Zong Fuli's last battle: Wahaha has a 20-year "hasty" handover

Abstract: The death of a generation of entrepreneurs, Zong Qinghou, shocked all walks of life. Netizens spontaneously went to the old headquarters of Wahaha to offer flowers, and entrepreneurs collectively mourned. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, sent a message to Banglian: "It's not too late to fight forty years in life, the spirit of a pioneer; Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi Group, said on Weibo, "I read a book about him more than 20 years ago, and I was deeply impressed and admired very much." A generation of legends, all the way well". Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, wrote a letter of condolence, writing, "I am saddened by the loss of a business leader in Zhejiang" and "Rest in peace, my friend Zong Qinghou." ”

At No. 160 Qingtai Street, Hangzhou, there is a small gray-white old-fashioned building, which is the old headquarters of Wahaha. From February 25th, the front of this inconspicuous six-story building was filled with flowers, as well as AD calcium milk, purified water and other classic Wahaha products.

Liu Feng, 48, was one of the first to arrive at the scene, and he is a fund sales manager who paid close attention to Zong Qinghou's report. Originally, he planned to bring a bouquet of roses, but he didn't think it was appropriate, so he finally chose chrysanthemums.

He told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that the reason why he wanted to send roses was because he saw media reports that Zong Qinghou suffered too much in his early years, and even if he became the richest man in China, he still maintained a simple lifestyle, "His life seems to be only autumn, without spring and summer, and his life is not brilliant enough."

But what Liu Feng didn't know was that Zong Qinghou regarded suffering as a kind of wealth, and for this hard-working entrepreneur all his life, perhaps the biggest pain was that he left Wahaha with too much unfinished business.

01The old man who built low-rent housing for employees is gone

Wahaha is an enterprise founded by Zong Qinghou for 37 years, and it is also the existence of Zong Qinghou's blood.

In 2007, Zong Fuli, who returned from studying in the United States, donated 10 million yuan to the Zhejiang Charity Federation after two years of training at the grassroots level under the arrangement of her father, and established the "Fuli Charity Fund" of the Zhejiang Charity Federation, which is specially used to subsidize poor students in college.

Two years later, Zong Qinghou donated 10 million yuan to establish Zhejiang Wahaha Charity Foundation. Zong Qinghou has always been committed to charity, and in the name of charity, Wahaha, like his beloved daughter, occupies an important position in his heart.

Zong Qinghou has also said in public more than once that Wahaha is proof of my existence in this world.

Wahaha is not only a childhood memory for many people, but also carries the "wish" of Zong Qinghou's life for nearly 40 years. In a magnificent era, he has too many decisions ahead of the times, which allows Wahaha to survive countless turbulences and become one of the most well-known entities at the moment.

He created the joint sales model, Wahaha's marketing network is divided into different levels, from the headquarters, provincial companies, special first-level wholesalers, to third-level wholesalers and then to retail terminals, with hundreds of thousands of wholesalers and more than 3 million retail terminals in the country, coupled with a tighter margin system tied to the interests of dealers, Wahaha can almost store goods to every commissary in remote rural areas within a week.

This allows Wahaha to have its own right to speak, as well as a maximum contact and grasp of dealers, which has become the key support for Wahaha's rapid development.

In addition, in 1991, Wahaha nutrient solution achieved unprecedented success in the market, and sales were booming. In order to expand the scale of production, under the matchmaking of Hangzhou city leaders, Zong Qinghou made a bold decision - to merge the state-owned Hangzhou cannery.

In those days, mergers between companies were not common, especially when a small-scale enterprise like Wahaha merged with a large state-owned enterprise, which was given a special meaning by those with ulterior motives: "dismantling the state-owned economy".

But Zong Qinghou was not swayed by the pressure and doubts of the outside world, he firmly promoted the merger plan, and successfully achieved a turnaround of a canning factory with an annual loss of 40 million yuan in just 100 days, and since then, Wahaha has started a new chapter in large-scale operation.

For employees, Zong Qinghou is even more generous.

