Aunt Qian is already a community fresh food chain company with a valuation of more than 10 billion yuan, but what makes co-founder Feng Weihua most memorable is not the first time he got financing and opened more than a thousand stores, but it happened in the company’s entrepreneurial history. A hurdle that is almost impossible to pass.
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Throughout 2015, Aunt Qian opened 101 franchise stores. Like Feng Weihua, the 101 newly joined franchisees are still newbies in the fresh food industry. No one knows that the following January and February will be the saddest times for fresh food in the south.
As the Spring Festival is approaching, immigrants from big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen return to their hometowns with their children on winter vacation. The main force of family cooking begins to decrease, and the fresh food industry enters the off-season.
No one has done this psychological construction for franchisees. At the beginning, the franchisees all thought that opening a Qianmo’s store was a good business that made a profit without losing money, because they had witnessed the hot business of the directly-operated stores. No one expected that in the first winter of joining, losses would follow.
The franchisee and management team sat at the negotiating table. It was an arduous, hours-long negotiation. The franchisee was very excited, felt that they had been cheated, and invested the money in a bad project. Once trust is lost, there is no reason to negotiate. Many unbelievable conditions are put on the table one by one, and they threaten to be ready to die.
Facing a group of franchisees who have lost patience, Aunt Qian also has internal disagreements. If she does not agree to a compromise, the association froze, but if she really wants to make concessions, can she go back? The company cannot bear unfair terms for a long time, and no one knows whether there will be a chance to reverse the passiveness in the future.
After weighing the pros and cons, Aunt Qian chose to make concessions.
The anger of the franchisees is temporarily relieved, and they slowly have patience to see what Aunt Qian will do next. After the negotiation, Feng Weihua led several core members to make several important decisions: to suspend investment to join, to abolish all the personnel who had previously reserved for quick store openings, and to leave behind capable forces to help franchisees to improve management quality; from the taller Grade A office building Moved to the second floor of a directly-operated store to reduce expenses and ensure that there are enough ammunition on the account to cope with the additional costs of negotiating concessions; Feng Weihua himself plunged into the supply chain and changed the way suppliers supply them within a week. The direct mining model is still to reduce costs.
In fact, the situation was quickly reversed. After only one month, the effect came out, and the performance of all stores began to revolve in a straight line. In April, May, and June, the performance in January was better than that in January. By August 2016, the operating conditions of the franchisees had generally improved, and the two sides returned to the negotiating table again. This time, Feng Weihua was the dominant party and withdrew all the concessions made at the beginning of the year, and the franchisees readily agreed.
This experience made Feng Weihua more aware of the group of "closest partners" she had to face, and even more respected the trust of franchisees. "When the external environment changes, the company needs to provide timely assistance when it is time to reach out to reflect the value of the franchise brand."
If the relationship with the first batch of franchisees is not handled properly, there may be no future Aunt Qian. Because of the concessions at the time, the franchisees saw enough sincerity and the investors saw the management team's ability to deal with the crisis. The story of Aunt Qian went from a small stall to a valuation of tens of billions to continue.
1. Passive choice
At the beginning, Aunt Qian was only Feng Weihua's younger brother, the founder Feng Jisheng, in the pork stall business in the farmers market. Feng Weihua recalled Aunt Qian’s eight-year journey and found that several key nodes were “passive choices”.
For the first time, Feng Jisheng's business of "not selling overnight meat" in the market threatened other vendors, was boycotted and forced to walk into the community.
The daring to open a community store is because Feng Jisheng verified in the market early that the Nissin model of "not selling overnight meat" can work; second, the concept of community fresh food at that time has not yet become a popular outlet, but there have been some successes in the market. Chain case. When Aunt Qian was kicked out of the market and started building community stores, some fruit chain brands had already achieved 700 to 1,000 stores.
When opening a community store, Feng Jisheng increased the number of SKUs in the store from a single pork to more than 400, because the Nissin model was used to make "freshness" fully perceived by consumers, attracting a daily flow of 500 to 600 people. The shop opened well at the beginning.
