Pineapple "Sultan", Rubber King
The journey of starting a business on your own is extremely difficult. Tan Kah Kee only has a little capital in his hands, so what can he invest in to achieve success? After detailed investigation, Tan Kah Kee found that canned pineapples have strong sales, short cycle time, and low capital requirements, which is very suitable for his situation. So he decided to build a pineapple canning factory.
With insufficient funds, Tan Kah Kee borrowed 7,000 yuan and started building a pineapple canning factory in the Tamsui Harbor Hilllands, 10 miles away from urban Singapore. After saving and saving everything, the 7,000 yuan borrowed was finally enough to build the factory. The tin and sugar required for making canned pineapples can be obtained on credit from other merchants. There was finally no problem in starting work. As soon as pineapples came on the market in April, Tan Kah Kee's "New Lichuan" factory began production. In order to win in the competition, Tan Kah Kee named the trademark of his canned pineapples "Sudan", which means the king of canned pineapples.
Under Tan Kah Kee’s careful management, the cannery is operating well and sales are increasing. At the end of the month, the net profit was more than NT$9,000. Not only has the entire investment in building the factory been recovered, but there is also a surplus. The economic benefits are truly astonishing.
Tan Kah Kee, who fought his way out of a desperate situation and won the first battle, took "Xin Lichuan" as a foothold and concurrently ran the Yuexin Pineapple Factory in partnership with his father's company, and then opened Qianyi Rice. The rice store also serves as the business office of the cannery.
As the canned pineapple business grows, the demand for pineapple raw materials is also growing. In order to solve this problem, Tan Kah Kee purchased a piece of open land near "Xinlichuan" to grow pineapples. Named "Fushan Garden", in fact, this planting land was indeed a blessed land, and later became the largest pineapple plantation in the area.
The road to entrepreneurship was not smooth sailing. While the pineapple business was developing smoothly, in the summer of 1906, the canned pineapple market plummeted. Tan Kah Kee could only barely keep a profit of 10,000 yuan. This blow made him Realizing that shopping malls are like battlefields, it is impossible to adapt to the rapid changes in the market by relying solely on one product, so he needs to look for new projects.
By chance, Tan Kah Kee learned that a rubber businessman had sold his rubber plantation at a high price. He immediately realized that this was an opportunity, so he quickly contacted the businessman and purchased 180,000 rubber tablets from him. Rubber seeds. At that time, due to the sluggish pineapple business, many people sold their pineapple orchards. Tan Kah Kee took this opportunity to purchase large tracts of land, which became his future rubber plantations.
By 1913, Tan Kah Kee’s pineapple production accounted for more than half of the entire Singapore, leaping to the top of the list and truly becoming the Sultan of the industry. In this year, he was already the owner of two rubber factories. He is an overseas Chinese entrepreneur who has four pineapple canning factories, a rice factory and a rice store in the park, with fixed assets and net profit of 4 to 50 million yuan.
However, the market situation was changing. In the autumn of 1914, just as the peak production season for canned pineapples was approaching, the First World War broke out, and European countries restricted the import of canned pineapples. As a result, various foreign companies stopped purchasing. Tan Kah Kee's pineapple canning factory was hit hard, with tens of thousands of boxes of product unsold. Not only that, the war also caused trouble for Tan Kah Kee's rice industry, especially after many merchant ships were attacked by German warships in the East Indian Ocean, and the already tense shipping almost came to a standstill. There are more than 10,000 bags of cooked rice stacked in the warehouse of Tan Kah Kee Rice Factory. The direct consequence of product backlog is difficulty in capital circulation. Factory rent cannot be paid back overdue, and workers' living expenses must not be in arrears. Tan Kah Kee fell into a situation of "difficult to maintain, living like a year".
In the winter of 1914, Tan Kah Kee finally sold all the goods. At this time, he made a decisive decision to engage in the shipping industry. He first relied on chartering ships, renting two ships, the "Wantong" with a load capacity of 1,300 tons and the "Wanda" with a load capacity of 2,500 tons, to transport cooked rice, which was in high demand. , and then sent to India for sale. Soon, due to the expansion of the market, he added two more ships to specifically undertake cargo from the British government. His assessment of the situation and timely changes in business strategies resulted in substantial profits. Just one year later, he made a profit of more than 200,000 yuan.
After that, he purchased many ships, but he did not operate them himself. Instead, he leased them to the French government. This not only saved trouble and avoided risks, but also made quick profits.
In 1916, Tan Kah Kee made another epoch-making move. At that time, European countries were fighting each other, which provided a rare opportunity for the U.S. economy to take off. The rapid development of American industry has stimulated the demand for rubber products and driven Malaya's rubber industry to become a pillar industry, with output ranking first in the world. Malaya became the world's "rubber kingdom". Tan Kah Kee's previous investment finally paid off, and he was recognized in history as one of the "Four Heroes of the Malayan Rubber Kingdom".
In the next two years, Tan Kah Kee gradually shifted his focus to the rubber industry. He successively converted the pineapple canning factory and Hengmei cooked rice factory in Tu Tau Kiu, Singapore into the "Qianyi" rubber factory, specializing in rubber cloth and realizing The rubber business has made a leap from single agricultural cultivation to industrial manufacturing. Then, he managed to establish a relationship with the American Rubber Industry Association, promoted advertising in the United States, and sold most of the products of the "Qianyi" rubber factory directly to the United States. In this way, he achieved the second leap: integrating rubber agriculture, industry, and trade operations into one, and setting a precedent for overseas Chinese to trade directly with foreign merchants without going through foreign companies during the century of British rule in Singapore.
Throughout the First World War, Tan Kah Kee not only suffered no losses, but remained safe and sound. Relying on rice, gum, ship shipping and the sale of iron sheets accumulated in the pineapple cannery, Tan Kah Kee earned more than 4.5 million yuan. After deducting various expenses, the actual assets are 4.3 million yuan. As a result, he quickly became one of the richest people in Singapore, and also became a famous entrepreneur and an overseas Chinese tycoon in Singapore.
Hope to adopt