Produced by Radar Finance and Economics, | Meng Shuai, editor| Deep Sea
Recently, the rumor of white elephant "refusing To accept Japanese-funded acquisitions, 1/3 of employees are disabled" has been widely spread on the Internet, and the old instant noodle brand has also been on the hot search, returning to the public's vision, and the sales of its products have also soared.
White Elephant once gained a firm foothold in the market by launching the star product "White Elephant Big Bone Noodle", but in the face of strong opponents such as Master Kong and Unification, as well as ramen and Akuan and other "back waves", white elephants face greater competitive pressure.
Before the white elephant, brands such as Hongxing Erke and Bee Flower have also staged the familiar "domestic product rejuvenation" bridge section.
They are called "the light of domestic products", have they really ushered in the spring? Industry insiders believe that "playing iron also needs to be hard" by itself. Although many consumers will pay for their feelings, what can really help companies and brands retain consumers is the quality and service of products, as well as continuous innovation and iterative upgrading to cater to the increasingly "picky" consumers whose tastes are increasingly " picky".
White elephant unexpectedly became popular: 1/3 of the employees were disabled and refused Japanese-funded acquisitions
After the End of the Winter Olympics, the Winter Paralympic Games officially kicked off not long ago. During this event, which attracts much attention from people with disabilities around the world, a domestic brand unexpectedly became popular for helping the disabled to find employment. The popular brand is The White Elephant, which was on Weibo on March 6.
One of the reasons why the white elephant is on the hot search is that some netizens turned out the "old news". According to reports, the White Elephant Food Company in Jining, Shandong Province, has 237 disabled employees in 2020, accounting for nearly 1/3 of the total number of employees, and the number of employment of disabled workers in Jining ranks first in Jining.
In addition to providing employment opportunities for the disabled, another reason why the image of the white elephant in the minds of netizens is more magnificent is that the white elephant is the only one in the domestic instant noodle market that refuses Japanese capital. It is reported that the head brands that currently occupy the domestic instant noodle market, such as Master Kang, Unity and Immai Lang, have Japanese capital to participate. Under such a market situation, the image of the white elephant with national feelings has won the praise of many netizens in an instant.
Radar Finance noted that in fact, the white elephant's contribution to public welfare in recent years is far more than this.
From donating 10 million yuan to the Soong Ching Ling Foundation to set up the "White Elephant University Student Rescue Fund", to donating 5 Hope Primary Schools to help children in poor areas and support rural education; from the company to help the Wenchuan earthquake, to the group trekking more than 2,300 kilometers to the Yushu earthquake frontline earthquake relief; when the new crown epidemic broke out, the white elephant donated 3 million yuan of prevention and control funds; Henan was hit by heavy rain, and the white elephant donated another 5 million yuan and materials.
After the white elephant accidentally became popular, its attention also rose sharply. According to the Baidu Search Index and weChat Index, the relevant data of white elephants reached a peak in the past month on March 6.
The surge in traffic is also directly reflected in the sales of white elephant products. Recently, the official flagship store of Tmall White Elephant posted an announcement saying that due to the recent surge in sales, factories across the country of White Elephant launched an emergency plan to produce all-out production, and strive to send out the goods ordered by consumers at the fastest speed.
The "overlord" is in front, and the white elephant is difficult to emerge
Before this popularity, the white elephant had a brilliant time.
Before 1996, Baixiang was only a small processing plant under the Henan Provincial Grain Department, with only 4 acres of land and a simple production line, but the number of employees far exceeded the number required for the production line, which also made the factory lose money for many years.
When the white elephant was on the verge of bankruptcy, Yao Zhongliang took over this "mess". In 1997, a company to produce flour products was built in Henan, and this enterprise called Henan Zhenglong Food Co., Ltd. was the predecessor of White Elephant Food. After Yao Zhongliang took charge, he let a group of old employees "pay leave", and at the same time, he recruited talents from the society, introduced a group of secondary school and college students for the enterprise, and completed the great change of employees of the enterprise.
In the year when green-skinned trains and migrant workers were important elements of the times, the instant noodle market soon ushered in a vigorous development. Under the leadership of Yao Zhongliang, the performance of The White Elephant also turned a profit.
According to the official website, at present, Baixiang Food has formed a layout of 12 high-quality noodle product production bases in 10 provinces such as Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Sichuan, Jilin and Shanxi, with a total of more than 20 subsidiary companies. In terms of production strength, Baixiang has more than 90 instant noodle production lines and nearly 1.2 million sales terminals, with an annual output of nearly 10 billion bags of instant noodles, and its products cover 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and overseas regions across the country.
