Zhang Hongfu, CEO of Michelle ice city, tells himself about his entrepreneurial history. What is the growth gene of WanDian?

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dream is very big, pointing to hundreds of billions of dollars.

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Founded in 1997, Michelle ice city has gone through 25 years. Zhang Hongchao and Zhang Hongfu, who came out of the countryside, initially estimated that they could open more than 20000 stores.

Of course, in the subsequent business development process, Zhang Hongfu, CEO of Michelle ice city, wants to achieve an annual revenue of 100 billion US dollars. At present, looking at the global catering market, only McDonald’s can reach this scale.

According to McDonald’s 2021 annual report, the annual system sales reached $112.5 billion, and the size of stores by the end of 2021 was 40031.

According to the data monitored by Jihai brand, the scale of stores in miyue ice city has reached 21510.

Among the top four domestic food and beverage chain stores, Wallace and Zhengxin chicken chops also have more than 20000 stores, in addition to Michelle ice city.

The entrepreneurial inspiration and motivation of Michelle ice city only comes from the following sentence: “Why are ice cream and drinks so expensive? I hope everyone can afford delicious and cheap ice cream and drinks.” Zhang Hongfu, CEO of Michelle ice city, hopes to make the brand stronger, make partners richer, and let everyone in the world enjoy the beauty of high quality and low price.

There is a required course in Michelle ice city, which is CEO Zhang Hongfu’s 20-year entrepreneurial history (1997-2017). We have excerpted part of the content (greatly deleted) for you to understand and learn how the WanDian brand grows.

The following is the self-report of Zhang Hongfu, CEO of Michelle Ice City:

Where did the founder come from?

1、 The starting point is never too small, and the dream is never too big

In recent years, I have met many entrepreneurs of the same age. They will ask me curiously how we opened thousands of stores. I ask them how long they started. They say that in the first year, why only a dozen stores were opened in the first year? I usually tell them: you are too lucky. We only opened one store in the first ten years, and we have been doing business for 22 years now.

Also often chat with people. When they know the price of our products, countless people persuade us why not go high-end; When they know that we are joining, some people will immediately associate with joining swindlers, and then compare them with each other; In the past two years, the popularity of online celebrity has soared. Many enthusiastic friends will also send me various online celebrity products and brands. We will also be affected by it and take some detours.

All these things should also make me think: who are we? Where are we from? Where are we going?

I often say that I am the creator of Michelle ice city, generation 1.5. My brother zhanghongchao started this business in 1997, and I joined it ten years later. Fortunately, I was born in this era, worked with our little partners, and spent my life and death with a silly momentum. I vaguely explored some of my own paths. I should be 1.5 generations, which connects the past and the future.

Our family is very ordinary, my brother is very hard-working, and our team is very grassroots. It is precisely because of these ordinary people and ordinary things that I feel that I have gained a lot of moving over the years. As a bystander in the previous paragraph and an eyewitness in the middle paragraph, I happen to have this opportunity and responsibility to tell the little bits here.

Different cultures have different languages and beliefs. What kind of belief is it that supports us to go on? What genes does this belief come from? This is also the question I want to think about.

All things in the world combine with each other to create different entities. Our appearance and ideology today are the result of different choices made over the past many years. Some of these choices are accidental of the times, and some are inevitable supported by values. Chance and necessity are intertwined, which is the present.

The world is diverse, and there is no right or wrong choice. Just like different civilizations and ideologies in this world, they also have their own soil for vigorous growth. What I write about our story may be just what I think is right or wrong.

A small ice cream and a cup of tea should also have a big dream; An ordinary person who does a trivial thing should also have his faith. I don’t read much and my writing is poor, but I’m willing to make efforts and start trying. This process may be another value.

2、 Before the initial establishment, the return of Education

I often share with my partners: if there is no education, we will not get out of that village, there will be no such team as I and brother Hong Chao now, and there may not be such a team now. But education may not be an immediate thing. Predecessors plant trees and later generations enjoy the cool.

Because almost all the stories and principles I heard from childhood came from Confucianism (of course, I didn’t know it was Confucianism at that time). Occasionally during the winter and summer holidays, my sisters and brothers will go back to their hometown for holidays, and tell me some stories that are more consistent with those of my father. And occasionally when I see my grandpa, what he said is almost the same. (in terms of the concept of having children, Grandpa and father both think that more children, more happiness, how consistent)

At that time, I felt that it was a very boring truth. After listening to countless cliches, it was pedantic and useless. But now think again, it actually penetrated into our bones. In many critical moments of choice, the truth and stories that I heard when I was a child have virtually become the current guidelines.

Confucianism is so tolerant and humble that people feel incompetent and spineless, so my father was criticized by my mother all his life. Now think about it. He really can support a boat in his stomach, interrupted his studies during the cultural revolution, and later failed to take the college entrance examination. I’m so old that I’ve never heard him mention it. It was my grandmother who felt that his eldest son’s life was full of regrets, and she would cry every time she spoke. But my father is safe and quiet. He didn’t mention these things. Maybe this is to do everything possible to be safe.

But if you don’t say it, it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want to. He should belong to the kind of “the baby is wronged, but the baby doesn’t cry”. Because I can feel his strong determination to train us to study since childhood. Our family has a large amount of arable land, with more than 20 mu of land. Mechanization was not very good in the 1990s. My father and mother have always cultivated this 20 mu of land, and I have hardly been allowed to work in the field.

What impresses me most is that my father, who was five or six years old, held my hand and taught me to write. When he was in his teens, he manually gave me application problems. In the early stage of junior high school, he taught me to learn English in advance. When I was lying on a stool to do my homework, he and his mother had to work in the field against the scorching sun: mowing grass, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, watering and irrigation… There were also wheat and autumn peanuts that were as tense and tired as a war.

Occasionally, I will be allowed to go to the fields, but it must be when I am disobedient and don’t want to study hard. As a disciplinary measure, let me know that farming is not good and there is no hope in the countryside.

I dare not say how effective the education was at that time, but if the fire of reading was broken, my brother would not come to Zhengzhou to study. If he did not come to Zhengzhou to study, there would be no work study stalls to start businesses, and there would be no subsequent stories. And I am the same. Without my father’s insistence, I have 10000 reasons not to continue school, so there is no later story.

In contrast, the general environment in the village at that time was that most families had more sons and more labor, so they dropped out of school and worked early. So at that time, many people thought my father was stupid. How much did it cost so many children to go to school. And because the children go to school outside, there are still a lot of bullies in rural areas where the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.

So, what I want to say is that education may have a very long investment cycle, but it must be done without hesitation and regardless of return. If you calculate the return and the calculation cycle, you are blind, because you can’t see the return. It’s just merit, but it will harvest. When will it harvest? No pains, no gains.

Recalling childhood is always beautiful. The reason why I want to write is that I think some things at that time actually have a lot of help for today’s entrepreneurship, such as telling stories.

Because my brothers and sisters go to school in Shangqiu, my hometown in Kaifeng is also an only child, enjoying the doting of my parents. At that time, the material conditions were very poor, and there was really nothing interesting. My greatest pleasure might be the boxes of books upstairs.  

I remember there was a set of magazines I particularly liked to read at that time, called youth science, which talked about a kind of stove: there is no flame, there is no high temperature, but it can heat food. It can make the water molecules inside the food heat up by violent movement, which is fast and safe. Later, we all know that it is now a cheap microwave oven.

There are also reference news in those bookcases, such as people’s daily, middle school students’ study daily, selected Chinese fairy tales, Story King, complete works of jokes, selected award-winning compositions, etc., as well as various junior high school textbooks on history, geography, chemistry, physics, biology, politics, etc. Because writing known words on a small bench is really not fun, so I secretly finished reading those books in primary school. After reading them, I felt bored, so I read them again, again, countless times! I really don’t like it except politics. I haven’t finished reading it again.

The world in those books is more colorful than children in an isolated village can imagine. So strictly speaking, I’m equivalent to a child in the urban-rural fringe, and the advantage of the fringe is to bring the edge of advancement and influence. After all, it opens another window in depression.

Eating without vomiting is not enough. Children have a desire to share. Once they master some unique secrets that others don’t know, they are very active and willing to tell stories to others. As a result, on every dark and windy night, my mother would be heard shouting my name in the streets and alleys, but I curled up on a wheat straw pile with my partners in the village and told them the story of Chang’e running to the moon and Hou Yi shooting the sun with relish; There is also a microwave oven with no flame and no temperature that can make them stretch their necks and widen their eyes; Not to mention the story of human landing on the moon, which can fly their thoughts out of the sky together.

So I had a nickname called Story King at that time. When I grow up, I find that when I organize a group of people to do one thing together, it is still through stories to describe the future and adjust my emotions.

Every step you take counts, even if you start early. I’m very grateful for the days at that time. Fortunately, there was no Internet and fortunately, there was no Tiktok. Otherwise, silly fork would only read books. Or even if I read foolishly, no one listens to my story, because an hour’s story has only one climax, and Tiktok can climax in 15 seconds.

It is now firmly believed that children who love reading will not have too bad luck, and children who love sharing will not have too bad luck.

3、 One life, two fortunes, three Feng Shui, four accumulation of yin and virtue, five reading

I especially want to say one word: one life, two fortunes, three Feng Shui. The first impression of this is superstition, and what I want to say is the non superstitious version of my understanding.

What is life? It is the condition we are born with, which cannot be tampered with. There is only one life and one experience. We can’t decide our birth by ourselves. We can’t choose our parents and family in reverse, let alone society in reverse. Therefore, even if the family background is not good (in other words, those who are born into a good family are not idle, such as Li Ka Shing’s sons), they can admit their fate, but they cannot admit defeat.

What is luck? Yun is a verb. The traditional Chinese character “Yun” is to march in the army. It is to make subjective and dynamic adjustments according to the actual situation in order to be invincible. Who is in transit? It’s your own luck. So it’s obvious that we can decide this by ourselves. We say that fate is in our own hands. What we mainly mean is luck. Luck means making efforts. It’s not like burning incense, worshipping Buddha and asking for a visa to change luck.

What is Feng Shui? Feng Shui is the surrounding environment and the era. Many bosses say that they are not heroes, but the product of the environment and times. Lei Jun said that they should follow the trend and stand on the wind, and pigs can fly. They’re right. It’s true. If you don’t believe it, let Tiktok start a business ten years earlier. Zhang Yiming is very good, but 2G network is not allowed! However, no matter how good the times are, winners are still rare, and most people still spend their lives in mediocrity, so it is not the times that are good, everyone will be good. Opportunities are only for those who are prepared. We should practice our internal skills hard until the time comes.

