"A generation of legendary entrepreneurs" Zong Qinghou officially came to an end.
At 10:30 on February 25, 2024, Zong Qinghou, founder and chairman of Wahaha Group, passed away at the age of 79 due to ineffective medical treatment.
The 42-year-old self-made entrepreneur who pedaled a tricycle to sell stationery and beverages in his early days was the richest man in China three times.
With the departure of Zong Qinghou, Wahaha, a "giant ship" in the beverage industry with an annual revenue of more than 50 billion yuan, will also usher in a new helmsman and a new direction.
According to the national enterprise credit information publicity system, on February 23, 2024, Zong Qinghou's daughter Zong Fuli succeeded her father as the legal representative, executive director and manager of Hangzhou Wahaha E-commerce.
Wahaha, which exceeds 50 billion, where to go?
Screenshot of Wahaha's official website.
50 billion business empire
Before Zong Qinghou's death, the last time Wahaha caused heated discussions was at the 2024 Spring Festival Gala of the main station, in Liu Qian's magic show, AD calcium milk accidentally "stole the show", and the classic green, white and red color scheme suddenly caught the audience's attention. Many people sighed: I can't remember how long I haven't drunk it.
But in fact, Wahaha still has a revenue volume of more than 50 billion yuan.
According to the list of the top 500 private enterprises in 2023 released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Wahaha's total revenue is 51.2 billion yuan, ranking first among beverage companies, 74 places ahead of Nongfu Spring, which ranks second. In the beverage industry, Yuanqi Forest, so far this year's revenue has not exceeded 10 billion yuan.
Typical "I haven't won in the ** field, I haven't lost in the business field". This stems from the fact that Zong Qinghou laid a relatively solid foundation.
Wahaha started in the first decade of the last century, when the trend of health care products was in full swing, so Zong Qinghou also locked in the field of "nutrition and health".
Screenshot of Wahaha's official website.
In view of his early experience in school-run enterprises, the first product he launched was the "Wahaha Children's Nutrition Solution" for the children's market in 1988. In just three years, Wahaha has an output value of more than 100 million yuan and a profit of more than 20 million yuan.
The market has proved that the path of children's nutrition products is feasible, so Wahaha continued this path, starting from 1996, and launched AD calcium milk, nutrition express and Shuang Crooked in the past ten years, all of which have received enthusiastic feedback from the market.
AD calcium milk, for example, produced 10700 million bottles, creating an output value of 68.5 billion yuan. Not only did it lay the foundation of "Big Brother" in the children's and teenagers' markets, but it also achieved a super single product in the relatively calm beverage market at that time.
The birth of explosive products, on the one hand, is that the product itself meets the market demand - "worth buying", and on the other hand, it also needs the support of a strong sales network - "worth selling". This has to mention another secret of Wahaha's success - the sales model of "joint sales body".
In the field of food and beverage, offline channels are particularly important, especially in the initial stage of e-commerce platforms more than 10 years ago.
Xiao Zhuqing, a marketing expert who has worked as the planning director of Wahaha Group for many years, recalled that when Zong Qinghou recalled, his first impression was "joint sales body". Specifically, the traditional model of the FMCG industry is a credit sales system of "first delivery, then sales, and last payment", which makes it difficult for dealers to have enthusiasm and for enterprises to obtain sufficient capital flow.
The joint sales model is the "payment before delivery" model, which pays a deposit of 10% of the annual sales amount, which is promised to be higher than the bank's loan interest rate, and finally dividends are distributed according to the profit at the end of the year.
Therefore, the joint sales body will be the interests of manufacturers and distributors in depth, which will help to achieve the goal of joint efforts, and Wahaha's products will be distributed to the whole country by dealers under the joint sales model of Wahaha.
The dividends of the "old Ben".
However, for Zong Fuli, the first person after Zong Qinghou, the burden of 50 billion is not easy.
Since the launch of the first product "Wahaha Children's Nutrition Solution" in 1988, star products such as AD calcium milk, nutrition express, and Shuang Crooked have carried the memories of generations of children. However, former consumers continue to grow up and even enter middle age, but "AD calcium milk" is still one of the few super items in Wahaha.
Although Wahaha has not disclosed the revenue proportion of different products, according to reports from the Economic Observer and other **, in the heyday of Wahaha, the revenue of Nutrition Express could reach 20 billion yuan, and the revenue of Shuang Crooked and AD calcium milk reached 10 billion yuan each, and the peak of Wahaha's total revenue was 782800 million, the importance of "AD calcium milk" can be seen.
Screenshot of Wahaha's official website.
This can also be found by visiting the market. Looking at offline supermarkets, the Wahaha products that can still be seen are basically AD calcium milk, nutrition express and cool crooked.
In addition to AD calcium milk born in 1996, nutrition express born in 2005 and old products born in 2006, the products that consumers are relatively unfamiliar with are only sparkling water and diamond bottles drinking purified water, the former is a product in 2010, and the latter is a product in 2015.
In other words, Wahaha's most popular products are almost all "innovations" from 10 years ago.
