"Zhou Yi" has clouds, "Poor think about change, change is general, and general is long." ”
It means that when things develop to a certain stage, they will fall into bottlenecks and find it difficult to continue, and only by changing can they be accessible and develop in a lasting manner.
Life is like this, and so is business.
In the past few years, with the opportunity of work, I have had more in-depth exchanges with dozens of entrepreneurs before and after, talking about the original intention, talking about dreams, talking about feelings, most of the time, will not stay on a topic for too long.
But in the past two years, I have a clear feeling that the topics that entrepreneurs talk about have become more and more focused, and even in the whole interview, they are willing to spend most of their time expounding the thinking and determination behind this, guess what this topic is? The answer is transformation.
Thinking about it carefully, in fact, it is completely understandable that, on the one hand, after the incremental era of staking, the vast majority of enterprises today are engaged in a stock game; on the other hand, compared with the past, the market environment, consumer demand and technological upgrading in recent years, the speed of change is completely different.
In a changeable environment to compete for a limited stock market, transformation must be a must-choose road, under the general trend, some entrepreneurs have made up their minds to "prefer to transform and upgrade to die, never follow the old way".
Not long ago, we noticed that there is such a company that also clearly reveals the signal of transformation, which is Tomson By-Health.
At the beginning of March, By-Health released its 2021 annual performance report, which can be described as eye-catching, and the revenue and profit have increased significantly compared with the previous year. At the same time, Chairman Liang Yunchao also issued a letter to shareholders "Another eight years to build a strong technology enterprise", hoping that in the next 8 years, the initial completion of the transformation of Tomson By-Health to a strong technology enterprise.
According to Euromonitor data, the total retail scale of China's vitamin and dietary supplement (VDS) industry in 2021 was 189.2 billion yuan, with a growth rate of about 6.6%. By-Health's share was 10.3%, ranking first. Frankly speaking, as the leading brand in China's VDS (dietary nutritional supplement) industry, By-Health proposed a strong technological transformation this time is somewhat beyond our expectations, for two reasons:
First, for most companies, transformation is often carried out in the case of development obstruction, but Tomson By-Health is more like taking the initiative to change in a favorable situation, what is the reason for this?
Second, why does Tomson By-Health's transformation take technology as the core, where is the combination point between industry and technology, and what is the realization path in the future?
With these questions, we went to Guangzhou, and Liang Yunchao had a face-to-face exchange, summed up, Tomson By-Health's transformation is more like a natural result, the three major concepts behind this enterprise are the most fundamental source of power for transformation, and I think it is also the underlying logic that can stand invincible for 27 years.
Author: Positive Wind
Source: Zhenghe Island
01、 Good times for change? There is no good time to do business!
There is a famous saying in the Jewish classic Talmud that if a ship does not know which port to sail to, then the wind blowing in any direction will not be a tailwind.
This sentence is used to describe the entrepreneur's judgment and choice of future direction, perhaps it is most appropriate, in a sense, the strong scientific and technological transformation initiated by Tomson By-Health this time is also derived from Liang Yunchao's determination to determine the future.
"Industry leaders, performance upwards, the market and word of mouth are very good, obviously it is a good situation, why do you have to take the initiative to change, to do such a thing that may be risky to pay and contribute?" In order to answer the doubts in my heart, I asked Liang Yunchao straight away.
Unexpectedly, Liang Yunchao did not answer my question directly, but first elaborated on his understanding of the concept of favorable circumstances:
"We do business, who dare to say that there is any good situation, the so-called good situation, is nothing more than the result of comparing with peers."
Liang Yunchao said that if placed on a narrow track, the development of Tomson By-Health looks very smooth, but if the horizon is relaxed, from the perspective of the healthy consumption track and even the entire consumer goods industry, there is actually a big gap, and there are many reference targets and learning examples.
In Liang Yunchao's view, the business world has no eternal winners, only eternal efforts, he said that everything is in change, even those who were once subversives, are being subverted by newer subversives.
"You can't rely on a product to eat for a lifetime, patented drugs still have a protection period, you can only continue to innovate, keep moving forward."
Broaden your horizons, face the gap, learn with an open mind, accept changes, and think that this is also a prerequisite for Tomson By-Health to choose the initiative to transform, after all, for any enterprise, the arrogance of looking at everything is the biggest "roadblock" on the road of transformation.
