Chapter 26 1. A river of spring water flows westward

The "first pot of gold" for Wahaha's investment and expansion came from the doorstep of Hangzhou. It was the legend of "small fish eating big fish" that was amazed by the media at the time as shocking as much as an earthquake. With the popularity of children's nutrient solution across the country, Wahaha itself has grown rapidly from a child to a teenager. In 1990, sales revenue and profits increased by 60 times and 120 times respectively compared with 1987 when the factory was established.But the company is still squeezed into a small space of less than 1,500 square meters beside the noisy Qingtai overpass.

Just a few kilometers away from Wahaha, the state-owned Hangzhou Canned Food Factory, one of the top ten canned food production bases in the country, has completely different troubles from Zong Qinghou: it covers an area of ​​100 mu, with a factory building of 50,000 square meters. It's not easy. After 1989, the company suffered losses year after year, with a total debt of 67.169 million yuan. The average debt of all employees in the factory was more than 30,000 yuan. There was still a backlog of 17 million yuan of canned food in the warehouse.When is the first day? Why can't Wahaha merge with the cannery? In August 1991, the main leaders of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee at that time had a bold idea.This is indeed a bold idea: Wahaha has only 160 employees including Zong Qinghou, the head of the company, and the canning factory is the big brother with 2,000 workers.Wahaha is a small school-run enterprise that is not top-grade, while the cannery is a large state-owned unit that is upright.Isn't this a modern version of the Arabian Nights that makes people laugh out loud!

Zong Qinghou is interested in turning this fantasy that makes people laugh out loud into reality. When the news came out, there was a lot of crying and cursing in the cannery. Some people put up big-character posters that are not protected by the constitution, and the content is firmly opposed to being betrayed and firmly opposed to mergers. Someone put up a slogan: "Swear to live and die with the enterprise!" Some people want to set up a factory protection team and organize a production self-rescue committee... "I don't believe that the good things that benefit the country at the top and benefit every employee including the cannery at the bottom cannot be truly understood and welcomed!" Zong Qinghou's Niu Jin who never turned back against the south wall came up again.

After explaining and persuading, reorganizing the team, and transforming the equipment, after a hundred days of mergers, the cannery turned losses into profits.The workers laughed, and Wahaha let go.Compared with 1990 before the merger of the canning factory, Wahaha's sales and profits in 1992 soared three times from a high starting point.A brilliant move in investment expansion has brought Wahaha its second leap since the successful development of children's nutrition solution. Wahaha has also entered the mainstream media's attention and become a model for a new round of economic reform.

Ten years later, Zong Qinghou made the following comments on this classic case of "small fish eat big fish": "Actually, Hangzhou Cannery is a big fish, but not a dead fish. The key lies in what to revitalize, just like Haier What Zhang Ruimin called the various resources of the canning factory in a state of shock—including materialized production materials and people. For Wahaha back then, it relied on a market-oriented operating mechanism and good products that accurately grasped the pulse of the market. Wahaha As a result, it is a once-in-a-lifetime extraordinary development.”

As a leading company in the beverage industry that intends to become a truly national brand, it is more necessary to expand the layout in all directions than ordinary companies.Beverage products are shipped in a large volume, and freight accounts for a considerable proportion of the entire cost.Experts estimate that the reasonable radiation radius of beverage products is about 500 kilometers, otherwise the competitiveness of products will be greatly affected.Based on the current production capacity of Wahaha, the annual output of drinking water, fruit milk, cola, etc. is more than 15 billion bottles, which can fully fill nearly 100,000 train wagons.Even if Hangzhou Railway Freight Station puts all its transportation capacity to Wahaha, it is far from enough.

Zong Qinghou began to look at the whole country. The first battle of Wahaha's investment and operation away from home was in Fuling City, Sichuan Province (later belonged to Fuling District, Chongqing).Located at the west gate of the Three Gorges, Fuling was an important town in the ancient Ba Kingdom.Regarding Wahaha's first battle in Fuling, there is an antique episode. In October 1945, Zong Qinghou was born in a house in an ancient city in Jiangsu. "Actually, my grandma is from Wanxian, Sichuan (now Wanzhou District, Chongqing)." Zong Qinghou would occasionally mention this family background in his very small circle of friends.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zong Qinghou's great-grandfather came to Chongqing and became a member of a party with a heavy hand.Many years later, "my grandma" married "my grandpa" who had served as a fourth-rank civil servant. Perhaps because of this ancestral relationship, Zong Qinghou confessed that he did have an inexplicable special emotion for the West.But Zong Qinghou had never been to his grandmother's hometown until 1994, when he accompanied a Zhejiang provincial government delegation to Fuling, which is the Three Gorges Reservoir area, to help her. On August 25 of this year, a delegation from the Zhejiang Provincial Government, including Wahaha, visited Fuling.At first glance, Fuling is hardly an "investment paradise".The ancient city is built on the hillside, scattered along the river, and the land is not three feet flat.It only costs 50,000 yuan to requisition one mu of land, but 160,000 yuan to level it out.