But despite this, as a brand that many people can often see on the shelves as children, White Elephant has not been competitive enough in terms of market share in recent years, and it is Master Kong, Unity and Immalang who occupy most of the market share. According to data, Master Kong, Unity and Jinmalang have jointly won about 80% of the market share. Therefore, many netizens believe that "the white elephant has gone out of business".
White elephant is not unintentional to participate in market competition, in 2003, white elephant launched the main healthy nutrition of the "white elephant big bone noodles", accompanied by the classic advertising slogan of "big bone nutrition in it", this product has also become the star product of white elephant, sales are rising, helping white elephants to gain a firm foothold in the market.
However, since then, the white elephant, which has successfully seized a lot of the low-end market share of Jinmalang at a price of 1 yuan, in order to cope with the fierce market competition, wants to impact the mid-end brand market at a price of 2.5 yuan, but in the end it has not been able to defeat Master Kang and the unified price blockade. Due to the mistakes in the price strategy, the white elephant was gradually thrown away by the opponent.
At this point, the white elephant can hardly return to its former glory. In 2014, the White Elephant IPO folded, moved its previous headquarters to Beijing, and withdrew to the Henan base camp again.
At present, with the continuous development of the home economy, in addition to facing the competition of several traditional convenience food brands, white elephants also need to deal with many rising stars. In the market, such as ramen noodles, Akuan, Zi hi pot and other products that start from different perspectives of new consumption and new technologies, they are also trying to divide this market.
Although the feeling is easy to use, the iron still needs to be hard
In recent years, cases of "rejuvenation" of domestic products have occurred from time to time.
On the one hand, it is an indisputable fact that the attention of domestic brands is rising. According to the "Baidu 2021 National Tide Pride Search Big Data" released by Baidu, the proportion of domestic brand search popularity in the total brand heat has increased from 45% to 75% in the past 5 years, which is 3 times the search popularity of foreign brands in the same period, and consumers' attention to national tide has increased by 5.28 times in the past 10 years.
On the other hand, the popularity of many "domestic products" is that the brand just happened to step on the feelings of consumers, and then actively or passively rely on marketing to expand popularity and strong "out of the circle".
In July last year, Henan suffered a torrential rain disaster, Hongxing Erke generously donated money, and suddenly took out 50 million chi to help the disaster area, this move was also ridiculed by netizens as "bankruptcy-style" donations, and Hongxing Erke's low-key conscience corporate image was also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Subsequently, netizens poured into hongxing erke's various online stores and live broadcast rooms, and began to buy wildly, and even the business of Hongxing Erke's offline stores was also brought to fire.
A few months later, the veteran daily chemical brand Bee Flower staged this scene again. At that time, bee flower was releasing a new product, and its packaging design sparked discussion. Bee Hua left a message in the interaction with netizens, "This costs money", "We are already very cheap"... Such a grievance of Baba's interaction has made many netizens feel sad about it, and issued a sigh of "bee flowers will not soon go out of business". So netizens spontaneously designed new packaging for their submissions, and sent this brand to the social platform hot search.
And this free "tap water" traffic, but also in the short term for the bee flower has brought a significant increase in sales, bee flower anchor said in the live broadcast, sold 20,000 orders in one day, is the usual amount of a whole month.
However, the two old domestic brands have only maintained the hilarity brought by this traffic for a while. After the enthusiasm of consumers retreated, the attention and sales of the brand also returned to calm, and the number of fans, viewers and sales in the live broadcast room declined. From the outside world's point of view, after the "rejuvenation", the white elephant is likely to be like the first two, and the wild consumption of consumers will gradually return to rationality.
As for whether the white elephant can take advantage of the victory, Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng believes that as a star enterprise dedicated to the help of the disabled in China, the white elephant has actually been taking action in the cause of helping the disabled. It is only with the enhancement of the current national self-confidence and national self-confidence in the Chinese, as well as the increasingly strong plot of the national tide in the whole environment, that the good holding of the white elephant has been rendered, which has caused the "breaking of the circle" of the white elephant. But this is more of a reflection of the brand's sense of social responsibility, rather than the product itself, as far as the market is concerned, the overall development of white elephants is not too smooth.
Some industry insiders pointed out that according to the market performance in recent years, many consumers will pay for their feelings, but what can really help enterprises and brands retain consumers is the quality and service of the product, "the iron also needs to be hard", otherwise it is a short-lived flash.
"With the continuous upgrading of consumption, in addition to the quality of products, enterprises also need to continue to innovate and change, and iteratively upgrade products to meet the increasingly rich consumer demand of consumers in the current new consumer market." Brands want to stand out in a competitive market and cater to market changes and consumer preferences," added industry insiders.
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