Since ancient times, the winner is king, and the loser is the villain, and this saying is especially true in the business world.
In Hunan, there is such a rural guy who claims to be a descendant of Li Shimin, who used 300 yuan to travel to Shenzhen and finally become a billionaire.
He also spent 88.88 million yuan to win CCTV advertisements, becoming the "standard king" of the year, and married a beautiful host of Hunan TV as his wife.
But in the end, he was in debt of 2.1 billion, and even went to prison.
He is Li Tuchun, the founder of Prince Milk, who was once all the rage.
So, how did a poor boy in the countryside have a net worth of hundreds of millions, and why did he go to prison after he succeeded?
Business opportunities everywhere
In 1960, Li Tuchun was born in Linxiang County, Hunan, in this impoverished mountain village, Li Tuchun spent his childhood.
But knowledge changes fate, and the suffering of childhood does not mean that you will not be happy in the future.
At school, Li Tuchun studied very seriously, and after graduating from high school, he was admitted to the Normal University.
In that era when college students were extremely scarce, normal students were especially popular, and the state assigned jobs after graduation.
Sure enough, after Li Tuchun graduated, he was assigned to a state-owned enterprise, which was mainly engaged in catering and grain and oil.
Compared with other employees, Li Tuchun is very down-to-earth, and he sometimes stays in the company all night to ensure quality and safety.
So it took him only 10 years to become a middle-level leader of the company.
But in the 80s of the last century, there was a tide of going down in society.
Employees of state-owned enterprises have resigned and started businesses, and many of them can earn millions of net worth, while some people have lost their wives and soldiers.
Li Tuchun was also affected by this wave, and he resolutely resigned from his leadership position and prepared to go to the sea to do business.
Subsequently, amid the doubts of relatives and friends around him, Li Tuchun took 300 yuan and came to Shenzhen with a vision for the future.
But for someone who has never been in business, going from 0 to 1 is too difficult.
For three years, Li Tuchun had nothing but odd jobs, so he could only return to his hometown with his wife Wang Yilan to sell calendars.
However, in 1993, Li Tuchun found a business opportunity and decided to sell the house and gamble.
At that time, he found that wall calendars with portraits were particularly popular, so he spent a lot of money to make many portrait wall calendars and sold them in Xiangtan, Hunan.
Unexpectedly, these wall calendars were robbed by customers, and Li Tuchun also relied on this small business to successfully earn the first 1 million in his life.
Smooth business path
Li Tuchun has never felt this kind of taste, and he is now clearly a million-dollar entrepreneur.
After his first success, Li Tuchun wanted to make his business bigger and stronger, and he invested his entire net worth, including video stores, bookstores, and so on.
But unlike selling calendars, when he put his money into these industries, he didn't make a splash.
In desperation, Li Tuchun had to return to Shenzhen again and prepare for his second venture.
By chance, he tasted the lactic acid bacteria drink and felt that the taste of this drink was very special, and there are still very few domestic companies that produce this kind of product.
So he took out a loan from the bank and founded Zhuzhou Sunrise Jiangnan Industrial Group in Zhuzhou, Hunan, which was the predecessor of the famous Prince Milk Group.
Because many people in China did not know about lactic acid bacteria drinks at that time, they were not popular when Prince Milk was launched.
In desperation, Li Tuchun had to take out 200 boxes of prince's milk by himself and provide customers with free tasting in restaurants, which was well received by customers.
It was also in this way that Prince Milk was successfully promoted in Zhuzhou and gradually began to make profits.
But for Li Tuchun, his goal is not just the city of Zhuzhou, but the whole of China.
But if you want to spread the prince's milk to all parts of the country, you need a media with enough influence, and CCTV, as a national media, is the best choice.
Moreover, CCTV will conduct advertising bidding every year, and the highest bidder will become the "bid king", so the advertisement of the product will also be broadcast in the prime time of CCTV.
Li Tuchun took a fancy to this, and he decided to take another big gamble.
He borrowed some money and integrated the company's existing funds, and finally in 1997, he won the CCTV "bid king" at a price of 88.88 million yuan.
In Li Tuchun's eyes, after becoming the standard king, all he needs to do now is wait.
Sure enough, as soon as the advertisement for Prince Milk was broadcast, it won the love of the audience, and Prince Milk became popular all over the country for a while.
Distributors from all over the country went to Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, hoping to sell Prince Milk.
In a short period of time, the sales volume of Prince Milk reached 800 million yuan, and the production workshop worked day and night, and some agents could not even wait for the goods overnight.
Li Tuchun's big gamble this time was undoubtedly successful again.
With the boom in business, Li Tuchun's feelings have also changed.
At a dinner, he met Jin Xiaolin, the beautiful host of Hunan TV.
Jin Xiaolin was a household name at the time, she once hosted the blind date show "Rose Covenant" and was known as China's No. 1 matchmaker.
Li Tuchun fell in love with Jin Xiaolin at the first sight, as a big boss who has been divorced for many years, he married Jin Xiaolin in style.
Later, Jin Xiaolin also resigned from Hunan Satellite TV and served as the vice president of Prince Milk Group.
Career and love are both harvested, Li Tuchun at this time can be described as incomparable, and he even called himself the 46th grandson of Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty.
Broken halberd and sinking sand
After his success, Li Tuchun reached a net worth of billions, and at the same time, he also decided to leave his comfort zone, expand his business, and even start investing in real estate and services.
But people are often prone to make mistakes when faced with areas that they are not familiar with.
Soon, the prince's milk fell into a crisis of broken capital chains.
In the face of the crisis, Li Tuchun sought funding from three major foreign banks, Goldman Sachs, British Associate and Morgan Stanley, but also began his third big gamble.
In 2007, he borrowed $73 million from three major banks and signed an agreement that he would voluntarily give up his 61.6 percent stake if Prince Milk's performance did not increase by more than 50 percent in three years.
Immediately afterwards, Citibank also injected 600 million yuan into Prince Milk, and the strong financial support allowed the company to develop again, but a person's fate is always closely related to the times.
In 2008, Li Tuchun put Prince Milk on the market.
However, the sky does not follow people's wishes, because immediately after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, Goldman Sachs and other banks were affected, allowing Prince Milk to repay its debts early, coupled with the impact of the melamine incident, Prince Milk is sliding into the abyss.
Because the capital chain broke again, and the "VAM agreement" was irrevocable, Li Tuchun lost all the equity of the company.
In 2010, he was also taken away by the police for investigation for "illegally absorbing deposits from the public," but was acquitted after 15 months in detention.
However, at this time, the prince's milk has long been a thing.
Although in 2023, Li Tuchun and his son will enter the lactic acid bacteria market again and strive to exceed 10 billion in sales within 3 years, but now there are various lactic acid bacteria drinks on the market, and it will only be more difficult for them to succeed.
Throughout Li Tuchun's life, although he was born poor, he was able to continue to seize business opportunities and win in high gambles.
But a person's fate will not always be favored by the god of luck, sometimes one wrong step, the next is a complete loss.
Resources:
1. Global Network: Why did Li Tuchun lose the prince's milk
2. The ultimate entrepreneurship of Li Tuchun, the founder of Prince Milk, in the year of his sixtieth birthday|Interface News
3. Li Tuchun is suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits, and the future of Prince Milk is uncertain_China Economic Net - the national economic portal
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