Just 143 days after leaving her father's care and taking charge of Wahaha, Zong Fuli encountered the biggest hurdle in her career.
On July 18, a resignation letter with Zong Fuli's signature was leaked, in which she said:“Recently, the Shangcheng District People's Government of Hangzhou and some shareholders of Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., Ltd. have questioned the rationality of my management of Wahaha Group since the death of Chairman Zong Qinghou, which has made it impossible for me to continue to perform my management responsibilities for Wahaha Group and its holding companies. Therefore, I have decided to resign from the positions of Vice Chairman and General Manager of Wahaha Group from now on and will no longer participate in its management.”
The letter was dated July 15th.
Afterwards, a former executive confirmed to the media that the resignation letter was indeed written by Zong Fuli.
Another person close to Wahaha said,In recent times, many Wahaha executives have left.
As a prominent second-generation celebrity, the three names “Zong Fuli” appear more and more frequently.
Born in 1982, she did not truly enter the power center of Wahaha until she was 39 years old. Before that, she joined Wahaha after returning from studying abroad in 2004 and started from the grassroots production management. Later, she also served as the director of the public relations department.
In 2007, Zong Fuli also took over Hongsheng Beverage Group, which was responsible for bottling Wahaha beverages.
But these are far from being the true successors of Wahaha.
Photo｜Zong Fuli (from the Internet)
In 2021, as the positions of vice chairman and general manager of Wahaha Group were handed over to Zong Fuli, the outside world seemed to smell the meaning of succession and looked forward to the achievements of Zong Qinghou's most beloved daughter.
In order to prove herself to her father, Zong Fuli has focused on promoting Wahaha's youth-oriented transformation since taking over the important position. This is what Zong Qinghou cares about and what Zong Fuli is better at.
In 2022, when attending the annual sales work conference of Wahaha Group, Zong Fuli vigorously promoted the reform plan and came up with more than 20 new products, focusing on the currently popular sugar-free sparkling water categories and new tea drinks.
However, during Zong Qinghou's tenure, Zong Fuli's reforms have never been truly implemented. Within Wahaha, it has always been difficult to clearly define the division of responsibilities between Zong Fuli and Zong Qinghou, as both of them would issue business instructions.
Some employees even said that as Zong Fuli took over important positions, the differences between her and her father became more and more obvious. The latter advocated family culture and emphasized rule by people, but Zong Fuli pursued strict implementation of the system and paid attention to the standardization of processes.
This subtle sense of restraint was finally broken at the beginning of this year. On February 25, Wahaha issued an obituary that Zong Qinghou, the founder and chairman of Wahaha Group, died at 10:30 on February 25, 2024 at the age of 79 due to illness.
The departure of her father gave Zong Fuli true freedom and the beginning of taking charge of the overall situation. But at the same time, Zong Fuli also lost her father's protection and guidance and began to fight alone.
In the more than 140 days since Zong Fuli took over as the head of the company, she had to stabilize the situation internally and face the disputes over Nongfu Spring externally.
Even though the latter made a public statement in response to the doubts and named Wahaha 12 times, Zong Fuli never gave any response in public.
During these one hundred days, Zong Fuli focused on doing the things she had always wanted to do but had never been able to accomplish.
In a “Letter to All Sales Staff” that leaked in early March this year, Wahaha declared that it would seize the opportunity to “launch a surprise battle for terminal distribution.”
At that time, Wahaha began to roll out its own exclusive freezers in offline channels, trying to win a key battle in the offline beverage industry's most critical battlefield.
In addition, the internal letter also emphasized the need to strengthen the assessment of dealer sales staff and use management to improve operational efficiency.
However, Zong Fuli's reform promotion period was also the beginning of Nongfu Spring's further encirclement of Wahaha.
In April this year, green-packaged Nongfu Spring quietly spread across major offline supermarkets. The green-bottle Nongfu Spring, which focuses on “pure water”, has finally officially challenged Wahaha's only remaining share in the bottled water market.
Zong Fuli encountered a strong enemy on the front battlefield, and when she retreated to Wahaha, she had more difficult situations to deal with.
A Wahaha distributor manager told Cailianshe:“Zong Fuli and the shareholders and senior management of Wahaha Group have been engaged in bargaining and negotiation, mainly on the equity issue. We have known about this for more than a month, but now (the negotiations) have not been concluded.”
The classic plot of the second generation fighting for power finally happened dramatically to Wahaha.
Picture｜From the Internet
What does Wahaha need after 37 years of establishment? At least judging from its current achievements, reform is indeed very important.
Data from Nielsen show that in the bottled water market, Nongfu Spring's market share has reached 26.5%, C'estbon has 21.3%, Baishuishan has 10.1%, Master Kong has 9.9%, and Ice Dew has 7.4%, but Wahaha only has 5.3%.
At present, Wahaha's flagship products are still AD calcium milk and Nutri-Express. However, no matter from which aspect, these products are not in line with the current consumption trend.
Zong Fuli launched a new brand Kelly one in 2016, targeting the new generation of consumers and focusing on soda water, pure tea, and fruit juice tea.
However, it was not until this year that Zong Fuli officially took over as the head that these new categories and products really entered the offline channels on a large scale.
On platforms such as Xiaohongshu, promotional content related to this new product only began to appear after March.
Picture｜From the Internet
On March 5, Wahaha also officially announced the launch of a new series of sugar-free pure tea products.
Phoenix.com Technology visited various offline distribution channels in Beijing and found that these new products have only been put on the shelves within the past one to two weeks.
“It's not selling well,” said a local Beijing supermarket salesperson. In Yonghui Supermarket, the new Wahaha product was placed in a separate promotional venue, but the sales volume can only be described as “okay.”
The rapid development of offline channels and the introduction of new categories will not yield results in the short term. However, internal personnel changes are essential.
Some employees told the media that Zong Fuli frequently adjusted the middle and senior management after taking over, and the employees had opinions. These “opinions” eventually ignited the fuse of the conflict, which directly burned Zong Fuli.
Before the resignation letter was leaked, there was a letter of complaint circulating online from a person claiming to be a former Wahaha employee, reporting that Zong Fuli, president of Hongsheng Group, had embezzled huge amounts of state-owned assets from the Wahaha Group.
Picture｜From the Internet
Data disclosed at the Wahaha Group's 2023 Annual Commendation Conference showed that Wahaha's performance in 2023 was about 50 billion yuan. This result is a decrease compared with Wahaha's sales of 51.2 billion yuan in 2022 and 51.9 billion yuan in 2021.
Before Wahaha reached its turning point, Zong Fuli was already caught in a dilemma.
As of press time, Wahaha has not yet made an official response to this series of rumors.
In addition, iQiyicha shows that on July 5, two directors of Hongsheng Beverage Group Co., Ltd., Shi Lijuan and Shi Youzhen, withdrew, and Zong Fuli's position was changed from chairman to executive director.
Shi Youzhen is Zong Qinghou's wife and Zong Fuli's mother.