After his son took over, his reputation plummeted, and 76-year-old Tao Huabi came back to fight the fire, but he still couldn't drag the old godmother who took the crooked road
"I'm the best person, and I'm going to be the number one if I want to do it. ”
"The first shot, I'll send it to the United States!"
Ten years ago, when interviewed by reporters, the old godmother Tao Huabi was full of confidence and heroism.
At that time, she was known as the "national goddess" and "hot godmother", with 3.6 billion assets on the Hurun rich list, and the company she created, "Guiyang Lao Gan Ma Flavor Food Co., Ltd.", was also the top ten in the first top 100 private enterprises in Guizhou.
With the great ideal of "creating a national brand and establishing a great cause for a thousand years", she successfully turned the "Lao Gan Ma" spicy sauce into a luxury product in the American market in one fell swoop, and the price was almost ten times that of China.
At the most glamorous time, she drove a luxury Rolls-Royce to play mahjong, and even the license plate number "A8888" came from the government's reward.
But as the old saying goes: being rich is sad for three generations.
When the "old godmother" passed into the hands of Tao Huabi's two sons, she suffered the fate of falling out of the top ten of the top 100 private enterprises in Guizhou, and the revenue plummeted.
Faced with competition from more than 4,500 spicy sauce brands such as Lee Kum Kee, Spice Girl, and Lee Ziqi, how far can 76-year-old Tao Huabi go with her family business of "no listing, no loans, and no financing"?
Tao Huabi has had a talent for making spicy sauce since she was a child.
When she was a child, frugality was the main tone of life, and there was no condiment at home, so she mixed Chinese medicinal herbs from the mountains with her own chili peppers to make a spicy sauce with a unique flavor, so that the hard-working family could also get the delicious taste on the tip of the tongue.
Later, she got married, but her husband died young, and she propped up the crumbling home for the sake of her two young sons.
She does manual work like a man, picking up sledgehammers and carrying cement.
But she couldn't make much money from manual labor, so she began to learn to do business: selling rice and tofu along the street.
It was the most difficult time for Tao Huabi, and she had more than 20 bamboo baskets of more than 100 catties. Fortunately, God did not fail this mother.
Not only did she successfully support a large family, but at the age of 42, she saved money to open a small restaurant, specializing in cold noodles and cold noodles.
Although the restaurant is small, the business is extremely hot, thanks to Tao Huabi's homemade spicy sauce, and many people come to eat cold noodles because of her family's spicy sauce.
Some poor students in the neighborhood also came here and often secretly dipped steamed buns with spicy sauce from the store.
Tao Huabi, who also suffered hardships, not only did not reprimand these students, but also took the initiative to give them discounts, and even invited them to eat.
This made the poor students grateful, and they affectionately called her "old godmother" one by one.
Although Tao Huabi's family gets up early and is greedy for darkness, for some reason there are fewer and fewer people who come to eat cold powder, Tao Huabi can't help but be confused.
Once the store closed early, Tao Huabi, who was puzzled, went out for a turn.
She didn't know it, but when she was startled, she found that almost all the cold powder shops used spicy sauce made by herself.
It's no wonder that the spicy sauce in his store is sold out every time, but the cold noodles can't be sold out.
After thinking about it again, Tao Huabi made a bold decision: to sell spicy sauce!
In July 1996, Tao Huabi closed the original restaurant, then borrowed two houses from the Yunguan Village Village Committee in Nanming District, hired 40 workers, and set up a food processing factory called "Lao Gan Ma Spicy Sauce".
This is the original "old godmother".
At that time, workers did not like chopping chili peppers, because the splashed droplets would hurt hotly if they accidentally got into their eyes.
And Tao Huabi always takes the lead, taking the lead in standing in front of the pier and taking the lead in chopping chili peppers. Over time, she developed frozen shoulder, and the nails of 10 fingers were all calcified by stirring the spicy sauce.
In order to use the customized bottle of spicy sauce, she asked Guiyang No. 2 Glass Factory to discuss cooperation, but the other party refused because the amount she ordered was too small.
After the product is produced, the market is a big problem in front of us.
