On February 22, it was shocked to learn that Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha Group, entered the ICU room due to illness, which made everyone feel very sudden, because he also attended the Wahaha National Sales Work Conference as the chairman in December 2023. But after seeing his admission to the hospital and Zong Fuli's statement, confirming the fact that he is critically ill, everyone hopes that he will be ** as soon as possible.
Three days later, Wahaha Group released an obituary: Comrade Zong Qinghou died at 10:30 on February 25, 2024 at the age of 79 due to ineffective medical treatment. As soon as this news came out, countless people regretted that we had lost an excellent, conscientious, socially responsible, and proud national entrepreneur.
In 1987, 42-year-old Zong Qinghou started from scratch, relying on a borrowed 140,000 yuan to contract the school-run enterprise distribution department in Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, which had been losing money for many years, starting from pushing a tricycle to buy popsicles, working more than 16 hours a day, and through unremitting efforts, it has become a giant Wahaha Group in China's beverage industry with 30,000 employees and assets of more than 30 billion yuan. As a result, he successfully topped the Forbes China Rich List three times in 2013.
His philosophy of going public is a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of hard work. After Zong Qinghou succeeded, he did not go public like many entrepreneurs. He believes that listing is only a means of financing, and his attitude towards listed companies is more conservative, believing that many of them are just making money, so Zong Qinghou pays more attention to how to run a good enterprise in a down-to-earth manner and serve the society.
His comments on Jack Ma's "Five New Theories" show his strong sense of social responsibility. The "five new theories" include new technologies, new models, new marketing, new logistics and new business models. However, Zong Qinghou bluntly said: "I think except for new technologies, everything else is nonsense!" He specifically emphasized that the new retail model could lead to a large number of job losses, and expressed strong opposition to Jack Ma's ideas.
He is simple, low-key, thrifty, often dressed in black, wearing dozens of yuan of cloth shoes, known as "the richest man in cloth shoes". Usually travel by plane, only in economy class, without an assistant. lives frugally, and according to people around him, his annual living expenses do not exceed 50,000 yuan.
After his success, he did not hesitate to give back to the society, and he donated billions of yuan for education, medical care and other causes.
His only daughter, Zong Fuli, is now the vice chairman and general manager of Wahaha Group, and hopes that she can carry on Mr. Zong's legacy and let the national brand Wahaha he founded live forever, which is the childhood memory of generations of Chinese.
Mr. Zong goes all the way!