reporter｜Yang Liyun
Editor｜Ya Han Xiang Xu Yue
Once made his name with a "honey grapefruit tea", it is about to end its ups and downs - the successor who had an accident with the boss, the product was discontinued, and the ducks were put on the shelves. They constitute the keywords of Tianwo this year.
has been established for 19 years, and it is still unknown whether it can complete the 20th year next year.
Li Li sat at the headquarters of Tianwo Food (Group) Co., Ltd., located in Sijing Town, Songjiang District, Shanghai, waiting for the employer's final fate to guide her own future destiny. The headquarters consists of a scientific research building and a factory. The exterior wall of the factory is hung with huge posters of products such as Tianwa Tea House "C-E" juice drinks and Barno coffee, but judging from the degree of fading, it has been a while.
Interface News reporter visited, only one truck was parked in the factory and was not loading. The forklifts carrying goods in the factory were also parked quietly and did not work.
Li Li has worked in Tianwo Food for 10 years. She is free and does not want to "promote step by step". She has been a grassroots employee for 10 years. Her current mentality is "I can do it every day" - "The boss has an accident." She paused, with a look of wanting to say something but still resting on her face. "I was arrested in May. (The company) has fired a group of people, including workers and management personnel, and I can't afford it. Now I'm just a person who is used as a few people." The reason why Li Li didn't find another way out is because "I can still get compensation when I'm dismissed." The creator of
, Lin Jianhua, lost contact with
days, turned around in May this year. Many investors have long been concerned about the ongoing related transactions between Tianwo Group and Nanpu Food.
Nanpu Food and Tianwo Food are companies founded by Lin Jianhua in 1992 and 1999 respectively. The two companies are closely related. The headquarters are both located in Sijing Town, Songjiang District, Shanghai, only 3 kilometers apart.
On May 4, 2018, Tianwa International (0219.HK), listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announced a brief suspension of trading and will issue an announcement that the company's then chairman of the board, executive director, CEO and controlling shareholder Lin Jianhua constituted the insider transactions of the company, which caused an uproar in the outside world. This announcement confirms the rumor that Lin Jianhua was investigated by relevant departments a few days ago.
6 days later, on the evening of May 10, Tianwo International officially announced that Lin Jianhua was assisting the relevant departments in conducting an investigation. Lin Jianhua has been absent from May 2 and the company cannot contact him directly.
According to the information revealed by Tianwo International in the announcement, the investigation directly points to Nanpu Food (Group) Co., Ltd., which has close business dealings with Tianwo. From May 2 to 7, the relevant departments asked Tianwo to provide some financial information about Nanpu Food, including the past amount of Tianwo's sales to Nanpu Food since 2008, and the balance of trade transactions between Nanpu Food and Tianwo's three subsidiaries on December 31, 2016, December 31, 2017, and March 31, 2018, respectively.
At the time of the incident, Lin Jianhua, as the controlling shareholder and chairman of Tianwo International, owned 1.425 billion shares of the company, accounting for approximately 64.62% of the company's total issued share capital. At that time, Tianwo International tried its best to clarify the impact of Lin Jianhua's investigation on the company, saying that the group's business operations are currently under normal circumstances. Lin Jianhua can still participate in the company's necessary decision-making work through his lawyer. During Lin Jianhua's absence, the work of the chairman of the board will be temporarily replaced by Lin Jianhua's son Lin Qi, and the work of the CEO will be temporarily replaced by the company's executive director Yang Yuming.
But seeing that Tianwo is like this, the market is ready for a big retreat. On May 11, Tianwo International, which was suspended for one week, resumed trading, and its stock price plummeted 23.71% on the same day.
Since then, Tianwo International’s announcements are like an episode of TV series, making people feel cooler and colder the more they watch. In June this year, the company's executive director, chief financial officer, company secretary and authorized representative Lin Keng, and independent non-executive director Shen Yalong resigned one after another.
By August, three independent non-executive directors of the board of directors, Liu Qianzong, Zhang Ruizheng, Wang Longgen, Chief Financial Officer Wu Wennan, Executive Director and Operations Director Xu Jianxin and others resigned one after another.
