When he was 3 years old, Chen lived in poverty with his father and had to move from place to place throughout his childhood.
Finally, Chen realized he had two passions: tinkering and repairing equipment and machines and cooking traditional dishes.
USD dumpling billionaire Chen Zemin is currently 72 years old and still has no opponent to surpass him
When he was Vice President of the People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou, Henan Province, Chen found daily work boring: `There’s really nothing that makes me feel really busy. Work is just wandering around.`
With a boring job at the hospital, Chen started a business in his spare time.
When China has an open integration policy, it encourages people to develop their economy.
One winter, Chen went on a business trip to Harbin City and saw people making a lot of dumplings at a time but had to leave the leftover dumplings out in the cold for the next dinner.
However, at that time China had no freezers available, while importing equipment from abroad cost more than 10 million yuan.
From here, he realized frozen food could become a huge industry, so despite opposition from his family, he resigned from the hospital in 1992 at the age of 50.
A modern dumpling production line of Sanquan
Without using aggressive marketing, Chen brought the product to a famous market, Hainan, introduced how to make frozen dumplings and invited users to taste it.
After the company had initial success with the local market, Chen continued to expand to Beijing – where urban people were not familiar with dumplings.
Many businesses at this time realized the potential market for frozen dumplings, so they started placing quite a few orders from the company.
Chen then changed his view, he supported the development of the industry and even shared business secrets with his competitors.
Sanquan, the name of Chen’s company, is headquartered in Henan province – an agricultural province.
Currently, the company has 7 factories, 35 sales offices, about 2,000 agents and accounts for 27% of the market share in China.
When Chen founded Sanquan, only one in 10 Chinese people had a refrigerator.
Yantai Moon, a Chinese refrigerator manufacturer, said its profits increased fivefold in 2013 alone. And when it reaches 141 million m3, China will surpass the US to lead the world in the volume of frozen warehouses.
Tran Be
