Written by Chen Chang, a weekly magazine of Finance and Economics
Editor / Yang Jie
1 sugar-controlled lipositant in the morning, 1 lutein, 1 fish oil, 2 aminose glucose vitellips, 1 coenzyme Q10, 2 grape seeds in the evening. This is the health care "prescription" prescribed by Lin Yi, a post-90s girl.
"Young people today, who doesn't stay up late?" Lin Yi said that when he works, he often works overtime day and night; when he is relaxed or unhappy, he runs to the bar to jump and drink. However, she herself knows that this is not lightly damaging to the body, so eating such functional health care products has become a "self-help" choice.
"Drinking with the left hand, protecting the liver with the right hand; staying up late with the left hand, mask with the right hand; hot pot with the left hand, stomach medicine with the right hand" is becoming the life portrayal of some Generation Z. They are keen to pursue novel and bold ways of life consumption, and with the acceleration of the pace of life and work, staying up late and eating irregularly is already commonplace, but they are worried that this will damage their health. Their lifestyle of staying up late and maintaining health at the same time has also been ridiculed as "punk health".
In the bottles and cans filled with "health products" by these young people, all kinds of functional foods for stress reduction, anti-shedding, anti-aging, and sleep aid are mostly presented in the form of fudge, drinks, etc., which are more beautiful and delicious.
With the increasingly strict supervision and the slowdown in the growth rate of the health care product industry, the traditional health product market has gradually touched the ceiling. Now, the giants of health care products have also quietly turned around and launched a variety of functional foods and oral beauty products to meet the consumption preferences of the Z era. This hundreds of billions of markets has also attracted the attention of capital.
But is this new industry really that beautiful?
The monthly income is less than 20,000, and the health "medicine" costs several thousand
"Lipid-burning sugar is used to lose weight, lutein can protect vision, fish oil can prevent three highs, prevent hair loss, ammonia glucose vitamin bone protection joints, coenzyme Q10 prevent heart problems, grape seed anti-aging." Lin Yi explained the efficacy of this large number of health care products on his desk to the "Finance and Economics World" weekly one by one, "I am currently eating these six kinds, and after eating, I will adjust the combination according to the schedule and physical condition." ”
Lin Yi, 26, works as a business executive at an Internet company. Under the pressure of huge work, whenever there is no overtime night, she will plunge into the bar to enjoy the pleasure brought by bungee jumping and electric sounds, and it is normal to go home at two or three o'clock in the morning to rest. "I believe that there are not a few young people who use the same way to relieve their feelings and work anxieties." But after a long time, she found that she could not sleep at night, listless when working during the day, her body often felt tired, her eyes were dry, her mood was not good, she was prone to headaches, and all kinds of problems came out.
Lin Yi felt that he could not change his living habits in the short term, so he had to choose to "save himself" by means of food supplements. She said that she did not dare to stop taking these health foods, afraid that one day "sudden death" would come to her door.
(Courtesy of the interviewee)
Unlike Lin Yi, Xia Miaomiao's age has passed 30 years old, and she has begun to approach the 35-year-old "Kan'er" of the Internet industry. After each night, she worries about whether she will look mentally ill, whether her skin will start to sagging, and whether her skin will appear dull. Therefore, in the matter of eating health food, she is even more than Lin Yilai.
Xia Miaomiao was also successfully "planted grass" by a star brand on the Little Red Book. Every quarter, she spends more than 2,000 yuan just to buy all kinds of health products of this brand. In the shopping promotion festival of major e-commerce platforms, she also takes the opportunity to stock up on a batch of goods.
Recently, in the live broadcast room, she excitedly ordered a 6-box collagen peptide worth 599 yuan, each box of 10 bags, calculated down, equivalent to each bag almost only spend 10 yuan, she can be like the advertising words printed on the product packaging, "drink out the Q bomb girl muscle." She has to eat 2-4 bags a day, 1 month of hard work, these 6 boxes will be used up. "The anchor has stressed that collagen products must be taken for a long time to achieve results." Xia Miaomiao said, "It's just that the pressure on my wallet is greater again." ”
At present, Xia Miaomiao's monthly salary is less than 20,000 yuan. But in the end, she spent more than 2,000 yuan on health products in a month.
Young people are caught up in "health anxiety disorder". Obsessed with "punk health", it is not only the female consumer group. Li Xiang, who has three years of work experience, said that when he first entered the workplace, the work pressure was very large, coupled with the lack of exercise and irregular diet, slowly, he began to lose sleep, hair loss, and people became fat.
