There is such a food enterprise that few people know about. But it cooperated with Wal Mart, Sam and RT Mart, the supermarket giants, about 10 years ago, and provided them with sausage and prefabricated vegetable products all the year round. This is the enterprise that produced the popular army hotpot. This product alone can sell tens of millions of sales within a year.
It is the Tweard from the northeast. It is the most appropriate contributor to call it a high-end supermarket. In addition to the stable and continuous supply of To B products, some To C consumer oriented products are also being deployed in the most popular broadcast channels.
From 2021 to 2023, the average annual revenue of TWARD will exceed 100 million yuan.
01. Catering entrepreneurs from small cities in northeast China
When I think back to the beginning of my business in 2001, Zhang Xia still has a fresh memory. At that time, she was the manager of a hotel in Mudanjiang, northeast China. Her husband, Wang Tianshi, also had a stable job in the state-owned bank. By chance, they met a vendor selling Harbin sausage and intended to transfer the shop to them. It was a small factory with workshop production. There were only 9 workshop workers and 2 sales outlets. The annual sales volume was about several hundred thousand yuan.
After much thought, the couple, who were unwilling to work, decided to give it a try. They held a family meeting to discuss. At first, of course, most of them voted against it. But finally, they persuaded their families to resign from their iron rice bowl like work units, sold their wedding rings, borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars, opened the way of starting a business from scratch, and named the company Tweard.
Two years later, in 2003, RT Mart entered Mudanjiang. This expansion strategy in the business supermarket, when put into the era of individuals, affected suppliers like Zhang Xia.
▲ (Zhang Xia, the founder of Tehuade. The interviewees provide pictures)
"Locals know that RT Mart is a supermarket from Taiwan, and they have admiration for it. But our company was small at that time, so it was difficult to get in. It was impossible to talk about it." Zhang Xia recalled to the "city boundary", "When we learned about the itinerary of the next few stops of the purchaser, we simply bought tickets and followed them all the way." Ted's perseverance finally moved "Party A" and gave them a five minute communication opportunity. Zhang Xia said frankly that he wanted to work together. But the other party replied, "The cooperation with other people's sausages has been signed." Zhang Xia thought, no matter what, we should call in first. Finally, she reluctantly took over the job of selling side dishes at RT Mart. In fact, it was the early semi-finished dishes. She cut and washed all the ingredients and prepared them. Customers could take them home and stir fry them.
This kind of compromise is not the way after all. Selling your own specialty sausage is the serious thing. Zhang Xia later learned that the meat in all supermarkets, including RT Mart, was basically unprofitable because it was a basket project for ordinary people. She seized the pain point and talked with RT Mart about her own ideas. Sausages were not pure meat, so she sold them in meat customer areas to help the supermarket increase the gross profit of the whole meat customer areas. The other party also put forward the "whimsical" sales requirement of "10000 yuan a day", which Zhang Xia led the company to achieve.
"It can be said that it is extremely difficult. This is a customer negotiation that impressed Zhang Xia the most." Zhang Xia did not expect that it was this negotiation that made her build a company with an annual revenue of more than 100 million years later, and also made her business abroad, and even had the idea of rushing into the capital market.
In the words of Tianshi Wang, in the eyes of Zhang Xia, there is nothing impossible. With this tenacity and momentum, Zhang Xia led Tehuade to gradually go out of Mudanjiang, enter the Dalian market in 2003, and expand the Beijing market and Shanghai market in 2005 and 2006. The company also cooperates with many well-known supermarkets - Wal Mart, Carrefour, Sam, Ole ', Hema, Metro, Olozi, etc.
It is believed that many loyal fans of Sam and Hema have bought military hotpot, cheese sausage, Taiwan sausage, chicken roll beef roll, pizza salad rice, as well as this year's new products Malatang and northeast pickle pot. In fact, these popular products are made by Tewade.
Take the army hotpot as an example. The first thing made was not good. Zhang Xia took them to the hotel door to door in a car to order and taste. Zhang Xia led the team to understand the appearance and taste of the army hotpot through 60 home tasting. Later, it was introduced that they went to the hometown of Korean sauce to get authentic Korean sauce. After returning home, they repeatedly debugged it as the base sauce of military hotpot. This is not enough. Troops' hotpot also includes Twald's own sausage, lunch meat, vegetables, rice cakes, cheese, etc. It took 9 months from the concept to the launch. After more than 20 polishing and debugging, the army hotpot was finally born and sold out on the supermarket shelves as soon as it was launched. "This single product alone sold more than 10 million sales in one month, which was 6 years ago."
After getting familiar with and mastering the unique methodology of cooperation with large supermarkets, the channel expansion of TWODE is more smooth, and the revenue is also rising all the way. So in 2024, Zhang Xia set a small goal for the company to "go to the next level".