Subsequently, Liang Yunchao and we explained in detail the thinking behind this strong scientific and technological transformation, summarizing the following 3 points:
First of all, the VDS industry has two development directions, one is the direction of heavy functional health food. That is to say, vitamins, minerals and animal and plant extracts as the main raw materials can supplement the nutrients and biologically active substances needed by the human body to improve the level of body health and reduce the risk of disease. However, the difficulty is that a large amount of personnel and capital investment is required for research and development, and the entry threshold is high.
The other is the direction of light function of food, fast digestion, and high frequency. For example, some vitamin gummies, nutrient drinks, etc., the advantage of this direction is that the market space is large and the entry threshold is low, but there are many competitors in the industry, and the "inner volume" is more serious.
In Liang Yunchao's view, By-Health started from heavy functions, and also has a high proportion of shares in the field of heavy functions, which is a major core advantage of the enterprise, from the direction point of view, must not give up the original competitive advantage, to the transformation of science and technology, strengthen R & D investment, enhance product barriers, is the inevitable way for The development of By-Health.
Secondly, the aging of Chinese population has shown a trend of large scale, deep degree and fast speed, and for the industry, the "silver hair market" is an opportunity worthy of high attention.
According to the data, the elderly population over 65 years old in the mainland has reached 191 million in 2020, which can be understood as one in every 4 elderly people in the world has a Chinese, and it is expected that China's population over 65 years old will reach a peak of 425 million people in 2057.
However, at the same time, the elderly in mainland China generally have insufficient energy or protein, and the proportion of vitamin B1, vitamin B2, folic acid, and calcium intake is higher than 80%, and VDS biased towards heavy function has a visible market prospect.
Third, from the perspective of the consumer goods industry, the competitive barriers of technology brands are far higher than those of marketing brands, while the functional VDS has higher requirements for technology research and development, and has a natural moat in the industry, raising the threshold of competition while bringing incremental value of science and technology to the entire industry.
Bezos once said that if you do something, set your sights on the next 3 years, there are many people competing with you; but if you can look at the next 7 years, then there will be very few people who can compete with you, because few companies are willing to do so long-term plans. If you think about 10,000 years, then the way you think about things will be different.
Time determines the height of the problem, Liang Yunchao can be said to be well versed in this way, it is not difficult to find that every bit of his thinking about the transformation is from the perspective of the future, the future things are put down to do, obviously, science and technology is the future of the industry, then what to do now is to devote to science and technology, firmly determined the future, which is also the reason for the transformation of Tomson By-Health to strong technology.
Of course, VDS is not an easy industry, the supervision of national policies, the approval of relevant institutions and the staffing of scientific research personnel, etc., each of which is full of challenges. In this regard, perhaps no one has a deeper feeling than Liang Yunchao, in his words, "this industry is to survive in the cracks, it is useless to cry bitterly, it is to see if you can grow with resilience."
So, how did By-Health grow with resilience? Where does its transformation come from?
02, everything is for health
For entrepreneurs, major decisions about the fate of enterprises are never whimsical, and Liang Yunchao is the same.
As early as 2014, By-Health has actually started a round of R&D strategy transformation, proposing functional R&D with its own patents and independent intellectual property rights. In 8 years, we have developed a number of functional new products such as "Jianliduo", "Jianshijia" and "Jian'anshi".
What is a new feature product? It is to reduce the risk of disease through VDS in a non-pharmaceutical scenario, and to be honest, this is a very difficult thing.
Why? Because few people in the industry are doing it, at present, there are only 27 state-approved health food functions, which can be understood as todayson by-health to be the "pioneer" in the industry, Liang Yunchao said that his goal is to discover more new features, to use new products to bring new health increments to consumers.
This reminds me of Jobs's "customer-neutral" philosophy when developing new products:
Jobs said some people say to give customers what they want, but that's not my way, and our job is to find out what they want earlier than customers.
Because people don't know what they want before you show them, which is why I never rely on market research.
In the same way, what By-Health does is to target what consumers need in the future, even if this is a road that no one has walked, even if there is too much uncertainty along the way, but this must be a difficult and correct road.
