Shandong's mysterious female richest man: 20 years to earn a 50 billion dollar fortune, control 36% of the global market

At the end of 2018, the Forbidden City series of cultural creation lipstick quickly swept the circle of friends of many women, and ranked among the explosive red products sold to off-sale on the sales platform.

Riding on the heat of this marketing out of the circle, Huaxi Biological was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in November 2019, issuing 49.56 million new shares and raising 2.3 billion yuan, showing a strong financial power and rapid expansion momentum.

Long before the launch of the Forbidden City lipstick, Huaxi Biological has already occupied a place in the market with its beauty products, and its hyaluronic acid products are industry giants.

Behind the brilliant journey of Huaxi Biological can not be separated from the helm of a woman, she is chairman Zhao Yan .

How did Zhao Yan build Huaxi Capital into an industry giant? What are the ups and downs of her life as the mysterious richest woman in Shandong province?

In 1988, a major announcement swept across China: the central government declared the establishment of Hainan Province and a special economic zone.

With the spring breeze of reform and opening up, countless young people with dreams of starting their own business and digging for gold boiled over.

At this time, in Shanghai, which is thousands of miles away from Hainan, Zhao Yan, a 22-year-old girl from Shandong, was traveling between the classroom and the laboratory.

Zhao Yan majored in biology at East China Normal University, and because of her excellent grades and high research potential, she successfully stayed on as a teaching assistant after graduation.

In Zhao Yan's original life plan, her future would have been in this ivory tower, either focusing on research experiments, or teaching on a three-foot podium.

However, the news of the establishment of the Special Economic Zone in Hainan shocked her, and aroused her unwillingness to be mediocre, eager to venture into the inner nature.

So, Zhao Yan decisively made the decision to resign, and three other friends hope to break out of the world together to go to this land of hope.

When they arrived in Hainan, they were disappointed to find that it was not as easy as they had imagined. Two months later, they did not find any business opportunities, and brought along the savings are slowly decreasing.

Just when everyone was disappointed and wanted to go home, luck suddenly fell from the sky.

In the course of her visit, Zhao Yan inquired about a factory with a batch of refrigerators that had not yet been assembled, and the owner was worried about how to dispose of them.

It turns out that the factory is foreign-invested, but the foreign capital is suddenly withdrawn, the financial chain is broken, the loss of wages of the workers naturally quit, resulting in this batch of unfinished nearly 1,000 units of refrigerators can only be idle in the factory.

Zhao Yan heard, keenly captured the business opportunity. After discussing with three friends, she communicated with the factory owner and bought the refrigerators at a low price.

Subsequently, they urgently went to the credit union loan, due to the penniless, and even had to use this batch of refrigerators guarantee.

In this way, they borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to hire technicians to repair the refrigerators. Soon, the refrigerator was repaired.

Because of the long, hot summers in Hainan, the refrigerator was still a novelty for the people. These refrigerators were put on the market and soon sold out.

Zhao Yan not only paid off the loan, but also earned a considerable amount of start-up capital.

After getting this hundreds of thousands of dollars of the first bucket of gold, the four young people were excited, began a detailed planning. They decided to start with the industry, they set up the Hainan Province Zhendong District Huaxi Industrial Company Limited, and founded a clothing factory.

As a result of proper management, and Hainan region's preferential policies to support, the garment factory quickly entered the profit phase, annual revenue can even reach a million.

At this point, the views of the four entrepreneurial partners have diverged, some people have been satisfied with the current situation of the pot full of money, do not want to take the risk; some people still want to continue to invest in the cause of bigger and stronger.

So, the four people equally divided the revenue generated in recent years, each went their separate ways.

As a determined entrepreneur, Zhao Yan is not satisfied with the little gain in front of her, she believes that there is a bigger business opportunity waiting for her, then decided to stay in Hainan, continue to run their own business.

Living in Hainan, Zhao Yan is no longer satisfied with the operation of a large-scale garment factory, but will look to the real estate sector.

At the time, Hainan was not yet fully developed, the infrastructure is relatively poor, so the land is very cheap. The local policy also encouraged real estate developers to develop and utilize the land, and the policy environment was friendly.

