No matter in the past or now, there has always been only one protagonist of the Coconut Tree Group - Wang Guangxing.
Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Li Xin
Edited by Mina
Header image source: Visual China
A 30-minute drive from Meilan International Airport is the headquarters of Coconut Tree Group on Longhua Road in Haikou City. Many buildings on this road are related to the Coconut Tree Group, where the factory, the first and second office buildings, the company's canteen, infirmary, and staff dormitories are concentrated.
There are traces of Wang Guangxing, the founder of Coconut Tree Group, everywhere here: for example, the four words "Coconut Tree Group" on the factory and headquarters building are written by Wang Guangxing himself. It is said that this is his original "word within character" calligraphy.
Photo: Li Xin
Even the occasional passerby will immediately recognize this as the headquarters of the coconut tree, as many of the buildings have the same earthy smell as the outer packaging of coconut palm coconut water. After the coconut tree became popular again through the live broadcast of "local taste", it gradually developed into a new Internet celebrity check-in point, and many tourists will bring a bottle of coconut water to imitate the classic photo pose of the spokesperson Xu Dongdong at the entrance of the coconut tree headquarters.
On the wall of the headquarters building, one of the posters is the recently popular coconut tree live broadcast room celebrity kk, and the other parts of the wall are densely printed with the story of Wang Guangxing, the founder of Coconut Tree, "saving the coconut tree" and the praise it has received.
Wang Guangxing, who is 84 years old this year, is still the "number one person" of the Coconut Tree Group. Recently, the national enterprise credit information publicity system shows that Coconut Tree Group Co., Ltd. has undergone industrial and commercial changes, and Zhao Bo stepped down as chairman and was replaced by He Chunling. In this regard, "Chinese Entrepreneur" called the Coconut Tree Group, and a staff member said: "It is not clear about the change of chairman, and our president has always been the president." For this sentence, his implication is that the president of the Coconut Tree Group has always been Wang Guangxing. In recent years, in the coconut tree group's internal magazine "Coconut Tree People", Wang Guangxing is also known as the president. Since then, the reporter has repeatedly contacted the Coconut Tree Group for interviews, but has been refused.
Employees of Coconut Tree revealed to China Entrepreneur that high-level officials like Wang Guangxing and Zhao Bo generally work in the first office area, and grassroots employees rarely see them, but Wang Guangxing will often meet with the students of the General Manager School of Coconut Tree Group.
The so-called general manager school, that is, the school mentioned in the enrollment advertisement of "cultivating the school of the president and deputy general manager" released by Coconut Tree many times before, is mainly to attract talents for the group.
Zhao Bo, who stepped down as chairman this time, is also an old employee of the group. It is understood that Zhao Bo entered the coconut tree work at the end of 1990, starting from the grassroots level and working step by step to the general manager and chairman.
On August 16, 2008, in an article published by "Coconut Tree People", it was recorded that Zhao Bo ran for the position of general manager of the company: the second round of general manager election was presided over by Wang Xiongzi (who is Wang Guangxing's son), and the main election method was to let the general manager candidates of both sides form a campaign team, boldly compare their advantages and disadvantages with competitors, and expose each other's shortcomings, and finally Zhao Bo succeeded in the election. Up to now, he has been in the position of General Manager for about 16 years.
According to public information, He Chunling, who took over from Zhao Bo this time, previously served as Secretary of the Party Committee and Executive Deputy General Manager of Coconut Tree Group, and she is also the vice president of Haikou General Chamber of Commerce.
However, whether it is Zhao Bo, who has served in the position of general manager for about 16 years, or He Chunling, the new chairman, they may only be the "supporting roles" of the Coconut Tree Group. No matter in the past or now, there has always been only one protagonist of the Coconut Tree Group - Wang Guangxing.
Before and after taking the helm of the Coconut Palm Group
The story of Wang Guangxing and the coconut tree began in 1986.
At that time, after 4 factory directors and 5 consecutive losses, Haikou Canning Factory (the predecessor of the Coconut Tree Group) came to the point of bankruptcy, and more than 1,400 employees were about to lose their jobs. As for the question of who will save and how to save it, the local people are also very troubled. It wasn't until 1986 that they decided to transfer Wang Guangxing, who was working at an electronics industry company, to take on this important responsibility.
