Source | China Entrepreneur Magazine Li Xin When asked about her recent state, Chai Xiu, founder of Miaokelanduo, described it as "busy and happy." She said that with the new year, the entire company is fully committed to the new three-year goal, and this year marks the beginning of the new strategic plan. In mid-March, Chai Xiu told the author, "After more than two years of layout and adjustment, Miaokelanduo has entered a more vibrant and confident state, with a significant trend of returning to high growth. In the first three months of this year, the company's work has been advancing efficiently. Although it's tiring, it's particularly joyful."

The past three years have been a period of challenge and transformation for Chai Xiu and Miaokelanduo. On one hand, from an industry perspective, the continuously growing cheese market has attracted various entrants, and as competition intensified, product homogenization became apparent, with price wars never ceasing. On the other hand, changes in the international environment, trade barriers, and exchange rate fluctuations have affected the procurement prices of cheese raw materials, and the significant increase in logistics and raw material costs has put pressure on every player in the industry. Chai Xiu also admitted that after experiencing rapid growth from 2019 to 2022, Miaokelanduo grew from zero to a scale of 4.8 billion yuan, a phenomenal growth rate in the industry. However, in the past two years, under the influence of external environmental changes, Miaokelanduo's development has faced challenges.

Against this backdrop, Chai Xiu rethought the company's strategy and actively promoted a series of transformation and upgrading measures. First, product innovation to open new markets and target new consumer groups; on the other hand, actively improving organizational management efficiency and operational capabilities, promoting cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, improving the upstream supply chain, and promoting the special plan for domestic original cheese to ensure the stability of raw material supply. Within Miaokelanduo, Chai Xiu began to pay more attention to refined management. Taking the recent monthly analysis meeting as an example, Chai Xiu said that in the past, many internal data and sales performance figures were only available to senior executives after month-end or year-end financial consolidation. Now, Miaokelanduo's sales and financial data are summarized weekly, so whether a new product is a hit and its sales performance can be fed back within three days, problems can be identified and immediately solved. "This organizational efficiency and refined management capability are forged under higher requirements and goals," Chai Xiu said.

Chai Xiu told the author that in the face of huge market changes and environmental uncertainty, what she can do is constantly adjust her mindset. "I cannot change the external environment, but I can change myself. Happiness is determined by oneself, and the certain opportunities, directions, and action strategies are also given by oneself," Chai Xiu said. Looking to the future, Chai Xiu said, "The space in China's cheese market is still infinite. We still have a lot of energy and many directions to practice. Miaokelanduo can create more value."

Maintaining Insight During the years of accumulation, Chai Xiu has become increasingly certain of her role and positioning—being a leader with vision and foresight. Chai Xiu lamented that the achievements Miaokelanduo has made today were not made today but were laid out one or even two or three years ago. For the team to climb the peak, her role is to be the leader. The leader must first have the insight to discover opportunities, and second, have the ability to lead everyone to put the insights into practice. Find opportunity points in the right track, and once identified, quickly produce results. This ability is also what Chai Xiu believes distinguishes her from others. This ability was already evident in the early days of transitioning from liquid milk to the cheese track. In 2010, Chai Xiu's Guangze Dairy, operating in the liquid milk track, had already become the number one brand in Jilin Province. At that time, she wanted to make Guangze a national brand, but the market already had leading brands like Yili and Mengniu. Guangze tried many times but failed. Chai Xiu realized that in the liquid milk track, without a unique comparative advantage, to create a national champion brand, she had to switch tracks. After that, Chai Xiu studied all sub-categories of dairy—milk powder, yogurt, ice cream, condensed milk, goat milk, buffalo milk, etc.—and finally chose the cheese track.

Photo: Xiao Li Chai Xiu's analysis found that although many companies were testing the waters in the cheese track, at that time all dairy companies in the market were only dabbling in the cheese category. If she entered this track at that time, even the giants would be on the same starting line as her. From an industry competition perspective, this was an opportunity. If she could run faster than others, she might stand out and make the first brand of Chinese cheese. "I have been particularly confident since childhood, always feeling that I could achieve something. So I firmly decided to realize my dream of becoming the first brand in China," Chai Xiu recalled. In 2015, Chai Xiu plunged into the cheese track and created the first brand of Chinese cheese. Miaokelanduo became the only listed company in China with cheese as its core business. "It is impossible to expect strategic changes to happen from the bottom up," Chai Xiu said. "Only when the founder has vision and foresight and determines the direction can the team work together." In recent years, Chai Xiu has remained curious about various new things. To broaden her horizons and enhance insight, outside of work, Chai Xiu actively participates in various business activities, consults practitioners from various fields, and through continuous communication and learning, discovers market trends and observes the changes of the times. Chai Xiu believes that the entire Chinese FMCG field is undergoing tremendous changes.