Although the previous owner of the cold powder and cold noodle shop liked her spicy sauce very much, after all, the market was too small, in order to expand the market, Tao Huabi carried the spicy sauce on her back with a basket and sent it to various stores for trial marketing like she had sold rice tofu at the beginning:
"You sell it first, if you can't sell it, you can take it back and ask me to return it!"
It was with this spirit of not being afraid of losses that Tao Huabi quickly opened up sales, and only about a week later, those shopkeepers called one after another to ask her to increase the amount of delivery.
In this way, in less than a year, "Lao Gan Ma Spicy Sauce" won the market in Guiyang City in one fell swoop.
Tao Huabi also tasted the sweetness of entrepreneurship, and the more she worked, the more energetic she became.
Soon, she established "Guiyang Lao Gan Ma Flavor Food Co., Ltd.", began to hire professionals for scientific management, and the market became bigger and bigger, and soon spread all over the country.
In just a few years, her factory has grown from 40 employees to nearly 5,000 people, and by 2013, the output value has reached 3.72 billion yuan, directly driving the employment of more than 32,000 people in the upstream and downstream industrial chains.
But Tao Huabi's goal is far more than that, after occupying the domestic market, Tao Huabi also set out to let the "old godmother" go abroad.
"For the first shot, I'll send it to the United States!"
After unremitting efforts, "Lao Gan Ma" not only successfully put it on the shelves of American supermarkets, but also made it a "luxury product" imported from the United States, priced at $12, almost ten times that of the Chinese market.
Many young Americans have fallen in love with the taste of "Lao Gan Ma" chili sauce, and are nicknamed "Angry Chinese Lady"
The reason why "Lao Gan Ma" can achieve such great success is inseparable from Tao Huabi's unique business mode.
Although she didn't go to school much, under the tempering of society, she found a unique set of management methods.
She has always adopted a cash sales model of "no arrears, no credit", although it seems to be inflexible, but it ensures abundant cash flow, and is also well received by pepper farmers and employees.
When it comes to capital, she resolutely adheres to the "three noes" principle of not listing, not lending, and not financing.
Tao Huabi believes that "as soon as it is listed, it may go bankrupt", "how much ability to do how big things", although she was repeatedly persuaded by her peers, she insisted on seeking progress in stability and never took risks.
Tao Huabi focuses on product research and development, strictly controls every raw material, and would rather stop work to ensure the quality of spicy sauce, and has made great efforts in terms of taste.
It is also by virtue of a high degree of confidence in the product, Tao Huabi can be said to have never advertised, and the later product promotion depends on the word of mouth of consumers, for which she is very proud: "Where there are Chinese, there are our products." ”
In the company, she can call out the names of 60% of the company's employees, from the security guards at the door, the workers in the factory, to the managers of various management levels and large distributors, and the wages and benefits provided to them are also top in Guiyang.
When asked if she had learned any management secrets, she just laughed back: "No, but I was a mother!"
Indeed, no one called her chairman in the company, everyone affectionately called her old godmother, and even warmly invited her to be a witness when she got married.
It is this way of operation that supports the development and growth of "Lao Gan Ma".
For the future development of the company, Tao Huabi's grand goal is to "create a national brand and establish a great cause".
But as she grew older, she felt more and more powerless due to illness. So, at the age of 67, Tao Huabi decided to retire honorably.
Since the company is not listed, the equity relationship is relatively simple, and the main shareholders are her two sons: Li Guishan and Li Miaoxing.
Which son should be in charge of the company's management? Tao Huabi pondered this.
In fact, the first person to contact the company's affairs was the eldest son Li Guishan.
After Li Guishan served as the first general manager, he helped the company establish corporate rules and regulations, reformed the production process of spicy sauce, and quickly put the company's development on the right track.
However, with the "old godmother" dominating the national market, Li Guishan believes that in order for the company to achieve breakthrough development, it must take the initiative to go public and try to diversify its operations.
This is contrary to Tao Huabi's business philosophy of "never going public", so Li Guishan, who could not change his mother's mind, chose to resign voluntarily.
As a rich second generation with a net worth of 4.5 billion, without the shackles of his mother, Li Guishan began to show his skills in the capital market.