I think I can be proud to say that my brother’s life is bad. Even when he was a child, my mother told him that he was miserable, but he is a person who works very hard to “luck” (in fact, it is really miserable). As for whether Feng Shui is good in the future, I will talk about it one by one in the next chapters.

At the end of this first part, I also want to make a summary of some other thoughts:

First, the experience of each of us is unique and only once. For example, being born in an age when people didn’t have enough to eat and going to school would be laughed at because of their rural hukou, these experiences are not replicable and are the product of a specific era. But like him (my brother), we can face the future more actively and enthusiastically. If you were decadent in the past, it’s not too late to work hard now. Didn’t you say? The most suitable time to plant a tree is ten years ago. If it was not planted ten years ago, it is now.

Second, education is a kind of ideological R & D investment. R & D investment will not ensure results, but it will not produce results without investment. When my father decided to let all four of us go to school, he took on so much pressure and toil. When he went around to raise tuition fees for us, many relatives told him that going to school was useless and had no future. I still remember countless hot summers when he and his mother worked in the fields, but he never wavered. So in the future, whether we treat ourselves, our partners or the next generation, we should continue to invest overwhelmingly, regardless of the return, but we are most likely to achieve fruitful results.

Third, Confucian culture is very useful. It not only affects our family style (I feel that it plays the largest role in future Entrepreneurship), but also imperceptibly affects the daily life of the whole Chinese people. In history, Confucian culture not only influenced China, but also spread to Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia, forming a Confucian cultural circle. China’s backwardness is only in the last 200 years, but look at how many famous entrepreneurs (the most famous Inamori Kazuo) in the Confucian cultural circle are in the world. Their values of running enterprises come from our ancestors. Just don’t die to learn kongyiji. You should have the ability to adapt to the times and an open fusion mentality.

Fourth, we must help others more, especially help people grow and learn. If there is no mutual help from our ancestors, it is estimated that we will not study and come out of the countryside. This is an input to accumulate virtue and do good deeds. If there is input, there will be output. If you invest in others, you are an investor, but the time span may be very long.

Fifth, we must be curious and curious about the world, constantly explore and be willing to share. The more we share, the more we get. I think my brother has been my mentor since childhood, and he is also the mentor of many people.

Sixth, good and bad are one. Now I am particularly grateful for my childhood life and experience, let me understand: life is not easy, cherish now. And if my brother didn’t suffer so much when he was a child, he shouldn’t be so hard-working and frugal. There is a book called “suffering and glory”. I think the title of the book is very good, very dialectical. So when you are in the low position, you should laugh secretly. It is a good time to work quietly and rise up. You know, you are only in your 20s, and there are still 40 years left until you are 65, and 40 years is enough for you to carry out reform and opening up.

Seventh, there is no better way except to pay much more efforts than ordinary people. My brother used Kazuo Inamori’s business ideas very well, but he didn’t know Kazuo Inamori at that time.

Eighth, a serious child’s luck is never too bad, but he will be given bad luck first. For example, my brother’s entrepreneurial experience of Michelle ice city followed by seven years of bad luck. But if you survive and take it seriously, you will practice a suit of armor.

The start of snow city

In 1997, I was preparing for my junior high school entrance examination in Grade 5. At that time, adolescence was approaching, and I began to yearn for the outside world. Therefore, I would listen to the news of my brothers in Zhengzhou.

In my heart, I feel that my brother is knowledgeable, educated, knowledgeable and capable, and will definitely stand out in big cities. I will feel proud if I think about it like this, and I can go to the provincial capital to see him and show me around in the future.

That spring, I forgot what month it was. I overheard my cousin returning home from Zhengzhou say that my brother was going to open a cold drink shop, and then asked her cousin to send a message to see if my parents could raise some money to take it.

I’m still thinking about what kind of cold drink shop it is. At that time, I saw a kind of printing called “thermal printing” in the magazine they took home. I thought the cold drink shop was a kind of refrigerant printing technology and a printing factory. I was so excited that I felt that my brother was finally going to do big business.

Later, I gradually learned that it was a beverage store. It is called a cold drink shop because it sells all kinds of drinks with ice. Please forgive me, I only heard of ice-cream at that time, such as ice-cream soda, ice bags, ice cream, but I haven’t heard of the word cold drink, so I’m particularly curious and full of fantasy about the delicious of cold drinks. Besides, when I was a child, I was short of ice cream, and I didn’t drink enough iced soda, so I pinched my fingers and looked forward to going to Zhengzhou.

In August of that summer vacation, my father and I went to Zhengzhou. My brother picked us up at the station and took us to his shop at the gate of Baimiao farmers’ market, Wenhua Road, Dongfeng Road (now the place has been demolished and changed into a technology market).

It’s a window with only about two square meters. Inside is a freezer, and next to the window is a table. There is an ice planer and a small chopping board on the table. Beside the chopping board are some tools such as knives and spoons. In addition to these devices, there are probably two people standing in the place where the products are made, with a small plastic ceiling fan blowing overhead. Next to the ceiling fan, there is a tape walkman. The Walkman has a wire connected to a naked thing without shell electronic components, which my brother calls a power amplifier, and it is also hanging on the edge of the window. This amplifier has a wire pulled out of the window, connected to a loud speaker, playing pop music.

Brother quickly made two drinks and sent them to two folding tables under the tree not far from the door of the store. There are a few ice cubes in the drink. The glass is full. I have forgotten what flavor it is. It may be mint or orange flavor respectively! At that time, I thought it was the best drink I had ever drunk so much. I guess it was because there was generally no ice in the iced drinks I drank before, and most of them were mixed with saccharin.

Many years later, I learned that this store was not his first one. He just moved to this place at that time. His first store was in Yanzhuang, Jinshui Road, the eastern suburb of Zhengzhou, which is now the Manhattan Business District of Zhengzhou. At that time, Yanzhuang was a very famous urban village in Zhengzhou, with many people.

The reason why he chose to do ice shaving was that when he was about to graduate, he considered that he could not do all kinds of jobs part-time all the time and should find a job that could be done stably and for a long time. And he suddenly remembered that when he was at school in Shangqiu, there was a street with all kinds of shaved ice in Shangqiu stadium. It is to carve large pieces of ice into snowflakes, and then pour syrup and the like on it, dotted with some raisins, broken peanuts and hawthorn sticks, and then add some seasonal fruits with sugar stains, which can be drunk and eaten, and it is particularly cool. He had never seen this kind of drink in the twoorthree years when he went to school in Zhengzhou, so he wanted to introduce shaved ice to Zhengzhou.

That spring was approaching graduation practice, so he first returned to Shangqiu and went to the ice shaving street of the stadium. Because he was good at studying since childhood, he was a master of physics, chemistry and biology, and his hands-on ability was particularly strong. Basically, I drank a few, and after careful observation and study of what others did, I could almost get it out. On the way back, he bought sugar and fruit, and then frozen ice and other materials at home. He boiled syrup and made a cup for my grandmother first.

After drinking it, my grandmother praised it! This greatly established his confidence in taking the shaved ice to Zhengzhou. Then we raised money. At that time, our family didn’t have money, so my grandmother took out her money at the bottom of the box (in those two years, my eldest brother and sister graduated one after another, and brother Hong Chao didn’t have to pay tuition for work study. My grandfather had a stable pension income, and my grandmother saved a little). At that time, there were still many thieves in the railway station. In order to guard against theft, grandma sewed out a pocket of her brother’s underwear, put 3000 yuan into the pocket, and sewed the mouth directly again.

My grandmother is an angel investor, the first product experience officer, and the chief risk control officer.

With the 3000 yuan in his crotch, my brother took the train to Zhengzhou. The first thing to do when he got off the train was to go to the bank near Wenhua Road School to deposit it. When saving money, the teller also asked him why his money was wet. It was not hot at that time, but he was too nervous all the way. The sweat soaked the money, and he just took it out and didn’t dry it

After the funds are in place, it is to find a place. At that time, the north of Wenhua Road is a dead end road, so Chenzhai has not become the largest urban village in Zhengzhou. Yan Zhuang on Jinshui road in the eastern suburbs of Zhengzhou is the largest, so he looked for a shop there. It’s said to be a shop. In fact, it’s semi open-air. At the door of a rental house, a space of twoorthree square meters is marked out under the street corridor. Go out of the stall in the corridor at the door during the day. After closing at night, pack your things and move them to the landlord’s yard, covered with plastic cloth.

Several large pieces of equipment were purchased in the second-hand market of Zhengzhou Yellow River Food City. A second-hand freezer costs 800 yuan, and there is no ready-made ice planer to sell. He bought an electric motor, welded a shelf by himself, and installed lifting adjustment threads on the shelf. At one end of the motor, a rotary table with ice blocks is welded (that is, a disk is welded with nails to block ice blocks, like football spikes). A knife plate is made under the rotary table (the same principle as the plane used by carpenters), and an ice planer is made.

The ice planer in my impression (I have also operated it), as shown in the figure below. The painting is rough. I hope I can make do with it and see it clearly:

The table of the console was pulled from his rental house, and the speaker and power amplifier were made by himself from the parts he bought in Zhongzhou electronic mall. I have seen all these things, and later he shared them with our partners several times, so I remember them in particular in detail. At that time, he first bought a wooden shell of an old red light radio and a separate Huiwei horn to install. As a result, the size of the horn was larger than the original hole on the radio. He had no tools to open a larger round hole. When he was helpless, he suddenly found that the hole diameter was the same as that of the coal ball in the corridor of the rental room. Finally, he used a burning coal ball to put it into the round hole ironed out on the wooden box. The size of the horn fitted perfectly.  

1、 The birth of cold wave ice shaving

The power amplifier without a shell was assembled and welded by him after he bought parts such as transformers, integrated blocks and diodes in Zhongzhou Mall (a mall specializing in electronic components in the railway station). Because when he was in junior high school, he could buy parts to assemble a radio by himself. It is estimated that these are not too difficult for him, a man of science and engineering.

Barrels of syrups with different flavors are all boiled by ourselves: cut strawberries or other fruits into cubes, add sugar, boil them in the pot until they are sticky, and then put them in bottles and cans respectively, and take them to the store by tricycle.

Why do you make your own equipment? Make your own raw materials? Because we need to save money, the starting capital is 3000 yuan in total. Paying rent, wiring, making signs, and buying some equipment and raw materials are basically all spent. And there was no concept of supply chain at that time. If he didn’t do it himself, he couldn’t buy the equipment and raw materials he needed.