Over the years, Wahaha has successively built a lot of low-rent housing for employees. Wahaha's old canning factory is located in a prime area of Hangzhou, and it is said that the housing prices in the vicinity have reached 100,000 yuan per square meter, but Zong Qinghou decided to be an apartment for employees here. In his opinion, employees who have been paying off their mortgages all their lives will not be in a good mood to work.

In 2023, Wahaha will spend 600 million yuan as a year-end bonus for employees. In Wahaha, there is also an unwritten rule that as long as you do not violate the law and discipline, you will not fire employees.

This makes it difficult for the outside world to describe him as "conservative". But under his rule, Wahaha did miss the big outlet of e-commerce. At one time, he publicly expressed his resistance to e-commerce on many occasions, "E-commerce is harmful to the country's real economy", and even openly choked with Ma Yun, saying that he was "very good at fooling". Missing out on the e-commerce era is also seen as one of the reasons for Wahaha's decline.

It was not until 2020 that Wahaha established "Hangzhou Wahaha E-commerce Co., Ltd." Zong Qinghou, who is in his 70s, appeared in the live broadcast room in person and interacted enthusiastically with netizens. When talking about Xingtou, Zong Qinghou took off the cloth shoes he was wearing on the spot and showed them in front of the camera, "Look, these are my cloth shoes, I bought more than 30 yuan a pair, they are very easy to wear."

But with the changing times, the consumer psychology of Gen Z has changed dramatically compared to previous decades. Emerging brands continue to rise with the help of capital, challenging the position of traditional giants. In this era of surging Internet waves, how to truly integrate into the field of e-commerce and successfully capture the minds of young consumers is still a difficult problem in front of Wahaha.

It's just that it is Zong Fuli who should consider this.

02 The "big parent" did not let go for a long time, and the handover was hasty

Although Zong Fuli has approached the core of Wahaha's power step by step over the years, the complete handover of the second generation still seems to be a bit hasty.

In December 2021, Zong Fuli officially became the vice chairman and general manager of the group, and Zong Qinghou was still the chairman of the group at this time. According to the change information on Tianyancha, it was not until February 23, 2024 that Zong Fuli replaced Zong Qinghou as the legal representative of Hangzhou Wahaha E-commerce Co., Ltd., which only happened two days before Zong Qinghou's death on February 25. As of now, the legal person of Wahaha Commercial Co., Ltd. is still Zong Qinghou.

The handover, which has not been 100% completed before, has also made whether the "second-generation handover" can be smooth has become the focus of attention from the outside world. Zong Qinghou is a hard-working and meticulous manager, so what is left for Zong Fuli is an asset, but also a tricky challenge.

Zong Qinghou has previously said, "My weakness is that I do everything myself, and everyone is more dependent on me." In 2015, when he was interviewed by the media, he mentioned that since the establishment of the business, Zong Qinghou has not set up the position of deputy general manager for a long time, only some middle-level managers, from the company's strategy to the production design of a product.

In the details of this outstanding entrepreneur, Wahaha has become an invincible giant ship, with efficient decision-making and efficient response, and has been green in the fast-moving market with rapid mutation for more than 30 years.

But no matter how big or small this kind is, it also makes Wahaha even more inseparable from the elderly Zong Qinghou.

Zong Qinghou said that Wahaha "is my whole life, all my dreams, all meanings, values, labels, and symbols", and this kind of nostalgia made him unable to let go. Even in 2023, Zong Qinghou expressed the idea of taking a back seat, but also said that he would let young people charge in front, "I watched from behind, and when I deviated, I twisted it and came up with some ideas." ”

In 2019, in an interview with the media, Zong Fuli indirectly pointed out the problem of excessive centralized management model.

On the one hand, Zong Fuli admires such a father, and evaluates Zong Qinghou as a "god-like existence", everything is very powerful, and he can solve it quickly, "You have to ask him if everything is okay or not, and then he will help you solve any trouble."

But when answering the question of what an evergreen enterprise looks like, Zong Fuli admitted that there should be a very perfect corporate governance system, and also mentioned that "an excellent entrepreneur should not be too obsessed with details". When asked by the host whether this refers to her father, she explained, "We are still in the early stage of development, and we need my father to manage it to the end, but in the long run, it is not suitable."

