Chapter 2252: Introducing a Friend

It was past five in the afternoon, and the sun had already begun to slant westward. The golden afterglow spilled through the windows into the dining room. Zhang Zui, Xiao Liuzi, and the others sat around the dining table, eating dinner with Zhou Andong. Once they were full and satisfied, the group left contentedly.

At this moment, the dining table was covered with all sorts of exquisite gift boxes. Besides gold and silver jewelry and jade ornaments, there was a large pile of baby clothes, shoes, toys, and rag dolls.

Zhou Andong didn't bother to open them to see what they were; he simply instructed Sister Liu to have these gifts sent to the rear building and handed over to Jian Qiu to handle.

After making the arrangements, he went to the study, picked up his fountain pen, opened his manuscript paper, and prepared to continue writing his script.

However, just as the pen cap was pulled off, the study door was knocked. Zhou Andong called out without even lifting his head.

"Come in!"

Sister Wu pushed the door open softly and walked up to Zhou Andong, whispering, "Chairman, there is a call on the parlor phone. It's Factory Director Wu from Hongxing looking for you."

Zhou Andong still didn't look up, only responding indifferently, "Tell him to call my study phone."

"Very well," Sister Wu replied softly, then slowly backed out of the room, gently pulling the door shut behind her.

Zhou Andong stared intently at the manuscript paper before him, the nib of his pen scratching across the paper. He had just written a few lines when the telephone on the corner of the desk rang.

Zhou Andong picked up the receiver with a helpless sigh: "Old Wu, didn't we just drink the night before last? Why do you want to see me again today?"

Wu Hongkang's voice, slightly low and tinged with a trace of exhaustion, drifted slowly from the receiver: "Seven o'clock tonight, at the First Bar. I want to introduce a friend to you. Besides that, there is something I need to pick your brain about."

Zhou Andong couldn't help but be slightly startled. He sensed that Wu Hongkang's voice was different from usual, as if it contained some indescribable, heavy emotion.

"Why does your voice sound so off? Did you run into some kind of trouble?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, followed by Wu Hongkang letting out a long sigh: "Sigh! It's a long story. Let's talk in detail when we meet."

"Fine, then we'll talk when we meet."

Since Wu Hongkang didn't want to say more now, Zhou Andong couldn't press him. He hadn't even asked about the disaster relief gala recording today; he would just ask when they met.

"That's it then," Wu Hongkang replied and hung up the phone.

"It seems Comrade Old Wu has really run into some trouble."

Zhou Andong muttered, gently put down the phone, and continued writing his script.

…………………………

At seven o'clock in the evening, Zhou Andong arrived at the First Bar on time. At a glance, he saw Wu Hongkang sitting in a booth not far from the entrance, with a thin young man in his thirties wearing myopia glasses sitting opposite him.

Zhou Andong walked over, and as he approached, he felt the young man looked somewhat familiar, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember who it was.

"Chairman Zhou!" The young man saw Zhou Andong first and hurriedly stood up to greet him.

Wu Hongkang looked up, saw Zhou Andong, revealed a trace of a smile, and also stood up.

"Little Shen, you know Chairman Zhou, so I won't introduce you," Wu Hongkang said to the young man, then looked at Zhou Andong: "Old Zhou, this young man is named Shen Wenqi."

Hearing Wu Hongkang's introduction, Zhou Andong immediately remembered who this young man was—he was none other than the founder of Wumart, Shen Wenqi.

Zhou Andong extended his hand very politely: "Mr. Shen, hello!"

"Chairman Zhou, you are too polite. Just call me Wenqi," Shen Wenqi was even more polite, bowing slightly as he shook hands with Zhou Andong.

"Sit down and talk!"

Wu Hongkang arranged for the two to sit, then opened a bottle of Brave to the End for Zhou Andong. Now that he was a boss himself, no matter where he went, as long as they had Brave to the End, he had to drink it.

"Old Zhou!" Wu Hongkang clinked his bottle against Zhou Andong's: "Don't look at him as young; he is a truly remarkable young man."

"After graduating from Nankai University in '83, he first went to the Daqing Oilfield to participate in the enterprise reform and management innovation at the time. In '85, he returned to Nankai to pursue a master's degree in management."

"Due to his outstanding grades, he graduated a year early and was assigned to the State Council Development Research Center to engage in macroeconomic research. Over the years, his research has involved price reform, oil strategy, macroeconomic regulation, and many other major topics."