According to the version circulating within the Coconut Tree Group today, after Wang Guangxing took office at that time, he made a military order of "reducing losses in the first two years and returning to the spring in three years", and implemented market-oriented measures including turning the workshop into an independent accounting and self-financing branch.
Under these measures, the Haikou canning factory, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, lost 3 million yuan in the first year, 3.88 million yuan in the second year, and made a profit of 2.4 million yuan in the third year.
It is undeniable that Wang Guangxing is indeed a talent. Many years later, some people recalled that when they first considered letting Wang Guangxing take over the business, they saw that as soon as he took over "Coconut Island", he sold many of the backlog of products. A series of measures he took after he was transferred to an electronics company have also achieved certain results.
What can be said to really change the fate of Haikou Canning Factory and Wang Guangxing is the birth of coconut water. Wang Guangxing once said that the canning factory has studied coconut water for more than ten years, but the development has not been successful. The main reason for the unsuccess is the low salary of scientific researchers, and the income of R&D personnel is not much different from that of ordinary employees, and there is no R&D motivation. So he decided to reward the people who could successfully develop coconut water.
"If you earn 1 million yuan, the developer's bonus is 3%~5% of the profit, that is, at least 30,000 yuan of reward. And as soon as the research is successful, I reward the developer with a TV set. Wang Guangxing said.
Wang Guangxing Source: Visual China
After the incentives were announced, the enthusiasm of the employees for R&D immediately went up, and in less than 8 months, one team succeeded, and the famous coconut palm brand coconut water appeared. "As soon as I succeeded, I immediately fulfilled my promise to reward the TV. When the coconut water is sold profitably, I will reward 3%~5% of the profit. By 1991, we had cashed out a total of 300,000 yuan. Wang Guangxing recalled.
Wang Guangxing has never shied away from letting more people know that he saved the Coconut Tree Group in the early years. On Longhua Road in Haikou City, many buildings related to coconut trees are printed with this story.
Although a series of innovative measures have been effective, Wang Guangxing is at best an excellent professional manager, and it was not until after 2006 that he was truly "at the helm" of the Coconut Palm Group.
According to Tianyan, the Coconut Tree Group is 100% controlled by Hainan Coconut Industry Co., Ltd., which is 100% controlled by the Hainan Coconut Employee Stock Ownership Association, and the legal representative is Zhao Bo. The establishment and registration date of the Hainan Coconut Tree Employee Stock Ownership Association is 1996, and the legal representative is Wang Guangxing.
Wang Guangxing's specific shareholding ratio in the Coconut Tree Employee Holding Association has not been publicly disclosed, but "Coconut Tree People" recalled the restructuring incident in 2006, and mentioned that at that time, "in the form of reward shares, the founder Wang Guangxing held a large share at the helm and commanded the enterprise".
After Wang Guangxing took power, he made a will and notarized it: in the future, the equity can only be inherited as a whole, and the inheritance cannot be divided, and the family heirs can only receive the share bonus. The reason is that if the division of the estate of the major shareholder is inherited into the hands of the individual, it will cause the dispersion of equity and the chaos of the enterprise, which is not conducive to the unified decision-making of the enterprise and affects the development of the enterprise.
Since then, Wang Guangxing's influence on the interior of the coconut tree has continued to be highlighted through various details. One of the most direct proofs is that after 2007, the cover of "Coconut Tree Man" also began to feature Wang Guangxing's personal photos or his group photos with others.
At the same time, the Wang Guangxing family is also gradually entering the coconut tree group. According to a 2019 report by Jiemian News, his son Wang Xiongzi and daughter Wang Yingzi have been successively arranged to enter the company to hold important positions, and there are also many relatives of Wang Guangxing in the group or upstream and downstream supply chain enterprises.
In his 80s, he planned a live broadcast on Douyin
Today, Wang Guangxing, who has entered his old age, is still the actual helmsman of the coconut tree.
In the past two years, what has made Coconut Tree popular many times is the live broadcast of "male models and female models" with the theme of "Let men have masculinity and women have femininity", which is said to have been planned by Wang Guangxing himself.
In October 2023, "Coconut Tree People" published an article directly attributed Coconut Tree's live broadcast on Douyin to Wang Guangxing himself. According to the article, President Wang Guangxing is keenly aware of the value of self-media platforms for product promotion, and personally planned the Douyin live broadcast background, dance, content, location, clothing, models and other content.
