1. Early life
Zong Qinghou was born on October 11, 1945 in Xuzhou, Jiangsu.
Zong Qinghou's grandfather was the Minister of Finance under Zhang Zuolin, and his father Zong Qilu worked as a clerk in the Kuomintang. Although the family was prominent for a while, after 1949, life became very poor, his father was unemployed, and the family lived on the salary of his mother, Wang Shuzhen, who was a primary school teacher.
2. Drop out of school to earn a living
Zong Qinghou graduated from junior high school at the age of 17, and originally planned to apply for a normal school that could pay subsidies without tuition, but he had to drop out of school due to his family's embarrassment.
In 1963, as the advance person of the educated youth, he went to the remote and difficult rural areas to engage in salt digging, drying salt, and picking salt, and was later rated as an "activist in the mountains and going to the countryside" in Zhoushan. A year later, Mamu Farm contracted and went to Shaoxing Tea Farm to continue to do manual labor.
3. Work experience
1. Return to the city to take up a job
In 1978, Zong Qinghou returned to Hangzhou with a large number of educated youths and replaced his mother's position as a primary school teacher, but due to his low level of education, Zong Qinghou, who returned to the city, was arranged to work as a worker in the carton factory of the Postal Circuit Primary School in Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, which also belongs to the education system. During the 10 years that he ran the school's factory, he worked as a salesman, and also ran an electric fan factory and an electric meter factory.
2. On-the-job further study
From 1981 to 1983, Zong Qinghou studied industrial enterprise management at Hangzhou Workers' Amateur University; From 1987 to 1988, he studied business leadership at the China Factory Director (Manager) Work Research Association and Zhejiang Television University, and studied enterprise management at the Party School of the Hangzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China.
3. Seize the opportunity
In 1987, the Shangcheng District Bureau of Culture and Education of Hangzhou City to the subordinate school-run enterprise distribution department to adopt the way of contract management, and open selection of the person in charge of the distribution department, Zong Qinghou saw the opportunity, Mao then recommended himself, and offered to bear the annual profit of 100,000 yuan, and the Bureau of Culture and Education required the profit index of the year was only 40,000 yuan, according to the per capita profit standard calculation has far exceeded the per capita profit index of state-owned enterprises at that time. In the same year, the distribution department of a school-run enterprise with only three people was formally established, and its main business was to sell soft drinks, popsicles and stationery paper. Because there are only two retired teachers, Zong Qinghou often personally pedaled the tricycle to deliver goods, because of the small profits, Zong Qinghou in Hangzhou Shangcheng District more than 40 primary and secondary schools and kindergartens to establish a good reputation, the sales network was gradually built, the use of school channels, Zong Qinghou won a lot of first-class distribution business.
When Zong Qinghou was distributing a nutritional product called "Chinese Pollen Oral Liquid", he found that this oral liquid had a certain effect on enhancing students' physique, but it was expensive, so he took the initiative to find the manufacturer and asked for simple products. After the price reduction, "China pollen oral liquid" became in short supply, the manufacturer's production capacity was urgent, Zong Qinghou seized the opportunity to persuade the Hangzhou Planning Commission to prepare for the construction of "Hangzhou Baoling Children's Nutrition Food Factory", and obtained the consent of the original manufacturer to open a filling production line. At the end of November 1987, the filling workshop with a daily output of 10,000 boxes was completed at No. 160 Qingtai Street, Shangcheng District, with a total sales of 4.36 million yuan and a profit of 2220,000 yuan.
4. Create a brand
In May 1988, the net assets of the distribution department of the school-run enterprise exceeded 8 million yuan, and the number of employees increased to more than 130. At this time, Zong Qinghou was no longer satisfied with consignment sales, and consumers began to worry that pollen liquid contained sex hormones, so he decided to develop his own product as soon as possible. Zong Qinghou keenly found that there are many products in the health care products market, but there is no special product for children, he found through research that only children generally have the problem of malnutrition caused by picky eating, so he took out 50,000 yuan to decide to develop children's nutrition solution.