At that time, going to his rental room was completely a kitchen: all kinds of pots and pans and coal stoves were lined up. During the day, he collected money to make products, at night, he cleaned the stall and went home alone. When he got home, he had to boil syrup for the next day. The next morning, when you send the raw materials to the store, you should hurry to Zhengzhou meat joint factory near Nanyang Road and Qunying road to load ice cubes. In this way, the rest time every day is about the same pace as when he was preparing for the exam, only threeorfour hours.

My sister said that when she was dispatched to Luoyang to work, my brother often called her at night after 12 o’clock, but my sister was already asleep. In the neighboring cities, there is time difference when making phone calls.

There are four big characters hanging on the window: cold current shaving ice. His shop window in Baimiao community is small and hot. The shop is facing the southwest. In summer, the sun is still hot, and the hottest noon and half afternoon in the distance can’t be covered here. The cooling measure of the whole store is the small plastic fan.

The customer ordered a drink at the door. After he made it in it, the glass was filled and sent to the table under the shade of the tree at the door. A person was busy sweating, and the fan on his head dried it for him. All day long, when I came home to take a bath, my upper body was full of salt, and the T-shirt was hard and almost hardened. He often joked that he sweated ten kilograms a day in summer. In fact, it might be only a lot more, because he didn’t need to go to the toilet after drinking water for a day, and it was all drained out through sweat.

Looking at it from the current perspective, I feel so bitter and tired. But at that time, I couldn’t see a trace of fatigue on his face, full of fiery passion. Playing music in the store during the day is full of rhythm. At night, you have to use the tape player to play for a while when you go home. When entertaining customers, he also gave full play to his love, communication and affinity, so there are many repeat customers. Why is he so bloody? Because of making money!

Products priced from 50 cents to 1.5 yuan can sell for more than 100 yuan a day. In a month, after getting rid of the rent and raw material costs of several hundred yuan, nearly 1000 yuan fell into the hands, while my sister’s salary was 200 yuan in the same period. One person made money for several people, which swept away all the hardships. He said that he didn’t have any big dreams at that time, that is, he wanted to make money first, to give subsidies and rewards to his family, and to buy a house to pick up his parents before the age of 30.

In the words of Jack Ma now, he is an entrepreneur with deep hatred. Later, when I opened my own store, I understood that feeling better. It was not that I felt bitter, but that others seemed bitter. In fact, I was quite adapted to and addicted to that high intensity. It’s like raising children. Others look dirty and tired after changing diapers in the middle of the night, but in fact, it’s just a natural process of upbringing with bitterness and joy.

I remember once I went to Nanyang Road meat joint factory with him to bring ice. That kind of ice is not a small ice block produced by the ice making mechanism in the current beverage store, but a giant ice brick with a length of about 1.2 meters, a width of 60 cm and a thickness of 30 cm. He cut the two large pieces of ice into two sections with his knife, packed them in a snake skin bag and put one section on my bike. He carried three sections by himself. When we rode to the door of his shop on Wenhua Road, Dongfeng Road, we had to cross the road. Because there were too many cars, people panicked, and the center of gravity of the three sections of ice was unstable, he fell down. I had reached the roadside at that time. He fell down in the middle of the road and couldn’t lift the car. The three pieces of ice had to weigh at least 150 Jin, while his height of 178 at that time was only more than 110 Jin. I watched him anxiously at the roadside, braved the scorching sun and the shuttle traffic, unloaded the ice from the car, tied the car, and then tied the ice in the snake skin bag again. When the whole thing was done, the ice had melted 1/3, and his whole body was soaked with sweat.

Back in the store, quickly put the ice cubes in the freezer. When using it, take a knife to cut the large ice cubes into small ones, and then use an ice planer to make ice shavings for the small ones. The remaining leftover materials are smashed into pieces to make ice juice. Because he didn’t wear gloves to deal with ice in hot weather for a long time, his fingers had arthritis, and his finger joints still looked swollen now.

Someone may say, why use that kind of big ice? Because at that time, there was no such small ice cubes and ice makers. The principle of his own syrup boiling and welding equipment was the same, neither of them. Not to mention VC venture capital and rounds, I haven’t heard of them. In short, the entrepreneurial conditions at that time were really good. You had to make everything yourself.

Doing this every day, I plan to make money at this speed, getting closer and closer to my dream.

2、 Seedlings, live

It is said that entrepreneurship is a matter of life and death. In the first year of cold wave ice shaving entrepreneurship in 1997, it experienced three deaths and three lives.  

The first is the first store, located in the urban village of Yanzhuang, Jinshui Road, under the corridor of a photo studio at the door of the rental house. I haven’t seen that store for only two months. Later, I just heard from my brother about how the store was closed.

After the store opened, because of the large flow of people in Yanzhuang, business was good at the beginning, but it was good for about a month, and slowly it didn’t work. My brother found that although the popularity of urban villages seems to be very prosperous, it is the wave of people who go out early and return late every day. In scientific terms, the total threshold population is not enough, and those who pass through his door are hundreds of people again and again. And those who live in urban villages are actually people at the bottom of the income, who occasionally have a taste of meat. But after a long time, their consumption frequency of drinks, which are non necessities, gradually decreased. After more than a month, the business slowly declined, and then fell into the difficult range of profitability, and then lost money. So my brother simply closed the store. The location of the store was not appropriate, and he died in the right place.

People move to live, trees move to die. He took that set of belongings and moved to the second store. I haven’t seen that store, which I heard from him later. It was on Cuihua Road, Nanyang Road. The business of that store is not bad. There are two schools nearby, and there are crowds at the door after class. My brother is diligent and sweet, but soon it’s summer vacation, and the source of tourists is less. Then, Nanyang Road, Cuihua Road, was built, and Cuihua road was directly blocked (that road was not opened later, so now Zhengzhou can’t find that road). That store also had no future, and it was also dead in the geography and luck.

Fortunately, when he opened the shop at that time, he didn’t invest in decoration. It was nothing more than walking the wires. The shielding measures on both sides of the window were nothing more than drapery, so moving around wouldn’t lose any money. The shop was at the intersection. At that time, there were many restaurants on both sides, not far from his alma mater Henan University of Finance and economics. Across the road, that is, the southeast corner of the intersection, is the Henan science and technology market that has been opened. At that time, the technology market was also a gathering place for knowledge youth, so the business of Baimiao market store was good. By autumn, my brother had saved thousands of dollars.

Shaved ice is probably, below is the shaved broken snow, which is poured with jam and pickled seasonal fruits or canned fruits, and then decorated with raisins, nuts and hawthorn sticks.

However, autumn is a season of desolation, with a burst of autumn rain and a burst of cool. Slowly, there was no business in the store, so the Baimiao community store was tortured by the weather that autumn.

I can’t help it. Winter is hard enough. So that autumn, my brother collected 10000 yuan from the business money saved by frugality, plus a little salary saved by my sister, plus a little money from selling grain after the autumn harvest in our hometown, and started selling oranges with a fruit boss he knew.

The unreliable thing is that they didn’t make money selling oranges. The reason why they didn’t make money was that they bought the goods together. Because my brother was sweet, he was in charge of sales. The following inventory and cash collection were the two bosses of the partnership. My brother felt that the business was good, but the next spring, he didn’t get any money. The landlady said that if she didn’t make money, she wouldn’t make money. It’s a big deal. She won’t cooperate in the new year. So this short experience of selling oranges in partnership, in addition to experience, did not get anything.

So in 1997, one year’s entrepreneurship has experienced three periods and three stores. The first Yanzhuang store lost its location, the second Cuihua Road store lost its location and fortune, and the third Baimiao store lost its location and fortune in winter.

In the spring of 1998, after the weather was warm, they withdrew the fruit and continued to open dry cold drinks. It was relatively smooth that year, and there was no demolition and road construction. In autumn, my brother temporarily rented the shop to a Fujian who made gold jewelry, and chose to sell candied haws.

Where is it bad to sell candied haws? He chose to sell them in Hefei. As for the reason, he couldn’t say clearly. He just felt that Hefei was a good market, with better economic conditions than Zhengzhou, and people loved it. Before going to Hefei, I also specially designed the packaging of candied haws. I remember it was a white bag. The brand was called Mrs. Zhang candied haws, and it took the high-end route: three-layer packaging. The candied haws were first wrapped in glutinous rice paper, then put into a plastic box, and finally put into a plastic bag.  

As a result, he slapped his face. After going to Hefei, he was not familiar with his life. He finally rented a venue and began to do it. He found that the winter weather in Hefei was too wet, and the candied haws would soon return to damp after dipping them out. If it’s saccharified outside, it doesn’t sell well. As a result, I tossed around in Hefei all winter and didn’t earn any money. The disheartened returned to Zhengzhou in the spring of 1999.

This story tells us a truth: we should fight in our familiar areas. If we run far, anything can happen. But paradoxically, people are also restless animals: when the current conditions are bad, they will think about whether the external conditions are better; When the current conditions are good, they will be in high spirits and think that the battle in the distant battlefield will be more smooth.

3、 The first ice city store is called “Mi” ice city

In the spring of 1999, when I returned to Zhengzhou, I originally wanted to continue fighting in baimiaodian, Dongfeng Road, but the demolition came.

Because the science and technology market across the road is booming, the original science and technology market can no longer bear the beautiful needs of the masses to buy computers and improve their lives. Baimiao farmers’ market was demolished. Later, it became a new area of the technology market, and a few years later, the current cyber Digital Plaza was built.  

No way, keep moving. Then he moved to a row of front rooms (but not current buildings) near our company, Southeast of Wenhua Road Bosong intersection, on the left side of the entrance of the coal hospital. At that time, I had made some experience and became more and more daring. I built a relatively large facade with an area of about 60 square meters, and there were also sixorseven folding tables in the room.

Because of the change of consumption environment, the products have also been upgraded. From the shaved ice in the cup to the Snowflake Ice in the plate; In addition, some fancy series products have been added, such as banana boats, milkshakes, and some foreign-style series of Boda (containing bubble water) and Binzhi (containing ice cream balls). Because the products and consumption environment have been upgraded, the name of the store has also been changed to snow city.

Why is it called Michelle? Because it tastes like sweet snow to pour sweet jam on the sliced ice like snow. Why is it called ice city? Because the product series is very rich, there are probably hundreds of ice products. I guess it should be the most professional ice store in Henan Province, so it’s called ice city.

