Chen Yuzhao
Tide merchants
"Strive to be strong and fight to the end", this is the interpretation of the word "struggle" by Chen Yuzhao, founder and president of Huafeng Pharmaceutical Group, chairman of the presidium of the American Chaozhou Merchants Association, and president of the Teochew Hometown Association in New York. Chen Yuzhao, from leaving his hometown at the age of 14 with his father's 1 yuan in his hand, to the pharmaceutical groups with business distribution in Hong Kong, Canada and the United States, the story of his struggle interprets the typical image of overseas tide merchants: do not complain about the world, have the courage to undertake, dare to challenge, and the innate business genes will not give up until the other shore.
Recently, the reporter of "The World Tide Merchant" exclusively interviewed Mr. Chen Yuzhao in New York, USA.
Apprentice: High emotional intelligence to learn good skills
Looking back on his apprenticeship, Chen Yuzhao immediately had a little more youthful breath, there was no bitter taste, some were full of conquest and gratitude. What makes the listener feel is that Chen Yuzhao, who was young at that time, had such a high emotional intelligence and such a clear goal.
In October 1974, chen Yuzhao, who was only 14 years old, carried the 1 yuan given by his father and took a car from Chaoyang in Shantou to Thailand via Hong Kong to join his uncle. At that time, there were several trains to go from Shantou to Hong Kong, and there was no highway, not only the road was rough, but also had to go around the mountain. It seems that the heavens intend to add a little drama, that day happened to encounter a heavy rain, the car could not pass on the way, only to avoid the rain and then choose the time to move forward. On the one hand, the 1 yuan on the body only dares to buy steamed bread to fill the stomach; on the other hand, whether the father and friend who made an appointment to meet in Shenzhen before can meet smoothly is unknown, and they have to be prepared to think of a response. Therefore, he intentionally or unintentionally chatted with his uncles in the same car to make a good relationship, in case he lost contact with his uncle in Shenzhen, then following his uncles to Hong Kong to find his uncle was also a good way. Fortunately, I arrived in Hong Kong.
After that, Chen Yuzhao worked in his father's friend's herb shop while reading medical books to learn medicine. A year later, the business of the medicinal herb shop failed, and the owner's family even had a problem with food and clothing. Chen Yuzhao himself left 50 yuan and gave the remaining 250 yuan to the shopkeeper, grateful for the grace of the original acceptance, and also grateful to the shopkeeper for taking him into the field of pharmaceutical materials.
Chen Yuzhao was full of interest in studying medicine, and at the same time, the chaoshan people's natural business DNA was already active in his body at this time. He chose to work in other medicinal herb shops, continuing to study medicine on the one hand, and learning how the boss operated and sold on the other hand. He found that different pharmacies had different specialties, including medical skills and business practices, so he chose the herb shop not to care about the salary, but whether he could learn or not. And what makes him different from other apprentices is that he specializes in picking bosses who are not easy to deal with, because he believes: "A person's success must have his superiority, and I can see the desirable places from his difficult side, learn from each other's strengths, and become my own experience." ”
In his fifth year in Hong Kong, Chen Yuzhao worked in Chinese and Western pharmacies. The owner thought that he did not know much more about Chinese herbal medicines than Chen Yuzhao, and trusted him to be the sales manager, who was specifically responsible for selling Chinese herbal medicines. With this opportunity to exercise, Chen Yuzhao practiced the knowledge he had learned in the past five years and accumulated experience, and he had more confidence in himself.
Chen Yuzhao summed up the apprenticeship with the reporter of "The World Tide Merchant": "The boss generally appreciates people who are willing to work hard and can't pay enough, so they are willing to pass on their experience. As long as I can learn something, I am willing to do anything. The only bad thing was that in order to learn things as soon as possible, I changed to quite a few pharmacies. Looking back, I'm grateful for that experience, and thank you to everyone who took me in. ”
Entrepreneurship: Unique insight does not believe in evil
In 1985, after more than a decade of polishing, the 25-year-old Chen Yuzhao had established his own network of contacts in the medical industry in Hong Kong, and he also knew the medicinal materials market in Hong Kong, and it was time for his first medicinal materials store to be officially established. He named the pharmacy "Huafeng Pharmaceutical", with the pattern of two ginseng surrounding the earth as a corporate symbol, meaning to promote Chinese herbal medicine to the world.
Of course, Chen Yuzhao, who has always been unpaid, only had 110,000 yuan when he founded the first medicinal material shop. How to use this 110,000 yuan, he also carefully calculated. At this time, Chen Yuzhao had the courage of "newborn calves are not afraid of tigers", but at the same time, he also had the rational analysis of "old scheming and deep calculations".
He chose the location of the shop next to the temple, and some of the previous shop owners of this shop died, some of them were mentally ill, so they were considered to be bad feng shui by everyone, and the shop owner was willing to change hands at a low price of 70,000 yuan. But in Chen Yuzhao's eyes, the location here is good, the flow of people is like a tide, and if there is popularity, there is wealth.