From the perspective of the practical path of this transformation, Liang Yunchao also has a very clear plan, which can be divided into three aspects:
1. Implement the "scientific nutrition" strategy and continue to build a "hard technology" product force
What is the "Science Nutrition" strategy? Its ultimate value is "all the way to C (customer)", creating incremental value for consumer health, more importantly, this strategy is not stuck on paper, at present, Tomson By-Health has identified 3 specific landing plans.
The first is the development of its own patents and formulas. Relying on modern and modern nutrition science, By-Health has established a comprehensive scientific system of dietary nutritional supplements, and has developed more than 30 kinds of customized raw materials and obtained more than 60 raw materials and formula patents.
This is followed by new and heavy functional product development and registration. This point mainly revolves around the value of the product, and Tomson By-Health values the function and health value of the new product, not just whether it can win the approval.
Like the "Jianliduo", "Jianshijia" and "Jian'anshi" that we mentioned earlier are functional new products for bone and joint health, eye health and liver health, and it can be found that each product has not left the core value of health.
The third is the prospective basic research on anti-aging and precision nutrition. In this regard, By-Health has also achieved breakthrough scientific research results.
At the end of last year, By-Health cooperated with a team of experts from many global institutions such as the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Mayo Clinic to extract the anti-aging substance PCC1 from specific grape seeds, which can accurately, efficiently and safely remove senescent cells.
2. Focus on "high precision", highlight differences, and continuously amplify competitive advantages
Michael Porter, the "father of competitive strategy", once said that efficiency can only be improved in two ways, one is to do the same thing, I do better than you, the cost is lower, faster; the other is differentiation, do not do the same thing, I want to do different.
How to be different has always been the focus of Liang Yunchao's thinking, "Why can Tomson By-Health do it?" Others do health care products, we do VDS; others do direct sales, we do pharmacy retail; others use ordinary raw materials, we select high-quality raw materials in the world; others use ordinary factories, we use transparent factories, Tomson By-Health Many things are successful by difference. Liang Yunchao said.
Therefore, in the next few years, By-Health plans to tilt resources more on "high-tech" heavy functional health foods, forming a core competitive advantage of "no one has me", and this has also been revealed.
For example, By-Health took 5 years and invested tens of millions of dollars to build the first fully automatic online dry blood spot detection center in China, and developed a personalized vitamin production equipment equipped with core algorithms to promote the transformation to precision nutrition, which is a cutting-edge presence in China.
3. Established by-Health Research Institute Shanghai Research Center and AI Research Center
In 2019, By-Health and the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the "Nutrition and Anti-Aging Research Center", focusing on research in the field of anti-aging.
This year, By-Health will continue to establish the Shanghai Research Center and AI Research Center of the Health Research Institute, using advanced technologies such as big data analysis and intelligent algorithms to further promote the implementation of precision nutrition solutions and create greater health value for consumers.
At this point, we can say that adhering to the mission of creating value for consumer health is the source of Tomson By-Health's ability to grow with resilience, and the accumulation of technology and the three practical practice paths in the past many years are also the biggest confidence of Tomson By-Health's courage to transform.
If you think about it, in fact, everything Tomson By-Health has done revolves around the definition that Liang Yunchao gave to this company. I asked Liang Yunchao, "What is your career?" Or, why does by-health exist? ”
"In a word, because our presence can bring more health value to consumers." Liang Yunchao replied.
It's all about health.
03, 3 core management concepts, shaping the underlying logic of continuous success
It is worth mentioning that in the exchange, Liang Yunchao talked about such a sentence, he said that Tomson By-Health can do so many years, and whether it is strong or not has nothing to do with whether it is strong or not, there are many stronger than themselves, enterprises attach importance to technology, but the most core value is not technology, what he values most is actually the concept.
This aroused my great curiosity, we talked about the industry, talked about technology, talked about strategic planning, why is the most important thing instead of the concept?
Liang Yunchao saw my puzzlement, and in the subsequent exchange, he shared the thoughts of these years one by one, I combed it into 3 points, if tomson By-Health has done something right in the development of Tomson By-Health in the past 30 years, I think these 3 ideas may be the best answer, or the underlying logic of the company's continuous success.
1. Abandon short-sighted thinking and pursue long-term value
Liang Yunchao has a sentence that impressed me deeply, he said that business is endless interests, what does it mean? That is, from the C-end user to the platform side, the brand side, the channel side must benefit, so that everyone can be profitable.
