"A thousand words long article" exposes each other's inside story, and the Wei family's Liangpi "brothers fight" problem | supply chain | brothers

The story of brothers doing business with opposite goals is always repeated in the business circle.

Recently, a farce of "thousand words long article" mutual exposure of scandals turned Shaanxi catering brand Weijia Liangpi from a regional brand into a national famous brand. The two sides of the infighting were Wei Wenjun, the founder of the Wei family Liangpi, and Li Chunlin, the former head of the operation of the Wei family Liangpi.

Public reports show that on July 21st, Wei Wenjun suddenly had a falling out with Li Chunlin and issued a thousand word long article, accusing Li Chunlin of causing nearly 17 million yuan in cumulative economic losses to the company. However, Li Chunlin, who earns a million yuan salary, is not focused on his job and even uses his colleagues and seeks personal gain.

Li Chunlin countered by accusing Wei Wenjun of being untrustworthy, promising to invest 5 million in himself but not fulfilling it, and accusing him of making "too bloody" money.

And the relationship between the two, who were considered brothers, has come to an end this time. According to a recently released document of Xi'an Huarong Weijia Catering Management Co., Ltd., Weijia Liangpi is the legal representative of its subsidiary Xi'an Xiachun Commerce and Trade Co., Ltd. Li Chunlin, who no longer has any relationship with Weijia due to personal reasons. Recent and future developments are his personal behavior and have nothing to do with Weijia Liangpi.

According to the official website of Weijia Liangpi, it was founded in 1999 as a fast food chain. Huarong Weijia has many brands including Weijia Liangpi, Weijia Convenience, Weisley Hamburg, Weike Coffee, Liu Laosan Rougamo, etc. At present, Weijia Liangpi is the largest brand in Weijia's system. There are only a few stores of other brands. Weijia Liangpi has about 200 stores, mainly in Xi'an, Baoji, Xianyang, Weinan, Beijing, Zhengzhou and other places. The main stores are concentrated in Shaanxi Province.

According to data from Qichacha, Xi'an Huarong Weijia Catering Management Co., Ltd. was established in January 2012 with a registered capital of 500000 yuan. In terms of equity distribution, Wei Wenjun, the founder of Wei Family Liangpi, holds 60% shares, Wei Yongping, Wei Wenjun's wife, holds 35% shares, and Ke Wei holds 5% shares, excluding Li Chunlin.

The reporter noticed that the trigger for this infighting was a suggestion put forward by Li Chunlin on July 16th.

Li Chunlin, as the head of the supply chain enterprise, proposed to Wei Wenjun, the boss, that in order to solve the problem of unfair accounting period of the procurement suppliers, the supply chain of Weijia Liangpi should be dismantled to rebuild a new company to do supply chain finance.

Li Chunlin believes that the previous procurement accounting period of Xia Chun Trading was about 3 months, during which the capital cost was about 5% annualized, equivalent to an annual accounting period capital cost of 20%, which is somewhat high. Therefore, Li Chunlin suggested registering a new company in the name of his wife and raising tens of millions of yuan to do supply chain finance, in order to reduce the cost of accounting capital.

Moreover, the new company is nominally cut off from the Weijia Liangpi and Xi'an Xiachun commerce and trade, and does not deal with the Weijia Liangpi head office financially. The profits saved will be distributed by Weijia Liangpi and the funding party at a ratio of 1:1. At the same time, "the supply chain of Weijia system will be established to control costs, while external services can be provided to incubate new types of catering".

In the following days, Li Chunlin repeatedly expressed his desire to chat with Wei Wenjun.

However, in the afternoon of July 20, Wei Wenjun suddenly rejected the idea of Li Chunlin, and proposed to transfer the "Xiachun Trading" to Li Chunlin. The two sides changed the cooperation mode, and "Xiachun Trading" supplied Wei's Liangpi at the market price. Not only that, Li Chunlin needs to take over all the assets and liabilities of "Xiachun Trading".

On July 21st, both sides finally "tore apart their faces" and began to blame each other.

The outside world speculates that the two sides may have accumulated grievances for a long time, and the issue of supply chain finance is just a trigger point.

In recent years, supply chain finance has also been quite common in industries such as fast-moving consumer goods and catering. The main reason is that after the epidemic, practitioners face financial difficulties and will use supply chain finance to provide small-scale credit services to meet their funding needs for raw material procurement, rent, employee wages, and other expenses. For example, the procurement of ingredients by catering enterprises is a high-frequency demand. If paid on a daily basis, it will occupy a lot of funds. However, if there is a payment period, it often leads to an increase in procurement prices, which has always been a dilemma in the industry. And supply chain finance can play the role of a lubricant in the middle.

At a previous industry forum, Chen Lizhi, CFO of Xufuji, mentioned the case of distributors in the "irrigation" supply chain. During the Spring Festival of 2023, Xufuji helped new distributors of multi brand agents stock up during the peak season by jointly offering interest subsidies with online commercial banks, driving a significant increase in shipment volume at a small cost.

Regarding the issue raised by Li Chunlin about the high cost of funds for Xia Chun's commercial accounts, the reporter from First Financial News learned that currently, platforms such as Meituan also have supply chain finance loans such as business loans, with an annualized interest rate of around 7.2%. In general, supply chain loans in the beverage industry are also mostly around 7% annualized.

However, a person in charge of a private enterprise told a reporter from First Financial that although the platform's funding scale is called out to be large, the actual operation of a single fund is generally not large, mainly to avoid risks. If obtaining short-term unsecured loans through small loan companies, the monthly interest rate is generally around 2% to 3%.