The temple is surrounded by one or two family-owned herb shops that have been in business for many years, and it is unimaginable that the new medicinal herbs shop will survive. However, Chen Yuzhao believes that avoiding the heavy is light, and entering some old pharmacies with few or no medicinal materials, and even beans and grains, to keep the customers of pharmacies. He gets up early every day and is greedy, both as a boss and a buddy, and a series of things such as purchasing goods, delivering drugs and running a drug store have to be handled by himself. He is very strict about the quality of medicinal materials, and personally screens each medicinal material to extract the essence. Do a good job in service, strictly control the quality, and constantly speculate on the psychology of consumers, he believes that the business will get better day by day.
Under the "suppression" of Chen Yuzhao's righteous atmosphere of "not believing in evil", shops with bad feng shui also came and went from time to time, old medicinal material stores gradually looked at new medicinal material stores, and chain stores under "Huafeng Pharmaceutical" gradually appeared in the crowded places in Hong Kong. In 1994, while accompanying his children to Vancouver for summer vacation, Chen Yuzhao carefully inspected the Chinese medicine market there, and half a year later opened the first overseas chain store in Vancouver's Chinatown. Clearly marked the price, and did not make any publicity, Chen Yuzhao said that it is a word that netizens like to use at the moment, "simple and rude" business method, but the business is not bad.
Development: Landing in the United States and Canada is booming
Just when "Huafeng Pharmaceutical" was doing well in Hong Kong, in 1997, Hong Kong suffered a financial crisis, and Chen Yuzhao was also deeply affected, reducing the scale of the chain store. After experiencing this financial crisis, Chen Yuzhao realized that in the face of the trough of the general environment, the strength of the individual is small, the sense of powerlessness has never been felt in 37 years, and all the "eggs" must not be placed in Hong Kong, the sense of crisis suddenly occupies his heart, and the expansion of foreign markets has become the core of development. After an investigation of Toronto, Canada, Los Angeles, and New York, in 1999, the first "Huafeng Pharmaceutical" in the United States settled in New York. New York has also become a blessed place for Chen Yuzhao, and has developed so far, opening 18 chain stores, with more types, involving medicinal ginseng mushrooms, tea fungi, etc., about hundreds of types, accounting for 60% of the total business volume.
Chen Yuzhao analyzed that even if the medicinal materials market in New York is gradually saturated, medicinal materials are also necessities of life, which determines the space for development. Now from the management of enterprises and product sales are gradually networked, full of confidence in the next development, when the time is ripe to land on the capital market.
When asked by a reporter from "The World Tide Merchants" the question of "which experience is the most memorable", Chen Yuzhao believed that if he had to say anything, he would feel "powerless" during the 1997 Hong Kong financial crisis, but other challenges were nothing.
"Since the age of twenty, I have begun to plan every five-year plan, choice is very important, but persistence is more important; to be a person, we must have confidence, dare to try, strive to be strong, fight to the end, can do our best to obey the fate of heaven, and life is also complete." Public welfare: elevated platform gathering American tide merchants
Chen Yuzhao went out with a dollar to take root in New York, he was grateful to everyone who had helped him, and he was willing to gather his strength to help people in need, especially Chaoshan compatriots. He joined the New York Teochew Association in 1999 and served as vice president. At the end of 2007, Chen Yuzhao was elected as the eleventh president of the Vancouver Teochew Association.
Chen Yuzhao said that at present, the number of Chaoshan people in New York is close to 100,000 people, which can be divided into four situations, the first is from the Chaoshan region, most of them are crew members, family members and children stayed in Chaoshan hometown, followed the sailing itinerary to the ocean to work hard here, this part is the most original Chaoshan people, and what we commonly call "selling piglets" (piglets: after the Opium War, the Western invaders wantonly abducted and abducted Chinese workers in the southeast coastal area of China. They were forced to go to Nanyang, the Americas and other places to resell, which the Heshan people called "selling piglets"; the second situation was the Chaoshan people who originally lived in Southeast Asia, the people who were liberated after the Indo-Todochina War and the Vietnam War in the 1870s and 1880s, which was the largest group of hometowns, accounting for about 70%; the third situation was that some of the ancestors with better economic conditions were Hong Kong people in the Chaoshan area; the last was that the Chaoshan people after the reform and opening up went to New York to study and invest. Chaoshan people in New York are mainly engaged in catering, agriculture, real estate, finance, network technology and so on.
Taking over the baton, Chen Yuzhao went down-to-earth to realize the wishes of his fellow villagers: "At present, I have done it for the hometown association.
The first is to buy a site for the hometown association, which is the wish of the previous presidents and members, but none of them have succeeded, and I can do it, which I think should be and proud;
The second is to obtain donations from enterprises or individuals to the Chamber of Commerce for the hipster merchants of the Hometown Association, and the donation can offset the "welfare" of income tax;
The third is the formal establishment of the American Fashion Merchants Association in 2016.
Next, I hope to be able to unite the members of the association more, the people's hearts, so that all the affairs can be carried out smoothly, which requires both their own efforts, external forces and the support of more talents, and also need opportunities to do more with less, step by step, steady and steady, there are hard work and enterprising, there are wishes but not empty talk. ”
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