---
title: "Zong Qinghou's Innovation Is Not Easy, Please Give More Respect"
description: "Recently, Wahaha Group has undergone many changes, from vending machines to the backdoor listing of China Candy, and the latest beverage bottle advertising. Despite detours and doubts, we say: 'Old man, you're doing great!' The Chinese beverage industry actually saw Wahaha achieve disruptive innovation first."
author: "谭长春"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-04-21"
language: "en"
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# Zong Qinghou's Innovation Is Not Easy, Please Give More Respect

> Recently, Wahaha Group has undergone many changes, from vending machines to the backdoor listing of China Candy, and the latest beverage bottle advertising. Despite detours and doubts, we say: 'Old man, you're doing great!' The Chinese beverage industry actually saw Wahaha achieve disruptive innovation first.

**Introduction:**
Recently, Wahaha Group has undergone many changes, whether it's vending machines, the backdoor listing of China Candy, or the latest beverage bottle advertising.
Despite many detours and doubts, we must say: Old man, you're doing great!
The Chinese beverage industry actually saw Wahaha achieve disruptive innovation first.
I remember in 2011, as a product manager at Coca-Cola, because I was working on Qoo and Nestea, I specifically gathered people together to study Wahaha as a competitor.
Wahaha's joint distribution system at that time did indeed pose some resistance to Coca-Cola in reality. Although Coca-Cola's channel system is the most complete and meticulously executed globally, when facing new product launches and competition, the joint distribution dealers who were controlled by Wahaha were still a factor we couldn't ignore. By binding dealers and requiring them to pay substantial deposits, Wahaha could quickly push its products into frontline terminals no matter what.
Although Wahaha didn't hire as many frontline salespeople as Coca-Cola at the time, they had already implemented some strategies, such as giving a certain percentage of personnel costs based on how much dealers stocked, enabling Wahaha to also drive a wedge into the market and have basic frontline execution.
Whether it's the products themselves (including the later marketing express), the channel construction model, or the market visit-style research method that outsiders often talk about, these are all somewhat different from the West and have a certain originality, including not setting up vice presidents, which is also their own characteristic. Many people now think Wahaha only adopted a follow-up strategy in products, channels, and other aspects, but that's biased.
So, we should first give Wahaha a thumbs up! A man who started his business in his forties, with different strategies and tactics, and still became China's richest person, even if there were problems or misunderstandings along the way, what more can we say?
Chinese beverage companies are not lacking in innovation.
Whether it's Yili's Shuhua milk, grain milk, Hainan Yedao's coconut juice, China's former bitter melon beer, the recently popular rice milk drink, the kudzu root drink that has been striving, or the hawthorn drinks that emerged in 2017, Chinese beverage companies are actively innovating. Although there may be more unscrupulous business owners making counterfeit and shoddy products in China,
we should at least give a thumbs up to these companies willing to innovate.
Since Chinese companies have gone through one or two decades of education in Western marketing theory and systems, the West has also encountered the problem of restarting in the mobile internet era. Although international giants, having always been in a market economy, have their own response systems, such as the significant qualitative changes in the marketing departments of Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, we see that the West and local companies have basically returned to the same starting line in marketing and sales development.
This is a golden opportunity. We should give a thumbs up to bold innovation!
Zong Qinghou's innovation deserves respect.
In recent years, various financial media have interviewed me multiple times, but the questions were basically: 'What do you think about the disagreement between the daughter and Zong Qinghou?' It can be seen that many people, including the media, have reservations about Wahaha.
In fact, we should see that over the years, Zong Qinghou's daughter hasn't done anything in innovation and entrepreneurship that deserves applause. We won't discuss the clichéd issue of the essence of business management, but just the fact that Zong Qinghou built a company as large as Wahaha and became China's richest person multiple times, surpassing various so-called new people and new economies, represents that he is the best innovator and entrepreneur. And his daughter, like Wang Sicong, entered her father's company right after graduating and returning to China, but what we see is that this first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, their business management and innovation capabilities, are something the younger generation may also look up to and admire.
Regarding vending machines, this is a sales system that we introduced and applied at Coca-Cola over ten years ago, and in recent years, during cooperation with some food companies, some have also discussed its application. But someone like Zong Qinghou of Wahaha not only saw the opportunity but actually established a company to operate it. This is completely another operating model outside the beverage industry, but they did it and pioneered it in the Chinese beverage industry! We must admire their courage and their spirit of being a pioneer and a willing ox!
Regarding printing ads on beverage bottles, from our industry exchanges, many industry professionals and companies have thought about it, but it was Zong Qinghou who first launched it. After the launch, the industry was in an uproar: 'We had thought of that too!' In fact, we can only lament: Is it because China has a feudal system for thousands of years, or do we talk more and do less?
Although printing ads on beverage bottles may bring some problems, such as difficulties in online-offline integration, consumer resistance, minimal actual effect, possible sales decline, cognitive confusion, and so on, we still look forward to Zong Qinghou's exploration receiving substantial or even revolutionary returns.
Going back to the spat between Zong Qinghou and Ma Yun during the recent National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sessions, we really don't need to take it too seriously. We have always believed that Ma Yun is just talking; haven't we seen him painstakingly trying new retail? And Zong Qinghou is not a blockhead either; he is quietly integrating mobile internet and continuing his journey of self-reliance and innovation in Chinese beverages.
It's a pity that we, the onlookers, are still here eating melon and discussing trivialities, while the real opportunity for innovation and development has passed.
Introduction: Tan Changchun, committed to selling any product as a fast-moving consumer good. General Manager of Huaxia Cornerstone Marketing Consulting Company, Group Chief Consultant, Special Expert Consultant at Kotler Consulting Group, Project Director at TNS Market Research Consulting Company. Founder of the integrated marketing system. Well-known sales expert and trainer; special lecturer for the China Marketing Director Qualification Certification Exam, special lecturer for 'Frontier Lectures', gold medal lecturer in the training expert group of 'Sales and Market', and special lecturer for marketing director classes at several top domestic universities.
Weibo: http://weibo.com/1159426107
WeChat Official Account: chnstone1
China Sales Force: http://t.cn/RIV73Dd
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