htmlOn August 13, Tianwo International suspended trading again and has been resuming trading for no longer lasting.On August 17, an announcement from the company disclosed that Lin Jianhua involved more than 2.1 billion yuan of unusual transactions, which were divided into three parts, of which 1.685 billion yuan was the advance payment paid by Tianwo International and its subsidiaries to Shanghai Tianpu Food and Weiyi International Trading companies in 2016, but no goods were received; 450 million yuan was represented by Lin Jianhua on August 23, 2017, Tianwo Food (Group) Co., Ltd. The company signed a comprehensive credit contract with Ningbo Tongshang Bank to obtain a loan of 450 million yuan, with the main purpose of financial support to Tiansheng Warehouse, a subsidiary of Nanpu (Hong Kong) Investment Company, which is owned by Lin Jianhua, and Ningbo Tongshang Bank has deducted 336 million yuan from Tianwo Food's account; in the end, there is still 60 million Hong Kong dollars a purchase agreement signed by Nanpu Ming Liquor and Huanfa Investment, which claimed that the goods had been delivered, but Tianwo International said that it had not received the goods.Strangely, these three payments seem to be Lin Jianhua’s intentional act of bypassing the board of directors. Members of Tianwo International’s board of directors claim that they are not clear about the ins and outs of the matter.
The mystery of the successor Lynch’s wealth show-off
Lin Jianhua has a son Lynch and a daughter Lin Liping. Both of them hold many important positions in the Tianwo Empire, one of which is a director of Tianwo Food (Group) Co., Ltd. After his father was investigated, the 25-year-old Lynch was appointed in danger.
htmlOn June 28, Tianwo International announced that it would remove Lin Jianhua from the positions of chairman, executive director and CEO, and his son Lynch officially took over.According to public information, Lynch graduated from University College London in August 2013 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. From July 2014 to December 2015, he served as assistant to the general manager of Nanpu, responsible for managing the marketing and media departments; in January 2016, he joined Tianwo International, serving as the group's deputy general manager, responsible for the daily management and supervision of Tianwo Tea House. In March 2017, he was appointed as the executive director of Tianwo International Holdings Co., Ltd.
As Tian Oh's prince, it is reasonable for Lynch to take over, but the original plot may have been many years later. Perhaps because he had not had time to show up in public, Lynch has always acted in a low-key manner, and only left public images when he was the deputy general manager of the group. However, in September this year, the short video "-" released the short film of Lujiazui luxury house in Pudong, Shanghai, once again brought Lynch and Tianwo to the spotlight.
The hostess of the luxury house, Si Jiali, introduced her 800 square meter mansion in the short film, with an independent swimming pool, the whole is designed by a French designer, and the furniture is customized by French maison dada. From the huge floor-to-ceiling window, you can overlook the Huangpu River. Si Jiali said that this was the wedding room her parents gave her and her husband.
As a fashion designer, Si Jiali graduated from the London Fashion Institute in 2011 and has a company named after her own name in China - Shanghai Hanna Si (Chinese translation of Hanna Si) Clothing Design Co., Ltd. Although her husband's information was not published on her Weibo, many netizens and self-media revealed that her husband was Lynch, the prince of Tianwo. In the video of the luxury house, the male owner who had breakfast with her also looked like Lynch.
According to netizens' estimates, this luxury house is worth up to 170 million yuan. Showing off wealth when Tianwo was facing a major change, the film attracted the attention of many netizens and was questioned by many people.
This young boss is in power and does not bring too much confidence to Tianwo’s employees. Li Li believes that "unless there are very powerful people who are willing to take action and rectify the company," she shook her head and said, "The business world depends on connections and face. It turns out that there are many people gathering together when they are good, but now the sky is falling. Who else is willing to come?"
ends all the way, and even the raw materials can't be paid.
In the past 10 years, Li Li has seen Lin Jianhua several times, and her impression of him is "more stubborn". For most people in Tianwo, they didn’t know that this company would be involved in such a big storm before May this year. But after Lin Jianhua lost contact, everyone in the company knew that he was involved in it, “It was because of Nanpu Food, not the god.”
In 1992, Lin Jianhua used his first pot of gold and packaging food industry accumulated in Putian South China Food Co., Ltd. to establish Nanpu Food (Group) Co., Ltd., which has served as the agent for the distribution of well-known brands such as Nestle, California Leslie, and Red Bull, and its performance has soared. Lin Jianhua served as general manager of Nanpu Food until May 2016, which means that when his son Lin Qi was the assistant to the general manager of Nanpu Food, he actually learned management experience from his father.
In the seventh year after the establishment of Nanpu Food, Lin Jianhua founded Tianwo Food in 1999, and the two companies have an inseparable relationship. Nanpu Food has always been the most important distributor of Tianwo Food. , Tianwo’s own brand development also relies in part on Nanpu Food distribution.
Currently, behind Nanpu is Guangming Group and Tianwo Group. Shanghai Sugar Industry Tobacco and Liquor (Group) Co., Ltd., a major shareholder, which holds 51% of Nanpu Food, is controlled by Guangming Food (Group) Co., Ltd.; while Tianwo (Fujian) Food Co., Ltd., which holds 35.84% of the shares and Shanghai Tiansheng Wine Co., Ltd., which holds 13.16% of the shares, are actually controlled by Tianwo Food.
