What kind of vision does a woman need to have to spell out such a large business empire? She founded Pretty Jiangnan, which she founded in 2008, became the only designated Chinese food supplier for the Beijing Olympic Games with a 16,000-page tender. A hand-carved crystal cup of Patrick for tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of chandeliers, and famous paintings from all over the world became witnesses to her most brilliant period.
In 2009, Zhang Lan was ranked in the top three of The Rich List of Hurun Restaurants, with a valuation of up to 2.5 billion. A year later, his son Wang Xiaofei married Big S, and he thought he was living a happy life, but he was tragically pit by capital and put on a big deal.
01 Start with washing dishes
The "tide of the times" will eventually disappear in the times, and the experience of rising from tall buildings to the ground is the greatest wealth of these people.
After Zhang Lan was born in 1958, her biological father was beaten into the "rightist" and followed her mother to live in her grandmother's house, and it was precisely because of the rules of her grandmother's family that she had a good habit from an early age.
With the death of her grandmother and grandfather, with the remarriage of her mother, 5-year-old Zhang Lan saw her nightmare stepfather. From going to the toilet, to studying, and even things like shoe shine are also stipulated to a fixed time period.
A few years later, the family was sent from Beijing to a farm in Anlu County, Hubei Province, where, if it were not for the harsh environment, where urban children would have learned to grow vegetables, herd cattle, plant seedlings, and harvest.
In the past few years in Hubei. It has become the deepest memory of Zhang Lan's life, and it is precisely because of this experience that she began to realize the change, and she began to reflect on her fate and life.
In 1988, Zhang Lan graduated from university, and a year later, he gave birth to his son Wang Xiaofei, and his long-term life of two points and one line made Zhang Lan feel bored in life. From a hard life, she began to be full of desire for wealth, an almost paranoid desire.
In the 80s and 90s, it was a time when the foreign moon was rounder than China's, and many people engraved their mark on foreign income and prosperity, and Zhang Lan also felt that foreign countries might be an opportunity to change themselves.
She resolutely resigned and came to Canada to work. Life in Canada, zhang lan called "just to earn money", the first job as a black worker is to wash dishes, $3.50 an hour, she worked 4 restaurants a day, 16 hours in a row. "The money earned in a day is equivalent to a month's salary in China." Later, the work was also various, unloading the car, carrying pork, barber shop as a hair washer, she did not have a day to rest.
Money was the original driving force, but as she saved more and more, this life without any status or identity, she also began to think about what she should do.
The autumn in Toronto is the most beautiful, the maple leaves flying everywhere in the mountains, at that moment she felt like a maple leaf, leaving the motherland, wandering away from home, nostalgia for the family became the most depressing thing in her heart.
On December 22, 1991, three days before Christmas, Zhang Lan, 34, returned to Beijing.
02 Start a business
When you feel that the mountains and rivers are exhausted, carrying it is suddenly cheerful. But many people just can't carry it, so starting from scratch, always repeating, life is not perfect. --Zhang Lan
After returning to China, Zhang Lan changed from a hit worker to a strong woman who did something, looking at the amount of funds in her hands, she was bottomless, but she was not willing.
In 1992, in an old grain store on Beijing's East Fourth Avenue, Zhang Lan rented the store for 130,000 yuan and renamed it "Alan Restaurant".
Catering is a "diligent line", do this line should be like an old scalper, diligent, thrifty. The body must be diligent, and the mind must be diligent.
Her childhood experiences and the hardships she has suffered in life abroad over the years have made her begin to take root in catering. Starting from the head of the kitchen, running the hall, purchasing, issuing invoices, basically she did it. In order to build his own shop, Zhang Lan ran to Pixian County, Sichuan Province, took a group of local bamboo workers up the mountain to cut bamboo, and transported 13 meters long bowls of thick bamboo to Beijing by train.
It was an era when everyone was thinking about "eating enough" for customers, but Zhang Lan's eyes turned to "eat well".
With the spring breeze from the south, the business of Alain Restaurant gradually flourished. After that, Zhang Lan successively opened a "Alan Roast Duck Hotel" in Guang'anmen and a "Bird Garden Shark Fin Seafood Restaurant" in the Asian Games Village, and the business was booming.
03 Zhang Lan who was targeted
After eight years of hard work, Zhang Lan opened 3 stores, and she can also be regarded as a famous female entrepreneur in Beijing. In the era of not being happy to swipe cards and scan codes, Zhang Lan, as a restaurant owner, often carries a lot of cash in his arms.
In the summer of 1999, an inter-provincial criminal gang targeted Zhang Lan. But just when they tracked and studied her travel rules and formulated a plan to prepare for action, they accidentally found that the "prey" had disappeared.
It turned out that Zhang Lan gave himself a vacation on a whim and went to France to visit his son Wang Xiaofei, who was studying abroad. However, he killed Zhang Lan's brother by mistake, which may be the destiny of heaven. This incident also caused Zhang Lan to have no intention of handling business for nearly half a year.
