Shihua Liquor has gone through a thousand-year natural economic period in a state of self-reliance. As it separated from the county winery and established its own business, it also entered the most glorious period in its history. The person who brought Shihuajiu a new destiny was a man named Wang Wancai. Regarding the history of Shihua Liquor, Wang Wancai is also an insurmountable mountain. No matter how people evaluate it, the height he created for Shihua Liquor has been surpassed by no one. Knowing our intentions, well-meaning insiders told us that it would be difficult to interview Wang Wancai, as Wang Wancai would not say anything. Wang Wancai's salary relationship is in the county party committee office, and his status is "Gucheng County Party Committee Party Style and Integrity Supervisor." As the only person in Gucheng who enjoys the treatment of a county-level administrative cadre as the director of an enterprise, Wang Wancai said anything he said was inappropriate.
But following the traces of Shihua Liquor and writing articles about Shihua Liquor, Wang Wancai, the old factory director, was unable to avoid a hurdle. After many twists and turns and inquiries, the author finally found the small building where Wang Wancai lived in a residential area in an alley in Gucheng County. Unexpectedly, Wang Wancai was willing to be interviewed. This made me overjoyed. Wang Wancai is nearly sixty years old, but there is no sign of aging at all. It still maintains the grandeur and grandeur of the TV commercials back then. I carefully avoided sensitive topics such as "Why Shihuajiu fell into a trough?" Carefully looking for topics that I think are suitable. But I didn’t expect that Wang Wancai guessed my thoughts and said with a hearty smile: "I have dealt with many people who write articles. I know your difficulties. No matter how talented you are, you can’t write without first-hand information. What do you want to ask me? Just say it.”
The author knew that the reasons for Shihuajiu’s current situation were complicated, so he bypassed the subject and talked about life with Wang Wancai. Perhaps it is because he is too far away from mainstream society, or perhaps our interview has aroused his yearning for the glorious days of his youth. Wang Wancai still seemed full of passion when recalling the past. "Shihua Wine is the sum of my life's hard work" (On-the-spot interview No. 6 - at the home of Wang Wancai, the former director of Shihua Winery)
Before he became famous, no one could have imagined that this unassuming young man would become a The "wine king" of the Shihua brand. Wang Wancai started working in 1961 (at the age of 17), became a full-time employee in 1962, and took part in the historically famous "Four Clean-ups" movement in 1963. Because of his outstanding work, he was highly appreciated by the organization. When the work team was transferred from Xiangyang County to Sui County in 1964, Wang Wancai was transferred as a backbone for training. After the training, he was planned to be the deputy captain of a work team. At that time, the governor of the province, Zhang Tixue, was in charge of pilot projects in Suixian County. This is why the Four Clean-up Task Force trained a large number of leading cadres. This is naturally a good opportunity for Wang Wancai's life. The bright future was obvious at that time. However, just as he was packing his bags and preparing to go to Sui County to show his ambitions, the Gucheng County Party Committee made a decision to retain some outstanding cadres to enrich the county-level units. At that time, there was no concept of enterprise. Wang Wancai was assigned to Shihua Winery by the leader using the "randomly dotting the mandarin duck spectrum" method that was popular at the time. To be precise, it was not called Shihua Winery at that time. It only existed as a branch of a county winery. This factory was restructured with Huang Gongshun Liquor Industry as the main body and the acquisition of four relatively large private small wineries. During that period, everyone from the leaders of the Communist Party of China to every ordinary citizen was eager for the rapid growth of state-owned capital, and all private enterprises would be transformed into state-owned or local state-owned enterprises within just two years. That urgency and consistency is almost exactly the same as today's eagerness to sell all state-owned assets to private individuals overnight.
When Wang Wancai came, there were not many people in the factory at that time, and even job appointments were not standardized. Wang Wancai was responsible for production, finance, logistics and other tasks, while another older man, Hu Kaixue, took overall responsibility. This year Wang Wan just turned 20 years old. For today's age, I can only be a student who has just entered university. But people in that era were precocious, and Wang Wancai took on the important task of a factory at the age of 20. Wang Wancai was an ambitious man. He studied the business carefully, paid attention to the new technology of the brewing industry, and used the most effective means in society at that time to gradually expand this brewery with a long history. Wang Wancai carefully calculated the time he worked at Shihua Winery.
From entering the factory as a 20-year-old young man, to finally leaving the winery in a depressed mood at the age of 55, from the person in charge of the "finger nose" assistant to the deputy county-level winery director and legal representative, to the person who left the winery Zhengxian treatment. He experienced the initial development of Shihua Wine and the heyday of his creation, and also spent the most precious period of his life, a full 35 years!
“The only useful time in a person’s life is twenty or thirty years. It can be said that Shihua Liquor has consumed my whole life’s hard work.” This old factory director in Du was once hyped as the “King of Liquor” by the media. , full of nostalgia for the past years, and when talking about today's Shihua Wine, Wang Wancai was a little sentimental, but did not express any evaluative views. Commander of the Military Region "Dianjin" Shihua Liquor (one of Wang Wancai's narrations)
The development process of an enterprise is similar to life. The years during the transition from baby to youth are long and dull. The story often takes place in a passionate place. The age of youth.