With an irregular diet and lack of fitness, he began to eat a probiotic product that advertised "retention in the intestines". Staying up late for too long to sleep badly, he began taking melatonin. As his hairline grew higher and higher, he also asked his girlfriend to buy several anti-hair loss serums, "staying up late to grow hair without mistakes."
What is worth buying the station data shows that in the past three years, the sales of black sesame pills with health care function labels such as hair care and hair care have soared, such as the GMV of the Chinese time-honored "Fang HuiChunTang" brand, which has an annual increase of 127%; and the health "goji berry tea" with the function of fire removal, sales have also increased by 22% per year.
The post-90s generation of "punk health" is not willing to give up staying up late at work, chasing dramas, and bungee jumping, but they have a strong sense of health and are particularly concerned about maintaining good health. They are also "bringing fire" to a new market: a variety of oral snack health products, such as functional foods, oral health products and beauty products.
According to the "2020 Functional Snack Innovation Trend" released by the Tmall New Product Innovation Center, women account for 70% of the functional snack consumer user group, and users in the 18-29 age group account for about 45%. And functional snacks are in the stage of transformation from "pan-functional" to "burden reduction" and "strong benefits", and the growth rate of demand for sleep assistance, immunity enhancement, whitening and skin care is in the forefront.
(Functional snack demand distribution, where the circle size indicates the size of the demand scale.) Source: Tmall New Product Innovation Center, Photo/GF Securities Development Research Center)
The traditional concept of health care products has also been replaced by new functional foods. They become more tasty and good-looking, and the packaging is more aesthetically pleasing and personalized. Cod liver oil and vitamins have now been transformed into gummies, jellies and a variety of colorful beverages. These foods pay more attention to nutrition and health, and some of them mean "prevention is greater than treatment" and "food supplements are more important than medicine supplements".
Young people eat out of the market of hundreds of billions
The health products industry has ushered in a new wave of development.
At that time, the health care product market once had a number of brands that were familiar to the public, such as Brain Platinum, Life No. 1, Sun God, And Mrs. Oral Liquid, and mass-produced a number of former "richest people". However, over the years, with the tightening of supervision and the continuous standardization of the industry, the development of the health care product industry has gradually slowed down, and there has been no more well-known large single products like that year for many years.
The data shows that the growth rate of the domestic health product industry has gradually slowed down since 2013, and by 2020, the growth rate of the industry will decline to about 4%. In the perception of domestic consumers, traditional health care products are mostly linked to negative news such as pyramid schemes and scams.
However, the rise of the post-90s consumer army has allowed capital to see new opportunities.
"Functional food can also be understood as health food, which has specific health care functions, is suitable for specific groups of people to eat, has the function of regulating the body, but is not intended to treat diseases. Compared with health care products, it does not require a 'blue hat' (the health food label approved by the State Food and Drug Administration), in addition to tablet capsules, it is usually made into gummies, jelly, drinks, etc., with both health attributes and leisure attributes. Fang Yu, an industry insider in the field of catering, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly.
According to data from Zhiyan Consulting and China Business Industry Research Institute, from 2012 to 2019, the market size of China's functional food industry has increased from 114.02 billion yuan to 358.58 billion yuan. At the same time, China's functional food penetration rate and per capita annual consumption are both at a low level, and the domestic per capita functional food consumption in 2018 was 117 yuan, only 1/5 of Japan and 1/8 of the United States; the penetration rate was only 20%, far lower than the data of 40% in Japan and 60% in the United States.
According to the report "Development Trend of the Health Food Industry from the Perspective of Consumer Demand" released in May 2021, domestic health food consumers are showing a younger trend, and 39% of consumers are aged 25-40 years old. In general, the main needs of consumers are efficacy, disease prevention and dietary supplementation, of which the main goal of users aged 19-25 is whitening and detoxification, muscle gain and fat loss, and the main goal of users aged 31-40 is anti-aging age, liver protection and stomach.
With a huge market outlook and scale, capital began to target this track. In January 2022, the functional meal brand Easy Law completed nearly 10 million yuan of angel round financing. In 2021, new brands including minayo, JOLIYOYO, Wonderlab, Sugar Friends Full and other new brands have successively obtained financing, and there are also well-known investment institutions such as IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital, Matrix Partners China, Meihua Capital, and Jiyuan Capital.
According to public data, in Luo Yonghao's live broadcast room, ffit8's "light meal replacement protein bar" sold more than 40,000 boxes in one night, with sales of more than 3.3 million yuan; BUFF X's "sleep gummies" sold more than 20,000 units in 2 months after the launch of the Tmall flagship store, and the average monthly sales of 4 SKUs exceeded 20,000 in 3 months.
