At the China International Import Expo in November 219, Zong Qinghou was in a state of "runaway". From product import to equipment introduction to technical cooperation, he saw business opportunities everywhere. Before the industrial summit matchmaking meeting on the afternoon of November 6, Zong Qinghou directly asked Althauser, Consul General of Germany in Shanghai, "Can you introduce a group of advanced mechanical and electrical enterprises in Germany to help us carry out industrial cooperation?" According to Zong Qinghou, Wahaha currently has two electromechanical projects and is currently undergoing the transformation of the industrial Internet.
as a traditional fast-moving enterprise, Wahaha is seeking digital transformation. Previously, Wahaha relied on fist products such as Nutrition Express to open the national market, but the pressure that traditional enterprises encountered in the Internet era was also unusual. Survival, transformation and iteration are normal topics.
In November p>218, after Weibo's account was silent for more than two years, Zong Qinghou quietly made a sound-"Who moved my nutrition express?" At the back of this question, there is an interaction with my daughter Fuli Zong, accompanied by two expressions of "heading" and "angry". The "mutual love" between father and daughter is mainly to promote the limited edition packaging products to be launched by Nutrition Express.
Like AD calcium milk, Nutrition Express is a generation's childhood memory. As a well-known national brand, Nutrition Express once created a marketing miracle of 2 billion yuan for Wahaha. Zong Qinghou has 41, fans in Weibo, and this marketing plan has attracted people's attention.
Subsequently, Wahaha's applet "Habao Amusement Park" was launched, and the limited edition nutrition express line can be purchased directly on this platform. According to Zong Qinghou, through this small program, Wahaha can better interact with consumers and dig deeper into consumer demand.
What is certain is that Wahaha is gradually changing, and every new attempt of Zong Qinghou can produce a "screen-brushing" effect in the industry. Previously, there was a misinformation in the media that Wahaha wanted to build a new energy vehicle.
Once upon a time, Wahaha was a potential king of market value. In 213, Wahaha had a record revenue of 78.3 billion yuan. In the same year, Zong Qinghou was rated as the richest man on the Forbes Chinese Rich List with a net worth of 11.6 billion US dollars. However, after three years of winning the list, Wahaha's revenue declined at an annual rate of 2%. In 218, this situation finally stopped. According to public information, Wahaha's operating income in 218 reached 46.89 billion yuan, a slight increase compared with 217.
In the latest Forbes list of Chinese rich people in 218, Zong Qinghou is not the richest man, but he still ranks 31st with a net worth of 57.98 billion. As for Wahaha's development plan in 22, Zong Qinghou hopes that the operating income can be increased by at least 5% to reach the mark of 7 billion yuan.
Is the era of physical retail enterprises really over? At least zong Qinghou wouldn't think so.
Two Nodes of Wahaha
In the winter of p>1978, Zong Qinghou returned to Hangzhou from Shaoxing Tea Farm. At that time, the mode of production in society had begun to slowly transform into the economic responsibility system for industrial production, and a large number of private enterprises came into being, Wahaha being one of them.
In p>1987, Zong Qinghou started a school-run factory business in Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Education. In the first year, he realized a profit of 22, yuan. This school-run factory located in Qingtai Road, Hangzhou Province became the earliest starting point of Wahaha and the foundation for its later development.
in p>1988, Wahaha introduced the first all-natural formula of children's nutrient solution, which quickly opened the market after listing. Judging from Zong Qinghou's introduction, Wahaha's revenue exceeded 1 million yuan at this stage, which quickly realized the original capital accumulation. However, in the eyes of more people in the industry, the key to the development scale of Wahaha was the merger of Hangzhou Canned Food Factory in 1991.
"At that time, Wahaha was in urgent need of expanding production scale. In order to meet the market demand, we wanted to build a factory to expand production. At first, the municipal government never approved it, until Hangzhou Canned Food Factory was insolvent, and the city leaders in charge wanted us to take over." Zong Qinghou's memory of China entrepreneur. According to the initial negotiation with the Hangzhou municipal government, Wahaha only needs to undertake the services of 5 workers when it merges with Hangzhou Canning Factory, but the development of the situation far exceeds people's imagination. In order to merge Hangzhou Canning Factory, Zong Qinghou invested as much as 8 million yuan, and later received more than 2, on-the-job employees and solved the problem of resettling 5 retired employees.
from the background of the times, 1991 was the hottest stage of the discussion on "the surname of capital and surname of society". In 1992, Comrade Deng Xiaoping talked in the south, and the real urban ownership reform began to advance. Wahaha was also regarded as the "first shot" of enterprise reform. After the successful acquisition of Hangcan Factory, Wahaha rose rapidly and developed into a private enterprise with a certain scale.