My eldest brother helped to get the name of snow ice city. My eldest brother is a well-read scholar, who likes to chew words. This Michelle Ice City store has photos (I’ll collect the photos later, and then add them in batches), but the store in the photo is hung with “secret” Michelle ice city, because Michelle ice city is a self-made word, and the signboard store made a mistake. The cost of changing words is quite high. The signboard store said it would give you 200 yuan cheaper, so you can make do with it. My brother agreed, because it saves money.

So to be exact, the first honey Snow Ice City store is called “Mi” snow ice city.

Because of the good business, there was also a loyal customer who wanted to join, and then opened a franchise store of honey snow ice city in Jiaozuo, called Tianwaitian honey snow ice city.

Everything is going well in stability, and the tossing brother is busy again. At the same time, there is a shop next door to be transferred, so he took over that shop.

Then he and his employee, Ya Tao, didn’t sleep for two consecutive nights. Holding a hammer, he rode on the wall and knocked down the middle partition wall one by one. He didn’t sleep for 48 hours. After the demolition, I bought cement and lime, smoothed out the traces of wall demolition, and added some tables, chairs and benches. On the basis of the original bar, I extended it by another meter to make it a more domineering long bar. On the eight tables, I also pasted the logo four words: Honey snow ice city.

I helped him stick the lacquered green rattan he bought from the Yellow River Food City to the wall. Seeing that a store is becoming more and more warm, customers like it more and more, and they are also happy.

My brother is planning to spend the winter vacation and spring will come. If it is done well, he can save a lot of money in 2000, and gradually move towards the peak of his life. It is not too difficult to marry Bai Fumei.  

As you can guess, in the spring of 2000, the municipal government strongly called on Colleges and institutions in the city to tear down the walls and show the green, that is, to tear down the walls, the facade houses, and the beautiful scenery of greening the campus and institutions. This big store, which has just been tossed around, will be closed again.

After much torture, armor will grow. I think he is a man with armor, because when he opened this store, he felt very calm. Or he may not be calm, but he just doesn’t want his family to worry about him.  

4、 With low-cost genes, he also finds it difficult for his customers

Today, on the Internet, many fans joked that Michelle ice city is the Savior of slum girls, which is also because its founder is a slum boy. Born poor, all kinds of white eyed, work study program, frustrated love, repeatedly demolished and moved, this is all the labels that can be given to my brother in the past. Maybe because life is so difficult, he also feels that his customers are very difficult.

Therefore, the prices of the products in this shop at wenlao road cultural intersection are lower than each other: three yuan hamburgers, one yuan five French fries, 2.5 yuan Yangzhou fried rice, 1.5 yuan hot and sour potato shreds and hot and sour cabbage, and five or six yuan meat dishes.  

Do you make money? It’s money making.

Because my brother is a man of science and engineering, he is very good at calculation. However, its calculation has never been to calculate how customers will pay more from their pockets, but to calculate how they can achieve the extreme of lower prices and get more customers’ likes.

For example, when we do hamburger promotion, the price is three yuan, and my brother will accurately calculate how much two pieces of bread are? How much is a piece of chicken breast? How much is the cost of self-made powder coating? What is the cost of oil? What is the cost of wrapping paper? He does not include electricity and labor. His principle is that I must have a large amount and spread these expenses very low.

Chinese cooking is also a principle, how much potato silk, how much oil? Several liang of side dishes (the quality standards of all ingredients and the portion size of dishes are also higher than those of their peers) calculate a very accurate cost, plus a small amount of gross profit, the price is pushed backward.

Why low gross profit?

At that time, he certainly didn’t know the role of business theory or the pregnant woman effect. He thought there were too many bitter students.

At that time, China’s urbanization was not as popular as today, and most of it came from rural areas, but when it came to big cities, all kinds of expenses themselves made it worse for families; In their youth, they have to chase their girlfriends. In order to catch up with the girl they want, many boys are fat in front of them. They don’t eat vegetables behind their backs, save money and fall in love.

And customers filled the door with praise, giving him the best feedback for calculating himself.

After the Chinese food in that store was served for a period of time, the Chinese restaurant next door closed, because the turnover rate of miyue Ice City home style restaurant was several times higher than that next door. At that time, it will not be large-scale procurement that can reduce costs. After all, there is only one store.

Therefore, being able to have high quality and low price can only be willing to give up profits and earn meager hard money. It is absolutely necessary to stab yourself.

Maintaining low gross profit can only lead to high efficiency.

First of all, the working hours of him and his team are almost 20 hours a day. I remember that the employees at that time were sister Chen pingjie, Xiaohua, swallow, and Yatao. They were open during the day and made their floors in the store after closing at night. They were also born of hard-working children, fully developed their fighting spirit, and lived like a family.

Secondly, it is higher than the meal volume and higher turnover rate. If the turnover is the same, he should be two or three times higher than that of similar restaurants. My brother is one of the chefs who started it himself, and several of his employees are trained by him to cook a few dishes.

Compared with today’s cooking environment, the back kitchen at that time was simply cramped, and there were no measures such as air conditioning. When facing the oil pan in summer, they feel a high temperature of more than 50 degrees, and they are completely used to it.  

The equipment is not awesome, so I remember a sad thing – when one of my partners at that time, sister Chen Ping, was making ice shaving (Chinese food kitchen, Western food kitchen and water bar kitchen are shared), her hair was accidentally stained with the lubricating oil on the lifting shaft of the ice shaving machine, and the machine was still running. In a moment, her hair was pulled from her scalp, an area as large as an egg. Chen pingjie was only hurt and cried for a while. Then she tied up her apron and went to work. She had to go to the hospital. This kind of thing makes people confused.

It’s difficult to start a business. It’s just hard work. It’s not too hard and tired. Calculate yourself. Fortunately, the result of the partners working together is that all their efforts have won the support of customers.  

This is the gene of miyue gradually established from that time. I can’t find a suitable adjective to describe it. It’s still mixed. Many people will also say that society is getting richer and richer, consumption has upgraded, and high-quality parity has become ineffective.  

I don’t know whether it will fail or not, but are customers short of money? This problem is worth thinking about. Is there still a lack of clothes in a woman’s wardrobe?

Today, many people talk about business models and various sophisticated calculations. How can we get more money? Get customers’ money, get customers’ money, deduct employees’ money, get investors’ money, but don’t think about how to pay more, let customers spend less, and give them more feedback.

The rise of snow city

1、 The birth of the second explosive

In July, 2008, because most of the franchise stores of the company in the previous year didn’t last until the spring of that year, there were not many stores open in that year. When it didn’t take too long to visit the stores, I could still put most of my energy in my own stores.

The stairwell at the east gate of the welcome market has become my last store. So when the summer vacation came that year, this store did not close during the summer vacation like other campus stores, but opened normally. Anyway, if it closed, I would be free.  

At that time, our product was only ice cream, and after May, as the weather gets hotter, I feel a little tired of eating ice cream. Customers need more thirst quenching drinks in summer. At that time, we didn’t have any systematic solutions for franchise stores. My brother’s Dongfeng intersection store took the lead in serving ice porridge and ice juice.

Under the influence of the head office and the second store, all our franchise stores have served ice porridge. After all, ice porridge costs three yuan a bowl, and the customer unit price is still relatively high. As franchisees, we prefer products with high customer unit price, but it is also because of the relatively high customer unit price that the sales of ice porridge is not particularly hot. In each of our franchisees, the sales volume is 100 bowls a day.

We also need hot items similar to ice cream.  

In June, my brother mixed juice with two flavors of orange and green apple according to the formula when he started his business ten years ago, and then sold it in the fruit juice blender that can rotate or spray. That kind of machine has its own refrigeration, which is directly frozen when it is connected to the cup. We use the popular eight ounce red Coke Cup in the market and sell it for one yuan. It’s refreshing and thirst quenching. It’s cheap and affordable, so it sells quite well, and gradually can match the sales of ice cream.

At that time, the second-hand juice blender my brother received was 1500 yuan. I also wanted to use this kind of ice juice, but I was not willing to spend 1500 yuan to enter the equipment, so I kept dragging it until July.

In July, students have a holiday, the weather is hot, and there are fewer and fewer people eating ice cream. I was really forced, so I went to the used car market and found a second-hand Dongbei juice blender, double cylinder mixing type. I bit my teeth and took it down.

At that time, my brother also gave the formula to our central kitchen, which produced the concentrated raw materials of these fruit juices, so that we can distribute the raw materials to the store, add water directly in the store, mix well, pour it into the juice blender, and then it can be sold.

My Dongbei juice machine now has two jars, one selling orange flavor and the other green apple flavor. Because the formula taste is more suitable for the environment at that time, it is also unique in the whole welcome market. The price is not high and the cup is not small. It is very popular when it is on sale.

But soon I found that 80% of customers buy orange flavor, and few people buy green apple flavor. Often, three or four jars of orange have been sold, and one jar of green apple has not been moved. If it sells slowly, the juice will gradually lose its flavor and taste will become worse and worse.

As it happens that I don’t like the taste of green apple personally, I wonder if I can come up with another popular style that can compete with orange.

At that time, my brother had started a business for more than ten years, and there were all kinds of treasures he bought in the basement of his family during the ten-year entrepreneurial process. Once our big warehouse was not enough and we had to transfer a batch of crispy cans to his basement. I turned around in the basement and found half a box of Nestle pure coffee powder.

At that time, we had been an ice cream chain store for more than a year, and coffee was the product he sold in the super iceberg a year ago. In the second half of 2007, super Fort took off its coffee products, and I personally liked his three in one coffee, so I took his half box of coffee powder to my own store.

One day in July, I sweated in the store, weighed a basin of water, added sugar according to the sweetness of the fruit juice, added the fat powder equivalent to the concentration of milk tea, and finally added a large hot-pot/" 22375 rel="nofollow" target="_self">hot pot spoon pure coffee powder.

After stirring, it tastes good! I had three drinks by myself. So I cleaned the peach flavor of the juice blender outside, poured the coffee into the jar, wrote a label and stuck it on the jar: cappuccino coffee, one yuan a cup.

At that time, I didn’t know how cappuccino was made, but I just knew its name was more romantic, because Xiao Yaxuan had a song called: love is like cappuccino.

I didn’t expect to sell hot as soon as I came up. One yuan a cup of cappuccino iced coffee is simply a great attraction for students. Soon, I can sell more than a dozen pots of iced coffee with pots and pans all day long, and I can sell more than 800 cups in an inventory at night!

Now I think I should be the brand with the largest sales of coffee in the whole Henan market ten years ago. At that time, Starbucks had not yet entered Henan, and the coffee of McDonald’s KFC was basically not sold much. The reason why this product is popular is that it is really good to drink. The three in one of sugar and milk is easy to accept. At the price of one yuan a cup, you can’t afford to lose money and be cheated. You can also taste the taste of cappuccino in the song by the way.

