Success Can be Rebuilt, Integrity Cannot — Dinner with Tse Po Tat, Chairman & Executive Director of Hung Fook Tong Group (鴻福堂)

Sometimes the most meaningful and inspiring conversations happen over casual meals. The Time Auction Blog is a snippet of our meetings with people who have found passion in their life and career, where we get a glimpse into their mentality behind their ventures.

As Chairman and Executive Director of one of Hong Kong’s top wellness beverage brand Hung Fook Tong (鴻福堂), it’s no question that Mr. Tse Po Tat has garnered great success for both his company and his own career. But that’s only half of the story.

Mr. Tse has had a long track record of failures — nearly surrendering his entire career at his lowest point — before his company catapulted to its current height of success. With remarkable resilience and persistence, Mr. Tse has led Hung Fook Tong’s overall direction, business strategy, and corporate communication through its ups and downs for 30 years. Despite the lure of high profits that has baited a number of companies in the F&B industry, he makes it a point not to bend ethical rules and insists on honesty and integrity when operating his company.

Over dinner, Mr. Tse shared how his success story was built from failures and reminded us of the value of maintaining moral integrity in whatever career you’re in.

What is thelife motto that you live by?

There are three things that I live by — honesty, sincerity, and responsibility.

No matter what you do, always be honest and treat others with sincerity. This may apply in the context of the workplace when you receive opinions or complaints from colleagues or customers. As for responsibility, you must be willing to own up to your actions when you encounter difficulties or crises in something that you’re in charge of.

As the Chairman of a Company, how do you stay in touch with your customers? Is it hard to respond to honest opinions and unfiltered voices?

I have an advantage because I started out working in the shops selling herbal drinks. I was able to grasp the first-hand expectations of our customers. Bringing these past experiences to my managerial positions, I then relayed what I learned to my employees. I told them to always smile and be willing to take feedback seriously. Don’t blindly object to criticism. Bring it back to the company and we’ll analyze it together to see how we can improve.

Indeed, sometimes it’s hard to accept when it’s not what you want to hear.

For example, the majority of our herbal drinks are low in sugar. But every so often, someone would accuse us of telling lies and saying that the drinks taste like sugar was added. They don’t understand that some herbs, like Chrysanthemum, naturally carry a sweet taste. Adding a small quantity of sugar can already make it very sweet. We often get criticised for this, even by the media. Sometimes we just have to swallow it because fighting back may arouse even greater disputes. We continue upholding our values of offering healthy, quality products and let customers determine for themselves.

What’s a lesson that took you the longest to learn?

Knowing the market and predicting what customers want. We are constantly creating new products but there’s always the risk that a product won’t sell well.

I have to constantly pay attention to the market, the demands of the customers.

Once you’ve come out with a new product and the customers end up not liking it, you will lose everything — the time, the effort you’ve put into creating the product, and also financial loss.

That’s why our company collectively puts a lot of thoughts into each and every new product.

We get everyone in the company to try every new product and make sure it passes a poll before releasing it into stores. Sometimes we’ll hand out free samples to our customers, get their feedback, and run a statistical analysis afterward. I also pay attention to which flavors in-stores are most popular among the customers. The ones that aren’t as popular are taken off the racks. But once we take it down, we will lose profit, because the cost of producing a new flavor is very high.

How do you keep coming up with creative innovations?

I’ve cultivated the habit of being very observative since I was a young child.

I filter my observations and extract the important things to turn into something new and innovative.

An example is bottling up our herbal tea drinks which was a new innovation. I noticed that many successful international beverage companies have their products bottled up and wanted to incorporate that into our small local company. Of course, the process wasn’t easy at all, and I encountered multiple failures. There was even a time when I almost completely gave everything up, but fortunately, I was given another chance and was able to stand back up.

What do you want everyone to take away after meeting you today?

Whether you are operating a business, or just going about your life, you have to recognize your responsibility towards society and be honest in everything you do. This is especially important if you’re working in the food and beverage industry.

Only sell products that you yourself are willing to put into your body. This how the F&B business should be.

But unfortunately, that’s not the case for every company. Just take look at some of the unethical businesses in mainland China that are solely motivated by financial gains. But our company is different, we test all the products ourselves and make sure they are up to standard before selling them to customers.

I would also encourage people to take risks. Our company was first in the local herbal drinks industry to operate in a chain-store format, set up a central kitchen, bottle up herbal drinks, and open up a store inside an MTR station.

For a small local company to expand to such a large scale inevitably incurs risks. But at the end of the day, it all depends on whether you are willing to take those risks.

As a Christian, I believe that what I have on Earth doesn’t belong to me, but to the God above. So, if I’m doing something wrong, I know that he’ll steer me back in the right direction but if I’m doing something right, he’ll keep on encouraging me.

Thank you Mr. Tse for raising 89 volunteer hours to Raleigh Hong Kong, Sunshine Action and more!

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