Recently, the news that Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, was hospitalized due to illness has attracted widespread attention.
The legend of the beverage industry, who single-handedly built Wahaha into a leader in China's beverage market, is now in his eighties and is in worrying health.
In this context, whether Zong Fuli, the second-generation leader of Wahaha, can carry this banner and lead Wahaha out of the predicament and become the focus of attention in the industry.
The first and second generations of leaders, Zong Fuli's relay road
As the only daughter of Zong Qinghou, Zong Fuli has been exposed to Wahaha since she was a child.
She has been influenced by Western culture abroad, and at the same time, she has accumulated rich experience in the front-line work of Wahaha.
Since joining the grassroots management of Wahaha in 2005, Zong Fuli has gradually moved towards the core of the company.
In 2021, she officially became the vice chairman and general manager of Wahaha, responsible for daily work, and became the second-generation leader of Wahaha.
In Wahaha's 16 years of experience, Zong Fuli not only has rich experience in production and operation, industrial chain building, and enterprise management, but also has in-depth insight into the consumer market.
She has led and presided over a number of important brand building projects and made important contributions to the brand upgrade of Wahaha.
Although Zong Fuli's relay road was full of challenges, she gradually won the recognition of the outside world with her hard work and talent.
2. New product development and market challenges
However, Wahaha's predicament was not achieved overnight.
With the continuous changes in the market and the upgrading of consumer demand, Wahaha's core products have gradually become aging, and its performance has also declined.
In order to find a new growth engine, Wahaha has been developing new products, laying out dairy products, carbonated drinks, vitamin drinks and other categories.
However, the market performance of the new products has not been satisfactory.
In this regard, some analysts pointed out that Wahaha's current core group is in the third- and fourth-tier markets, and this kind of market does not match the types of products with newer and niche selling points.
When an enterprise does not have brand power, product power cannot match.
In addition, Wahaha also has some mismatch problems in the dealer system, channel resources, personnel team, etc., resulting in certain restrictions on the promotion of new products.
3. The contradiction between father and daughter concepts and future development
In the second-generation inheritance of Wahaha, the difference between the concepts of Zong Fuli and her father Zong Qinghou has also attracted much attention.
It has been reported that Zong Fuli's innovative ideas have not been well reflected, and the conceptual contradictions between father and daughter have affected the development of Wahaha to a certain extent.
However, there are also views that this difference in philosophy is the driving force for Wahaha's future development.
After taking over as general manager, Zong Fuli has been committed to injecting younger elements into Wahaha, and measures such as changing spokespersons, developing new products, and cross-border co-branding all reflect her innovative spirit.
Although the current market performance of new products is not ideal, this does not mean that her efforts are worthless. On the contrary, these attempts have accumulated valuable experience for Wahaha's future development.
In the future, as Zong Fuli gradually comes to the forefront, she will have more room for development to realize her own ideas.
At the same time, she also needs to face more challenges and difficulties, and how to innovate and upgrade on the basis of maintaining the traditional advantages of the Wahaha brand will be an important problem for her to solve in the future.
As the second-generation leader of Wahaha, Zong Fuli is expected to bring new development opportunities to Wahaha with her talent and hard work.
In the future development, Wahaha needs to continue to innovate and upgrade on the basis of maintaining the traditional advantages of the brand to adapt to the changes in the market and the needs of consumers.
Only in this way can Wahaha be invincible in the fierce market competition and continue to write its legendary story.
How will the second-generation Wahaha change in the future