Gradual Domestic Substitution

But for a large enterprise, the implementation of a decision is not easily achieved by a mere directive or slogan. More than two years ago, when Chai Xiu first proposed the idea of replacing imported cheese with domestic original cheese within Miaokelanduo, she encountered many doubts. "People generally didn't understand whether such a concept could be realized," Chai Xiu recalled. For the promotion of the domestic original cheese plan, the R&D side was most worried that because domestic milk has a different flavor from imported milk, how to keep the product's flavor and color consistent with the past after using domestic milk; on the supply chain side, after domestic substitution, Miaokelanduo would need to reorganize milk sources to ensure supply, and finding several high-quality upstream milk sources as strategic partners was also a new problem; the sales side was worried about how to ensure quality stability and win the favor of terminal key customers after promoting domestic original cheese. The resistance was great, but to change the situation of high dependence on imports for upstream raw materials, significant increases in raw material costs, and supply chain uncertainty, the domestic original cheese plan had to be promoted. In addition, in Chai Xiu's view, this is also a revolutionary thing. Miaokelanduo is a leading enterprise in the industry. Promoting domestic substitution, using high-quality domestic milk as cheese raw materials, promoting the development of upstream animal husbandry, and regulating domestic milk prices also play an important role. "The domestic raw material substitution sounds like a simple sentence, but it is actually an extremely difficult thing. It requires the full effort of the entire company to succeed," Chai Xiu said.

Source: Visual China She also recalled that after the implementation of domestic substitution, R&D colleagues conducted a large number of experiments in the factory within two days to determine the formula for a product. "They told me that they succeeded on the 60th attempt, and finally did dozens more times to finalize the formula," Chai Xiu recalled. "For this formula, the R&D colleagues' legs were swollen from standing, but in the end, everyone was particularly happy." After the proportion of domestic original cheese increased, it provided cost advantages for Miaokelanduo's product innovation in the children's and adult snack food fields, and also promoted the development of the B-end cheese business. Chai Xiu paid more attention to the expansion of new online channels. In her view, in the past, Miaokelanduo did achieve the number one position in the cheese category on online platforms, but it still needs to explore more opportunities and more actively use online tools and multi-platforms. "In the future, our e-commerce business is expected to grow several times," Chai Xiu said.

Entrepreneurship Never Stops

For entrepreneurs, Chai Xiu believes they need strong resilience. She said that the outside world always says she is vigorous and energetic, and indeed she is. She always maintains learning ability, innovative spirit, and continues to strive. At the beginning of this year, DeepSeek emerged and attracted attention from all walks of life, and Chai Xiu was also excited. At the annual meeting, Chai Xiu set "Miaokelanduo fully applies artificial intelligence" as one of the company's success goals for 2025. She said that the company has already applied AI in areas such as R&D cheese taste testing, production quality control, and marketing. Artificial intelligence can generate huge practical application value for physical enterprises like Miaokelanduo. "The process of entrepreneurship is very happy, and it seems to continuously extend life," Chai Xiu said. "I have always been on an upward path." Regarding advice for female entrepreneurs, Chai Xiu said that for entrepreneurship, one must ask oneself three questions: First, objectively evaluate one's own resources, including talent, funds, and connections. Second, for female entrepreneurship, being both a wife and a mother; both a daughter-in-law and an entrepreneur, under multiple identities, do you have a firm belief to do things well? Third, are you fully mentally prepared to continuously improve yourself to face one difficulty after another on the entrepreneurial road? Regarding the future, Chai Xiu, who is still on the entrepreneurial path, has a new plan—to build a company with 10 billion yuan in revenue. In her view, in China's food sector, building a company at the 10-billion level, maintaining healthy brand development, and letting more people fall in love with cheese—if she can achieve this step, she will have realized the first stage of her Chinese cheese dream.