The key to the success of Douyin's live broadcast also lies in Wang Guangxing's "three choices": choose vests or tights and other clothing that can show the curves and muscles of the body; choose a plump female model with a height of more than 170cm, and a male model with chest muscles and abdominal muscles above 180cm tall;
The advertising and marketing strategies of Coconut Tree Group over the years are also a continuation of Wang Guangxing's own marketing ideas.
Photo: Li Xin
A number of internal articles in "Coconut Tree People" have pointed out that summing up the 38 years of development, Wang Guangxing believes that the success of Coconut Tree is inseparable from advertising planning, and the most important successful experience in enterprise management is advertising planning experience.
He believes that when the market is oversupplied, the advertising words should be straightforward and easy to understand, and the advertising pictures should be intuitive and clear, beautiful and clear, so that consumers can know that it is a coconut tree product at first sight. For example, the advertising slogan "I have drunk since I was a child", and the colorful and dense text style on the packaging of coconut water products.
But over the years, along with such marketing ideas, coconut trees have also attracted a lot of criticism for themselves.
In 2019, the new version of the packaging of Coconut Tree used the coconut water held by the female star to highlight the figure, as well as the advertising slogan "drink from childhood to adulthood", which caused many people to question its "rubbing the edges" voice. In 2021, after Coconut Tree began to make efforts in short videos and live broadcasts, although it successfully captured the traffic, the voices questioning it have not been settled.
In 2021, the coconut tree "forcefully" marketing will achieve an operating income of 4.616 billion yuan, and the sales volume will increase by 16.82% over 2020, setting the best result in history. The company's sales in 2022 increased by 5% on the double-digit growth in the same period in 2021.
In February 2024, Coconut Tree Group disclosed at the New Year opening conference held in Haikou that the company's total annual sales in 2023 will reach 5 billion yuan, of which the sales volume in January will increase by 20% over the same period last year, and the group's total annual sales volume will be 700,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 10.26%.
This is also the fourth consecutive year that Coconut Tree Group has achieved revenue growth.
Pressure from the baton
Coconut Tree has also had a strong sense of attracting talents over the years, for example, it has issued a recruitment advertisement similar to the outer packaging of coconut palm coconut water, "Coconut Tree Cultivation Vice President", recruiting talents across the network, and promising that "if you enter school, you will have a car and a house, a high salary, a future, and you can get rich".
Some Hainan locals also see entering the Coconut Palm Group as a premium option. A Hainan native close to the coconut tree told China Entrepreneur that the larger enterprises in Hainan are concentrated in real estate, tourism and other industries, and in recent years, everyone feels that working in the coconut tree is a good option. "The salary of an ordinary workshop director can be four or five thousand per month, and the year-end bonus is more than 10,000 yuan. Locally, that's a relatively high salary."
But it is not easy to enter the coconut tree work, and the road to becoming the general manager of the coconut tree is also "difficult and long". According to the recruitment released on the official micro in January this year, if you want to become the general manager of the coconut tree group, you must work in the market for 6 years, work in the workshop for 3 years, and after 14 years of training, after the expiration of the general manager's term, you must have performance and experience before you can be promoted to the chairman of the group.
Whether it is young blood or He Chunling, who took over the steering wheel of the chairman, the pressure they have to face at this stage should not be underestimated.
Jingjing (pseudonym), born and raised in Haikou, told "Chinese Entrepreneur" that outsiders' perception of coconut trees is more coconut water, in fact, coconut milk, winter melon tea, chrysanthemum tea, cold powder, etc. are the childhood memories of the local post-90s generation.
While affirming the coconut tree, this sentence also reveals a signal that in addition to the large single coconut water, the coconut tree lacks a second growth curve that it can rely on in the larger market.
In 2014, Wang Guangxing said in an interview that he would complete an output value of 10 billion yuan in 2016~2020, but so far, this goal has only been half completed.
Now this burden has also fallen on He Chunling's shoulders.
If the packaging of coconut trees, various marketing strategies, the decoration of the exterior of the factory building, and even the style of recruitment and employment are integrated together, it is not difficult to find that after so many years, a set of management models and marketing methods belonging to coconut trees have already been formed within the coconut tree group. The outside world thinks that every step of the coconut tree's "unreasonable play" is particularly reasonable in this model.
As the new handsome, whether He Chunling can jump out of the "original" old narrative of the coconut tree is still full of uncertainty.
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