"In '90, he served as the team leader for the 'China Macroeconomic Decision Support System' research project, supported by the World Bank and the National 863 High-Tech Development Fund."

"His research and development work passed national-level appraisal and received high praise from the World Bank and relevant ministries of the State Council. During this period, he obtained a doctorate from the Institute of Systems Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences."

"Furthermore, the research he led on our country's oil price policy received attention from relevant central ministries, promoting the policy reform of our country's oil prices."

"These important achievements made him the youngest academic leader in our country's economic research field. Consequently, he received support from the American National Science Foundation to conduct postdoctoral research in systems engineering at Stanford University."

"He returned to China early last year and founded the Caster Company with several friends. It is a high-tech enterprise. After more than a year of development, it has achieved relatively good performance and developed excellent IT projects for several large domestic enterprises..."

Zhou Andong suddenly understood a bit. Shen Wenqi founded Wumart at the end of '94. He was meeting him through Wu Hongkang, likely looking to solicit investment.

Unlike entrepreneurs who started businesses in the early '80s, such as Jianlibao's Boss Li, Haier's Boss Zhang, and Lianxiang's Zhi, the entrepreneurs after '92 had a higher proportion of highly educated intellectuals.

They were knowledgeable, broad-minded, and stood at a higher starting point than their predecessors. Their entrepreneurial directions were more diverse and cutting-edge. For example, Chen Yuzhong founded China's first cultural relic and art auction company, and Shen Wenqi's Caster was also one of the earliest information technology companies in the country. This generation of people later had a unified name: the '92 Faction."

Although the term '92 Faction didn't exist yet, it was undeniable that Zhou Andong was the most influential and representative figure of the '92 Faction, bar none.

While studying in the United States, Shen Wenqi conducted specialized research on the American retail industry, and what he admired most was Costco. This chain membership-based warehouse retail store later profoundly influenced Xiaomi and Miniso. In '96, Shen Wenqi made a special trip to the United States to inspect Costco and introduced its budget system to Wumart.

The POS and MIS management information systems used by Wumart were all developed by Shen Wenqi's Caster Company. In the era of extensive expansion of local supermarkets, Wumart's store commodity barcode usage rate had already reached 100%.

The terminal store information connected by HP servers could intuitively see the inventory levels and sales status of 6,000 commodities, and the efficiency of commodity management was significantly ahead.

By '01, Shen Wenqi applied the Internet to commodity procurement, logistics distribution, and inventory management, becoming the first chain enterprise in the Beijing area to truly use Internet technology for procurement and management.

Wumart also invested heavily to build a warehousing and logistics system and cooperated with third-party logistics companies for unified distribution, gradually establishing a competitive advantage in the fresh food and vegetable fields.

Wumart opened stores while simultaneously acquiring others, successively managing the Shijingshan Gucheng Vegetable Market and acquiring the Tongzhou Ximen Mall, Jinding Building, and some commercial properties in Jinmen.

It built a large retail kingdom spanning Beijing, Jinmen, Hebei Province, and other places. By the end of '02, Wumart's annual sales reached 4.5 billion, with taxes paid exceeding 100 million, ranking 12th in the national chain industry.

By '06, Shen Wenqi climbed to 152nd place on the Hurun Rich List with a net worth of 2 billion RMB. Tied with him were the bosses of Geely Auto, Tianjin Sunac, New Oriental, and Bubugao Supermarket.

However, in the autumn of the same year that Shen Wenqi climbed to 152nd place on the Hurun Rich List, he was implicated in the case of Beijing Vice Mayor Liu Yunqing. Shen Wenqi, who had been walking the business world for over a decade, was taken away for investigation.

Wumart's acquisition of state-owned assets in Beijing, such as the Shijingshan Gucheng Vegetable Market and Tongzhou Ximen Mall, was precisely in the area under Liu Yunqing's jurisdiction. When Wumart listed in Xiangjiang in '03, Liu Yunqing had even gone to ring the bell.

But Shen Wenqi's eventual conviction had nothing to do with Liu Yunqing. In the first-instance judgment, financial dealings with Taikang Company and the logistics and information projects Wumart launched brought Shen Wenqi ten years of imprisonment.

From an entrepreneurial star to a prisoner overnight, this was supposed to be Shen Wenqi's prime, and also the best time for Wumart's development. When he was taken away, Wumart had already developed 567 stores and was considered one of the most promising local retail companies.