Functional food has also become a new direction for giants to "turn around". Health care product brand By-Health, originally known for its protein powder products, also began to expand its category around 2017 to create health food products, and launched the brand Yep, which focuses on collagen powder solid drinks and tableted candies. The latest spokesperson signed by Tomson By-Health for Yep is Olympic star Gu Ailing.
Listed pharmaceutical companies are not far behind. Including Yunnan Baiyao, Guangyao Baiyunshan and other traditional Chinese medicine time-honored brands, have successively launched different functions of fudge food, Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical, Dong'e Ejiao, China Resources Sanjiu also have a layout, they were originally Jiangdong stomach digestion tablets, compound Ejiao pulp, 999 cold spirit and other OTC drugs are the most famous.
Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical, which is well known as "Jiangzhong Stomach Digestion Tablets", launched Jiangzhong "Monkey Gu" biscuits in 2013 and officially entered the field of functional food. Monkey Gu is the original brand of Jiangzhong Diet Therapy Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the group. Monkey Girl Biscuits, which focuses on stomach nourishing effects, became a hit after its advent, and its sales in 2014 were close to 800 million yuan. At the end of the same year, Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical successively launched Monkey Gu Drink and Blue Goji Drink, and subsequently, products such as Jiangzhong Monkey Gu Rice Thin and Jiangzhong Zhongshan Hawthorn Chicken Golden Gummy have also appeared on supermarket shelves in many places.
In the early days, Dong Ejiao launched three types of functional foods such as Dong Ejiao, Compound Ejiao Paste and Peach Blossom Ji Ejiao Cake, and in 2020 and 2021, it has successively listed products for younger groups such as Dong Ejiao brand Ejiao powder and "Flower Jane Age" composite Ejiao powder.
In early 2017, CR Sanjiu established the Great Health Division, and in September of that year acquired a health product company with products covering solid beverages, tableted candies, tea bags, nutritional gummies, etc. According to the company's 2021 semi-annual report, CHC (Consumer Health) health consumer goods business revenue was 5.129 billion yuan, accounting for 66% of the total revenue, which has become one of the company's main sources of income.
Raw materials such as hyaluronic acid, collagen, and white kidney bean extract have also begun to be used in gummies, mineral water, oral liquids and other import-type snack drinks.
Bloomage Bio, the "first share of medical beauty", also put its next business breakthrough on oral hyaluronic acid food. In 2021, Bloomage Launch launched the hyaluronic acid food brand "Black Zero" and opened the sale of "Shuimuquan", a drinking water brand containing 83mg of hyaluronic acid per bottle. In August last year, Bloomage also launched the hyaluronic fruit wine brand "Huxiang Corner".
"Business for young people is still easy to do." Fang Yu sighed, "The bottled tablets of traditional health care products, many people may forget to take them when they buy them. But now, like some fudge, bubble lozenges, enzyme jelly and other functional foods, both beautiful appearance and delicious characteristics, and young people like ordinary snacks almost no different. What's more, it is also portable and ready to eat, making it easy for young people to eat at any time. Therefore, it is normal for capital to favor such foods. ”
(Functional foods are classified by efficacy brand, source: State Food and Drug Administration, figure / Caixin Securities)
Real health, or IQ tax?
But functional foods and health care products are the same, and the focus of the discussion on them in the outside world finally falls on safety and "whether to harvest IQ tax".
In fact, at present, there is no concept of "functional food" in domestic laws and regulations related to food, only the division of ordinary food and health food.
Therefore, strictly speaking, the large multifunctional foods on the market, although they all claim to be produced in accordance with the standards of health food, have not obtained authoritative certification, which can be said to be in the ambiguous area between health care products, health foods and foods. Products such as BUFF X blocking candy, nelo probiotic chewing beans and other products do not have the "green hat" logo of health care products, so they can only be promoted by playing "edge ball".
It was not until February 2021 that the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the "Dosage Form and Technical Requirements for Health Food Filing Products (2021 Edition)", which for the first time included gel candy in the food form into the health food filing dosage form.
After Song Zhiya, who participated in the Korean love variety show "Single is Hell", became popular, an Internet celebrity weight loss fudge brought by her also attracted much attention. This gummy product claims that its active ingredient is Garcinia cambogia extract, which can block the body's absorption of carbohydrates and greatly enhance satiety, thereby reducing energy intake and helping to lose weight.
But soon, this claim was questioned by the industry. Ruan Guangfeng, director of the Science and Technology Department of the Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center, said that the main ingredient in Garcinia cambogia extract is hydroxycitric acid (HCA), and studies have found that HCA can inhibit the synthesis of fatty acids and inhibit appetite, but most of these studies are some in vitro cell studies and animal studies, and there are few studies in humans.
