Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, passed away: he started from scratch at the age of 42 and created a beverage faucet from scratch

On February 25, Dohaha released an obituary, Zong Qinghou, founder and chairman of Wahaha Group, died at 10:30 on February 25, 2024, at the age of 79.

Looking back on Zong Qinghou's life, he spent 15 years on the farm in his youth, and it was not until he was 42 years old that his career ushered in a turning point.

Now, after the death of Zong Qinghou, his daughter Zong Fuli will take over the burden of Wahaha.

15 years of farm life laid the foundation

Relying on the borrowed 140,000 yuan to take over a distribution department

According to public information, on October 12, 1945, Zong Qinghou was born in East Street, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, with a total of five brothers and sisters.

Zong Qinghou's family was once prominent, his grandfather was the finance minister under Zhang Zuolin, and his father was a clerk in the Kuomintang government. But after liberation, their lives became impoverished, and their father had no job and lived on the salary of his mother, who was a primary school teacher.

In 1963, in order to reduce the burden on his family, Zong Qinghou, who graduated from junior high school, went to a farm in Zhoushan, where he dug for salt, dried salt, and picked salt on the beach. In the countryside, he stayed for 15 years.

Zong Qinghou recalled this experience in the program "Reader", saying that he had done farm work, repaired dams, picked up dung and even learned to kill pigs, and the 15 years of hard life made his fighting spirit stronger, and at the same time, he could bear hardships, trained a better body, and laid a better foundation for future entrepreneurship.

In 1978, 33-year-old Zong Qinghou returned to Hangzhou and worked as a salesman in a carton factory run by the Workers' and Peasants' School. It wasn't until he was 42 years old that his career reached a turning point.

In 1987, Zong Qinghou borrowed 140,000 yuan to take over the distribution department of the school-run enterprise in Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, and started by selling sodas, popsicles, stationery, and paper to make money. As long as he receives a call from the school, whether it is windy or rainy or scorching sun, 42-year-old Zong Qinghou immediately pedals on a tricycle to deliver the products to the school, even if the profit is meager.

In July of that year, Zong Qinghou used the pollen sales proceeds and a bank loan of 50,000 yuan as the original capital to establish Hangzhou Baoling Children's Nutrition Food Factory (later renamed "Hangzhou Wahaha Nutrition Food Factory") to process pollen oral liquid for Hangzhou Baoling Company.

At the same time, Zong Qinghou found that children's loss of appetite and malnutrition were common, but there was no nutrient solution specially produced for children on the market. In 1988, under the guidance of Professor Zhu Shoumin, Wahaha developed the first nutritional product for children.

According to Wahaha's official website

At that time, Zong Qinghou only had 100,000 yuan of working capital, but in the face of the advertising fee of 210,000 yuan from two TV stations in Hangzhou, he signed the advertising contract without changing his face. As a result, the advertisement of "Drinking Wahaha, Eating is Fragrant" spread all over the country, and Wahaha Children's Nutrition Solution quickly became popular, and orders increased sharply. In 1990, the sales revenue exceeded 98 million yuan.

In 1991, with the support of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government at that time, Zong Qinghou merged the old state-owned factory Hangzhou Canning Factory at a cost of more than 8,000 yuan, obtained more than 60,000 square meters of factory buildings, and also received debts of more than 60 million yuan and more than 2,200 workers.

However, 100 days after the merger, the Hangzhou Canning Factory successfully turned losses into profits, and Wahaha has since been on the fast track.

A leading food and beverage company from scratch

Wahaha was once in trouble because of the "Dawa Dispute".

At the end of 1994, Wahaha actively responded to the call of the State Council to support the resettlement work in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, devoted itself to the development of the western region, merged three flooded enterprises in the Fuling area, and established Wahaha Fuling Co., Ltd.

Since then, Wahaha's strategy of "going west to the north" and setting up factories close to the consumer market has become bigger and bigger, and it has continuously established branches in many places.

In 1996, Wahaha Pure Water was born, and Wahaha began to expand from the field of children's products to the field of adult products. In 2004, Wahaha implemented the strategy of "comprehensive innovation" and continuously launched new products such as Nutrition Express and Shuang Crooked.

From scratch, from small to large, Wahaha created by Zong Qinghou has become a leading food and beverage enterprise in China, with more than 200 varieties of products covering more than 10 categories such as protein drinks, packaged drinking water, carbonated drinks, and tea drinks.

In the course of Wahaha's development, the "Dawa dispute" is one of the biggest challenges faced by Zong Qinghou.

