The 85-year-old "first-generation entrepreneur" sold his listed company for 1.29 billion yuan as none of his children wanted to take over the business.
On the evening of July 16, Zhejiang Meida Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhejiang Meida", 002677.SZ) announced that Xia Zhisheng and Xia Ding, the controlling shareholders of the company, signed a Share Transfer Agreement with Shenzhen Star Blueprint Industrial Investment Partnership (hereinafter referred to as "Shenzhen Star Blueprint") for a combined 29.99% of the shares, with a total consideration of 1.29 billion yuan. After the transaction, Shenzhen Star Blueprint will become the new controlling shareholder of the listed company, and the actual controller will be changed to Zhang Haizheng.
Just two days before the trading halt, Zhejiang Meida recorded two consecutive daily 10% limit-ups. On the day of resumption of trading on July 17, it once again hit a one-word daily limit-up.
The second-generation heir was unwilling to take over the family business, and the 85-year-old legendary founder of the "first integrated stove listed stock" Xia Zhisheng had no choice but to decide to transfer the control of Zhejiang Meida to a cross-border e-commerce operator. Why did the market respond in such a manner?
01 An entrepreneur who can turn his ideas into reality
In 1941, Haining, Zhejiang, the ancient town of Yanguan. That year, China was in the most difficult period of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
In an old house in Haining, Xia Yubing, a modern Chinese calligrapher, was concentrating on writing at his desk. He was skilled in a calligraphy style called "lacquer script" — using a flat brush to turn rounded strokes into square ones, with thick horizontal strokes and thin vertical strokes, just like being brushed out with a lacquer broom. This unique writing style was originally created by Jin Nong in the Qing Dynasty, and it stood alone in the entire modern calligraphy circle.
Just at that moment, a boy's cry broke the tranquility. Xia Yubing named his son Zhisheng. "Zhi" means the direction one's heart is set on. It refers to a person's ambition as the focus of the mind, the spiritual guide for actions and efforts.
Xia Zhisheng's growth was deeply influenced by his father's obsession with lacquer script. Decades later, when someone asked him what he had learned from his father, he said that the most he had learned was persistence and rigor. This later became the spiritual pillar when he founded his own business.
In the 1960s, Xia Zhisheng went to a university in Beijing to study engineering, but it was a turbulent era. Many people asked him what he had experienced, and he just calmly quoted Gorky's famous saying "Hardship is the best teacher" and then smiled and said, "Many experiences cannot be replicated."
At the same time, Xia Zhisheng was one of the earliest "restless" people after China's reform and opening-up.
In 1979, the spring breeze of reform blew into Haining. Xia Zhisheng, who had just been promoted to deputy director of Haining Valve Factory, made an important decision — to go into private business. In that era, most people who dared to venture into private business fell into two categories: those who had no way out, and those who could see opportunities others could not. Xia Zhisheng belonged to the latter. He later summed it up himself: "The central government had just issued the order that whoever moves faster will enter the market first. Our company was born in that era. If farmers wanted to get rich, they had to develop industries."
So, he founded Xiaobang Electroplating Factory with 5,400 yuan in his pocket, and used his technical expertise to provide supporting services for surrounding industrial enterprises, quickly establishing a firm foothold. After that, Xia Zhisheng began to provide processing and supporting services for large state-owned enterprises such as Shanghai Hardware Factory and Punan Tool Factory. Not only were his products of excellent quality, but they also won the national Plum Blossom Award.
Having achieved initial success, Xia Zhisheng did not rest on his laurels. He first founded a heat treatment factory in 1983, and then Yaoming Plate-Making Factory in 1985. The plate-making factory was also the first truly technological breakthrough in his entrepreneurial journey.
At that time, the domestic high-end mold market relied on imports from Switzerland, which were expensive. Xia Zhisheng took a different approach and developed an etching method, realizing "one-step three-in-one forming", which greatly reduced costs and accumulated substantial capital. By 1986, Xia Zhisheng stood on the award podium in Hangzhou, and together with Lu Guanqiu of Wanxiang Group and Feng Gensheng of Qingchunbao, he received the honor of "100 Excellent Directors" in Zhejiang Province.
Most of the people who won this award in that era later became legends. Xia Zhisheng was no exception. He always followed the same logic: "Take one step, look three steps ahead. When the enterprise reaches 70% of its peak, you must find the next track."
In 1988, when the electroplating factory was booming, Xia Zhisheng surprisingly decided to shut it down, for the very reason that the business had severe environmental problems. It is worth noting that even now, there are not many domestic business owners who truly value environmental protection.