Zong Qinghou's account is not so calculated.Fuling is a key reservoir area of ​​the Three Gorges Project, which has attracted the attention of the central government and the attention of the whole country.What's more, Fuling is the throat of Sichuan, Chongqing and Hubei, and it is an ideal bridgehead to open up the Southwest market, which is in line with Wahaha's overall strategy of investing and expanding across the country. On October 19, Wahaha Company signed an agreement with Fuling local government to establish Wahaha Group Fuling Co., Ltd.According to the agreement, the company will be invested 40 million yuan by the two parties respectively, and will merge with three extremely poor state-owned enterprises, Fuling Candy Factory, Fuling Canned Food Factory, and Fuling Baihualu Wine Industry Company, which will be submerged or partially submerged in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area.The board of directors of the company entrusted Wahaha with full authority to contract and manage 15 years of resettlement funds and resettlement tasks, and resettled 1,200 people.During the first four years of the company's establishment, the two parties will not share dividends. Wahaha guarantees that during this period, the net assets of Fuling Company will reach 156 million yuan, that is, the net profit will be 75.6 million yuan.Otherwise, Wahaha is responsible for compensating 70% of the shortfall.If the excess is completed, 70% of the excess will be rewarded to Wahaha Company. Dividends will be distributed according to shares after 4 years.

In 1995, Wahaha Fuling Branch created an output value of 56.78 million yuan in the first year of operation, with profits and taxes of 8.13 million yuan, of which profits were 4.03 million yuan.Since then, various indicators have increased substantially at an astonishing rate of doubling year after year, ranking among the "Top 15" key industrial enterprises in Chongqing.Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and other high-level officials from the central government successively came to inspect the project, and praised it as "setting a model for counterpart support in the reservoir area".

At the beginning of 2000, the second phase of the Fuling project with an investment of 200 million yuan was launched, and a very cola production line and 9 fruit milk production lines were settled here.Fuling Company has become the earliest, largest and most successful enterprise to invest in all non-local production projects of Wahaha.Associated with this, Wahaha's sales in the Sichuan market have simultaneously increased by 10 times. The second phase project of Wahaha Fuling Branch on the banks of the Yangtze River The first battle was won in Fuling, and Wahaha's strategy of investing in the country has made great strides since then. The battle line took the lead along the Yangtze River Basin.Guangyuan in northern Sichuan, Yichang and Hong'an in Hubei, Changsha in Hunan, and Wahaha have spring water rolling westward.Afterwards, taking the Yangtze River in the west as the main axis, the two wings gradually went north and south: Xinxiang in Henan, Chaohu in Anhui, Gaobeidian in Hebei, Shenyang in Liaoning, Tianshui in Gansu, Nanchang in Jiangxi, Shenzhen in Guangdong, Guilin in Guangxi... Over the course of 8 years, Wahaha gradually built up With 500 kilometers as the basic radius of radiation, a mesh product flow framework that echoes each other and serves as horns for each other has been established. Wahaha's investment expansion has an obvious feature: to meet the company's own development needs as the premise, and to take social benefits into consideration.This point is clearly reflected in the investment layout of many branches.Fuling and Yichang are the Three Gorges reservoir area, Guangyuan is the only contiguous mountainous area in northern Sichuan, and Hong'an is an old revolutionary base where 200 generals of the Republic have emerged. "Make good use of social resources and fulfill social responsibilities" is Zong Qinghou's consistent business philosophy.This sound public relations marketing investment operation idea brings Wahaha a higher brand reputation, stronger product affinity, and more abundant business growth soil. "Yichang Daily" reporter Liu Ping once made a detailed record of how Wahaha settled in Yichang County, where the Three Gorges immigration task was the heaviest—— On May 15, 1997, Jia Zhijie, then Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, hosted a banquet for Wahaha Chairman Zong Qinghou.During the meeting, Zong Qinghou said that he would seriously consider the plan to invest in Hubei. Jia Zhijie quickly passed the news to Tian Zhenya, secretary of the Yichang Municipal Party Committee.On the same day, Tian Zhenya quickly dispatched Li Quan, deputy secretary of the Municipal Party Committee, to lead the leaders of the Municipal Three Gorges Dam Working Committee and the Municipal Immigration Bureau to Wuhan to contact and negotiate with Zong Qinghou. On June 30, Li Quan led relevant officials to Hangzhou again.Zeng Xianrong, acting magistrate of Yichang County, said earnestly: "Yichang will unconditionally urge Wahaha to invest. We have made up our minds to introduce Wahaha. If we can't do it this year, we can wait for next year. If we can't do it next year, we can wait for the next year. Even if we wait another three or five years. .” On the same day, Wahaha signed a cooperation agreement with Yichang County. On August 7, Zong Qinghou visited Yichang County in person.The next day, the two parties signed a formal cooperation agreement.Yichang has done all the preliminary supporting preparations with great enthusiasm and efficiency rarely seen in the west. On September 10, Wahaha Yichang Branch started construction. On December 28, the first bottle of Wahaha fruit milk rolled off the assembly line. In 1998, Yichang Branch, which had just been put into operation, achieved sales of 130 million yuan and a total profit and tax of 42.37 million yuan. The result is obviously a win-win situation of "you get rich and I develop".Yichang has gained a vibrant and excellent company, and Wahaha has gained a marketing platform that looks at Chutian and competes in Central China.