How? There is only one way, that is, to run the business well and reflect its own value, here Liang Yunchao particularly emphasized, "This value is not the level of the stock price, but to be able to do the best in the existing basic conditions, don't live up to those who cooperate with you."
From the perspective of Tomson By-Health, it is the best embodiment of active transformation and change and firm belief in long-term value.
Otherwise, how to explain running dozens of countries and regions around the world, only to select the best of the best, to get high-quality raw materials; and how to explain the manufacturing workshop into a transparent factory, with a sunny and transparent attitude for all walks of life to visit; and how to explain the heavy investment in research and development, do millions, tens of millions of clinical trials again and again.
"Don't sacrifice the future to understand the pain of the moment." Liang Yunchao said that his long-term faith has been integrated into his own blood.
2. Forget the successful past and have the courage to "change your life"
If you use a plant to describe the enterprise, I think bamboo is the most appropriate, a company's lasting growth, most of the time to rely on self-revolution and internal innovation, forget the successful past, like bamboo, constantly grow new "bamboo knots", so that they are in a new environment and ecology every day.
Tomson By-Health is very much like a growing "bamboo", not because of the past success and complacent, put themselves in the future, innovation and change into the genes of the enterprise, so as to ensure that they are always in a dynamic evolution process, I have to say that behind this is actually a great wisdom of survival and development.
In a rapidly changing market, the best strategy for companies is always to give themselves more choices, open a new project, set up a new branch, and allocate some of their best efforts to do things that no one has ever done, even if it means risks and challenges.
But the master often understands the truth that even if you don't do it yourself, one day your competitors are likely to do it, rather than being "revolutionized" by others, it is better to let yourself be reborn.
3. To be a brand is to be a person, integrity is more important than intelligence
When talking about the position of Tomson By-Health, Liang Yunchao has a very vivid description, he said that this is an industry on the tip of the tongue, a company on the tip of the knife, there are two lines that must not be touched, one is the red line of the law, and the other is the bottom line of morality.
For the red line of the law, he said that this must not be touched, can not be thought, can not have a fluke mentality, think of guilt, for the bottom line of morality, he is honest than smart more important values to demand enterprises.
A specific manifestation is that when meeting customers, Liang Yunchao prefers to call them family and friends, he has a principle, his children, his family and friends do not eat the products, is absolutely not produced, absolutely can not leave the factory door, so those who buy Tomson By-Health products are also his family and friends.
He said that doing a brand and being a person is the same truth, people must have a bottom line and values, the same is true for brands, if everyone sees Tomson By-Health hesitate when buying products for parents and children, it may be that There is a problem with Tomson By-Health's integrity system.
So we can also see that By-Health has been strictly demanding itself with a strict standard.
For example, although some raw materials meet industry standards, they do not necessarily meet the corporate standards of By-Health, adhere to the benchmark pharmaceutical companies in product research and development, and jointly release the Blue Book of Standardization of nutrition and health industry standardization with the China Institute of Standardization, etc. It can be said that By-health is not only the executor of industry standards, but also hopes to be the "leader".
These are the three core concepts of By-Health, and I think it has profound learning and thinking value for the corporate world.
04. Conclusion: Bless those who are "paranoids who can't live in fear"
We know that self-evolution and transformation breakthroughs have always been a "contrarian" thing, and there are very few companies that really do this.
Intel's story of successful transformation has long been a touted by the corporate world, and the philosophy of its chairman, Andrew Grove, has become the motto of many managers around the world: "Only paranoia in fear can survive."
Judging from the qualities emitted by Liang Yunchao, he is also the same "paranoid who can't live in fear."
I asked Liang Yunchao, the transformation is bound to encounter all kinds of unpredictable difficulties and challenges, don't you feel difficult and tired?
He shared with me such a sentence, "Don't shout difficulty, when you encounter difficulties, find the door of the largest local people's hospital for a day, watching in and out, life and death, many problems will be relieved."
As for tiredness, Liang Yunchao may have some, he said that he is a person with a low happiness index, on his 40th and 50th birthdays, he made the same wish, that is, not to be more truthful, I hope that I have a more relaxed life, but he also admitted that this wish has not been realized so far.
I think this may also be the truest state of every excellent entrepreneur, running for an idea, an ideal, a mission, no matter how tired it is, it can not stop moving forward.
Finally, I wish Tomson By-Health, every company that has the courage to change itself, and every "bigoted maniac who can't live in fear."