04 The road to self-created industry
In April 2000, Zhang Lan resolutely transferred the three food stall restaurants he operated, and invested 60 million yuan saved in the past 10 years into the high-end catering industry. In the high-end office building of Beijing Guomao, Zhang Lan's first "Pretty Jiangnan" restaurant with Sichuan's face-changing face as its logo came into being.
Since you want to be high-end, who should you face? Since you want to do Louis Vuitton in catering, you must consider more than just the operation of the assembly line, but must be able to form a system.
So Zhang Lan took all the savings of the first half of her life, and the slightly luxurious Jiangnan in the affordable price began to appear in major office buildings, and under the combination of Jiangnan Water Town and Sichuan Spicy, her restaurant design was very advanced.
The first four months of the pretty Jiangnan, can not make ends meet, just rent and staff wages accounted for more than half, fortunately Zhang Lan's vision is not bad, coupled with the superior decoration and unique dishes, the 5th month, the pretty Jiangnan began to quietly explode.
After several years of development, Zhang Lan's Pretty Jiangnan has completely become an industrialized system in procurement, decoration, and chef training, which can accurately define all the ingredients of the dish of fish and meat shreds to grams, and even the heat has a specific time definition, which minimizes the human impact.
In 2006, the first Lan CLUB only spent 300 million yuan on decoration, and she found Philippe Starck, a French designer, a chair of 180,000 yuan and a crystal lamp of 400,000 yuan, which was extremely luxurious and challenged everyone's imagination of a top restaurant.
In the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Zhang Lan and her son stayed up for a month and wrote a 16,000-page tender, logistics, procurement, food safety, finance, volunteer management, all of which are included.
This year, Zhang Lan also became the torchbearer of the Olympic Games, and a year later, Zhang Lan was ranked No. 3 in the list of rich restaurants, and the wealth valuation once reached 2.5 billion.
In 2011, Wang Xiaofei, who had only met each other four times, got married to Big S, and Zhang Lan also fulfilled her dream, and her family and career were both successful.
Because his son married a star, it was inevitable that gossip, for the sake of the children's reputation, Zhang Lan intimidated reporters during this period, and every time he could make reporters dumb, he was once sealed as a mother-in-law who "talked a lot of cruel people".
Relying on 20,000 US dollars to start a business and get such a brilliant career, Zhang Lan can be said to be very successful, but this success has not been maintained for a long time.
05 The pretty Jiangnan that collapsed overnight
Zhang Lan, who was anxious to expand, was exchanged by a private equity fund CDH for about 200 million yuan in exchange for a 10.53% stake in Pretty Jiangnan in 2008, according to which the valuation of Pretty Jiangnan at that time was about 1.9 billion yuan. After getting the money, Zhang Lan blindly estimated the development of the enterprise and the change of the general environment.
A VAM agreement changed Zhang Lan's fate and was kicked out of the company's founder. When raising funds, IT was agreed with CDH that if C&F could not be listed at the end of 2012 for reasons other than CDH, CDH had the right to transfer its equity or withdraw from C&F through legal procedures to reduce its registered capital.
In order to go public, Zhang Lan also moved his nationality to an unknown island, but with the financial opacity of catering enterprises, the regulatory level froze the IPO of the entire catering industry; the central "eight regulations" were also issued at this time, the high-end catering industry suffered a collective winter, and The beautiful Jiangnan inevitably suffered from this cold current.
Zhang Lan may not have imagined that she escaped death, but she did not escape the collapse of the enterprise. Because there was no money to redeem its shares, and the profits of Pretty Jiangnan in the following time were greatly reduced, in 2012, the number of stores was reduced from 70 to 50, and Zhang Lan's shares were also liquidated.
On the seventh day of the Chinese New Year in 2015, Zhang Lan's office broke into more than 20 people dressed in black and told her bluntly that you are no longer the chairman of Pretty Jiangnan, and all your assets are frozen, please leave immediately.
The value of 2.5 billion collapsed overnight.
This year, she was 57 years old.
06 The woman who does not accept defeat
From working abroad to opening a restaurant, to founding the Pretty Jiangnan and Lan Clubhouse, and later losing control of pretty Jiangnan, she has experienced great ups and downs, but has always maintained a strong and vigorous vitality.
She was knocked down again and again, stood up again and again, even if she fell into a low point, after a rest, she was able to grow in a positive posture.
With the popularity of the short video field, the 64-year-old woman started a business again, rooted in the world of e-commerce with goods, and each time a live broadcast is 6 hours.
In the face of the discussion of netizens, she still feels: "I am not inferior."
In the face of the divorce of her son and Big S: she is not partial to her son, does not take sides, but only means that her children and grandchildren have their own children and grandchildren.
Be sensible, know the destiny, and not be discouraged. After experiencing wild storms, she has also seen mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, smiled at her life, and after seeing her children's various failures, she can also say a sentence: I Zhang Lan is a dragon, and he Wang Xiaofei can be a worm.
A strong woman who has a lot of cruel words is legendary enough in this life.