Zong Qinghou was aware of this problem. In 2018, he mentioned to the media, "They all say that I am more 'dictatorial', and in the past I was really too detailed, causing employees to rely on me." In an interview with "Chinese Entrepreneur" in 2021, he revealed that the main focus now is on Wahaha's management system reform and process transformation. He also began to require "each employee to manage himself" in a more institutionalized way, so that "the factory is governed according to the system, so that anyone has no problem leading (the enterprise)".

However, Wahaha's past family culture model has been deeply rooted, and in 2021, he predicts that it may take three to five years for Wahaha to achieve this ideal state through reform.

And three years later, in 2024, Zong Fuli is standing on the eve of the time node he mentioned. This 42-year-old woman is going to take the helm of the giant ship Wahaha alone.

03 "I admire myself the most now, it's better to rely on myself"

Wahaha was originally on its way back to its former glory. 2013 was the peak of Wahaha's performance, with 78.28 billion yuan, but since then it has been declining, and its revenue will shrink to 43.98 billion yuan in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, the situation has picked up, exceeding 50 billion yuan, but there is still a gap from the peak.

It is easy to fight the country, but it is difficult to defend the country. The pressure Zong Fuli faced was greater than that of Zong Qinghou.

Internally, although Zong Fuli has been in charge before, Zong Qinghou, who has taken a back seat, is still Wahaha's reassurance, and without Zong Qinghou's protection, she still needs to make Wahaha trust her more, get used to and adapt to her completely different management methods and concepts from Zong Qinghou.

Zong Qinghou was born in the 40s, in the 80s in the wave of entrepreneurship, from the tricycle to send the school book from scratch, this generation of entrepreneurs have endured hardships and have a human touch. Zong Fuli is a post-80s generation, received Western education, went to the United States to study at the age of 14, completed high school and university here, and believes in the power of the system in her management style.

Zong Fuli once talked about the discomfort of employees in an interview, Zong Qinghou directly gave instructions and employees implemented, and she hoped that the team would find a way to solve or find problems, "I go to work, they will be very uncomfortable with me." They will think that my side is more demanding, and if you submit a plan, they will expect you to tell him what plan you want, but I usually don't tell him, I only tell him what kind of purpose I want to get. ”

Mutual adaptation and run-in after the change of coach is a problem that Zong Fuli and Wahaha cannot avoid.

Externally, she has to face an increasingly fierce competition in the beverage market.

Wahaha products themselves have the pressure to catch up with the times. Zong Fuli also bluntly said, "Young people grow up drinking wahaha, but it doesn't mean that young people still drink wahaha when they grow up." After trying to open up a number of production lines, Wahaha's current popular products are still the well-known eight-treasure porridge, purified water, AD calcium milk, very cola, and nutrition express.

In terms of market competition, the situation is even more complicated. Not only is e-commerce subverting the past channel advantages, but the channel port is also being reshaped, with emerging online channels such as Douyin and Pinduoduo, as well as convenient retail channels represented by convenience stores and vending machines, all of which are affecting the way beverages are sold. In the market, Wahaha not only has to face old rivals such as Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, and Master Kong, but also has to deal with upstarts such as Yuanqi Forest and Heytea, as well as low-cost tea chains such as Mixue Bingcheng to seize the market.

These problems, even if Zong Qinghou dealt with them, were very tricky, and he once said, "It's difficult to do advertising now." It's not like before, when the ads were bombarded and the products were out at once. ”

As early as 2016, in an interview with the media, the female entrepreneur, who was already running her own Hongsheng beverage group independently, mentioned that her idol when she was in school was Song Meiling, and later Park Geun-hye and Hillary Clinton, both well-known female leaders. When asked again, Zong Fuli said, "Now I admire myself the most, can I say that?" she put away her smile and said seriously, "It's better to rely on yourself."

Now, it's time for Zong Fuli to really rely on herself, and the world is waiting for her answer.