1996, Wahaha, Danone Company and Hong Kong Baifuqin Company jointly set up five companies to produce products with "Wahaha" as the trademark, including purified water and eight-treasure porridge.
Wahaha holds 49%. After the Asian financial turmoil, Baifuqin sold its shares to Danone, and Danone jumped to a controlling position of 565,438+0%.
Although Danone holds 565,438+0% of the equity of the joint venture company, the decision-making power of the whole Wahaha Group is concentrated in Zong's hands. In the nearly 10 years of cooperation with Danone, Zong has been firmly in control of Wahaha by virtue of his prestige and tough style accumulated in Wahaha for many years. Danone sent managers and marketing directors, but they were all driven away by Zong. It is reported that at the beginning of cooperation with Danone, the "four chapters of contract" between Zongzong and Danone is the best embodiment of Zongzong's tough style:
First, the brand remains unchanged; Second, the position of chairman remains unchanged; Third, the treatment of retired workers remains unchanged; Fourth, employees over the age of 45 are not allowed to be dismissed.
At that time, Danone immediately proposed to transfer the trademark right of Wahaha to its joint venture company, but it was rejected by the State Trademark Office, so the two sides later signed a trademark use contract.
What Zong did not expect was that a seemingly casual clause in the contract made Wahaha fall into today's passivity. There is such a clause in the contract: "China can use the (Wahaha) trademark in the production and sales of other products in the future, and these products have been submitted to the board of directors of Wahaha and its joint venture company for deliberation ..." This clause is simply that Wahaha wants to use its own trademark to produce and sell products, and it needs the approval of Danone or its joint venture. Since 10, Wahaha has successively established 39 joint ventures with Danone, accounting for 39% of the total number of subsidiaries of Wahaha Group.
After the joint venture, the cooperation between the two sides was not pleasant. In the middle and late 1990s, with the rapid enhancement of enterprise strength, the improvement of product marketing network and the popularization of product image, Wahaha urgently needed to expand its production capacity by expanding its scale and setting up factories across regions. But Danone disagrees with Wahaha on many issues, such as investing in factories. For example, in order to respond to the national call and complete the industrial layout of enterprise products in the central and western regions, Wahaha's decision-makers hope to participate in the western development, counterpart support for the old revolutionary base areas, national poverty-stricken areas, the construction of the Three Gorges reservoir area and other projects. However, Danone is reluctant to invest because it is worried about the spending power of these areas. Because it is a joint venture, Danone is unwilling to invest, and Wahaha cannot invest by itself. Sharp contradictions have occurred between the two sides.
At this time, Danone acquired Robust, Wahaha's biggest competitor at that time. This made Zong Houqing vaguely uneasy. Realizing that the cooperation with Danone not only didn't produce positive significance, but even limited the development of Wahaha, Zong discussed and decided with the Chinese decision-making team at 1999 to set up a company group with no joint venture with Danone. Most of these companies are established in the western region, the old revolutionary base areas supported by counterparts, national poverty-stricken areas, the Three Gorges reservoir area and other areas where Danone was initially unwilling to invest, and have achieved good economic benefits. By 2006, the total assets of these companies had reached 5.6 billion yuan, and the profits of that year reached 654.38+0.4 billion yuan.
Perhaps it is the good performance that makes Danone jealous. A few years later, Danone suddenly demanded compulsory acquisition of these companies which were established by Wahaha employees and had no joint venture relationship with Danone, on the grounds that Wahaha Group "shall not allow any other party except Wahaha Danone joint venture company" in the trademark use contract.
From June 5438 to February 2006, Danone signed a contract with Wahaha to acquire the remaining non-joint ventures. But three months later, Zong reneged on his word and decided to set up another sales company in order to break away from the channels of the original joint venture company and sell the products of the non-joint venture company.
On April 8, 2007, Zong disclosed the inside story of Danone's forced acquisition of Wahaha. The contradiction between Wahaha and Danone surfaced.