Initially, "Lao Gan Ma" invested in the development of Kunming Jintai Hotel, which was a great success;
However, the high-end community "Yunrun Tianyang Project", which was later invested, was postponed many times due to various changes, and finally embarked on the road of no return to "unfinished", and Li Guishan was also included in the "blacklist of dishonesty".
The fire at the city gate affected the pond fish, because of the relationship between Li Guishan and the "old godmother", consumers also questioned the credibility of the "old godmother".
In desperation, Tao Huabi could only break his arm to survive, declaring: Li Guishan's personal investment behavior has nothing to do with the company.
The eldest son faced a "credibility crisis", and Tao Huabi had to hand over the company to the younger son Li Miaoxing to manage.
Compared with the aggressiveness of the eldest son, the younger son's business philosophy is obviously more similar to that of his mother, and they are both inclined to seek stability.
However, during Li Miaoxing's tenure, he faced a new problem: the price of raw materials continued to rise, and the unit price of "Lao Gan Ma" spicy sauce was 8 yuan, which was the standard price of the industry, and it was not easy to change at will.
In order to retain a certain profit margin, Li Miaoxing had to change the ingredients of the "Lao Gan Ma" spicy sauce and replace the previous Guizhou pepper with a lower-priced Henan pepper.
The profit is there, but the old customers with a keen sense of taste soon discovered the difference, and asked on social platforms: "Why is the old godmother" not delicious?
Word of mouth plummeted, and her operating income also declined all the way, Tao Huabi was in a hurry, and in desperation, she chose to go out again when she was over seventy years old.
She resumed the previous formula of "Lao Gan Ma", and under the persuasion of her son, she began to advertise.
She filmed an advertising video of "unscrewing the godmother", and also cooperated with men's clothing to launch co-branded products, and formulated a promotional package with a price of 1288 yuan, including "99 bottles of old godmother + custom sweatshirt".
All kinds of measures have allowed the "old godmother" to change the declining trend, and finally reached an operating income of 5.023 billion yuan in 2019, a record high.
But under the fierce market competition, this situation did not last long.
In the years since Tao Huabi's retirement, some new spicy sauce products have emerged, such as Hubang, Fansaoguang, Chuanwazi and Li Ziqi hot sauce, while some established spicy sauce products are also being introduced, such as Liubiju, Lee Kum Kee and Haitian.
Different from the insulation of capital by the "old godmother", other competitors have already used the power of capital to expand wildly in the market, eating away at its market share step by step.
Not only are they eye-catching advertised, but they are also on par with the "old godmother" in quality, and some even have a bottle of sauce that is a dish with chunks of beef and crispy pine nuts.
And Tao Huabi, who couldn't parry, tried to catch up with the "new trend" and started a live broadcast to bring goods.
But netizens later discovered that the so-called "live broadcast" is just a loop of Tao Huabi's interviewed video, which has always been repetitive content, and there is no more value output.
Lao Gan Ma's sales volume on Douyin is only hundreds of thousands, which is far from reaching the effect of "national brand".
Moreover, the previous problem of rising raw material prices has not been resolved.
In 2022, in order to cope with the further rise in costs, Tao Huabi had no choice but to increase the price of "Lao Gan Ma" products, which increased by about 1-2 yuan per bottle, and fell out of the top 10 of the top 100 private enterprises in Guizhou for the first time.
According to the data of 2021, the operating income of "Lao Gan Ma" was 5.403 billion yuan, a decrease of about 1.2 billion yuan from 2020, a year-on-year decrease of about 22.25%.
This also means that relying on Tao Huabi to go out of the mountain alone cannot solve the development problem of "Lao Gan Ma".
In this regard, some netizens commented: Tao Huabi made a good hot sauce, but he didn't teach a good son.
How should the "old godmother" solve this development dilemma? Let's wait and see!
Some people say: The comeback of "Old Godmother" needs a Li Jiaqi.
Indeed, Tao Huabi is still the former Tao Huabi, and the "old godmother" after restoring the original formula is still the former "old godmother", but the environment has changed and the market has rolled.
How to strike a good balance between inheritance and innovation to better meet the diverse needs of emerging markets is a question that the new generation of management needs to ponder.
Source: Poison Sir Finance