According to the obituary released by Wahaha's official Weibo on February 25, the company's founder Zong Qinghou passed away at 10:30 a.m. on the same day at the age of 79 due to lung cancer.
It is worth mentioning that until he was exposed to be admitted to the ICU for treatment this year, Zong Qinghou still served as the chairman of Wahaha, and never retreated to the second line, and even before 2021, he had been serving as the general manager.
Zong Qinghou, who is over the age of old, has not retired for a long time, in addition to being accustomed to being a hands-on "big parent", to a certain extent, it is also a helpless move.
In 2013, Zong Qinghou won the title of China's richest man for the third and last time, and Wahaha's annual revenue at that time was as high as 78.2 billion yuan, which was unrivaled in the same track.
At that time, Zong Qinghou set the 2014 annual performance target for the group to exceed 100 billion yuan in revenue, according to the development momentum of Wahaha at that time, although this goal is not easy to achieve, but it is not outrageous.
But the facts are beyond everyone's expectations, since 2014, the originally unstoppable Wahaha's performance has declined year after year, and it is gradually moving away from Zong Qinghou's "100 billion KPI".
At present, Wahaha has not officially announced the detailed revenue for 2023 to the outside world, but according to the statement at the group's annual summary meeting hosted by Zong Fuli on January 29, this figure is estimated to be around 50 billion yuan, which will not be much different from 2022.
In the past 10 years, in order to lead Wahaha back to glory, the father and daughter of the Zong family, who are at the helm, have tried their best.
According to statistics, including PH9, which became a small hit a while agoIn addition to 0 soda and young milk tea, Wahaha has launched nearly 300 new products in recent years, and the R&D department is obviously working hard.
In the era of mobile Internet, Zong Fuli, as the leader of the public relations department, also mobilized traffic thinking and co-branded with major Internet celebrity brands across the track.
Among these co-branded products, the biggest response is probably the AD calcium milk ice cream co-branded with Zhong Xuegao, trying to rely on "playing the sentimental card" to regain the gradually lost customers.
In addition, Wahaha also became a sponsor at this year's Spring Festival Gala, putting AD calcium milk and nutrition express on the table, and won the ** in Liu Qian's magic session, a rare high-profile one.
But judging from the results, most of the above-mentioned efforts and attempts, thunder and rain.
A large number of new products created according to the "Internet celebrity" route have been stranded on the shelves of shopping malls and ignored after the popularity has dissipated in a short period of time.
At present, Wahaha's really best-selling products have to be the batch of prepared milk drinks such as AD calcium, which have been popular for 20 years, as well as the drinking water series that are always available at home.
Seeing the cake in his hand being cut away by new competitors again and again, and his own family was unable to open up new growth points, this was Zong Qinghou's heart disease before his death, and it was also the main reason why he was reluctant to retire with confidence.
For Zong Fuli, the embarrassing dilemma that Wahaha is in at the moment is also the biggest problem she faces after taking over.
Zong Fuli, who was born in 1982, was born 5 years earlier than Wahaha, so her development path is almost synchronized with her father's career.
Before she went to the United States to study high school at the age of 14, she witnessed Wahaha's rise from start-up to rise, and her family's economic conditions improved day by day.
Because of this, Zong Fuli is different from other daughters, she was not born with a golden spoon, and she has experienced the life of ordinary people for many years, and she has witnessed the hard work and anxiety of her father's entrepreneurship, and understands that every penny in the family is not easy to come by.
Under the expectation of her father, Zong Fuli chose to study business when she went to the United States to study, and the intention of this decision is also obvious.
In 2002, after obtaining an undergraduate degree in international business in Los Angeles, Zong Fuli returned to China in a low-key manner, joined Wahaha according to her father's expectations, and started a three-year grassroots work training to fully understand the company's basic business.
In the three years of working on the front line of the business, Zong Fuli has accumulated a lot of market experience and came up with the idea of trying to start a business.
For the first time when her daughter started her own business, Zong Qinghou just took her as a test of the water, and gave 10 million US dollars as support, and did not have much hope for the results.
But he didn't expect that his precious daughter's energy and pattern were far beyond his imagination.
Hongsheng Group, founded by Zong Fuli in 2003, is of course mainly engaged in beverages in the same vein as Wahaha, undertaking part of the OEM business of the parent company.
But in addition, Zong Fuli has also expanded maternal and child products such as milk powder, as well as new sectors such as offline retail.
Today, Hongsheng Group, of which Zong Fuli is the chairman, has more than 40 subsidiaries across the country, with a net value of 80 billion.
In 2020, Hongsheng Group even successfully squeezed into the top 500 private enterprises in the manufacturing industry, which is enough to prove that it has the ability to take charge of itself.
It can be said that this successful entrepreneurial experience not only impressed his father Zong Qinghou with his skills, but also became Zong Fuli's name when he was in the senior management of Wahaha.
In 2018, Zong Fuli officially joined the ranks of Wahaha's senior executives as the director of brand public relations, and two years later, she also served as the vice chairman of the group's sales company, and her voice has been improved step by step.
In 2021, Zong Fuli took over as the vice chairman of the group and the general manager at the same time.
After holding real power, Zong Fuli's series of operations also showed the huge difference between her and her father's style.
Reform is the main theme after Zong Fuli actually took over Wahaha.
In 2018, under Zong Fuli's decision, Wahaha replaced the spokesperson Wang Leehom who had been used for 20 years, and the spokespersons who have been replaced since then, such as Xu Guanghan , Wang Yibo, etc., are the most popular traffic niches nowadays, with high fan appeal.
In a talk show, Zong Fuli also unabashedly said the reason for her decision, that is, Wang Leehom has "I don't like it, he's old", and consumers will inevitably be aesthetically fatigued.
Moreover, Zong Fuli even said domineeringly that the reason why Wahaha's mineral water has been able to sell well for decades in the past is not because of Wang Leehom's star effect, but "my dad".
For Wahaha's future development, although the group is in a bottleneck period, she is still full of confidence.
She is convinced that there will always be demand in the food and beverage sector, and as long as she adheres to long-termism, the road may become more and more difficult as the number of competitors increases, but the direction will not be wrong.
But as we said at the beginning of the article, the current situation of Wahaha can be called "there are pursuers after the latter", and it is urgent to break through the bottleneck.
As of 2022, Wahaha's market share in the domestic bottled water market has fallen to 22%, only ranked fifth in the industry, not only lagging behind the old rivals Nongfu Spring and Master Kong, but even the latecomers such as Cestbon and Jingtian have also overtaken in front of Wahaha.
It is worth mentioning that this number was still 4 in 20172%, which has shrunk by nearly half in just five years, I believe that Zong Fuli cannot have no ripples in her heart.
If there is no accident, with the death of Zong Qinghou on the 25th, the 42-year-old Zong Fuli will also officially become the new generation head of Wahaha.
Regardless of whether there is preparation in advance or not, now that the burden is already on our shoulders, we will wait and see whether Zong Fuli can support Wahaha and lead the group back to the top.