In addition to the merger of Hangzhou Tank Factory, another key node for Zong Qinghou was the famous "Dawa dispute". The cooperation between Wahaha and Danone began in 1996, and it was quite effective at first, but the two sides were contradictory and open in the later stage because of their differences in ideas.
"In fact, our cooperation with Danone was very good at first, but because Danone didn't understand the China market and didn't trust us to run it by ourselves, it set up many obstacles. At the same time, they also acquired Robust and Shanghai Guangming, which are our competitive brands." In Zong Qinghou's view, Wahaha's demands were the same as those during the merger of Hangcan Factory. At that time, Wahaha also urgently needed to expand production rapidly. However, after repeatedly negotiating with Danone to set up a new factory, the demands could not be resolved. As a last resort, Wahaha could only start to build its own factory and process products for the joint venture company.
From Zong Qinghou's statement, it is known that Wahaha built its own factory and set up a non-joint venture company, and the list of non-joint venture companies is listed in the annual audit memorandum to Danone, and Danone has never raised any objection to this. However, at a later stage, the management of Danone Asia Pacific began to demand the acquisition of non-joint ventures at a low price, which Zong Qinghou certainly refused.
Immediately, Danone began to file a lawsuit against Wahaha all over the world. For a long time, Zong Qinghou taught himself legal knowledge, and gradually clarified two key issues in the lawsuit against Danone-who is engaged in horizontal competition? Who is abusing trademarks? It is precisely because of the legal initiative in these two matters that Wahaha has won the lawsuit all over the world.
"I didn't feel particularly difficult or scared." In an interview with China Entrepreneur, Zong Qinghou once revealed a thrilling experience in earlier years. In September 213, Zong Qinghou was scratched by a man with a knife in his own community. But soon, Zong Qinghou returned to work. "I didn't feel scared at that time, so my subconscious reaction fended him off. I think my physical strength is ok, and I am still chasing him."
As Zong Qinghou said, he has been full of courage all his life, and such courage has also created Wahaha's beverage empire. But like more enterprises in the real economy, the development of the Internet has brought an impact on Wahaha in a certain period of time. Zong Qinghou's public speech at a summit in 214 was quite impressive. At that summit, Zong Qinghou publicly criticized the negative impact of e-commerce on the real economy.
digital transformation and challenge
"In fact, what I have always opposed is that the Internet burns money to buy traffic on a large scale, selling the hard work of the real economy cheaply, and disrupting the market price of the real economy." Zong Qinghou told China Entrepreneur, "In the past two years, the development of the real economy is indeed difficult, but what enterprises need to face is how to upgrade the management model of products and enterprises on the premise of constantly meeting the needs of consumers."
from the perspective of the development of the whole industry, physical retail and real economy will inevitably suffer the impact of e-commerce and internet. However, the real economy has a certain threshold. Wahaha has developed for more than 3 years, and has already formed a channel network all over the country by virtue of joint marketing, and even touched the capillaries of the lowest market. Such offline barriers cannot be shaken and caught up by e-commerce in the short term.
that is to say, compared with the e-commerce platform that wants to keep sinking, the physical retail enterprises represented by Wahaha have a more evolutionary foundation, but they always need evolutionary thinking and weapons to complete the upgrading and transformation.
At present, it is certain that Zong Qinghou did not reject new technologies, and his attitude became more and more open.
In Zong Qinghou's introduction, Wahaha was the first enterprise to start digital construction. In 1997, Wahaha has introduced the information system of ERP, and realized a series of information management from ordering by dealers to purchasing, production, delivery and logistics. And since the development of the enterprise, this system is constantly upgrading.
Zong Qinghou believes that Wahaha has always been the product of the integration and development of the Internet and the real economy. And Wahaha is constantly trying new marketing methods that are closer to young people. After entering 219, Wahaha began to interact with consumers and promote products by combining more platforms such as Tik Tok, WeChat and Weibo.
"In fact, we were originally the earliest consumer enterprises in China to advertise on the Internet," Zong Qinghou told China Entrepreneur. In the early years, Wahaha had a fate with Sohu. "In 1997, Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu came to see us, and we put an advertisement in Sohu. After that, Sohu was also listed on NASDAQ, becoming the first China Internet company listed in the United States."
In addition, it is worth mentioning Wahaha's all-round exploration on the road of intelligence.
According to public information, in 215, Wahaha began to build intelligent factories. And in the near future, Wahaha will build its own "private cloud" platform, improve the infrastructure of intelligent manufacturing with the help of advanced technologies such as cloud computing, big data and AI, and further enhance the core competitiveness of intelligent equipment manufacturing.