Produced by Radar Finance and Economics, | Meng Shuai, editor| Deep Sea
Recently, Wei Long, the "marketing master" of the snack industry who has created circle marketing events for many times, has turned over. Some consumers found that Weilong's many product packaging was printed with advertising slogans such as "about it", "thief big", "tough" and so on, which was considered by many netizens to be suspected of vulgar rubbing the edge ball.
On March 30, Weilong issued a statement saying that recently some netizens put forward relevant opinions and suggestions on the packaging of the company's products, and the content of the layout copywriting of the product packaging caused some netizens to dispute, and the company apologized deeply, the company attaches great importance to the opinions of the majority of netizens and consumers, and decided to stop the production of the controversial copywriting packaging, while optimizing the layout copywriting and design.
Radar Finance noted that Weilong, who is well versed in marketing, has also caused controversy over the page design of the online store. At that time, Weilong's online store used advertising slogans with sexual innuendos such as "thick and long old man" and "sit up and count yourself".
From a pack of small snacks of fifty cents to the spicy noodle empire valued at tens of billions today, Weilong has repeatedly expanded its brand awareness and influence through marketing, and greatly improved the low-end and unhealthy image of spicy noodles in the minds of consumers. However, Weilong has also been repeatedly complained by consumers about food safety problems.
Weilong, which passed the hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November last year, is only one step away from listing. Some industry insiders believe that listed companies, as public companies, need to establish a good social image, and Weilong should pay attention to its own social impact in the future development process.
Packaging has been accused of playing vulgar edge ball more than once
"Spicy noodle brother" Wei Long stall is in trouble!
Recently, some netizens posted that when they were shopping in offline supermarkets, they found that Weilong's multiple product packaging was printed with "about it", "thief big", "tough" and other copywriting, and netizens believed that Weilong's product packaging was suspected of vulgar pornography.
Subsequently, after the netizens' posts were fermented, related topics appeared on Weibo's hot search. As of press time, the topic of #Weilong Spicy Strip Packaging accused of playing vulgar edge balls has exceeded 490 million readers and more than 31,000 discussions.
According to the staff of the Luohe Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, the relevant situation has been learned and will be fed back to the regulatory office for investigation.
The customer service of the Weilong Food flagship store said that this is the design copy, and the labeling made according to the characteristics of the product has no other meaning. On March 26, weilongfang staff responded in a follow-up interview with the media that they would cooperate with the market supervision department to investigate and verify.
On March 30, the company publicly apologized.
At present, the product detail page of the Weilong Food flagship store can no longer see the product packaging involving the dispute copywriting, and the packaging on the product display page on the store shelf is "thief spicy", "chewy", "dry goods" and other advertising words.
Radar Finance noted that this is not the first time that Weilong has caused controversy due to product marketing.
In December 2016, WeiLong, who has repeatedly been out of the circle for marketing, tasted the "sweetness" and launched a new store advertisement in his official online store while it was hot. According to the online store page, The flagship store of Weilong Food is full of advertising slogans such as "thick and long old guy", "sit up and calculate yourself", "halogen is easy to blur things", "little brother eat tofu", "enthusiastic next door old pills", "foot control welfare", many netizens ridicule "suspect that they clicked the wrong URL", Wei Long also reminded on the page - "You are shopping in Taobao, not the kind you think".
According to Wei Long, at about 3 p.m. on the same day, the number of visitors to all terminals of the store soared to more than three times that of weekdays, and 35,000 people rushed in one fell swoop.
At that time, Tao Jie, the head of Weilong online store, said, "If three years ago was the era of chicken soup, then now is the era related to bad taste, funny, entertainment and other elements, and marketing is to adapt to the trend of the times." ”
Founded in 1999, Weilong marketing plays an important role in the development of the company.
2005 is an important node in the development of Weilong. At that time, the spicy noodle industry grew barbarically, and some non-compliant black workshops were exposed by CCTV, and the spicy noodle industry immediately ushered in a cold winter in the industry. At a time when some of its "black-hearted" peers were expelled by the market and some of its peers could not sustain itself, Weilong quickly occupied a large blank space vacated by the market with the advanced production line and quality management system at that time, and completed the further expansion of its own spicy noodle empire.
In 2010, Weilong joined hands with "Little Swallow" to launch the "Weilong" classic series. In 2012, Weilong cooperated with the popular traffic flower Yang Mi to launch a number of products such as mouth-kissing roast and kissing bean curd. Wei Long's many cooperation with stars has not only made it famous, but also changed the stereotype that spicy noodles were only low-end snacks before.
From 2015 to 2016, in order to gain a leading edge in the mixed spicy noodle industry, Weilong upgraded its product packaging with great foresight. At that time, in the market environment where most of the same types of goods were packaged in transparent bags, Weilong upgraded the packaging to a minimalist style with black and white as the main color, and adopted foreign aluminum foil and aluminum film packaging.
