking.
The same is true for Zong Qinghou. In 1945, Zong Qinghou was born in a down-and-out old bureaucratic family, with many brothers in the family, in that era of material scarcity, the family often mixed with a little green vegetables and salt is delicious, and even the youngest sister had to be given to relatives for adoption.
In this environment, Zong Qinghou went to the society early to make a living, worked odd jobs, repaired cars, and showed unusual business acumen. Zong Qinghou's father once used 80 yuan to buy a set of popcorn machine from a friend, which is the kind of street cannon that is now set off in the short **, but he doesn't know how to operate, so Zong Qinghou took his younger brother to use this set of equipment to pop popcorn in the streets and alleys, although the time was not long, but he also gained an income of 100 yuan.
Tasting the sweetness of doing business, Zong Qinghou stared at the train station again, the train speed at that time was slow, the running time was long, and there were vehicles arriving at the station late at night, and hungry passengers often had to endure hunger to go home. Zong Qinghou bought cheap sweet potatoes from farmers' markets far from the city, cooked them and sold them to travelers who got off the train late at night, although he could not make a fortune, but he also subsidized his family's life.
Beginning in 1963, Zong Qinghou began 15 years of heavy physical labor, working on farms and tea farms, although physical work consumed people's will, but Zong Qinghou has never given up on himself, and has developed a diligent and tenacious character.
In 1978, Zong Qinghou returned to Hangzhou and replaced his mother as a supplier in the Shangcheng District Post and Circuit Primary School as a supplier and farmer carton factory.
The opportunity came, when Zong Qinghou was 42 years old, in 1987, the Shangcheng District Cultural and Educational Bureau of Hangzhou City wanted to adopt the contract management method for the subordinate school-run enterprise distribution department, and Zong Qinghou immediately contracted the school-run enterprise at a cost of 100,000 yuan beyond the task.
In 1988, Zong Qinghou's boldness and keen business sense made this school-run enterprise, which was still engaged in basic sales business, reborn.
At that time, there was a popular nutritional product in the market, that is, a variety of oral liquids that we are familiar with, Zong Qinghou also found this market opportunity, he immediately found Zhu Shoumin, a professor of nutrition at Zhejiang Medical University at that time, and after several twists and turns, Zhu Shoumin came up with a set of product solutions.
Zong Qinghou boldly took out 210,000 yuan to advertise Wahaha's nutrient solution on Hangzhou TV, 210,000 yuan was paid, and only 100,000 yuan was left on Wahaha's account.
But with the advertising slogan "Drinking Wahaha, Eating is Fragrant" was broadcast on TV, Wahaha sold 4.88 million yuan in a few months, and another 27.13 million yuan in the second year.
Zong Qinghou concocted the same method, from Hangzhou to Shanghai, from Shanghai to East China, from East China to North China, and then to all parts of the country.
In 1990, Zong Qinghou acquired the Hangzhou canning factory, which was not well managed at that time, at a cost of 80 million, and realized the replacement of shotguns, the new factory has a huge space of 60,000 square meters, and the business scale of Wahaha has also risen rapidly, from 100 million in 1990 to 2 in 1991500 million.
In 1992, Wahaha followed the example of Robust to launch fruit milk and other beverage products, and became a private beverage giant in China.
The success of the affiliate
In the development process of Wahaha, the most famous product is Nutrition Express, in that era, Nutrition Express could sell for 20 billion a year, but what created Wahaha's beverage empire was inseparable from the term "joint sales body".
With the spread of business, Wahaha ushered in explosive growth in 1993, but Zong Qinghou found that there was a problem with the business.
At that time, the FMCG industry was generally the first payment and then the goods, also called credit sales, and the money was given only after the sale, and most of Wahaha's business cooperated with state-owned enterprises such as sugar, tobacco and liquor companies, and the problem of payment collection was not serious, but with the spread of the business network, a considerable part of Wahaha's business was carried out with local distributors, so there was a situation where dealers took the money to get Wahaha.
Wahaha's business has also fallen into a strange circle, with rapid growth in sales, but not abundant in funds, and the seller has become an uncle, and he is running around.
At the dealer conference in 1994, Zong Qinghou put forward a long-planned reform plan - the joint sales body.
The joint sales body is divided into a batch of dealers, two batches of merchants, three batches of merchants, and three batches of merchants correspond to the retail terminal, according to the requirements, a batch of merchants will be handed over to Wahaha every year 10% of the next year's order price, as a deposit, and then a batch of merchants in the area responsible for the development of two batches of merchants, the second batch of merchants need to pay first, Wahaha is responsible for home delivery, two batches of merchants and then the development of three batches of merchants, the latter service retail terminals, in this way, Wahaha has a certain autonomy over dealers.
In those days, Zong Qinghou encountered unprecedented pressure, some dealers yelled at Zong Qinghou, some left angrily, some complained everywhere, and the company's internal sales staff also came to intercede, afraid that in this way, the past payment would not be recovered.