At the same time, he turned his attention to the brand-new consumer electronics field and founded Haining Yaoming Electrical Appliance Factory, producing Meiyao brand audio systems and radio cassette recorders. As a result, he succeeded again. The Meiyao brand became famous nationwide and entered large shopping malls in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The electrical appliance business grew bigger and bigger, and the product lines expanded to cash registers, heaters and energy-saving lamps.
In 1996, Xia Zhisheng plunged into the solar water heater industry and founded Meida Solar Energy Industry Co., Ltd. From melting glass tubes from sand to finished water heaters, he connected the entire industrial chain. Moreover, he moved the production line back to Haining from Xuzhou to solve transportation and environmental problems. Meida Solar Energy soon became one of the first provincial-level high-tech enterprises in the field of solar thermal utilization in China, with its production and sales ranking among the top in the industry. There was a saying in the industry: "North has Tsinghua, South has Meida". His hometown Haining also became the location of Zhejiang Solar Energy Testing Center due to the clustering of the solar energy industry.
At that time, Xia Zhisheng could be said to have achieved great success, but he was unwilling to stop there. Around 2000, influenced by reports about how kitchen fumes harmed women's health, the nearly 60-year-old Xia Zhisheng began to ponder a new question: Could we suck the fumes away from the bottom the moment they are generated?
This idea was absurd at the time. For decades, range hoods had been sucking fumes upwards. Making fumes flow down was against common sense.
But Xia Zhisheng was precisely the kind of person who dared to challenge common sense.
In 2001, he officially established Zhejiang Meida, formed a 7-person R&D team, and started closed-door research and development. For three years, thousands of experiments were conducted. In 2003, the world's first integrated stove was born. By integrating the range hood and the stove together, the fumes are exhausted downwards from the side of the stove, with a suction rate as high as 99%.
When the product was developed, the real difficulties had just begun. There was no production license, property developers did not know how to design the flue, and shopping malls did not know how to sell it. He took the integrated stove to Qingdao to participate in a home appliance exhibition, and visitors asked with confused faces: "Is this a washing machine? Or a refrigerator?"
Xia Zhisheng later recalled those years: "We ran into obstacles everywhere. The first three years were all loss-making. The public had never seen such a thing, and they simply did not accept it." However, he did not get discouraged. Instead, he invested 80 million yuan of his own money in promotion, traveling between Tianjin and Beijing, communicating about industry standards and seeking expert support.
Finally, with the coordination of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the down-draft integrated stove was incorporated into the industry standards. In 2006, Meida participated in drafting the Ministry of Construction's standard for Exhaust Ducts in Residential Kitchens and Bathrooms, which stipulated the technical standards for "lower air inlets".
The company's situation gradually improved. On May 25, 2012, Zhejiang Meida was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, becoming the first A-share listed stock in the integrated stove industry. Integrated stoves also evolved from a "weird product" into an industry with an annual output value of over 25 billion yuan.
Later, more than 500 integrated stove brands entered the market, with Mars, Inalfa and Shuaifeng being listed one after another. Xia Zhisheng also entered his seventies.
02 The dilemma of the second-generation heir
More than 80% of private enterprises in China are family businesses. Since the first generation of reform-era entrepreneurs went into private business, these enterprises have collectively reached the same threshold — the founding generation is getting old, but the success rate of second-generation succession is less than 30%.
Zhejiang Meida is a typical family business. At the time of listing, Xia Zhisheng, his wife Bao Yihong, his son Xia Ding and his daughter Xia Lan jointly controlled the company, with a total stake of 73% after equity penetration.
Having gone through five industries over more than 40 years, Xia Zhisheng made every decision himself and always rushed to the front line. The problem for this founding generation is: You can do everything yourself, but when you want to pass the baton, you find no one is capable of taking over.
In 2017, the 76-year-old Xia Zhisheng resigned as chairman for "health reasons" and passed the baton to his son Xia Ding.
Xia Ding holds a PhD in Economics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, but he obviously did not have the same dedication to the integrated stove business as his father did. Over two and a half years, Zhejiang Meida's operating style was summed up by the industry with the two words "laid-back".
In terms of marketing, competing brand Mars had a sales expense ratio of over 20% during the same period, launching full-scale offensives both online and offline, with overwhelming variety show sponsorships and social media promotions. In contrast, Zhejiang Meida not only had almost no presence in online channels, but also lagged behind in R&D investment during that period, ranking at the bottom among the four listed integrated stove companies.
As a result, although Zhejiang Meida had the first-mover advantage, it missed the golden development period, and Mars, which was established ten years later, quickly narrowed the revenue gap with it during this period.