According to China Youth Network, Wahaha has jointly funded the establishment of a number of companies with France's Danone and Hong Kong's Peregrine to produce products with the "Wahaha" trademark, including purified water and eight-treasure porridge.

Initially, Wahaha held a 49% stake, and Danone and Peregrine together held 51%, and after the Asian financial crisis, Peregrine sold its stake to Danone, and Danone jumped to an absolute controlling position of 51%.

At the end of 2006, Danone wanted to acquire a 51% stake in Wahaha's non-joint venture at a price of 4 billion yuan, which was strongly opposed by Zong Qinghou, who immediately issued a statement in the media, accusing Danone of setting up a takeover trap. Danone countered that Zong Qinghou had violated the agreement between the two parties by using the Wahaha trademark outside the joint venture.

It turned out that Danone had requested to transfer the trademark rights of "Wahaha" to the joint venture company of the two parties, but was rejected by the State Trademark Office, and then the two parties signed a separate trademark use agreement. According to the agreement, the right to use the Wahaha trademark has been transferred to the joint venture company, and without the consent of the foreign party, Wahaha Group shall not use the Wahaha brand to produce and sell related products alone.

Zong Qinghou believes that Danone was introduced because the development of enterprises requires not only capital, but also technology. But in hindsight, Danone brought very little technology and didn't think much about it when signing the contract, and in a hurry, "we fell into a trap that Danone orchestrated." ”

Since then, the situation has continued to escalate, Zong Qinghou resigned as chairman of the joint venture company, Wahaha employees collectively expressed dissatisfaction, the French ambassador to China and relevant national authorities expressed concern about this, and the Ministry of Commerce stated that it "acted in strict accordance with the relevant laws and regulations on foreign mergers and acquisitions".

In May 2007, Danone officially launched legal proceedings against Wahaha, and the two parties filed a series of lawsuits and arbitration applications in the California Court of the United States, the Arbitration Tribunal of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce in Sweden and the Hangzhou Arbitration Tribunal in Zhejiang.

It was not until September 2009 that Wahaha and Danone issued a joint statement that resulted in a settlement: Danone sold its 51% stake in each joint venture company to a Chinese joint venture partner, and the two parties would terminate all legal proceedings related to the dispute.

Successor Zong Fuli took center stage

Zeng Yili mainly promoted cross-border co-branded activities such as makeup and blind boxes

"After 'breaking up' with Danone, Wahaha is getting better and better. After resolving the dispute, in 2010, Zong Qinghou proposed to "create another Wahaha" and strive to achieve annual sales revenue of 100 billion yuan within 3 years.

In 2013, Wahaha's operating income was 78.278 billion yuan, which is still some distance from the goal of 100 billion yuan, but this is Wahaha's best result in the past ten years, and since then the operating income has hovered around 45 billion to 50 billion yuan.

In recent years, Zong Qinghou's daughter Zong Fuli has stepped into the center of the Wahaha stage.

According to public information, Zong Fuli was born in 1982, studied abroad at the age of 14 to receive Western education, and after returning to China in 2004 after graduating from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles with a major in international business, she went to a production workshop in Xiaoshan to experience.

After three years of experience, in 2007, after Zong Fuli and her father reached a tacit understanding that "the father doesn't ask, the daughter doesn't ask for help", she opened up a "new world" according to her own blueprint - Hongsheng Beverage Group, which is mainly engaged in Wahaha beverage OEM processing business.

From a production line to a comprehensive beverage group with 20 production bases, more than 40 subsidiaries and a whole industry chain layout across the country, Hongsheng Beverage Group has also been ranked among the "Top 500 Private Enterprises in China" and "Top 500 Private Enterprises in Manufacturing in China" for many times.

Until 2018, Zong Fuli returned to Wahaha as the head of the brand public relations department of Wahaha Group, and boldly brought a series of innovative attempts to Wahaha, such as cross-border products such as nutrition express makeup, haha dumplings, blind water, and AD calcium milk ice cream.

Since December 2021, Zong Fuli has officially served as the vice chairman and general manager of Wahaha Group.

Zong Qinghou has affirmed Zong Fuli to the media more than once, not only saying that Zong Fuli has become a more mature entrepreneur in recent years, showing a satisfied attitude towards the company independently managed by her daughter, but also saying "better than me".

In a talk show, Zong Qinghou talked about Zong Fuli and said that 1/3 of Wahaha's enterprises are managed by Zong Fuli, and Zong Fuli's performance in Wahaha Group can be scored 90 points.

Now, with the death of Empress Zong Qing, Wahaha's burden will all fall on Zong Fuli, where will she lead Wahaha?

Red Star News reporter Yang Peiwen

Edited by Yu Dongmei