Red Bull's public opinion war has re-emerged, and this time the focus is on dealers

The dealer only has one question, can my Red Bull sell?

Yesterday, some websites and self-media very coincidentally launched at the same time the title and content are roughly the same article, basically the opening content is the Zhejiang High Court preliminary trial reign of 100 million yuan, Jiangsu Red Bull, Beijing Red Bull, Hangzhou Red Bull are not allowed to reproduce, sell Red Bull, and then continue to say that the market supervision department issued a warning letter to the supermarket operators to stop selling Red Bull, strictly and severely investigated and punished things.

In short, since Red Bull's 6 years of disputes, it is not the first time that such a naked dialogue with dealers has been held.

However, the result of the Zhejiang Higher People's Court's Judgment No. 42 of the Zhejiang Higher People's Court quoted in the article is not a bit early, because both parties appealed immediately after the judgment, and the judgment did not take effect during the appeal period, not to mention that during the appeal period, Red Bull Vitamins provided the key evidence of the original 50-year agreement.

Knock on the dealer

A week ago, the news of Red Bull Vitamins' statement on the original 50-year agreement nearly reversed fears about Reignwood's red bull market position.

At the same time, some self-media pointed out that reignwood's statement of releasing the original 50-year agreement at this time is to increase its negotiating chips before the new annual dealer cooperation negotiations, and to stabilize its own dealer channels.

In fact, reignwood Red Bull's distributors are extremely loyal overall, most of the customers have been cooperating for a long time, almost a company that has grown up with Reignwood Red Bull, and is a strong business in the local area, such as Changsha Huaxia Sugar and Wine Co., Ltd., which appeared last year due to behavior preservation lawsuits. As one of the earliest and most successful distributors in changsha market using direct distribution model, Changsha Huaxia Sugar & Wine Co., Ltd. has been sitting at the top of the Hunan Province Red Bull Vitamin Functional Drink Distributors for more than 13 years, and its distribution of Reignwood Red Bull is sold to large-scale supermarket systems such as Qianhui, Haorunjia, Wanjiahui, etc. In 2020 alone, the number of Reignwood Red Bull distributed by the company is as high as 2.07 million boxes, with sales of more than 230 million.

Therefore, the channel front that reigns and has been consolidated by Reignwood Red Bull for a long time has extremely strong resilience and pressure resistance, and the probability of such a thing as a defection in Reignwood Red Bull will not be very large.

Beverage industry watcher Ma Lei admitted in a recent interview with a reporter from China Business Daily that even if Thai Tencel eventually wins the lawsuit, it will be difficult to win the market. First, because the consumer acceptance of Tencel's Red Bull products in Thailand is average; the second is because the Yangyuan beverage channel is mainly distributed in the northern township market, and the drivers of Red Bull products, white-collar positioning, etc. do not match, which has little help to the Thai Tencel channel; third, many Chinese Red Bull dealers have a lot of feelings for the company, even if they withdraw from the company, many dealers will not choose Thai Tencel products, but choose other functional beverage products.

Reignwood Red Bull revealed data at the 2021 final meeting that the annual delivery amount reached 22.1 billion yuan. At present, 39 business units have been established, and a sales network of 4 million people, including 600,000 core terminals, is served through about 800 offices. In contrast, Thai Tencel has a huge gap with Reignwood in terms of sales data and market size.

Perhaps, the above-mentioned naked article is written for their own dealers, after all, through the ban on the sale of Reignwood Red Bull and the realization of the seamless replacement of Tencel Red Bull is the most worth looking forward to at present, and stabilizing the military's heart is the primary task.

The law needs to be respected

In fact, the zhejiang higher court's first-instance judgment was given to both parties in early January, and both parties also knew that after the appeal, before the second-instance trial judgment was made, the first-instance judgment was not effective, and even so, the self-media still released the judgment documents at a unified time, and deliberately did not mention the fact that the two parties had appealed and waited for the second-instance trial to begin.

For legal professionals, it is fine, but for ordinary people, this is tantamount to using the blind spots of legal knowledge to carry out precise targeted attacks on legitimate merchants, misleading the public and public opinion, creating uneasiness for legitimate merchants, and disrupting the normal order of the market.

In this regard, there is not a trace of respect for the law by beneficiaries.

And this risky operation of flouting the law seems understandable after the shock caused by the current Red Bull Vitamins throwing out the original 50-year agreement.

Some are in a hurry.

After all, the thai TENCEL litigation strategy and market plan are based on Beijing Red Bull can not provide the original of the 50-year agreement to start on the basis of Beijing Red Bull can not provide the original 50-year agreement, was treated by TENCEL as a new agent Wang Rui, only joined China Red Bull in 97 as a grassroots accountant, signed the 50-year agreement in 1995 when the current head of TENCEL Xu Xinxiong is only 25 years old, 95 years of 50-year agreement in their eyes may be just a legend, they are all gambling, gambling Yan Bin can not find the original of this agreement, after all, several times in a critical moment, Reignwood could not produce the originals, not to mention that at the end of 2020, in a public debate, Beijing Red Bull admitted that it was "unable to provide the originals".

And this original is now found and crucial. Multiple lawsuits are linked to it and are interlinked.

With the inclusion of key evidence in the original 50-year agreement and the orderly advancement of litigation trials, the Red Bull case is gradually becoming clear, the original source is clear, and the restoration of the truth of the facts is yet to be given a fair ruling by the law.

Red Bull vitamins can still be sold

In the 6 years of red bull disputes, how many rounds of litigation has Been carried out by Reignwood and TENCEL, I am afraid that even if it finds a legal counsel, it will take a certain amount of time to clarify, not to mention the dealers, especially in the past year, TENCEL relied on the final judgment of the Supreme People's Court No. 394, launched a number of lawsuits against dealers and terminal customers, and enforced injunctions against customers and terminals through the legal tool of behavior preservation.

However, in fact, as of March 2, 2022, no court has yet made a final ruling on trademark infringement involving Red Bull of China and related parties, including the SPC's Final Ruling No. 394 (this case only rejects Red Bull China's claim for trademark rights and clarifies the ownership of trademark rights).

As for the investigation and punishment of Red Bull by the market supervision department, the State Intellectual Property Office (Guozhi Fa Bao Zi (2021) No. 43 Reply) has issued a reply to the relevant bureau to suspend administrative law enforcement. More than 1,000 cases of temporary disposal of China Red Bull products in the market have been suspended after communication and the issuance of relevant evidence.

But in fact, in more low-tier cities, market managers still have more or less subjective or objective law enforcement errors, waiting for Reignwood's legal department to strengthen communication and apply for dismissal, for which Red Bull Vitamins also issued a notification letter to dealers:

However, with the submission of the original 50-year agreement as key evidence, some key lawsuits may speed up the progress, and the harassment faced by dealers at this stage is on the one hand, Red Bull Vitamins will have a bottom, on the other hand, dealers also need to pay attention to preserving evidence as an important material for future accountability.

postscript

In fact, in business there are no permanent brothers, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. The submission of the original fifty-year agreement is enough to pull Red Bull back into the normal track, depending on whether the top management of the two sides of Red Bull has the wisdom to turn the relationship into a jade.

After all, Chinese is about feelings, and winning a lawsuit does not mean winning the market, let alone winning people's hearts.

(Text/FMCG Elite Club)