In 2016, the Korean Food and Drug Safety Agency announced that due to reports that garcinia cambogia extract, a slimming product, may cause liver damage, the Food and Drug Administration will take necessary measures, including re-evaluation.
In recent years, the popular white kidney bean extract is also known to contain starch blockers. "It can block the carb, and it will not be fat when eaten." One user said. However, some insiders said that how high the inhibition effect in this type of extract is and how much it is utilized in the human digestive system is not very clear at present.
Lin Yi, Xia Miaomiao and Li Xiang also told caijing tianxia weekly that they also did not have clear evidence that what they ate was really effective, but in their view, snack products should be harmless, "long-term eating, it will always be useful."
(Photo/Visual China)
Is the so-called functional food the "placebo" prescribed by young people who are "punk health" to themselves?
Dietitian Zheng Yulong did not completely deny this statement, "From a professional point of view, by improving daily diet and lifestyle, as well as exercise conditioning, etc., it is beneficial to supplement nutrition." However, before choosing functional foods, you should find a professional organization to do a one-on-one assessment, make a judgment on nutrient deficiency, and then choose to eat the corresponding products. ”
Is the 100 billion market reliable?
In this 100 billion market where capital has high hopes, it is not easy for new brands to survive and stand out.
Can functional foods clearly allow consumers to perceive changes in their physical condition? Hai Yu, an investor in the consumer industry, told Caijing Weekly that few companies can do this. "The ingredients that laws and regulations allow food to add are very different from health care products. Usually the ingredients that are allowed by the regulations to be added to food are less dominant or less effective. For example, GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) is not as effective as melatonin, but melatonin is not allowed in food. ”
"This has caused the problem that many new brands are facing now: users feel that it is useless to eat, or they do not feel useful, they will not repurchase, and the repurchase rate is low, and the brand cannot survive." Haiyu said.
Wonderlab's probiotic product advertisements have been paved with Internet platforms such as Zhihu. In the Tmall flagship store, the product sells more than 8,000 pieces per month. However, in the comment area, there are a lot of voices that "do not work", "pay IQ tax", and "are deceived by advertisements".
(Photo/Screenshot of Tmall platform)
In the BUFF X Tmall flagship store, "Finance and Economics" weekly saw that in addition to the price of about 50 yuan of "blue BUFF" sleep gummies, high-calcium gummies, vitamin C gummies and other staple products sold more than 10,000, the total sales of most of the rest of the products are in the hundreds of thousands of pieces, of which, collagen peptidose, turmeric kudzu gummies and other product sales are only single digits.
During the "Double 11" period in 2021, the first few in the tmall health food hot store list were basically occupied by old brands such as By-Health, Swisse, Yijie, Zimeitang, and Aojiabao, especially overseas brands, and there were basically no new brands.
At the same time, Haiyu said that unlike the health care products and pharmaceutical industries, "the entry threshold of functional foods is not high." The founder of a functional food brand also revealed to the outside world, "90% of the players who have recently entered functional food do not have their own core technology, but look for a foundry to do OEM." "In the field of functional food, most companies have not formed their own research and development barriers.
For the health care products industry, even the industry giants have seriously insufficient investment in research and development. In the first three quarters of 2021, By-Health's sales expenses reached 1.639 billion yuan, but the research and development expenses were only 0.97 billion yuan.
For pharmaceutical companies and health product companies that already have a certain brand influence in the industry, it is not easy to do the "food business" of young people.
E-commerce has already subverted offline channels. Although young people are keen on health, they rarely go to supermarkets and pharmacies to buy goods like middle-aged and elderly people. They prefer to "plant grass" on large e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, as well as platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
According to the Prospective Industry Research Institute, from 2012 to 2018, the sales of China's health food e-commerce channels have increased from 12.6 billion yuan to 82.1 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 36.7%; in 2019, e-commerce channels accounted for 34%.
However, the layout of online channels of traditional pharmaceutical companies and health product companies is still lacking. Such as Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical, the sales terminal of its health care products business is still mainly large shopping malls and hypermarkets, in 2019, affected by factors such as the cold channel and the decline in demand for high-end gifts, the company's annual revenue of the health products sector was only 146 million yuan, down 25.65% year-on-year.
"Punk wellness" young people create huge business opportunities, but for businesses, this market is full of challenges.
(At the request of the interviewees, Lin Yi, Xia Miaomiao, Li Xiang, and Fang Yu are pseudonyms)