Zhao Yan saw the opportunity and bought three pieces of land.

Even Zhao Yan himself did not expect, in the policy dividend stimulation, Hainan real estate ushered in a wave of heat, land prices continue to climb.

Zhao Yan to 1400 yuan / square meter low cost to buy the right to operate the land, and ultimately to 30,000 yuan / square meter price off, all of a sudden earned more than 20 times the profit.

Zhao Yan quickly became a millionaire.

Unlike other hot-headed investors, Zhao Yan quickly realized the risks of the real estate industry under such high heat, and discovered the impact of speculation behind the heat, then decided to sell all the plots of land, the transfer of garment factories.

The subsequent development also confirmed Zhao Yan's judgment. 1994, Hainan real estate bubble quickly disillusioned, a large number of investors lost to the blood money, a time of rotten buildings everywhere.

And at this time, Zhao Yan, has long been successful from this pool of muddy water to withdraw. She left Hainan and came to the next target city - Weihai, Shandong Province.

However, Weihai has become a sad place for Zhao Yan.

Out of her familiarity with the real estate industry, she proudly invested in the major project of the Weihai International Trade Tower, and came up with a huge cost of 200 million yuan.

And with the advancement of the construction project, the project behind the intricate interests of the entanglement also surfaced, involving many of the big names in business, Zhao Yan was sidelined by the project.

In order to avoid greater disputes, Zhao Yan had to throw down the cost of 200 million yuan, in order to withdraw safely.

The strongest of them all, she didn't just sink into a state of depression, she withdrew from Weihai and turned to Beijing, the capital of the world.

This investment in the career of the defeat to Zhao Yan left a deep lesson, but also let Zhao Yan more cautious weigh the pros and cons of the project investigation more fully and thoroughly.

In Beijing, Zhao Yan established Huaxi Real Estate and set her sights on Chang'an Street.

In Zhao Yan's view, although the cost of real estate on Chang'an Street is incredibly high, the advantages of its location are unique and unrepeatable, and there is a huge appreciation of space. Moreover, the future of the construction project to obtain this lot will only be more difficult, the competition will be more intense.

Adhering to their own judgment, Zhao Yan decisively landed a plot of land here and carried out building development. At the end of the construction of the building, she sold the building to the Huaxia Bank at a high price of 170,000 yuan per square meter. The success of this one project meant that Zhao Yan gained a valuable foothold in Beijing's real estate industry.

Zhao Yan's ambition doesn't stop there. Relying on precise business vision and prudent decision-making, she led Huaxi Real Estate to undertake a series of major construction projects, including the famous Huaxi International Center, SK Tower, Wukesong Stadium, and so on.

Each of these projects was a huge success, for example, the Huaxi International Center became part of the China World Trade Center, and the Wukesong Sports Pavilion became a popular performance venue for celebrities. This has led to the rapid expansion of Huaxi Real Estate, which has an excellent track record, and Zhao Yan herself has become a senior investor and a well-known developer.

Zhao Yan's business map is not limited to real estate development, in the bigger and stronger Huaxi real estate at the same time, Zhao Yan is also slowly arranged in the beauty industry chess game.

As early as 2001, during her EMBA studies at Peking University, Zhao Yan met Guo Xueping, a researcher at the Shandong Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Because Zhao Yan's undergraduate degree is also a student biology major, the two talked to each other and got along very well.

During the conversation, Guo Xueping revealed to Zhao Yan that the Shandong Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences has a joint venture with a foreign company, Shandong Furuida Bio-chemical Co. However, due to poor management and failure to find the right marketing strategy, Forida has always been in the red.

This "bio+commercial" model immediately sparked Zhao Yan's interest. Under the leadership of Guo Xueping, she made a site visit to Forida.

Guo Xueping explained to her that the main function of hyaluronic acid developed by this company is to lock water, but there is no market demand for this function.

When she heard this, Zhao Yan had a change of heart, and she eagerly asked Guo Xueping, "Does this mean that hyaluronic acid can be used to moisturize the skin?"

After getting an affirmative answer from Guo Xueping, the two looked at each other and unspokenly thought of a possible use for hyaluronic acid - beauty makeup.