02. High end innovative products
The "Market" learned that a live broadcast room had just found Tweard and wanted to customize a sausage product that was not available on the market. It was required that there should be large meat particles in it, without water retaining agent (an additive). Both parties have high efficiency and clear goals. They have met three times before and after making a decision. Previously, in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, there had been Tehuade's pickle pot.
As the growth point of the company's performance in 2024, Zhang Xia attaches great importance to the channel expansion and development of the To C consumer end this year. According to Zhang Xia, the sausage products specially customized for this cooperation will be launched in the broadcast room at the end of April and the beginning of May, and the sales are expected.
"Other channels are also catching up, so we are very confident about the growth in 2024," added Wang Tianshi.
When the demand is high, the output will naturally keep up.
The current company layout of TWD is that Mudanjiang is an old production base, Shanghai is a research and development center, Tianjin has two sales companies, and Beijing also has a branch. In Yancheng, Jiangsu, it will be the headquarters of the company in the future and the main body of the company that may be listed in the future. A new factory will be built in Tehuade, Yancheng, which is expected to be put into production this year.
In the process of large-scale expansion of an enterprise, the outside world is most worried about product quality and safety control. In China, food safety is a big problem.
After obtaining a certain market share, the R&D pace of TWARD slowed down. Zhang Xia has set a "focus" strategy for the company, first reducing the annual SKU to 48, and then refining 8 out of 48 to focus on, which is to focus on product lean.
Moreover, in the process of communication with the "market", the two founders repeatedly emphasized the positioning of Tewade as "a medium and high-end innovative product".
Wang Tianshi, the chairman of the board, told the "market boundary" that 90% of the products of Tehuade could not be seen on the market, such as pickled sausage, Angus Valley beef sausage, turkey celery breakfast sausage, and cheese sausage. To this end, the company has invested huge R&D energy and funds. "Innovation is the core competitiveness of Tewade. In 2022 alone, we will develop 108 products a year, almost every three days." When attending a German exhibition, he was surprised to find that even Germany, which is best at producing sausages, found three new products that are not available locally in Tewade with more than 2000 kinds of sausages.
This innovation ability benefits from the R&D team established by the company, which includes German sausage experts with more than 30 years of sausage production experience, five-star hotel chefs, and partners from Southeast Asia.
▲ (Tehuade star products: Northeast pickled vegetable pot, Angus Valley feeding beef sausage. Respondents provide pictures)
In terms of cost, TWD is also willing to cut materials. All the meat products purchased are from famous listed companies such as Chia Tai, Shuanghui and Yurun. The overall level benchmarking international famous brand sausage. "What we do is high-end. Although we do a lot of low-end products, we can't go far. Good products must go a long way." said Wang Tianshi.
Logistics cost is another important expense for enterprises integrating food production and sales. This is also one of the unique advantages of Tweard. The best-selling Shouxi pot on the shelves of a shopping mall used to be washed and cut by supermarket employees themselves. The average human efficiency of a single pot was 21 minutes.
Zhang Xia left an assignment for several logistics supply chain companies in his hand - "whoever can solve the human efficiency problem for me will do this project for him". Finally, through the integration of various logistics factories, they sent the upgraded finished food materials to the supermarket, and raised the human efficiency of a single pot to 7 minutes. At present, the logistics of TWD can cover Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south, Shenyang and Dalian in the north, not to mention big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The company can provide cold collections in the first and second tier cities across the country every other day. Zhang Xia knows that some raw materials supermarkets are in a hurry, and others can't deliver them, but Tehuade can deliver them as soon as possible.
When it comes to the next plan, Zhang Xia said, first of all, we should adhere to the positioning of middle and high-end; Secondly, make the main products sausage and prepared dishes healthier and more nutritious; Finally, I hope the company can become stronger and stronger for a long time.
There are two other things that must be done this year. One is short video live broadcast. Zhang Xia believes that "our two founders travel around the world every day to explore food stores and trace the source of raw materials. It's a pity not to do live broadcast."
The second thing is going to sea. Long term overseas observation made Zhang Xia find that the consumption capacity of Europe, America, Southeast Asia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and other places is very good, which inspired her to go global. For this reason, TWD will frequently appear in sausage exhibitions in Paris, France, Singapore, South Korea, etc. in the next period of time.
The company also has the idea of going public. The most obvious sign is the introduction of private funds and the start of formal shareholder management, which makes the enterprise more perfect in terms of structure and management.
However, "it is difficult for food (enterprises) to enter the capital market in the past two years. Only when enterprises need the help of the capital market will our enterprises naturally embark on this path. In fact, many unlisted enterprises are invisible champions in the industry, and Tewald is committed to doing a long-term thing - creating the world's first brand of high-end sausage." Founder Wang Tianshi thought about looking into the distance.
Author | Chen Chang
Author | Chen Fang
Operation | Liu Shan
