Pan Dong

Early life

Pan Dong, born in 1965 (currently 57) focused on education as her highest priority in the earlier years of her life. Before marrying her husband, Luo Qiuping, who could go on to found Blue Moon Group Holdings Ltd., Dong earned both a Bachelour and Master’s degree from Wuhan University in organic chemistry in 1987. Her first job as a post-secondary teacher at another university in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, China led her to a continued passion for further education. 10 years of teaching later, she then completed another Master of Business Administration this time through Michigan’s Lawrence Technological University. Her husband, Quiping, was also educated with a certification in chemical engineering as well as a Master’s in organic chemistry.

In 1992, she and her husband used her knowledge in organic chemistry to develop a liquid kitchen detergent that would later be sold as the flagship product for their enterprise. Two years after the launch of this product, they would found Blue Moon.

Career

By 1994, Pan Dong joined her husband Luo Qiuping in co-founding Blue Moon Group Holdings Ltd. as a joint project between the two of them in the city of Guangzhou.

Despite her position as co-founder of Blue Moon, Pan remained a technical assistant for several years afterward while her husband remained CEO of the company. She was later given stakes from Luo and his father due to her meticulous management and technological knowledge. Through Dong, the company was able to navigate mainland tax benefits with foreign investment according to the prospectus. She was formally appointed as the chief technology officer in 2003. According to the company, Dong has been primarily responsible for its technological development ever since her appointment. Her continued loyalty to the Blue Moon brand also later led to a new position of Board Chair in 2007.

Though the enterprise proved to be lucrative, they believed that proper investment into the brand could lead to an explosion in popularity. The two founders contacted Zhang Lei of Hillhouse Capital Management Ltd., a well-known venture capitalist in the Chinese market in 2010 that was known for his successful investments in other fledgling Chinese companies like Tencent and
JD.com. Lei’s own net worth at the time was $3 billion. Dong and her husband also previously met Lei four years before when the company was then focused on liquid hand soap.

In a phone call, they explained to him their development of China’s first liquid detergent. While they emphasized its current stability in the market, they also believed that the earnings would remain small unless they could gather funds to expand in marketing, production, and product innovation. Lei saw potential in the product, as most companies in China at the time sold only powdered detergent under the assumption that consumers would not pay for the more expensive liquid variety. Believing in the company, he supplied funds to the two and thus Hillhouse became Blue Moon’s first outside investor.

Initial losses following the investment into the enterprise through higher product development prices in this increasingly competitive space did not deter Dong. She continued to push the product into the Chinese market to combat the powdered soaps that were their direct competitors. By 2020, the COVID-19 virus led to a trend of more thorough disinfection, which gave the brand the jumping-off point needed to see sizable profit margins. China was also one of the first countries able to manage the outbreak of the virus, and the investing market favoured brands in recovering regions over ones still in the throes of the pandemic. This combination led to the retail portion of Blue Moon becoming more than 300 times oversubscribed.

Blue Moon’s great success was also due to the company going public on the stock market in December of 2020. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) made Dong worth a total of $8.3 billion as Dong retained 77% of the company’s share. The stock price has since dropped, but Dong is still evaluated in the billions as of July 2022.

Two decades after her position as a teacher, Pan Dong is now considered to be one of the richest women in the country. Her drive in the company pushed Blue Moon’s Revenue to HK$7 billion and doubled earnings from roughly HK$500,000 million to HK$1.1 billion. Her constant marketing and technological work within the company at one point led to Dong’s ranking of 297 among Forbes Billionaires.

The Blue Moon brand has often been compared to the US brands Proctor and Gamble and Unilever Plc. Bloomberg labels Blue Moon as “China’s P&H” after the consumer giant for the development, manufacturing and selling of personal hygiene products, cleaning products and detergents. However, Blue Moon has actually surpassed both brands in sales within the country of China. Hong Kong’s sales alone have provided the company with $1.3 billion in the initial public offering. Blue Moon is touted as an example of local brand loyalty surpassing foreign markets. The company continues to release new products every year and currently has an extensive roster of cleaning products from facewash to detergents.

Net Worth

According to Forbes, Pan Dong’s estimated net worth is $3.6 billion as of July 2022.

Achievement

Dong’s company Blue Moon earned the prize of China’s Green Benefit Enterprise Best Model Award at the 6th World Economic and Environmental Conference in 2017. The company won the International Carbon-Value Aware at the 7th World Economic Environmental Conference in 2018, and also one the honour of C-BPI’s “Golden Brand” for being ranked first in the industry by C-BPI for ten consecutive years (2011-2020). Lastly, Blue Moon achieved the 2019 Responsible Brand Aware at the 9th China Charity Festival in 2020.