Zong Qinghou found Zhu Shoumin, a 63-year-old professor of the Department of Nutrition of Zhejiang Medical University, to develop a formula, in order to invite Zhang Honghui, a technician from the century-old store "Hu Qingyutang", to preside over the manufacture of the original solution, Zong Qinghou had "three visits to the thatched house", and did not hesitate to give Zhang Honghui a set of three bedrooms and one living room that the Shangcheng District Education Bureau had just assigned to him, and his family of three was still crowded into an old house of 10 square meters. In the end, it was made of longan, red dates, hawthorn, lotus seeds, etc. as raw materials, combined with the advertising slogan of "drinking Wahaha, eating is fragrant", by 1991, the annual sales had reached 400 million yuan, and the net profit was more than 70 million yuan; In the same year, the scale of production expanded, and Zong Qinghou merged the insolvent old state-owned factory - Hangzhou Canned Food Factory with 80 million yuan, and formally established Wahaha Food Group Company.
In order to allow more than 2,000 employees of the merged Hangzhou Canned Food Factory to have work, Zong Qinghou began to implement a multi-brand strategy aimed at children, and launched new beverages one after another, and in 1996, Zong Qinghou formed a joint venture with Danone of France, and Wahaha Pure Water was born.
In 2004, Wahaha implemented the strategy of "comprehensive innovation", and subsequently, new products such as Nutrition Express, AD Calcium Milk, and Shuang Crooked have been continuously launched, and the full line of products has exceeded 48.
In 2005, Wahaha's self-developed innovative product, Nutrition Express, became the first drink for consumers to buy, creating a miracle of "sales of nearly 800 million yuan in the year of listing".
In 2006, Wahaha launched new products such as Cool and Crooked, Very Coffee and Coke, which swept the beverage market with an irresistible momentum; In the same year, Wahaha ranked 220th among Chinese enterprises, among the top 100 large-scale industrial enterprises and 11th among large-scale private enterprises.
In 2012, Zong Qinghou launched the functional beverage Qili, and as of the end of November 2012, its sales volume has exceeded 1400 million cans.
On May 15, 2008, Zong Qinghou participated in Phoenix Satellite TV and other events"United as a Special Program for Earthquake Relief"With tears in his eyes, he donated 4 million yuan to the China Poverty Alleviation Association.
In July 2009, Zong Qinghou established Zhejiang Wahaha Charity Association to devote itself to various social welfare undertakings, and in the face of natural disasters and public crises such as floods, snow disasters, and droughts, Wahaha Group has generously donated money. As of January 2024, it has accumulated more than 700 million yuan in assistance to students, orphans, the elderly, and the disabled.
Zong Qinghou has a soft spot for return education and has been sparing no effort for a long time. 23 Hope Primary Schools and 100 Sunshine Playgrounds have been built across the country, and a total of more than 300 million yuan has been spent on education support over the years.
Since 2000, Zong Qinghou's Wahaha Group has donated to Hangzhou's "Spring Breeze Action" for 17 consecutive years to help poor students realize their dreams of university. As of 2017, a total of 74.6 million yuan in grants has been disbursed, helping 16,874 college students in need. Since 2011, Zong Qinghou has set up a special fund for "Wahaha Chunfeng Student Assistance", and as of 2018, the cumulative special amount has reached 70 million yuan, and has helped 20,401 students in need.
In 2008, when Wenchuan was the first to go, Zong Qinghou donated more than 1,500 yuan to the disaster area; In 2010, more than 850 yuan was donated to the drought in southwest China. In 2013, Zong Qinghou urgently delivered millions of bottles of water, beverages and eight-treasure porridge in Ya'an**, and donated 10 million yuan to support the reconstruction of homes for the affected residents. In January 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out in Wuhan, he donated 15 million yuan in cash and one million bottles of drinking water and eight-treasure porridge worth more than 8 million yuan to support the fight against the "epidemic".
On June 20, 2021, Zong Qinghou, Chairman and General Manager of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, donated 324 computers and 28 teaching all-in-one computers to two middle schools in Ganzi Prefecture on behalf of Wahaha Group.
Zong Qinghou quotes:You say that I am the richest man, how rich, as long as I don't take it out and give it to foreigners, it is all the property of our Chinese, I will eat such a little, use such a little, the money is still used to reinvest, then to solve employment, and then to generate taxes for the country, in the final analysis, it is still social!