Fortunately, I sold my cappuccino from July to winter, and no one objected that my cappuccino was not authentic. Well, maybe it’s because the drink has no fixed taste, and it’s palatable. And my selling method is also quite simple, that is, an eight ounce paper cup with a straw inserted and without a cover.

Until 2011, iced coffee was the best-selling summer item.

2、 Partnership, introducing managers

Family disturbance is actually a dilemma caused by small family management. If a group of people have not seen the world, they are naturally prone to struggle. At this time, we all realize that it is time for the company to take another step forward. We should broaden our horizons and introduce more capable and visionary experts to transform Michelle ice city from a workshop to a more formal company.

Family members also expressed their understanding of this idea, and the introduction of managers and corporate operation is more fair and transparent than relying on a family member. At that time, of course, we didn’t know about headhunting companies and other institutions, so we began to look for talents around us who could undertake this major task.  

It happened that Taoge (who was in charge of purchasing at that time) had a classmate surnamed Zhang. He lived in Shanghai and worked in a large-scale flooring production enterprise. He was in charge of sales business, familiar with markets all over the country, and had the experience of leading large teams. He was very progressive. At that time, his relatives opened our franchise store, so we contacted him.  

After several communications, he also readily expressed his willingness to join us, so he quit his job in Shanghai and came to Zhengzhou alone to join the snow ice city.

In order to better motivate everyone, my brother redesigned the equity, from his sole proprietorship in the past to a partnership of four of us, and he gave the major shareholder to president Zhang. He tied with brother Tao himself, and I ranked third, so the gang of four was established.

It was already the spring of 2009. After President Zhang joined us, he immediately began to sort out some basic important work. But before, we only knew how to develop business, and no one mentioned the basic important work, because no one understood it.

First of all, Mr. Zhang took us to find a designer to upgrade the logo. Our old logo was an ice cream shaped vector map that my brother found on the Internet, and it was used directly. It is estimated that there will be a fine for copyright protection today. After all, the old logo was carefully selected by my brother, and it is also very easy to use, but it is an ice cream shape, which is too directional. Mr. Zhang believes that our next stage of transformation is to focus on tea, so we need a recognition graphic that can represent the sweetness of Michelle ice city to replace the previous ice cream mark.

Soon he found a studio called Shang Hai design, and a designer surnamed Zhang designed a satisfactory logo for us. Because we didn’t have much money at that time, we haggled all kinds of prices. We only made a logo instead of an extended application, and finally charged 800 yuan. We used the logo for ten years until 2018.

Secondly, it combs the corporate culture. Before that, we didn’t have the concept of corporate culture, and we hadn’t heard of mission, vision and values. After he came, he quickly sorted out a set of behavior creeds suitable for us, which we have used for three years:

Pursuit: either the first or the only!

Vision: help entrepreneurship and employment!

Mission: create a high-quality price revolution to benefit the public!

Behavior creed: do what you say and do what you say!

Then he found someone to design our first version of the website. The design company is called Jueshi design studio. Later, we became friends with designer teacher Liu. The website of that version is very beautiful and full of sweet breath. The background music is the city of sky of hishirang.

Finally, he reorganized and divided the team. After the general manager, there are investment invitation, operation, planning, finance and distribution, and the prototype of a small company has been formed. Zhang Zong asked someone to design the logo, which we have used for ten years.  

What is more valuable is that he has brought a lot of advanced experience from the southern market. At that time, the tea market in Shanghai was relatively mature, so the suffix of fresh ice cream in miyue ice city added tea, and we also began to explore tea.

In short, for the honey snow ice city at that stage, president Zhang brought many advanced business ideas, including my personal vision development, and I must also thank him. He took me to Shanghai for the first time to attend the exhibition and to Guangdong, Guangxi and Hunan for the first time to investigate the market.

Michelle ice city gradually became more like a company, and everything began to run steadily.

3、 Three years of training in the countryside

After Mr. Zhang came, after some drastic reforms, the company entered the track of normal development, and several of our shareholders also carried out a simple division of labor.

After that, my brother no longer took charge of specific company affairs, and the responsibility was fully entrusted to general manager Zhang. He himself transferred back to the home style restaurant in miyue ice city to manage the business there; Taoge is responsible for purchasing, logistics and external public relations affairs of the company; General manager Zhang is responsible for the company’s strategy, development and investment promotion; I am responsible for planning and publicity and store operation and maintenance.

The office is located in Antai Wenyuan, a residential community at the intersection of Wenhua Road and Sanquan road. The house was bought by my brother to live in by myself. First, it was vacated for office use.

In the next two to three years, the peak period of franchise is from February to May during the Chinese New Year. At that time, our office on the sixth floor of the community was people mountain people sea, with a large number of visits and contracts. 90% of the stores opened in the whole year were in those twoorthree months.

At that time, the biggest trouble was that when customers visited, they were always stopped by the security guard of the community at the door, or they walked into the community for a few rounds, but they couldn’t find the building where we were. I often have to climb down the stairs from the sixth floor to pick up customers at the door, so when business is good, my legs hurt.  

At that time, I secretly made up my mind to buy a regular office when I got rich in the future, and we could no longer let our customers be intercepted and interrogated by all kinds of people.

After the May day peak, the number of inquiries and contracts signed by customers is getting less and less. By July, there are almost no new stores. At this time, we can separate our energy and go on the store inspection. At that time, there was no scientific process and method for the store inspection. We just took a small book to the store. If we found that the products, hygiene, service and publicity were not done well, we would carefully explain it to the boss or clerk. We were often tired and thirsty, but after a month or two, it remained the same without any improvement. The reason why there was no improvement was that we were really soft hearted at that time and never willing to pay a fine. Even if sometimes I want to be fined for something particularly excessive, I often withdraw the ticket in the midst of bitter pleading. In my impression, I didn’t issue a real ticket in those twoorthree years.

This is the most ineffective management. Later, we gradually found out that although the fine is the most controversial and scolded, it is the most effective of all the rectification methods. No one will be unhappy with their own wallet. Without compulsory economic measures, it doesn’t matter if they are meticulous.

Maybe today, our customers will still scold the company when they see this sentence. I can only say that the most effective idea we have explored is: great love in the heart, ruthless.

There were not many stores at that time. So when the tour ends, I will go back to the welcome market and help in my own store. I am a person who likes to be in the store very much. Even if I stay for more than ten hours a day, I never feel tired. At that time, my girlfriend also left the company and worked in the store, so together with a Miao (now our company purchases), we constituted all the business personnel in the store.

The biggest advantage of the three of us in the store is that the staff is stable and there will be no mistakes in cooking.

At that time, the headquarters of the company was not strong, so in the season change, all franchisees had to find their own way to survive. So I groped for milk tea in the winter of 2008; In the winter of 2009, I served hot coffee and jujube milk; Ice sugar gourd and jasmine green milk tea were served in the winter of 10 years. Not only in winter, but also in spring and summer, we have to make various explorations to ensure that business will not decline. So I will try all kinds of fruit juice, coconut milk, almond dew and so on. I check the formula and technology on the Internet, then go to the raw material market to buy various raw materials, come back and match them. After matching, I quickly try to sell them in the store. The sales effect is good, and I can feed back to the company for large-scale promotion.

So my personal store can also be understood as the company’s experimental field and direct store, and doing these explorations is equivalent to taking part-time research and development tasks. There is no way. The technology of the start-up company is relatively weak, so it can only be used by all the people.

In order to achieve the best sales effect, I have to design posters and leaflets for each new product. Every time I design leaflets and posters, I have to run to the design company. It’s really inconvenient. I decided to learn design by myself.

Later, the designer who helped me design posters said that if I really want to learn, I just need to design oneortwo posters by myself to get started.

So I learned CorelDRAW first, because this software is used to design flyers; Then I learned Photoshop. (the company that designs the poster uses this software)

Because they are all groping by themselves, without the guidance of professional teachers, I basically use them as words. I can only find some materials on the Internet to highlight the publicity theme and focus I want to express. I really can’t do it more beautifully, but it works very well.

The advantages of their own design will soon be reflected.

First, the response speed is fast. We have developed a product, and we can immediately use the office printer to make a small sample.

Second, the theme is obviously violence. I don’t have any makeup skills. I only highlight the product name and price.

Third, error correction is also very convenient. Once you find that the effect is not good, redesign it immediately.

Finally, one more skill, one more way of thinking. Self learning these two software is a rare life experience. My father often said: learning new things is more important than skill.  

4、 High end fantasy

In 2010, we have been a franchise chain of Michelle ice city for three years. The division of labor among our shareholders has gradually become clear. Although the development of the company is not fast, it is also moving forward steadily. It has passed the life and death period and has a certain amount of small savings.

After various explorations, my own store has two signature products, ice cream and coffee, and customers are also coming in an endless stream every day. I added two more employees, so I don’t have to stay in the store often.

Then the question comes: what can I put you in, my abundant energy?

At that time, under the leadership of general manager Zhang, we have opened our eyes to the world. The scope of our investigation is not limited to Zhengzhou, but also began to travel to other cities, including Hangzhou, Shanghai and so on.

First of all, I saw two excellent brands in Hangzhou, one is called Miguo and the other is Guomai, both of which are very exquisite. The unit price of their products is not low – 8 to 16 yuan. Many fresh fruits are used in the products, such as small tangerine, lemon and passion fruit, which were first seen at that time. They taste very fresh and their business is very popular; And that fruit wheat was the first to be represented in Zhengzhou. We have opened one near laozhengda on University Road and one near Dongfeng Road light yard. Although the business is not good at the beginning, we all think it is rising steadily, so we pay great attention to it.

Secondly, I saw a brand in Shanghai: bright yellow signs and store decoration, cute cartoon logo, catchy brand name, and a large number of lemon fresh fruits are used in the product line. Yes, its name is happy lemon.

Zhengzhou has also opened a brand similar to happy lemon, called shitangyu. Its product price is 4 to 15 yuan, the decoration is fashionable and exquisite, the clerk’s service is polite and quality, and the door is also queuing as usual. This makes our loser team envious. We will stay at the door for a few hours. Calculate for this store, it can sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. The customer unit price is so high that the net profit must be 200000!