By the time Shen Wenqi was released from prison in '15, Wumart only had 168 large supermarkets left, and it soon delisted from the Hong Kong stock market in a hurry.

For Chen Wenqi, the unjust case fell from the sky, and Wumart suffered a heavy blow. Although the enterprise didn't collapse due to its solid foundation in technology, talent, management, and operations, it lost major development opportunities.

Ten years in prison changed the world. When Shen Wenqi left, Wumart ranked seventh among the top 100 domestic chain enterprises with 23 billion in sales.

That was the golden age of offline retail. The founder of Gome climbed to the top of the Forbes China Rich List, and JD. com, whose cash flow was almost broken, made Brother Qiang's hair turn white overnight.

When Shen Wenqi returned, offline retail was generally struggling and fighting in the midst of transformation. Old Huang of Gome was still serving time in Beijing No. 2 Prison, and the Gome managed by his wife had already been left a position behind by his old rival, Suning...

It wasn't until '18 that the retrial of Shen Wenqi's case for fraud, unit bribery, and misappropriation of funds was pronounced, changing the verdict to Shen Wenqi being innocent, the co-defendant unit Wumart Holdings being innocent, and the previously collected fines and property being returned according to law.

Zhou Andong listened to Wu Hongkang introducing Shen Wenqi, but was distracted, thinking about Shen Wenqi's life experience in his previous life.

"Old Zhou!" Wu Hongkang finished introducing Shen Wenqi and looked at Zhou Andong with a smile: "Wenqi is very interested in supermarkets, so he found you, hoping to solicit some investment from you."

Zhou Andong looked at Shen Wenqi, smiled noncommittally, and asked: "Why did you think of finding me for investment? Isn't the performance of your Caster Information Company very good? The investment for a large supermarket is only a few million, which shouldn't be a problem for you."

"Capital is not the problem, but we lack experience," Shen Wenqi said very frankly: "To tell you the truth, last year, several ministries held a chain industry development seminar in Yangcheng."

"I attended as a representative of the IT industry. At the meeting, I learned that 10% of the world's top 500 enterprises are in the circulation industry, and chain retail has huge potential. At that time, I decided to develop a POS system for supermarkets."

"When I returned to Beijing, I learned that a large supermarket had opened at Caishikou. I specifically went over to take a look. I discovered that this supermarket actually had a POS system, and the entire checkout system was very complete, which surprised me greatly."

"Since then, I have visited the RT-Mart supermarket several times every month. And what surprised me even more is that this supermarket not only demonstrated excellent ability and level in operation and management, but its business philosophy was even more advanced than Walmart's!"

"First, let's talk about operation and management. From the display layout of commodities to the service attitude of employees, every detail was handled just right. The goods on the shelves were arranged in an orderly manner, making them clear at a glance."

"The aisles were spacious and bright, allowing customers to move through them easily. And the employees, they always greeted every customer with a smile and enthusiasm, patiently answering various questions and providing thoughtful and meticulous service."

"Then there is the business philosophy, which is even more eye-catching. RT-Mart focuses on customer demand, constantly introducing new and unique commodity types and promotional activities."

"At the same time, it actively advocates the concept of green and environmentally friendly consumption, striving to create a sustainable business model. In contrast, Walmart, which has always been hailed as the industry benchmark, seems to be much inferior."

"Just two months ago, I went to Yangcheng again to attend a meeting. Over there, I actually saw an RT-Mart supermarket too. Although it hadn't officially opened yet, the fashionable architectural appearance and the many citizens gathered together, whispering and discussing, revealed an eager anticipation for its opening in their eyes."

"At that moment, I realized that a earth-shaking change was quietly taking place in our country's retail industry. And the retail model of large supermarkets is changing and reshaping the daily lives of domestic people and the entire commercial ecological environment at an astonishing speed."

"At the same time, this new retail form of self-selection and quality consumption is an important development direction for the future. Therefore, after I returned to Beijing, I unhesitatingly started the preparatory work for entering the retail industry."

"However, as various preparations progressed, I was shocked to discover that behind the seemingly simple and easy-to-understand supermarket operations, there were many intricate and complex problems hidden."

"The most pressing issue was the procurement of merchandise shelves. I inquired everywhere and searched in many directions, but I could never find a supplier. Driven to a dead end, I even had the thought of picking up a welding torch and welding the shelves myself..."