Nanpu Headquarters, which is 3 kilometers away from Tianwo Headquarters, is now in a depressed state. Wang Yong, who has worked in the company for two years, said: "This company is about to collapse, and Tianwo is about to collapse too. These days, some logistics companies and the like have come to collect debts. "He told Interface News that in the past six months, Nanpu has fired some employees, and except for security, logistics and offices, other departments have left.
Since 2015, Nanpu's performance has begun to show a rapid tightening trend. According to the "Wine Industry Businessman", from 2015 to 2017, Nanpu's net profit was RMB 30 million, RMB 100 million and RMB 1.46 million respectively.
Interestingly, Nanpu and Tianwo have stocked each other on each other's territory. Nanpu has set up a nearly 100-square-meter store at the door of Tianwo Group, which contains red and white wine and other wine products represented by Nanpu Food. It is understood that these wines were originally mainly supplied with Recent companies and governments have received banquets, and their business has not been as good as before. In the past, Nanpu's largest order, the "California" of Jialu Winery, USA, has long since terminated its cooperation with it.
and part of the function of the Nanpu factory is also Tianwo Food's warehouse. Although the reporter was driving a small truck to pick up the goods during the inquiry, in fact, Tianwo is almost at the end of the road.
Whether it is a local Shanghai or a distributor far away in Shenyang, Liaoning, they are complaining that Tianwo is not supplying in time.
Shanghai's distributor Chen, manager of Shanghai's distributor, told Interface News, "It is still selling, but the supply has not been delivered in time since July. Something happened to their boss, the factory had problems, and it produced very little, and sometimes it might not come for two weeks. "
, while a dealer in Shenyang said that currently only Tianwo's milk tea and coffee drinks are in the end, and they will no longer represent the brand after the clearance. Another Suzhou dealer also said that only a small amount of plum snacks remained, and is cleaning up the inventory.
In addition to retail, Tianwo also does B-side business. In January 2017, Tianwo International issued an announcement to establish a strategic procurement with Shanghai Fosun High-Tech (Group), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fosun International The purchase cooperation agreement has become a strategic procurement cooperation supplier for Fosun Group's packaged food. This strategic procurement cooperation agreement remains valid within 3 years. At that time, Tianwo International was still looking forward to bringing business opportunities through Fosun Group's network, thereby achieving further growth.
However, regarding the question of whether the cooperation agreement can be fulfilled normally under the current Tianwo production capacity situation, Fosun Group rejected the query request from Interface News.
"How to produce it if you don't have money to buy raw materials? "Li Li said that not only Tianwo's factory in Shanghai is difficult to produce, but the factory situation in other parts of the country is similar. "Now, it is just about producing whatever is in stock, and there is no production without stock. "She said. How to collapse the building
In fact, before Lin Jianhua was investigated, Tianwo was too old.
Tianwo's heyday was when Fan Bingbing endorsed Tianwo Group's honey grapefruit tea in 2013. The TV advertisement of "What are you drinking healthy and beautiful? Tianwo honey grapefruit tea" was popular all over the country.In the same year, Tianwo International Holdings Co., Ltd. was listed in Hong Kong and was wholly owned by Tianwo Food. Jacky Cheung, Lee Yuchun, Lee Min Ho, Huang Xiaoming , Wu Xiubo, Zhou Dongyu and other stars endorsed various beverages such as Guo Tianwo's charcoal milk tea, ice black tea, C-E, Jin Gongquan, honey grapefruit tea and other beverages in different periods, but Tianwo's flagship product still only has one honey grapefruit tea. When
days of the year, it did not make accurate judgments on the future trend of the industry to prepare for the future. These potential crises first appeared in an exclusive interview report by Lu Ying, the then financial director of Tianwo Group.
Lu Ying, who joined Tianwo Financial Team in 2008, led the financial team to participate in Tianwo International's listing in Hong Kong in 2013. In the report titled "Tianwo Group: Financial Acceleration" in the magazine "Chief Financial Officer", Lu Ying said that unlike many other food companies, Tianwo not only produces and sells its own brand products and agents with a wide range of products, but also has different regions of many agent products. This has resulted in the fact that the brands, price systems and marketing methods sold in the Central China, North China and South China are not completely consistent, and the business line is becoming more and more complex.