Then, in those two years, the American ice cream brand DQ entered Zhengzhou. The first store opened in Vientiane city and the second store opened in Guangcai east gate. The store is spacious and bright, and the products have good taste and characteristics (pour the cup without spilling). Its price is very expensive – 5-25, but there is an endless stream of fashionable men and women who buy it, which makes our saliva drop 3000 feet.

And then look at our own business: one yuan for an ice cream, one yuan for a glass of juice or iced coffee, there is no pattern in the production of products; The store is dilapidated, with an area of only a few square meters, which is decorated by pasting posters; The husband and wife run the business without any sense of service; The location of the store is also in the dirty and messy temporary houses, or at the gate of the farmers’ market; Customers are mostly students, and seldom see fashionable little sisters and brothers. In short, the place is low and the profit is low. It is simply a big low force to dig in the soil.

Because the store is so low, I’m embarrassed to tell others that I open an ice cream chain store when I go out. So we decided to build a high-end brand to undertake the upcoming consumption upgrading (at that time, there was no word consumption upgrading, but we really think so). Think about the white silver, the tall storefront, the beautiful little sister customers, and think that if you boast in the future, you will have more face!  

Another important reason why I wanted to be a high-end brand at that time was that Shanghai, the most fashionable and young shopping mall in Zhengzhou, wanted to invite us to open a store. However, after knowing our price, they will not give up and are afraid to lower the grade of the mall (ten years later, the mall is still unwilling to invite us over and is still afraid to lower the grade).

But people all want face. Seeing other people’s shops are all kinds of bright and beautiful, looking down at their own shop is rustic, how can I stand that kind of cowardice in my heart.

Then I was ready to work. The other two shareholders also encouraged me to say: buddy, this is up to you. We all know you can do it!  

I’m a person who can’t stand it, so choose this thing to do! At that time, the judgment for the high-end was that the location should be in the gathering place of young people in the city, but at that time, Zhengzhou did not have today’s fast fashion mall, only a big Shanghai City, but I was unwilling to let my first store enter, so I chose the corner between Zhengzhou experimental middle school and Zhengzhou No. 9 middle school, where the wealthiest children gathered in the north of Wenhua Road at that time – Wenhua Road. Many milk tea brands in this place sell very expensive. Our learning object at that time, shitangyu, also has stores here. The children of these two schools are from Zhengzhou City, and their consumption is several times higher than that of our original customers.

The location should be high consumption, and the store should also look more compelling, so we need to find a good designer to design it. But after all, it is limited by our life circle, and we have never found an excellent designer like now, so we found a teacher who can do interior decoration and rendering. We talked to him about our needs and provided photos of several brands we studied. Soon he made the publicity map, which looked OK. I could feel that he borrowed from Guomai and happy lemon. But there was no way. At that time, the tea was not as popular as today. The designer really couldn’t find any object to pay tribute to, so he had to pay tribute to them.

I have never experienced the product line design of high-end stores; But I’m a foodie, and I still have feelings about eating and drinking. So I drew a menu (referring to Guomai and Shitang). At that time, I took a SLR for several days and went to the gate of Tangyu to take photos and observe. Later, I sent someone there to work and study.

After our people came back, they told me a shocking secret: their tea was weighed with an electronic scale, accurate to grams; Their water is measured with a measuring cylinder, accurate to milliliters; When they make products, many syrups and milk are measured in small cups!

Please forgive me for being such an idiot in tea drinking. These are basic and necessary knowledge in tea shops today. At that time, we knew nothing at all.

We were originally good at ice cream. I just want to continue to serve high-end ice cream in my store. In order to be exemplary, I personally went to DQ undercover before opening, the main purpose is to learn how to do DQ’s Blizzard without spilling.

With the backstage moving line and design drawings, the production method of each product and the menu of the series were drawn, and the construction of this store began soon. I also made a list of ingredients, packaging materials and other materials according to the menu I drew, and purchased all these materials. The standard of purchase is to buy only the best and most expensive ones on the market. If you can use cold chain, you will never need room temperature, if you can use fresh fruit, you will never need jam, and if you can use ice cream, you will not use our previous ice cream powder. Instead, you will use kangpaike’s milk slurry. The ice cream machine also spent a lot of money to buy an American Thaler. In short, it is indeed a high standard of conscience. Soon after, the store officially opened.

After opening, the business was very prosperous and the gross profit was quite high. I was excited. I felt that loser was about to enter the ranks of high wealth and handsome, and I was more confident to chat up with girls. But my feeling didn’t last long. My business began to decline gradually, and then it didn’t decline again when it fell to a certain range. I calculated that I still had a good profit in this state.

Soon after, a brand from Guangxi called Da Wei drink opened next to it, and its main product is Fresh Mango Smoothie. At that time, the fresh fruits used in my high-end store were mainly oranges, and mangoes were not touched, so soon Dawei drink had many loyal fans, and my customers were a little less, so I entered the break even line.

Anyway, this store is open. Taking into account my previous experience in opening several stores and my experience in opening high-end stores this time, I have become the most experienced person in the company. The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. In the next six months, I opened more stores directly than my brother.

First, my brother’s alma mater – Henan University of Finance and economics. After it merged into Henan University of economics and law in 2011, we went through the bidding process and won a facade of a 100 square meter school service building. It was originally our shareholders who discussed how to decorate the store, but maybe I was too straightforward. I spoke more when discussing some decoration opinions, and then the task of opening the store was left to me.

Before that, the largest Michelle Ice City store I opened was less than 10 square meters. The high-end store was more than 40 square meters. Suddenly, a 100 square meter store was still under great pressure. But there was no way, and I couldn’t escape. I discussed it repeatedly with brother Zhang Hui, the designer, and finally opened the CAIDA store.  

After the store of the University of Finance and economics opened, the students couldn’t support it. After all, this is the store opened by their senior students. We also decorate the interior into two floors, with an elegant environment and good quality and low price. As a result, the popularity exploded every day, and there was a large queue at the door, so we tasted the benefits of opening a big store on the university campus.

Then opened the aviation academy store, the economic and trade store and the Zhengzhou University store. These stores are all big ones, and their business is full. Their turnover is several times higher than that of the high-end store on Jianxue street.

That high-end store gradually became chicken ribs. During that time, on the one hand, I had to spare my energy to open new direct stores, on the other hand, I had to work regularly in DQ undercover, so Jianxue street stores were less and less, and the business naturally became worse and worse. In addition, there are still three months of holidays every year that will lose money, but when the landlord receives the money, there will be no less than one month, so I decided to close this store.

In September, 2011, after two months of summer vacation in Jianxue Street store, the landlord wanted to raise the rent at the juncture of paying the rent for the new year, which made me decide to close the store directly.

 

Once you decide to close the store, the speed is very fast. You can empty the store in only one day. Then our financial department thoroughly and carefully cleared the investment income of the store from 2009 to 2011, and the result was that the store earned a total of 6100 yuan in two and a half years. I remember very well that I earned 6100 in two and a half years.

Although I didn’t earn direct cash, I think I gained a wealth of experience through this store: it’s not so easy to earn high-end. I admit that it’s my poor ability, but I really want to explain the difficulties of doing high-end business. These things may still be very one-sided. After all, they are personal thoughts, but I also want to say it, hoping to be useful to other entrepreneurs.

First, is it the widespread needs of customers or their own psychological needs to be high-end? Now I think it is our own vanity that has played a great role in promoting our vanity. In order to find reasons for our vanity, we will ignore the fact that there are more and more rich people, the high-end demand is increasing, the consumption will be upgraded, and the high price will win the low price.

Yes, consumption will upgrade, but most people think of consumption upgrading as rising prices, which is not consumption upgrading. What should be upgraded is good products and good experience, but the price is at the bottom, and the price does not necessarily need to be upgraded. But as an ignorant operator, the first thing I think of is that I raise the price first. If the price is high, the price will be high.

Second, pricing is obscene. There is a pricing method in the jewelry industry, that is, high-end goods that are more than ten times higher than the price of jewelry sold normally must be placed in the window, through which he can establish his identity, raise the price and bear the expectation, and then sell at the middle price.

But jewelry, as a high-end low-frequency consumer goods, is not the same as ice cream, milk tea and other things. Consumers need to recognize quickly, make decisions quickly and buy quickly. There is no time to understand your outfit. The biggest mistake I made at that time was that I shouldn’t trust people who hadn’t opened a store and ordered some products for more than 20 yuan. There are very few people in these product points. Therefore, employees are not proficient in cooking, and customers who occasionally order these high-priced products have high expectations. As a result, ultra-high priced products sell to one customer and hurt one customer.

Now think about it. Just sell your best price honestly. It can’t be loaded or carried, which makes it convenient for consumers to make decisions, and it’s not easy to fall into the pit. It’s also easy for employees to train, and there is no need to recite the formula for products that are not often ordered.

Third, high-end means knowledgeable groups with strict service requirements. So in order to be worthy of everyone, you have to bear all the high costs, from decoration to equipment, to salesperson’s education, appearance, tooling, food materials, packaging materials and promotional materials, all of which should buy the best. As a result, it seems that the gross profit of the products sold is high, while the net profit after amortization of all costs is actually very low.

Fourth, the ability of managers is related to cognition and experience. Others have become popular in high-end business, but they are not necessarily suitable for losers. If they are not suitable, don’t hold on. This is also a matter of ability.

That high-end store is so broken. Although I didn’t make money on the book and spent two and a half years on energy, I have experienced the process of opening a new store from 0 to 1, which makes me more comfortable when opening other stores in the future, and I will be a little more comprehensive when doing some thinking than in the past.  

Learning and evolution happen all the time, and that store gives me more learning and thinking than other stores.

This is the road we have traveled. Even if it is a detour in a period, every step counts. I think for me, this is the greatest value. The experience of opening various stores in those two years also laid a solid foundation for my business after 2012.

High end, for others, is a rising tide, with ease, for losers, it is still a beautiful fantasy. Maybe business is the same as looking for someone to live. It’s the best and most important to be suitable for yourself. Wang Fu, born with a round face, lives a serious and down-to-earth life. Don’t envy the Internet red face. We can’t wear that kind of makeup.

Where is Michelle ice city going?

1、 The first time I visited the store, slapping my face

When my brother gently suggested that I should visit the store, I realized that there might be some problems in the store, but I didn’t know what the severity was.

Soon, I asked my colleague shaonan to arrange a Toyota Custer minibus. The executives of our departments, a total of about a dozen people, set out. Our route starts from the North all the way. When we crossed the Yellow River Bridge, we were very excited. I told my partners that I would like to take you to a franchise store that has been open for many years. The franchise store is very serious, a girl and beautiful. Now the store is running well, which should be the benchmark of Anyang area.