Performance data can also reflect product disconnects. In 2013 it reached 782After the peak of 800 million yuan, Wahaha's performance fell into a cliff**, once falling to 43.9 billion yuan.
In April 2018, Zong Fuli was appointed as the head of the brand public relations department of Wahaha Group, and since then she has made drastic changes at the marketing and product levels
In terms of marketing, the most talked about is the replacement of spokespersons. Since 2018, Wahaha has no longer renewed the endorsement contract with Wang Leehom, and in 2020, it was officially announced that Xu Guanghan, who has more traffic and is more embraced by young circles, will be the new spokesperson.
This also caused dissatisfaction among Leehom Wang's fans at the time, but in 2021, when Leehom Wang fell into a negative situation due to the divorce turmoil, Zong Fuli was mentioned again, and this time consumers praised her unique vision of "foresight".
In terms of products, in addition to the "old three" AD calcium milk, nutrition express, cool crooked and evergreen bottled drinking water, Zong Fuli launched new products such as sugar-free version of Very Coke, low-sugar drinks in tea, and electric soda after 2018.
The most worth mentioning is that she has created a sparkling water brand kellyone under her English name Kelly, which has a variety of products such as vitality Bobo, which belongs to Hongsheng Beverage Group*** Zong Fuli has served as the actual manager for a long time.
However, these changes did not make much of an impression on consumers. Zhu Danpeng, a food industry analyst, once said that the aging of Wahaha's brand and products is a fatal wound to the beverage market. Over the years, Wahaha's product route has basically been based on imitation and following, and the innovation is insufficient, and there are not too many popular models to speak of.
Screenshot of Wahaha's official website.
New helmsmen have new challenges
Leaving aside the product level, Zong Fuli's bigger challenge may come from the management of the enterprise itself.
Xiao Zhuqing recalled Zong Qinghou and mentioned that an important impression left by Wahaha on people is "human touch". Zong Qinghou understands that the development of enterprises needs to rely on employees, so he has formulated policies and mechanisms to encourage key employees to invest in new projects or supporting projects of the main business, so that the achievements of Wahaha's development can be shared with employees.
He mentioned several details, such as employees who have worked for more than ten years and cannot keep up with the requirements of the company's development positions, and will arrange for the transfer of security guards or warehouse keepers to retire; Zong Qinghou personally arranges for each production base to recharge the workers' meal cards and send a sum of money to the workers during the Chinese New Year, fearing that the employees will be reluctant to spend money, so they can directly charge the lunch card so that the employees can eat better; All the beverage bottle caps of Wahaha Group are manufactured by "Junjie Company", and the shareholders of Junjie Company are the provincial managers of Wahaha and the important backbone of the company.
Xu Meng, founding partner of V&T Law Firm and director of the Risk Management Center of Family Enterprises, mentioned that for family enterprises, private entrepreneurs are often plagued by negative public opinion. Fortunately, Zong Qinghou, as the richest man who has been in the public's attention for a long time, does not make people feel flamboyant and exaggerated, let alone disgusting scandals and extravagant behavior. "A good reputation is the greatest wealth left by Zong Qinghou. ”
Can Zong Qinghou's prestige and charm in the enterprise be all "inherited" to Zong Fuli? For employees and dealers, can trust be "inherited"?
Regarding Zong Fuli's next challenge, Gao Hao, director of the Global Family Business Research Center of PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University, pointed out that Zong Qinghou, as an outstanding representative of the founding generation of entrepreneurs, adheres to the management philosophy of "sticking a rod into the end" and does everything himself. Wahaha has almost no vice presidents, which means that the company's operation and management are highly dependent on Zong Qinghou himself, rather than an effective modern corporate governance system such as the board of directors and senior management.
* One of the big challenges for people is how to fill the huge power gap after the departure of a generation of capable and energetic entrepreneurs? Enterprises may face great uncertainty in the process of reconstructing the governance structure of responsibilities, rights and interests. Gao Hao said.
Before the official **, Zong Qinghou has been training Zong Fuli for many years. According to public information, the 42-year-old Zong Fuli went abroad to study at the age of 14, and after returning to China in 2004 after graduating from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles with a major in international business, she went to Wahaha's production workshop in Xiaoshan to experience.
In 2007, Zong Fuli founded Hongsheng Beverage Group, which was mainly engaged in the OEM processing business of Wahaha Beverage until she returned to Wahaha in 2018. It is worth mentioning that the 2022 Zhejiang Top 100 Manufacturing List shows that Hongsheng Beverage has an operating income of 104200 million yuan, net profit 14700 million yuan on the list.
On December 9, 2021, Wahaha issued an announcement announcing that Zong Fuli was appointed as the company's vice chairman and general manager, which is also considered to be official** by the outside world.
However, Zong Qinghou did not retire after **. In 2023, Zong Qinghou said with a smile in an interview with CCTV that he would not retire, even if he has taken a back seat in recent years, he will watch the young people who are charging behind, "turn around when you deviate and come up with some ideas".
Now, with the death of Zong Qinghou, Wahaha's burden will all fall on Zong Fuli, who will come up with her ideas next?
Author: Qu Boyang.
Editor: Yu Yuan.