A former worker, he became a pharmacist and is the originator of the electronic cigarette, a market estimated at 7,5 billion dollars in 2016. Today ambassador of the blu brand, he personifies the evolution of China, from the great leap forward of 1958 to the current liberalism of the Middle Kingdom.
A HISTORY: THE CREATION OF THE MODERN ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE
A nightmare. It's a " horrible Nightmare that gave Hon Lik the idea of his invention. At least, that is how the Manchu, passing through Paris and receiving in the rather impersonal room of a large Parisian hotel, tells the story. His history. " I still remember it like it was yesterday! I am at the top of a cliff, about to fall into the bubbling sea below, I wake up terrified but as soon as I fall asleep, the nightmare returns. I am sure the culprits were the nicotine patches I left on my chest so I was trying to quit smoking. I had to find something else. »Navy blue jacket, light blue shirt, the one who is generally presented as the inventor of the electronic cigarette willingly sacrifices to the exercise of the interview, affable, posed and smiling behind discreet glasses.
If the filter of the translation (Hon Lik speaks neither English, nor a fortiori French) does not make it possible to grasp all the subtleties of Mandarin, we feel the man familiar with the exercise, mixing personal anecdotes with defense and illustration of a clearly understood vaping: the one which, by preserving the gesture and the nicotine, banishes the harmful effects of tobacco smoke.
Hon Lik is a remarkable communicator, skilled and convinced to fulfill the role required by his new functions. Expert in vaping, he is now R & D consultant of Fontem Ventures, on the Beijing and Silicon Valley sites, and VIP in the world of blu, the electronic cigarette of the subsidiary created by Imperial Tobacco (which swallowed Altadis and therefore the former French Seita in 2008). The tobacco giant bought the company and the patents from Hon Lik in 2013. The blu, launched on the French market in October 2016, preceded by the qualification of world leader and number 1 in the United States and the United Kingdom for e-liquids, is offered by 8 tobacconists in France.
THE FATHER OF THE E-CIGARETTE….
Hon Lik is a bit to the electronic cigarette what Roland Moreno is to the smart card: an imaginative inventor who, from a simple idea and a little electronics, finally created a concept capable of changing the face of the world ... at least that of smokers, and the tobacco industry. " Between my first prototype and the last model, there is the same difference as between the first laptop and the last iPhone.In short, the market should continue to grow. In fact, vapers today number in the tens of millions. A study by the firm EY estimated the world market at 7,5 billion dollars in 2016, with the prospect of reaching 20 billion in 2020. In France, Xerfi estimated it at 400 million euros in 2015 with a rate of growth bringing it to 700 million in 2019.
Hon Lik is also, at the age of 60, a fine summary of China over the past fifty years, from cultural revolution to socialist market economy, to party-tempered liberalism and globalization. He was born in 1956 in Shenyang (Moudken, in Manchurian), the capital of Liaoning province, in the northeast of the country, the ninth most populous city in China. A premonitory sign, this is where the first stock exchange in China was born in 1986. The great leap forward, launched by Mao, begins two later, in 1958. As a young college student, he is embarked on the maelstrom of the cultural revolution initiated in 1966. Too young, Hon Lik will not be enlisted in the Red Guards but will work in the tobacco fields, he recounts without dwelling on him. Plant, harvest, dry, sort, sell the leaves dear to Nicot: he does a bit of everything and begins to smoke, imitating a father who will die… of lung cancer. Having become a worker in a factory producing drilling parts, he will owe Deng Xiaoping's comeback to see the doors of high school open, then, after the baccalaureate, those of Liaoning University, a traditional Chinese pharmacy specialty.
Entering the provincial research institute, he focused on the virtues of ginseng, filed two patents and created his first company in 1994, a success first of all but which soon suffered the onslaught of competition. Certainly, but the electronic cigarette? " I smoked two to three packs of diet a day and, as a researcher and pharmacist, I knew both the plants and the dangers of tobacco. I tried quitting with menthol candy, patches, but no luck. I felt that I had to remove the products of combustion from tobacco, such as tars, but neither the nicotine nor the puff of smoke nor the gesture », He explains. What about electronics? " I was curious, I took apart and reassembled radios and televisions to occupy myself when I was young, the idea then occurred to me to associate the two, electronics and plants to create a substitute mimicking the cigarette. »
A first hand-crafted prototype will come out: a small metal cylinder, a few wires connected to a printed circuit, an original technology for vaporizing a liquid containing nicotine ... In 2003, he patents his invention and creates his start-up, Ruyan (translate "like tobacco"), to industrialize it. If success is first there (we are talking about 20 million euros in sales in China in 2006), the rest will be less rosy. Confronted with the Chinese tobacco lobby and counterfeiting, the company is in decline. Become Dragonite, based in Hong Kong, it cedes, for 55 million euros, the patents on the electronic cigarette to Imperial Tobacco in 2013.
Rich, Hon Lik? Hard to say. He only held a very small part of Ruyan (0,79%) but the deal is surely more complex. And he had not left empty pockets in his pharmaceutical business. " I am part of the Chinese middle class », He summarizes, modest and discreet. His daughter, who graduated from Peking University, is now a 27-year-old lawyer. During his first visit to Paris - private, this time - he had sacrificed to the classic tourist route from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower via the Galeries Lafayette! His only avowed hobby is fine wine - a classic in present day China.
BECOME AN AMBASSADOR FOR BIG TOBACCO ...
Some die-hard vapers have had a bad experience crossing the Rubicon of this "sold", entered the "hell" of the tobacco industry ... He does not care.
He unashamedly assumes his dual status as a smoker-smoker very suitable for playing blu ambassadors. " Manufacturers are in the best position to distribute electronic cigarettes. They see for themselves the decrease in tobacco consumption and have understood, which was not the case at the beginning, that it is an alternative and that the two modes could coexist. And it is also true that the Western market is the only one able to value Hon Lik's patents, the Chinese market being paradoxically somewhat closed to him. " They have the know-how, the network, the financial means ", He specifies, rebelling, without losing his calm, against those who want to ban e-cigarettes in his native country:" This is not the best solution. A thousand years ago a Chinese emperor wanted to fight against the floods by building dikes everywhere. It was a failure. His successor, he dug canals to guide the water. This is what must be done: channel rather than prohibit by framing quality, standards, promoting the right devices and the right liquids. I appreciate the independence of mind of the French, they will know how to make the right choices »
In the meantime, Hon Lik says he is "proud" of his invention which he considers useful for humanity. And has other innovative ideas in mind. " Painting, reading, skiing is not exciting enough for me. A true inventor must invent several things in his life ... »Enough to revolutionize a sector again? Yes, he answers with an enigmatic smile while taking a puff of a pipe. electronic…
Source : Lesechos.fr/