Zhao Yan realized that with the development of economic conditions, more and more women began to pay attention to appearance management, skin care is one of the most important aspects.

Similarly, many career women, due to work pressure and late-night habits, have more oil in their pores, resulting in greasy, rough facial skin. Hyaluronic acid, or hyaluronic acid, is the right answer to women's skin care needs.

Zhao Yan, who is optimistic about the prospects of the hyaluronic acid market, immediately decided to cooperate with Forida. As an investor, she injected 12 million yuan into Forida and acquired 50% of the company's shares, becoming the largest shareholder.

After taking over the reins of Forida, she led the company through a series of reforms. Before Zhao Yan took over, Forida was still in the mode of a scientific research and development organization, with no clear market awareness, and was extremely young in product positioning and marketing strategy.

As a senior investor with many years of experience in the business world, Zhao Yan used her experience and business vision to transform Forida into a modern enterprise. Under the leadership of Zhao Yan, Forida has set up a research and development center, which is responsible for improving product quality, and a marketing department, which is responsible for connecting with the market.

Under the correct reform decision, Forida soon realized the historic transformation from loss to profit, and changed its name to Huaxi Bio.

With the competitiveness of high-quality products and specialized marketing strategies, Huaxi Bio has become the world's largest R&D and production company of hyaluronic acid raw materials in 2007, and Zhao Yan has become the Queen of Hyaluronic Acid.

In 2007, Huaxi Bio, which accounts for 36% of the world's hyaluronic acid raw material supply, was listed on the Hong Kong stock market. The listing means that Huaxi Bio has entered the capital market and is about to expand.

The reason why Huaxi Bio can occupy the world's leading market share is to grasp the hyaluronic acid can lock the water of the first advantage. As a star, entertainers and even ordinary women to keep the skin moist and clean necessities, so hyaluronic acid has a large number of consumer groups.

At the same time, the production cost of hyaluronic acid itself is not high, even only a few dozen dollars. But in the medical beauty institutions, a hyaluronic acid can be sold for thousands of dollars, which generates a premium of hundreds of times. However, even so, a large number of consumers still rush to buy this product.

Out of the need to consolidate market share and stabilize the consumer base, Zhao Yan believes that a successful business should always remain innovative and dynamic. Before 2016, although Huaxi Bio was profitable every year, there were still problems in executing the strategy. In response, there was a need to upgrade the strategy.

In order to promote the long-term development of the enterprise, in 2017, Huaxi Bio was delisted from the Hong Kong stock market and privatized for change. Accordingly, the company's organizational structure and personnel were adjusted accordingly, and the product strategy was also transformed.

The decision to make the difficult delisting adjustment proved to be a significant positive for Huaxi Biotech.

In November 2019, Huaxi Bio, which completed the structural adjustment, landed on the KTC again, and its second listing performance was extremely remarkable. On the first day of listing, the closing price reached 85.1 yuan, up about 78% from the issue price. HuaXi Bio's actual family member, Zhao Yan, became the new richest person on the board with a market value of 24.1 billion shares.

Among the industry leaders, but Zhao Yan is not stopping there. She pointed out that since Huaxi company to beauty products as the main object of business, we should uphold the attitude of responsibility for the health of consumers, to effectively solve the skin problems of consumers, the advantages of hyaluronic acid products continue to consolidate, and to do the social responsibility of the enterprise.

Looking back at Zhao Yan's entrepreneurial journey of more than 20 years, it can be said that the ups and downs are magnificent. She has a keen business vision and is able to accurately recognize business opportunities. More importantly, she has unparalleled vigor, can carry the failure, but also can push the change, always maintain a grasp of the macro situation.

As a successful entrepreneur, Zhao Yan herself is not satisfied with a 50 billion dollar fortune, but always maintains a sense of social responsibility. Because of her active participation in drug research and development and material preparation in the fight against the epidemic, she was awarded the honor of Shandong Province's 38 Red Flag Woman in 2021, which has filled her glorious life with a great deal of ink and color.

1, China Economic Net: "Huaxi biotechnology Co., Ltd. chairman Zhao Yan: from small substances to open up the big world"

2, Securities Daily Net: "Huaxi biological chairman Zhao Yan: with scientific and technological means to bring more beauty"