The second passivity was about money. By September 2014, Aunt Qian had opened 15 directly-operated stores in Shenzhen. In the next few months, Feng Weihua and his brother were faced with a working model with high efficiency in every store, and at the same time the funds had bottomed out. Dilemma.
The first reaction of the two was to find a financing for emergency. An investment director received them, but rejected the project. The director’s words shocked them, but at the same time it also affected many subsequent decisions: "We usually feel that the products that come to the door are not good products."
The financing was unsuccessful, and the siblings gave up the idea of looking for investors and decided to open up to join. If it were not because of the tight capital chain and no more money to open direct stores, this decision would not have happened. In fact, the Aunt Qian at that time had only 20 stores in Shenzhen, no team, no system, and a very basic supply chain, and was not yet ready to open enough to join.
What supported the siblings to make the decision was their strong belief, "Such a good project cannot delay its development. No matter what method is used, it must create opportunities without opportunity, so that its opening speed should be faster."
At the time, this was a bold decision: let go of joining.
The first franchisee's store opened in the center of Guangzhou City. The high rent of 40,000 yuan a month made Feng Weihua feel unsure. But the business in the store has been smooth since it opened, which made the subsequent joining process smooth. After that, franchisees will always take a look at this store during the hesitation period, "The flow of people is there, and everyone can understand it at a glance."
Facts have proved that these "misunderstanding" decisions are all key steps in the path of Aunt Qian's entrepreneurship. After opening to join, Aunt Qian began to accelerate expansion. In 2015, the number of Aunt Qian’s stores reached 101.
The result of the liberalization of franchise is that “the franchisee has solved the funding problem, the franchisee has solved the personnel recruitment problem, and the daily management problem has been solved by the franchisee, and the operating quality of these stores is higher than that of the direct-operated stores." After one point, Aunt Qian gave up the plan to open a large-scale direct sales store and resolutely chose the road of franchise-based expansion.
This decision immediately affected the third "passive": to build the core capabilities of the supply chain.
The management can understand that since they decide to take the franchise route, they must create value for the franchisees. How to create value must be to help them really solve the problem in the supply chain. "First, why do franchisees buy from you when they open a store? Because you have the advantage of scale, you can provide more cost-effective goods; second, you greatly reduce their workload and only need to concentrate on selling the goods Good service to customers."
After opening the franchise, Aunt Qian began to build her own city warehouse, and the supplier sent the goods to the city warehouse, processed them, and then distributed them to every store by their own logistics.
And why are the suppliers willing to supply Aunt Qian at a low price? Feng Weihua said, there are only two points. First, check out in three days. This is rarely done in the entire retail and fresh food industry. The extremely fast checkout speed reduces the pressure on the supplier's capital chain, and they are naturally willing to make profit.
Second, the number of Aunt Qian’s stores is increasing every day. For suppliers, they are dealing with a customer whose orders are steadily increasing.
These two key factors have opened up the gap between Qian's supply chain and her opponents.
2. Aunt Qian speeds up
It sounds like Feng brothers and sisters have different entrepreneurial logic from ordinary people. However, Feng Weihua said frankly that the experience was only summed up after the fact, not at the beginning. "We are also gradually realizing the many advantages of this business model while exploring, making the management of franchisees easier. The efficiency of goods is increased, and the efficiency of funds is also improved. After the efficiency in several aspects is high, it is possible to continue efficient management while the scale is growing."
Therefore, even if there are more than 2,900 stores opened up to now, Aunt Qian did not have the "500 store management threshold" predicted by investors, and everything is being implemented quickly and orderly.
Feng Weihua introduced that the average daily passenger flow of each store is now more than 600 people. With the self-built supply chain, the people and goods yards are in a state of efficient circulation, and it is ultimately determined that most of the stores are profitable.
In 2018, Aunt Qian decided to leave South China. At the first stop, I chose Hong Kong, which investors are more worried about. The reason given by investors is: Hong Kong people may not recognize a mainland brand, and their requirements for quality may be higher. However, Feng Jisheng insisted on taking this step on the grounds that Hong Kong is the preferred springboard to the global market, and it is only one step away from Shenzhen. Needless to say, the advantages of the supply chain are.