Days strive to create a centralized management model. I once thought about learning from the management model of some group enterprises' sub-business departments. However, since the overall size of the company is not large, the management team will be huge and complex, and the mobility and flexibility will be relatively poor. Therefore, Tianwo was trying to explore its own unique management model at that time, such as using two models to operate its own products and agent products in a team. In 2013, when
Tianwo International was listed, the gross profit margin of its own brands increased by 5%, reaching 28%, and the gross profit margin of its agent brands increased slightly by 1.4%, reaching 10.2%. Lu Ying admitted that due to the government's control of the consumption of three public funds, the high-end foreign wines sold by Tianwo agents have indeed been affected. The plan for 2014 is to "focus on developing private brands, especially beverages in private brands."
However, some industry insiders analyzed that Tianwo has not made further breakthroughs in its own brands in recent years, and the imported wines and other third-party products that Tianwo International relied on are mostly mid- and low-end products and have low gross profit margins. Both factors have dragged down the development of the company's business. After the rise of the sales channel of e-commerce, for old traditional food companies like Tianwo, the offline channel advantages they originally had were invisibly weakened. In the above interview, Lu Ying "always maintains a calm attitude towards the popularity of e-commerce." Looking back now, Tianwo's overly cautious attitude may lead to the company's "half a beat slower" in the transformation and expansion of online channels.
While that day, its competitors such as Sansquirrel, Baicaowei, Liangpinpuzi, Laiyifen, etc. have already rushed towards e-commerce, including many companies that have e-commerce genes since they were born, and traditional companies that embraced online channels. Even as early as 2012, among the tens of thousands of casual snacks on Taobao, "Huang Feihong", known for its spicy peanuts, had defeated well-known snack brands such as Tianwo, Shanghaojia, Leshi, and Qiaqia. In e-commerce channels, whether it is marketing methods or targeted product research and development, there has never been a case where "honey grapefruit tea" could be widely circulated.
In the past two years, Tianwa Food and Snacks' revenue has dropped from 1.07 billion yuan in 2016 to 724 million yuan in 2017, down 32.9%. The revenue share of private brands in overall revenue has also dropped from 43.7% in 2016 to 36.7% in 2017. The remaining 63.3% of the revenue contribution comes from the distribution of third-party brand products, including well-known brands such as Martell , Hennessy, and Wahaha.
From 2015 to 2017, Tianwa International's revenue increased slightly from 4.908 billion yuan to 5.018 billion yuan, net profit fell sharply from 366 million yuan to 170 million yuan, total liabilities increased from 3.384 billion yuan to 4.675 billion yuan, debt-to-asset ratio increased from 53.9% to 58.7%, and earnings per share EPS fell from 0.17% to 0.07%.
days of the dilemma is not just that there is not enough funds to invest in production, no continuous advertising and marketing and product innovation and upgrading, its brand effect is diminishing, and products that have reached the market terminal are not as popular as in the past.In a Luosen convenience store in , Xuhui District, Shanghai, there is no beverage product displayed on Tianwo. The only Tianwo candied fruit production date is February 2018, with a shelf life of 12 months, which means that it will expire in two months.
Even in the self-operated supermarket at the entrance of Tianwo’s headquarters, although most of Tianwo’s self-operated products are neatly displayed, the most famous honey grapefruit tea is only 3 months away from its expiration date.
In May this year, half a year after the "big earthquake", the creditors finally couldn't sit still. On November 12, a creditor filed a liquidation petition for Tianwo International to the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands. Meanwhile, Tianwo International seeks to appoint the company to have a low intervention joint temporary liquidator for restructuring as an alternative to forced liquidation.
A week later, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands approved Tianwo International's joint temporary liquidator application, and Tianwo International's board of directors will retain all powers related to the management of the company's daily business in order to formulate a debt restructuring plan. Afterwards, Tianwo International quickly added three independent non-executive directors at the end of November, namely Hong Kong practicing accountant Lin Tianfa and Liu Fei, and mainland Chinese practicing lawyer Hu Hongwei, forming the most complete situation with Tianwo International's board of directors in the past three months.
Daywa International stated in its latest announcement on the liquidation petition that the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands has postponed the petition hearing, with the latest deadline being February 28, 2019, but it is expected that Tianwa International will continue to apply for a postponement of the petition hearing before this date, that is, the court will be postponed to buy time for reorganization.
Relevant person in charge of the company said in response to the Interface News inquiry that it had obtained approval from the Cayman Islands Grand Court to appoint Deloitte as a joint temporary liquidator based on the basis of "low intervention" to fully assist Tianwo in the reorganization. The purpose of this appointment is to "preserve the value of the group."
The question is, how does Tianwo plan to revive new value.
(Li Li and Wang Yong are both pseudonyms in the article)