Soon, the car arrived in Anyang. Her shop was in a market near a school, which sold all kinds of snacks, fruits and student supplies in the markets around the traditional campus. When I arrived at the door of the store, the situation was very gratifying. There were a lot of students inside. It looked like business was good. The boss was busy. I boasted to my colleagues that this was our store. The changes in recent years were quite big. When it was just opened, it was on a roadside in Anyang City. At that time, the business could sell for hundreds of yuan a day.  

But as soon as I arrived in the kitchen, I was dumbfounded, which was in great contrast to the tidiness and brightness of the store. First of all, walking on the ground is sticky, and even the shoes can be glued off. This is the result of not cleaning for a long time after the milk syrup polluted the ground; Not only are the feet sticky, the ground also looks dark. It’s definitely not like the ground that hasn’t been cleaned for only oneortwo days. All kinds of mops, brooms and other cleaning supplies are piled up indiscriminately, without the concept and rules of food safety.

The most impressive and surprising thing about that store is that near the pool, there is a red plastic bucket on the ground that can hold about one or two hundred kilograms of water. How big is it? It’s about the same size as the garbage can we see in the community.

It should be the largest plastic bucket that can be bought on the market. There is a full bucket of diluted syrup for lemonade in the bucket. After this diluted syrup is prepared, the shelf life is very short. It is impossible to prepare such a large bucket without deterioration. I found a cup and tasted it. Sure enough, there was a sour smell, but I always felt that there was something wrong. Then I went to the boss and found out that this proportion was made by themselves. They said they felt that this proportion was more convenient.  

Second, impressive, but more angry, their lemons are not sliced according to our standards and then pounded in a cup, but directly in a bucket that can hold about 20kg of water, pounded with a large rolling pin, and then uniformly filtered the lemonade into a five liter bucket after tamping. The rest are dehydrated, and the lemon slices are put into another bucket for standby, Then when the front desk cooked the meal, they added dehydrated lemon slices, lemon juice and their own diluted syrup according to their own proportion. I couldn’t understand the proportion and dosage, and I didn’t want to understand it.

In short, in addition to the advantage of good business, the other cooking standards of this store are all invented by ourselves, and almost none of them are consistent with the company. I was shocked at that time, and we were all shocked at that time. This is our old franchise store, which I am proud of. It is the benchmark of Anyang, where business is gradually improving. It is a store run by a young and beautiful post-80s little sister. If the benchmark I am proud of is like this, what will the next store look like?  

After Anyang, the next stop was Xingtai, Hebei. We went to several stores in Xingtai and some stores in the county below. We also met some bosses. Business was OK. After all, there was no good brand in the north of the Yellow River. There is no tiger in the mountain, and monkeys are called overlords, which is indeed an iron rule.

However, it’s almost a standard of making meals in one store. It’s almost impossible to see the traces of chain brands, except that the signs are the same. In the process of talking with franchisees, we found that many stores are unable to sustain their business. In the face of some competition from local brands, they are weak and weak, and they generally do not have any effective methods, and the company can not provide good support. Therefore, many stores are resigned to fate and close to collapse.  

These, you can also think out the reasons. After all, as long as the development speed that year, where are partners? If you have the mind, can you help them manage the store well? What’s more serious is that I, including a group of senior executives, haven’t been to the store for a long time. When I don’t see these situations, it’s difficult to rationally imagine how our work will be carried out and what our store will look like. Everyone knows the saying that radishes don’t wash mud when they are fast, but if you don’t eat the radish that is covered with mud and makes you feel embarrassed, you won’t really blame radishes for not washing mud when they are fast.

The ability of the new company and its new partners is not strong, and they also focus on the great leap forward. The feedback of people’s livelihood hardships is submerged outside the courtyard layer by layer (or there will be no feedback, because we are all enjoying the happy harvest).  

As for the production standard of products, there is something that makes people cry without tears. At that time, the standard of our lemonade was a glass of 28 grams of lemon slices. We will see that many stores only have about 20 grams, and even use more than ten grams, not a cup of more than ten grams, but many cups prepared, all of which are more than ten grams. Shortness of weight itself was also very common at that time. If it was just shortness of weight, it would be good for everyone to drink fresh lemons, even if it was less.  

However, many stores are obviously not so good in business, but they prepare lemons in advance, stack hundreds of cups and put them in the freezer. What’s more, it was stored directly at room temperature. I took a piece of lemon from the cup and smelled it between my nose. I don’t know how long it has gone bad. Later, I talked with the clerk and found that many of the lemons sold were overnight slices.

With a depressed mood, we continued to move forward. We went to Beijing and Tianjin again, and the situation was not much better. Fortunately, when we arrived in Huanghua County, Hebei Province, the boss’s store business was fairly good. The boss used to be a truck driver who delivered goods to us. He thought our business was ok, so he joined the store and went back to his hometown to start a business. When he started his business, he sold his truck.  

When chatting with him, I felt a heavy sense of responsibility. They entrusted our savings, future and destiny to us, and now we manage the store so badly, but we think that a school is thriving and feel special guilt. In fact, it’s not just Huanghua. None of our franchisees in the country is the rich second generation. They all took the savings of several generations to invest in this business, but we were so disappointed at that time.

After Huanghua, we didn’t follow the scheduled route to the north, because the north of the Yellow River is basically the same. We plan to look to the south, to the south of the Yellow River and to the south of the Yangtze River. Passing by Jining, Shandong, I came down to watch the shop and talked with the boss. It was almost the same situation, or even worse, because there were many brands in Shandong, and the business was OK in other places, and the hygiene was very poor. Shandong had already started many stores, and the business and hygiene were not good.

When we were in a car with a heavy heart and the most depressed mood, a colleague called me Zhang Zong. At that time, I suddenly raised my head like crazy and said don’t call me Zhang Zong, I’m not worthy!

On the way, I kept thinking about what caused our confusion at that time? Failure is the mother of success, and success is also the mother of failure. It is precisely because of a few years of good wind and good water, it is easy for people to unknowingly start complacency, start arrogance, luxury produces arrogance, arrogance makes people happy, happy people ignore shortcomings, and then based on the perspective of good one-sided judgment, set an unrealistic leap forward goal.

I think we need to be grounded. We need to know where we come from. We need to think carefully. Where are we going? With continuous growth, we are also trapped in daily business, and we have not been together seriously for a long time. We should choose a place where we can calm down, seriously reflect, discuss, put order out of chaos, and get back to our original intention.

In the first two years of our business, we will also carry out field expansion training to build the league, but later, with the rapid growth, we haven’t done it again for a long time. Discipline, goals, teamwork, hard work, thinking hard, we need to get these back. My colleagues contacted an expansion route, which is located in baligou, Xinxiang, in the north of Zhengzhou. I think it’s a good idea to expand and March in the wild, climb mountains, and live in old houses in the countryside. On the first weekend back, we got up early and went to baligou by bus. In retrospect, I’m not very satisfied with the overall development process. I imagined it was very strict, but the actual instructors were very loose and did not achieve the desired effect, but it was still a very fruitful comprehensive development meeting.

After the training camp at the foot of the mountain, we put our tents on our backs and began to climb the mountain. The goal is to climb the top of Taihang Mountain, which is about 30 kilometers away. It is said that there is a millennium old village, and we are going there. The mountain road became more and more steep. At the foot of the cliff called shangbali by the locals, everyone was tired and about to collapse, but his heart was happy. Because of physical fatigue, people had temporarily forgotten the backlog of anxiety. We helped each other, cheered up, and finally reached the top of the mountain in the dark.

The ancient village at the top of the mountain is in particularly difficult conditions (the Internet is particularly popular. Guoliang village, which has a hanging wall Road, is not far from here, and the conditions here are even worse, because there is no hanging wall Road). In the village, we saw a rusty steel cable, a transport vehicle used by villagers to haul tractors up the mountain decades ago. That steel cable is not enough to bear the weight of the tractor. The villagers want to disassemble the tractor into parts at the foot of the mountain, then tie the parts to the steel cable and pull it up with a rope. Chinese people have genes to bear hardships and stand hard work. To overcome unfavorable conditions, mountain people have done much better than us.

That night, we stayed in the folk house on the top of the mountain, a small stone farmyard, calm and peaceful, starry all over the sky, surrounded by summer insects chirping at night. We ate the hand-made noodles made by the farmer’s aunt. Everyone ate it with soup and juice. Finally, it was a sin to kill a sheep, but the mutton soup was really delicious. I had never had such a delicious mutton soup before.

In the evening, we were in the old house, which was covered with newspapers but still airy. We held our discussion, criticism and self-criticism. I remember that day we should have talked about when the rooster began to crow. We decided to stop signing new stores and tie our shoes. Instead of growing for growth, we really did a good job in the operation and let it grow naturally. At that time, there was a popular saying, don’t forget the purpose of starting because you walk too fast, and don’t be too fast for your soul to catch up with your steps. At that meeting, I also had some small differences with the chairman: whether our own employees should open a store or not.

We expressed our opinions and finally did not reach a conclusion, but anyway, it made our team understand ourselves better. Although the external conditions of the meeting were not good, our hearts became clearer and brighter, so we slept particularly sweet on the crowded bed that night. The next day, we got up early, played some line-up games in the grass, and then went to the Taihang mountain cliff outside the village. Under the guidance of the coach, each of us folded a paper plane, wrote our wishes, and flew out along the cliff. My wish is to make the world better for us, protect employees, the company and society, and continue to strive for 100 years.

In the spring of 2016, we set the annual theme of that year: packing. Because of the rapid growth in previous years, we fell into a dilemma. We plan to stop and tie a shoelace. Don’t develop too fast, let the soul keep pace. Therefore, the opening volume of our new stores in that year was extremely low. We hope that it is no longer the radish that does not wash the mud when it is fast, but that we can slow down, seriously improve the operation level and improve the profitability of a single store.

Then our whole work was adjusted to the slow mode. Direct sales almost no longer planned to open new stores, but focused on maintenance and improvement; We have also raised our requirements for the audit of franchise stores in order to reduce the number of new stores, so that we can have the energy to rectify the team and improve the level.

As for the annual performance target, there is almost no hard standard, because the previous year was afraid of being planted, we think it is better to be conservative. The plan is beautiful, and the reality is cruel. The final facts have proved that we have overcorrected.