The first store in Hong Kong was a small store of 100 square meters. On the first day it opened, there were more than 3,000 customers, which exceeded everyone's expectations.
Since then, Aunt Qian has been speeding up all the way, opening her first store in Chengdu in March 2020, and another city in the same month, opening the Chongqing store. As of the end of 2020, Aunt Qian has more than 2,950 stores across the country and has initiated franchise investment in 11 cities.
3. A brand new adventure
Before the entrepreneur Qian Qian, Feng Weihua was just an ordinary worker.
Perhaps it was the influence of the two brothers in the family doing business. The idea of starting a business has been sprouting in the working life of the past ten years, but due to the lack of mature ideas, she has been slow to act.
The first opportunity to realize the inner thoughts was to co-found a pork brand with friends. Two years later, this project failed because of unclear value proposition, inability to reach consumers' minds, and decision-making issues.
This experience made Feng Weihua cautious about "pork" and entrepreneurship. In 2011, when Feng Jisheng was visiting the Sam's Club, he saw a box of standardized pork on display in the freezer. He suddenly had the idea that "selling pork" is a promising business.
When he told his family about the idea of using the "Nissin" model to sell pork, Feng Weihua's first reaction was that it would not work to discount the goods. Under her influence, the two brothers also lost interest.
Feng Jisheng could only start the exploration road of entrepreneurship by himself, verifying his ideas bit by bit, from the first pork stall to the opening of the first community store. As the original creator of a new business model, he knew that he had found a new business model. The key to open the door to the fresh food industry.
When the store opened to the fourth, Feng Jisheng invited Feng Weihua to visit Shenzhen. Standing in front of Aunt Qian’s store, her younger brother’s entrepreneurial ambition, determination, and logic were revealed to Feng Weihua with the flow of people coming in and out. She began to seriously think about the charm of this business model.
Then she decided to sell the house, support her brother to expand the scale of business, and joined Aunt Qian's entrepreneurial journey after her daughter completed the high school entrance examination. At that time, Aunt Qian had just 15 stores.
Feng Weihua was in her early 40s. For her, this entrepreneurship was more like a new life adventure.
Feng Weihua and Feng Jisheng are only two years old. Among the four siblings, they have been closer since they were young. In business, the two have the trust between their relatives and complementary personalities. In the eyes of investors, the siblings are more like "one person."
They have a clear division of labor. The younger brother controls the strategy in place and is responsible for looking at the general direction; the older sister takes over all management tasks, organizes a team to lead the war, and is responsible for finally implementing the strategy. Feng Jisheng can only see more clearly if he stays away from the daily management of the company. Feng Weihua is better at listening, she always has enough patience to listen to other people's ideas and absorb valuable parts from them.
The hardship of starting a business will bring some people to the brink of collapse countless times, but Feng Weihua has never. She slowly concluded after many years, this may be affected by her mother. Mother is kind and cheerful, and she has never shown a sad side in front of her. Feng Weihua also discovered this trait in his own body during the entrepreneurial process, "The same hurdle may knock others down, but I can resolve it with ease."
She didn't have much management experience before, let alone manage such a large company. Not only must she consider the future of a company with a valuation of tens of billions, but also must advance and retreat with thousands of employees and franchisees. She forced herself to start learning and improve her financial, marketing, and management skills.
Entrepreneurship is to find good luck in constant trial and error. But is it possible to attribute Aunt Qian’s good times to luck? "Our brothers and sisters are doing and trying. No one can figure it out from the beginning. But one thing is clear, that is, before you do a good job, learn to make a profit. You first let others live better. Only then will you have the opportunity to adjust yourself. When we are faced with choices, this is all that affects our decision-making invisibly. Do you say it is luck? It can also be said to be luck, but this is because you understand human nature. There will be such luck."
Fresh food is a very difficult industry, but Feng Weihua has the vision to be a great enterprise and a global company in this field. "The fresh food industry, from upstream agriculture and animal husbandry, to the supply chain, to the retail end , Covering a very long chain. If it can be done well, the value it can create is immeasurable."