At the end of 2019, Xia Ding chose to leave for Hong Kong to engage in investment, and his younger sister Xia Lan took over the second baton, serving as chairman and general manager. However, after only four months, Xia Lan quickly resigned from the general manager position, and the 79-year-old Xia Zhisheng had to come back to serve as the general manager himself.
In March 2023, Wang Peifei and Xu Jianlong, the "long-time family veterans" who had followed Xia Zhisheng for decades, took over as chairman and general manager respectively. By June 2026, the 85-year-old Xia Zhisheng held the nominal position of "Honorary Chairman" and completely withdrew from daily operations. Even Xia Ding and Xia Lan did not enter the new board of directors, but before this transfer, the three of them still held a combined 52.41% stake.
Parallel to the second-generation succession issue was the industry's overall shift from prosperity to decline.
The fate of the integrated stove industry is closely linked to the real estate sector. If no one buys a house, naturally no one will buy a stove. According to data compiled by AVC, the retail sales of the integrated stove industry in 2022 was 25.9 billion yuan, and by 2025 it dropped to only 9.8 billion yuan. The entire industry saw a sharp decline in revenue and turned from profit to loss, leaving only Zhejiang Meida with a profit of about 10 million yuan.
03 Far-sighted advance layout
Xia Zhisheng might have been prepared for this long ago. A father knows his son best. Before his son Xia Ding took over, he had completed a round of precise asset restructuring.
In February 2016, Meida Group transferred its 270 million shares at a price of 12.2 yuan per share to Xia Zhisheng, Xia Ding, Xia Lan, and three veterans Wang Peifei, Xu Jianlong and Zhong Chuanliang respectively. After the transfer, Meida Group no longer held shares in the listed company, and the controlling shareholder changed from the "group" to the Xia family individuals. The equity change was prepared in advance, and large dividends were distributed in those years. However, after acquiring the shares of small shareholders formed by the group's early equity incentives plus the resulting taxes, the Xia family faced a cash gap of about 1.147 billion yuan.
In 2016, Zhejiang Meida distributed 3.1 yuan for every 10 shares, with a dividend ratio of nearly 98%. In 2017, it distributed 4.65 yuan for every 10 shares, with a dividend ratio still close to 98% — almost distributing all the profits of the whole year. The dividend in 2015 was only 10 shares transferred for 6 plus 2.5 yuan distributed, which was far less aggressive. Over two years of high dividends, the Xia family took about 375 million yuan with a stake of about 75%.
In June 2018, Xia Zhisheng released the first share reduction plan since listing, citing personal capital needs. This plan was to reduce holdings by 6%, with a market value of about 771 million yuan. But in the end, it was terminated early after reducing holdings by 0.88%. In the same year, the three veteran executives took the lead in reducing their holdings: Wang Peifei cashed out 241 million yuan, Xu Jianlong 158 million yuan, and Zhong Chuanliang 148 million yuan, totaling 547 million yuan.
From 2021 to 2025, Zhejiang Meida's cumulative cash dividends exceeded 1.5 billion yuan. The dividend amounts in 2023 and 2024 even exceeded the net profit of the respective years. Calculated based on the Xia family's 52.41% stake, they took about 794 million yuan in the five years.
After all the dividends were distributed, selling the company became the logical next step.
04 The new owner wants to sell integrated stoves to the whole world?
The buyer of this transaction, Shenzhen Star Blueprint, was established on July 7, 2026, only 10 days before the signing of the transfer agreement. It is a company established specifically for this transaction.
Through equity penetration, behind the buyer entity are Zhang Haizheng and Star Commerce Innovative Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Star Commerce Innovative").
Zhang Haizheng holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He once worked at Microsoft Bing and Amazon, and returned to China in 2013 to transition to cross-border e-commerce. More than a decade later, Star Commerce Innovative has grown into a behemoth. The company has over 1,700 employees worldwide, with business covering categories such as home, outdoor, 3C, auto parts, maternity and baby products, and apparel, selling to the whole world through platforms such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart. Star Commerce Innovative has received multiple rounds of financing from institutions such as CICC Capital and ABC Investment, and was rated as a "quasi-unicorn enterprise" in 2018.
From the perspective of transaction structure, Zhang Haizheng purchased 29.99% of the shares through Star Blueprint, which was just below the 30% threshold for a comprehensive tender offer. The total price was 1.29 billion yuan, at 6.656 yuan per share, an 8% discount from the price before the trading halt. The threshold was hit precisely, and the discount was moderate. After the transaction is completed, the Xia family will still hold a combined 22