In the 1970s, the construction of China's second north-south artery, the Jiao-Liu Railway, began. The person directing this major project was Kong Qingde, the then deputy commander of the Wuhan Military Region. This deputy commander, one of the first lieutenant generals to be awarded the title after the founding of the People's Republic of China, drank Shihua wine at the "Third Front Construction" headquarters in Gucheng. The general was full of praise for the Shihua wine, and he remembered the Shihua wine after getting drunk to his heart's content. At the critical moment, Commander Kong ordered another drink of Shihua Wine. At the economic work meeting held by the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, Commander Kong said: "People say that Hubei people are like nine-headed birds. I think they are just stupid birds at best. Maotai and Fen wine are so popular, so Hubei people are willing to pay for other people's water." , I don’t know how to make a fortune from wine. I have drunk Shihua wine, and the taste is not worse than Maotai wine. I have also seen the Shihua winery on Shihua Street. Is the water from Shuangquan well not necessarily as good as the water from Chishui River? It has a history of thousands of years. Why doesn’t the local government study it and develop it?” Commander Kong’s words carried great weight in the Hubei Provincial Committee at that time. At that time, the provincial finance allocated 260,000 yuan to Gucheng County specifically for this purpose. Expansion of Stone Flower Winery. In the 1970s, the weight of 260,000 yuan in people's hearts and the value in the market exceeded 2.6 million yuan today. With the support of the government, Shihua Distillery carried out its first large-scale expansion and renovation. This enabled Shihua Winery to bid farewell to the traditional production method of handicraft workshops for thousands of years and embark on the road of modern industrial development.
The history of Shihua Liquor is indeed very legendary, from the earliest King of Chu Xiang Yu, to the leader of the rebel army Li Zicheng, to the commander-in-chief of the Fifth War Zone Li Zongren buying wine on Shihua Street, to the 1970s. Kong Qingde, deputy commander of the Wuhan Military Region, "dianjin" Shihuajiu, was actually closely related to the mighty general who commanded thousands of troops. Is it an accidental coincidence of historical opportunity? Or is it inevitable that Shihuajiu has inherent heroic qualities?
Shihua Liquor dominates Hubei’s liquor industry (Wang Wancai’s Part 2)
History entered the 1980s, and China was transitioning from national attention to politics to economic development, and Wang Wancai followed suit. caught this trend. As an entrepreneur in the early stages of economic transformation, Wang Wancai used his outstanding talents to confirm the classic motto "The times make heroes."
At this time, the old factory director Hu Kaixue had retired. Shihua Winery was also separated from the county winery and became an independent winery. Wang Wancai stepped onto the stage and became the first generation of corporate legal persons after the implementation of the factory director responsibility system. Under his painstaking management, Shihua Winery has reached considerable scale after several investments and expansions. The production capacity reaches 3,000 tons, becoming a strong financial pillar of Gucheng County. At that time, out of the county's fiscal revenue of 6 million yuan, Shihua Winery contributed more than 2.7 million yuan! It should be said that when the liquor market had not been liberalized at that time, Wang Wancai developed a business strategy suitable for this period. He divided competitors into two levels: near and far. This was probably inspired by the philosophical saying that "people who do not worry about the long-term must worry about the near-term". The so-called "foreign concern" refers to the "top ten famous liquors" such as "Moutai", "Fenjiu" and "Luzhou Laojiao" that have dominated the national liquor market for many years, while near concern refers to the "top ten famous liquors" that occupy a large market share in Hubei Province. "Bianyunbian" and "Yellow Crane Tower". To compete with the "Top Ten Famous Wines" to seize market share in other provinces, Wang Wancai adopts the strategy of high quality and low price. For close enemies, he adopted a tit-for-tat strategy of fighting for every inch of territory. This strategy has proven to be very successful.
In the early days of reform and opening up, the entire country was still in the low-wage period of egalitarianism. Income determined consumption. Generally, low-income societies did not care about famous brands. Although a bottle of Moutai at that time only cost more than 30 yuan, Fenjiu and Luzhou Laojiao only cost about 20 yuan. For Chinese consumers whose monthly salary at that time was generally only about 40 yuan, these "famous wines" with low absolute value still became the moon hanging high in the sky. Shihua wine is popular among consumers for its excellent quality that is comparable to Fenjiu. Liquor with an alcohol content above 53% is especially popular among Northeastern men who like hard liquor. Throughout the 1980s, Shihua Liquor's liquor sales to North and Northeast China accounted for more than 40℅ of the entire Shihua Distillery's annual output. As for the province, he clung to the "White Clouds" in Songzi and the "Yellow Crane Tower" in Wuhan, the provincial capital. Compared with Li Bai's famous poem "Ship to Buy Wine by the White Clouds" and "White Clouds and Yellow Crane", the world The popularity of famous buildings, the thousand-year history and numerous legends of Xiaoshihua Street seem a bit petty.
The smart Wang Wancai understood that the only way to compete with these two wineries was based on the quality of the wine. That was still the era of the planned economy. Like many industries, the determination of quality did not lie entirely with consumers but to a large extent with industry authorities. Specific to the liquor industry, the Liquor Appraisal Committee organized every year by the National Ministry of Light Industry and the Provincial Light Industry Bureau is the only authoritative organization for certifying liquor quality. Wang Wancai is well aware of the power of this and attaches great importance to various evaluation activities. The most important thing every year is to prepare for evaluations at all levels. He personally participated in the production of sample wines for the wine tasting event, personally inspected every grain used to brew the sample wines, and personally supervised every aspect of the production of the sample wines. The thick newspaper clippings accumulated by Tu Mingchun, the winery scholar, record various media reports on the various honors Shihua Winery has won in various awards