But Zong Qinghou's ruthlessness, not only to their own strict self-discipline, but also reflected in the firm will, even if the performance declined, Zong Qinghou also insisted on not changing the joint sales model, fortunately, at that time Wahaha sales were in full swing, for the sake of money, many dealers finally admitted it, but in 1994, Wahaha's dealer conference order data only increased by more than sixty percent, and before that it doubled every year.
And Wahaha, who has money, runs faster.
The Dawa controversy
Just at the critical period of Wahaha's development, Zong Qinghou also showed the other side of his character, forbearance and strength.
In 1996, Wahaha introduced a joint venture between Peregrine and Danone as a partner, and Zong Qinghou valued Danone's ability and experience, and the two sides quickly negotiated and quickly established a joint venture company, with Danone and Hong Kong's Peregrine joint venture Jinjia holding 51 shares.
However, this shareholding ratio also laid the foundation for future development.
In the 1998 financial crisis, Peregrine collapsed, so Danone acquired Peregrine's shares and became the controlling shareholder of Wahaha.
In the honeymoon period after the joint venture between the two parties, the entry of foreign capital allowed Wahaha to introduce advanced equipment and management ideas, and its sales revenue and profit doubled for two consecutive years. When Zong Qinghou attended Danone's board of directors for the first time, he looked at the five-star red flag fluttering over the French headquarters, which made him extremely proud and almost burst into tears.
But after 1998, Zong Qinghou soon found that Danone did not seem to be interested in the strategic planning and investment he proposed, which dragged down Wahaha's development, which made Zong Qinghou feel dissatisfied. But then Danone acquired Wahaha's old enemy Robust and handled Wahaha's business coldly, but at that time, Zong Qinghou put the overall situation first, and still kept calm and endured all this.
But in 2005, when Fan Yimou succeeded him as president of Danone Asia Pacific, things began to go to extremes.
Fan Yimou believes that there are also a series of non-joint venture companies under the Wahaha system, which serve the joint venture company, take away the market and profits that should be enjoyed by the joint venture company, and demand to acquire 51% of Wahaha's non-joint venture company at a price of 4 billion, but this move was rejected by Zong Qinghou.
Since May 9, 2007, Danone, Wahaha and Zong Qinghou's family have conducted a 1,000-day litigation battle, and the two sides have conducted 70 or 80 lawsuits, Wahaha responded to all the lawsuits, and Zong Qinghou participated in all the lawsuits. For a while, the two companies continued to sound artillery, whether it was a war of words or a lawsuit war, there was a back and forth, and this lawsuit even alarmed China and France.
In the face of the world's food giants, Zong Qinghou, who is over the age of six, has always been at the forefront and has not budged. Finally, on September 30, 2009, the two parties issued a "settlement statement", and Danone sold 51% of the equity of the joint venture and withdrew from Wahaha.
The patriarch is gone
In 2010, Zong Qinghou topped the Hurun Report for the first time, and in 2013, Wahaha's sales reached a peak of 78.3 billion yuan. From 2014 to 2015, Wahaha's total revenue began to decline, and in 2022, Wahaha's revenue will be 5120.2 billion yuan, down about 30% from 2013.
This is of course affected by the 2014 Nutrition Express rumor case, when some netizens said that Nutrition Express dried and turned into a piece of rubber, which caused the nutrition FMCG to drop from 500 million boxes a year to 1500 million boxes, heavy losses.
But to a certain extent, it also reflects the changes in the market and the gradual backwardness of Wahaha's products and models.
On the one hand, with the rise of e-commerce, the market has become transparent, and the market channel has become more simplified.
On the other hand, in Wahaha, for a long time, Zong Qinghou was like the king of Wahaha, and Zong Qinghou worked from 7 o'clock in the morning to 11 or 2 o'clock in the evening almost every day. Every year, we also spend a lot of time to visit markets across the country to grasp the first-hand information of the market, so as to make timely and accurate decisions. Even the company did not set up a deputy general manager for a time to avoid infighting.
Although Zong Qinghou controls the power, in the early stage of entrepreneurship, this model gives Wahaha the ability to make quick decisions and respond to the market, but with the changes of the times, the iteration of consumers, and the marketing and product logic of the aging Zong Qinghou are also challenged by new ideas.
On December 9, 2021, Wahaha Group released a news on its official website that Zong Fuli was appointed as the vice chairman and general manager of the group, effective immediately. In the eyes of the outside world, this is also a symbol of Wahaha's official **, but Zong Qinghou is still a little late to let go.
In a previous interview, Zong Qinghou talked about the daughter of the Western education background pays more attention to the analysis of data, in his opinion, the Western market is different from the Chinese market, the Chinese market is still developing, the changes are great, and the data alone may not be able to see things clearly, to a certain extent, it also reflects the characteristics of Zong Qinghou's parents.
With the departure of Zong Qinghou, it also means that Zong Fuli and Wahaha will also enter a new era.
For Zong Qinghou, the FMCG industry will not forget him, as he once wrote in his autobiography: "There will be a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people, and there will be a thousand Wahaha in the eyes of a thousand people." But for me, there is only one Wahaha. He is my whole life, all my dreams, all the meanings, values, labels, symbols. It is a testament to my existence in this world. ”