Original Li Jing Economy**.
On February 25, Zong Qinghou, founder and chairman of Wahaha Group, died in Hangzhou at the age of 79 due to ineffective medical treatment.
A generation of business legends fell, and a generation of Zhejiang businessmen came to an end. His friends revealed that at the last moment of his life, Zong Qinghou still insisted on working on the hospital bed, and truly dedicated his life to the cause he loved.
Zong Qinghou. Photo by Deng Pan, reporter of China Entrepreneur Magazine (Zhongjing Vision).
Born in an ordinary family, a late bloomer in his 40s, and then became the head of one of the top 500 Chinese enterprises, Zong Qinghou, who dared to be the first and worked hard, inspired countless private entrepreneurs, and the Wahaha brand he founded was the childhood memories of the "post-80s" and "post-90s".
The "grandmaster" of China's beverage industry is gone, but the business story and management ideas he left behind are still valuable assets in the development of China's private economy.
Self-made and a late bloomer.
Due to poor family conditions, Zong Qinghou sold sweet potatoes and fried rice in his early years, and he did whatever he could make money. Until 1987, 42-year-old Zong Qinghou contracted the distribution department of the school-run enterprise in Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, with a loan of 140,000 yuan, and embarked on the road of entrepreneurship by selling soda and popsicles. The following year, Zong Qinghou founded Wahaha in the 6-story small gray building at No. 160 Qingtai Street, Hangzhou, entered the hot oral liquid market at that time, and invested almost all of the company's 210,000 yuan in TV station advertising.
With the advertising slogan "Drink Wahaha, eat is fragrant" is well-known, Wahaha oral liquid is also popular all over the country.
Zong Qinghou (first from the right) has often gone deep into the production line of the enterprise and participated in product research and development. (Details**).
In 1991, Zong Qinghou set up a small factory with his own 100-person school and merged Hangzhou Canned Food Factory, which caused a sensation. In the ** environment at that time, mergers were once called "monopolies". In the face of external pressure and internal employee doubts, Zong Qinghou made the decision to maintain the original personnel structure of the old factory after receiving the full support of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, and established a new production line and implemented a subsidy and performance bonus incentive system. In just 3 months, the canning factory, which has an annual loss of 10 million yuan, has turned losses into profits.
At that time, no one took the initiative to do business, and if we took the initiative, it was a little easier to do later. Zong Qinghou said. Behind the understatement, there is his keen business sense, bold marketing methods, and decisive reform measures, which also make him a representative of China's private entrepreneurs "starting from scratch".
Dare to open up and dare to try and make mistakes.
The food and beverage industry is highly competitive, with multinational companies competing with local players. No matter how the market changes, Wahaha Group has always maintained its leading position, one of the reasons is that Zong Qinghou has the courage to open up and dare to try and make mistakes.
Zong Qinghou's business road has never been smooth sailing, and Wahaha has also returned home in the fields of children's clothing, liquor, supermarkets, etc., and has even been criticized for not doing business. However, Zong Qinghou is not afraid of trial and error. In his view, innovation and trial and error are just a thought, and only after repeated failures can we succeed.
In 1996, Zong Qinghou cooperated with Danone of France. However, due to differences between the two parties on business philosophy and other aspects, Danone took Wahaha and Zong Qinghou to court in 2007. In the following 1,000 days, the two sides conducted seventy or eighty lawsuits, and Zong Qinghou participated in the whole process. At the same time, he also made the worst preparations: closing all joint ventures in a timely manner, and simultaneously investing billions of yuan to build 90 new production lines to replace the original production capacity, so as not to give opponents a chance to take advantage of it.
The final result ended with Danone's withdrawal from Wahaha, and the two sides issued a "settlement statement" in September 2009. Wahaha not only recovered all the shares of the joint venture, but also greatly expanded the production scale.
The joint venture didn't learn much either. Later, I felt that the world's top 500 companies were not as well managed as our Chinese enterprises in some aspects. Zong Qinghou's complaint was not a quick tongue, but Wahaha's strength, technology and management at that time had indeed reached a high level.
Be bold and innovate and strive to sink.
Zong Qinghou is known for his diligence, and he has been running the market at least 200 days a year. Running on the front line all the year round, Zong Qinghou has a keen sense of business, and Wahaha has established a huge network of joint sales since 1994. The uniqueness of this sales network lies in the fact that all first-level dealers who do business with Wahaha must pay a deposit in advance on an annual basis, and the purchase is settled once in the course of operation. This kind of "channel revolution" of project innovation is used as a teaching case by Harvard Business School.
Some of the bad debts at the end of the year are caused by salesmen, and some are caused by dealers not being honest, so I want dealers to make a deposit first. However, you won't lose money by playing margin, I will give 15% interest, equivalent to 18% per annum. Zong Qinghou said before his death that credit is the cornerstone of all marketing systems to be constructed, and commercial credit relations need to be guaranteed by interest mechanisms.
Those who win hearts and minds win the market. Zong Qinghou once said that products that Wahaha dealers can't sell can be directly returned to the manufacturer or replaced. Don't let others suffer, dare to take risks, and build a solid marketing network for Wahaha.
At the same time, Zong Qinghou advocates a highly centralized and flat management model, through informatization and monthly dealer conferences, his personal management tentacles can even be rooted to the grassroots level, which ensures a high degree of unity in corporate decision-making, as well as the implementation of decision-making is not out of shape.
Zong Qinghou's daughter Zong Fuli once said in an interview that Wahaha minus Zong Qinghou is equal to zero. In a word, it shows the importance of Zong Qinghou to Wahaha. As the older generation of entrepreneurs leave or quit one after another, I hope that Zong Fuli can inherit the mantle, maintain the "four thousand spirit" of "traveling through thousands of mountains and rivers, speaking thousands of words, trying every possible way, and enduring thousands of hardships", and win the medal of the new generation in the new era with sweat and wisdom.
In August 2018, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up, an economic reporter interviewed Zong Qinghou and published a full-page report "Step by Step, Forever Preserve the Pure Heart", click to read.
Original title: "Forever Strugglers! Pay tribute to Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha Group