Morale is the first to be affected, because the team has adapted to the rapid progress of several years. When it suddenly stops, the most affected is the growth and promotion of partners. A partner who may have worked for three or five months in the previous year can be assigned to the new store as the store manager, but after the speed of expanding the store suddenly slowed down, there is no chance of promotion for a long time. At that time, we didn’t come up with enough effective plans to improve everyone’s operation level in actual operation, or there were no effective training measures in training and education. The result was that we didn’t raise the turnover at all, and the morale was destroyed.

Other departments of the company are not much better, because a large number of new employees were recruited in the previous year. When they came, they were all eager to try and ready to work hard. As a result, we didn’t open up enough battlefields to practice and give everyone a chance to fight. Our partners suddenly lost their sense of direction and the internal atmosphere began to get worse and worse.

After seeing this, I was also very upset. I always felt that everything was caused by me, so I had little intention to cheer you on. A climate of doubt slowly grew inside the company. Everyone began to comment on whether the company was able to move forward. If the company was not able to move forward, did they still have room to grow? Because of the slow performance growth, the frequency of promotion and salary increase has also decreased compared with the previous two years. At this time, the team is not only demoralized, confused about the future, but also increasingly stretched. It happened at this time that the man who dug the foot of the wall came.

The biggest shock to us was that at that time, a brand from Ningbo first arrived in Henan. As a challenger, the chips offered when digging at the foot of the wall were very attractive. A middle-level employee who did quite well and had high prestige was poached. Originally, people were swaying. As soon as he left, he directly took away two strings of people: one was his brothers in the original market operation Department, about a dozen, and the other was a director of the investment promotion department who was close to him, and took several.

Later, I learned that the reason for the success of poaching was not only our low morale, but also the fact that the other party’s conditions for driving were indeed rich: cars, dry stocks, and dividends. And after the two teams arrived there, they soon launched a fierce offensive against us in the market. For a time, our franchisees all over the country first received calls inviting them to surrender, and then a very small number of them did change their signboards. The other group did not change their signboards. That brand began to open stores next to them one after another. The product structure, positioning, crowd and price were not much different, and the activities were particularly fierce. Our franchisees began to be worried.  

Even the advertising language of the battle is full of gunpowder: the east wind blows and the drums beat, so that the honey who sells lemonade will never come back. After that, the rest of our partners received this new stimulus. A small part began to sway, while another part began to worry about the fate of the company. When they were worried, they wanted to ask me to say that I didn’t have the energy to explain it to them, or to ask me to give feedback and explain it to me, which itself also contributed to the atmosphere of suspicion, and then some partners left one after another.

I don’t worry about the fate of the company. The stronger the storm, the stronger the heart that can be honed. I’ve never heard of people who can achieve their own brand by attacking others, and I never think that people who are so anxious that their values begin to distort can achieve great things. Because the official account of the brand built by the team that left the company in the past is full of all kinds of strong investment information and crazy boasting about business performance. If so, this matter will really hang in the balance. It’s just a worry: whether others are good or not can’t control so much. When can we get better?  

2、 World Matcha originated from China

In 2016, no matter how many difficulties and troubles there were at that time, the road still had to go and the meeting still had to be held. So on March 10 of that spring, we held the second annual meeting of entrepreneurs at the Great Hall of the people in Henan Province. The theme of the conference is world Matcha, which originated from China.

Since the launch of Matcha in 2015, it has been selling lukewarm. After my brother came back, he was not very satisfied with my invitation to AOI platform Matcha. He was a thorough person. After his research, he came to a factual conclusion: Matcha in the world did not originate in Japan, but in China. At present, the largest production is not in Japan, but also in China, so he said that it is clearly a good thing for our own ancestors, Why should we give the standard of good Matcha to Japan?

As early as the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the earliest way our ancestors used tea was to eat tea and Matcha. Later, it was introduced into Japan and carried forward in the Tang Dynasty. It also formed a unique Japanese tea ceremony. The Japanese love Matcha so much that they can’t just drink it, but also add it to all kinds of other food and snacks. Today, the Japanese have the longest life in the world, which may also have a lot to do with the frequent consumption of Matcha.

The way of using tea in China was gradually changed to making tea after the Song Dynasty, but in fact, the leaching rate of nutrients in making tea was very low, and a large amount of cellulose was not fully utilized, but dumped as tea residue.

We decided to reformulate Matcha ice cream, which had not sold well before, and then officially released it. At that conference, we invited 2400 franchisees and store managers to participate, and each of them gave two packs of Matcha ice cream powder. Although we still didn’t carry forward Matcha later, we have to say that this created a momentum for the popularity of Matcha in the market in the next two years.  

The highlight of that meeting was the keynote speech of my brother’s return to products and ingenuity. The return of the founder can always give you great confidence and encouragement. He also introduced the newly established R & D center and let the R & D partners make a collective appearance. Those partners are very young, most of them are post-90s. His brother wears an apron and completely returns to the standard dress of the clerk. He introduced his capable little partners Da Da, Ruirui, Lulu and Sasha one by one. At the meeting show, Li Da, the youngest student, also said something that I still remember. He said, some people say that it is not the alarm clock that wakes us up, but the dream. But I want to say that it’s not the alarm clock that wakes us up, but that we didn’t sleep. Pay tribute to the little partner who once made efforts for the honey snow platform!

My brother’s insight into business problems and the planning of future product lines made our franchisees full of confidence, and also moved the suppliers and service providers present. 2400 people in the whole venue listened quietly, and everyone was full of infinite hope for the future in the cold spring.

At that time, we also officially released a new image upgrade. The brand planning and upgrading of Xiao Wei’s fashion trend also made the partners present applaud constantly. It was also on that platform that I first introduced the new brand construction department leader, Mr. Da long.

And even if I have a lot of pressure and troubles in my work, I can’t change my true nature of bragging on stage: the next decade. Boasting is the appearance, and being firm in the fog is the root.

That meeting was also the first time that international suppliers were invited to give a speech. After the foreign supplier representative from the Netherlands took the stage, the atmosphere reached a climax, because he was so tall and handsome! Another winner at that time was LETV. We can’t remember how many LETV TVs we rewarded, just like no money. Banners fluttered outside the venue, which was the result of our partners’ hard preparation for several days and nights.

On the whole, the grand occasion of the meeting was unprecedented, the results were in line with expectations, and the sense of ceremony was overwhelming.

This is us. Happiness and pain coexist all the time, climax and vortex are synchronized, self doubt is also full of firmness, depression is not lost in publicity.

From the birth of lemonade in 2013 to 2016, we didn’t have any hot sales for three consecutive years. After my brother returned to research and development in 2016, he led several research and development partners to fight day and night, and finally, our products increased. However, new contradictions have emerged: the contradiction between the scarce and ineffective products in the past and the expanding store group has now turned into the contradiction between the excessive frequency of innovation and the backward store management ability.

Logistics and front-end began to have frequent contradictions, and both of them were miserable. Back end R & D knows that there are too few good products in the company, and consumers have no choice, so they launch new products day and night. To promote new products, it is necessary to mobilize marketing publicity and improve the product matching manual of stores. At the same time, back-end production has also received a large number of production orders for raw materials of new products, which leads to the failure of publicity and marketing. The kitchen matching manual of stores is changed more than twice a month, and factories often make mistakes in the face of new production topics.

That kind of feeling is unbearable. Today, we can explain these things rationally, but at that time, the front end represented by me and the back end represented by my brother collided fiercely. When facing various problems, it was difficult for me to calmly listen to their reasons and explanations, and the war was imminent. But now I still want to explain the situation at that time.

When I was idle before, my brother was not idle. He went to many places. The more places he went, the more excellent brands he observed, the more he could deeply feel our disadvantages. Therefore, after returning to research and development, what he most wants to change is the derailment between us and the mainstream milk tea brands, which is not only a product level, but also a systematic problem in all aspects.

He just wanted to solve it completely and took advantage of that opportunity to bring the company to a complete transformation. In the process of transformation, front-end partners and leaders who have adapted to the previous rhythm will have a variety of tearing feelings: they need to distinguish between two different syrups with similar names that go up at the same time, they need to work hard to cook pearls, and they also need to practice various manual scooping operations. In addition, they have changed operation tables, proportioning tables, regular new products, and so on for several months.

The pain of the front end is that we already have 2000 franchise stores. Because of the origin of the company’s brand, these franchise stores did not receive strict and systematic training when they opened their stores, which can be understood as the grassroots of the headquarters, and the franchisees are also grassroots, and the staff they recruited are also grassroots who can start after a day or two of trial, so we are particularly adapted to the traditional simple and fast operation method, Suddenly came the kind of operation requirements like coco a little bit, and their suffering can be imagined.

So in that contradiction, no one is wrong, because the heart of gradual improvement is good. Everyone is wrong, because everyone looks at problems from the standpoint of their own department and team. My fault is that I don’t see the future trend of milk tea chain stores as clearly as my brother, and I don’t see the trend of consumer demand. I just think that I can’t do many things based on our disadvantages. It is a kind of seeing the present with the present, not the present with the future; It’s the lack of ability to cover up for yourself, but you don’t stand on the position of customers and see their needs clearly.

3、 Youth is to fight

At the end of 2016, reviewing all kinds of things in this year is like taking a roller coaster for 10000 times. It is because of all kinds of gains and losses that we have created a stronger heart.

There is a dream of moving forward, and everything on the way is nutrition. Merry Christmas, my friends have worked hard. We want to let at least 1billion people share sweet and nutritious sweetness at Christmas 10 years later. The above is a passage I wrote on wechat for Christmas 2016.

With a flick of your finger, 2017 is coming. Once, an entrepreneur who was several years younger than me asked me how to open more than 1000 stores. At that time, he started his business for two years. I seriously told him that we only opened one store in the past ten years. We have opened more than 1000 stores, and it took us 17 years. Everything is a result of accumulation.

1997-2017, honey Snow Ice City, 20 years old, brother started a business for 20 years; It has been ten years since I opened my first franchise store in 2007. Over the past ten years alone, too many things have happened. I have seen countless brands live and die, or peer brands around me, such as microphone, sijihua, typhoon shelter, seven cups of tea, or big brands familiar to me and remembered by a generation, such as Nokia and Xinfei appliances. We have also experienced countless near death moments, but somehow we have survived. The greatest significance is to survive without getting off the card table.

In 2017, we have experienced the pain of the great leap forward and the damage caused by stopping growth. Those things are like doomed. It’s better to experience early than not, and it’s better to experience early than late. Therefore, we can see less about the pace of development. In 2017, we decided to go at an unpleasant and slow speed with a normal mentality.

Source: foodbud food capital Bureau (id:foodbud), reprint has been authorized. Reprint authorization and media business cooperation: Amy (wechat: 13701559246);
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