Weilong's simple new packaging has received a lot of praise as soon as it was launched. It was this upgrade that Weilong cut to the demand for consumption upgrading at that time. WeiLongyi dumped the greasy and unhygienic impression of the spicy strip packaging in the past, became a hot Internet celebrity snack, and played its own product differentiation in the same type of market to help the brand further gain a foothold in the market competition.
In addition to the aforementioned marketing, Weilong has also launched a number of marketing events such as the official website self-blackening and cooperation with violent comics to help the brand break the circle. Weilong's series of marketing closely followed the trend of the times, and quickly received a large number of young consumers.
Food safety problems have been exposed many times
Although marketing has helped Weilong fight many beautiful battles, the product is ultimately the foundation of the brand, and Weilong has been involved in many food safety storms.
Weilong Food has been found by the market supervision and administration bureau and food and drug administration of Zhejiang, Guiyang, Shanxi, Hubei and other provinces, and added sorbic acid and its potassium salt and dehydroacetic acid and its sodium salt preservatives to its products.
In 2018, according to the announcement of the Hubei Provincial Food and Drug Administration, among the 643 batches of 11 types of food sampled by it, 21 batches of unqualified samples, including Weilong Food, were listed. In response, Weilong Food responded that its products are produced in accordance with the standards of Henan Province, where it is produced, and the products are fully qualified.
In January this year, some consumers reported that foreign objects were found in the large hot sticks they purchased from Weilong products, suspected to be "locking the essence ring" of sex toys. In this regard, the parties said that they did not need compensation, but asked the authorities to respond. Subsequently, Weilong customer service responded that the relevant situation has been reflected to the factory, and it is currently in the investigation, and will feedback the follow-up relevant situation to consumers and actively deal with it.
In addition, on the black cat complaint platform, there were 325 complaints related to Weilong, and consumer feedback related to foreign objects found in the product (small pebbles, plastic, hair nail caps, cotton swabs, etc.), food mold, packaging oil leakage, empty bags, expired and other issues.
It is a critical period for listing
Liu Weiping, the founder of Weilong, who came out of the small county town, is not willing to simply push the spicy strips from his hometown to the whole country, and he also wants to leverage the capital through a small package of spicy strips and send Weilong to the market.
According to Tianyan, in May 2021, Weilong Food completed the Pre-IPO round of financing, with investors jointly led by CPE Yuanfeng and Hillhouse, and well-known institutions such as Sequoia China, Tencent, and Yunfeng Fund participating in the follow-up investment. It is reported that this is the first external financing obtained by Weilong since its inception.
On 12 May and 12 November last year, Weilong submitted a listing prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange each. On November 14 last year, Weilong passed the hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Not long ago, the "2021 Global Unicorn List" released by the Hurun Research Institute, Weilong successfully entered the list with a valuation of 60 billion yuan. As of the close of trading on March 20, the market value of snack brands Three Squirrels, Good Shop and Qiaqia was 10.92 billion yuan, 11.02 billion yuan and 25.304 billion yuan respectively. Weilong's previous valuation is more than 10 billion yuan more than the sum of the latest market capitalizations of these three snack brands.
According to the prospectus, Weilong's total revenue from 2018 to 2020 was 2.752 billion yuan, 3.385 billion yuan and 4.12 billion yuan, respectively, of which the revenue growth rate in 2019 and 2020 was 23% and 21.71%, respectively, and the compound annual growth rate from 2018 to 2020 was 22.4%, which far exceeded the compound annual growth rate of 4.1% in China's leisure food industry in the same period.
From 2018 to 2020, Weilong's net profit was 476 million yuan, 658 million yuan and 819 million yuan respectively, and the company's comprehensive gross profit margin in the aforementioned time period also reached 34.7%, 37.1% and 38% respectively. In 2020, Weilong's net profit margin reached 19.9%, almost double the average net profit margin of China's snack food industry in the same year.
According to the prospectus, from 2018 to 2020, Weilong's distribution and sales expenses were 235 million yuan, 281 million yuan and 371 million yuan, respectively.
However, the prospectus also exposed weilong's shortcomings in online marketing, and the data showed that from 2018 to 2020, weilong's online revenue accounted for only 8.4%, 7.4% and 9.3%. The three squirrels in the same snack track have a revenue of 9.794 billion yuan in 2020, of which online business accounts for 74%.
At the same time, the number of dealers who terminated their cooperation of Weilong offline is rising, reaching 430, 554 and 2132 from 2018 to 2020, respectively. Weilong said that it is mainly to adopt a stricter dealer management system and eliminate dealers whose performance growth rate is less than the company's expectations, performance decline and long-term trading is not active.
Some industry insiders believe that the current Weilong in the field of spicy strips has a relatively leading industry position, although Weilong has also made diversified attempts in products, launched vegetable products, soy products and other products, but spicy strips are still its most recognized products in the market, Weilong's advantages in categories are not obvious, and Weilong's sales performance in online channels also needs to be improved.
"In addition, although Weilong has been striving to improve the unhealthy and unhygienic image of products in the eyes of the public by upgrading product packaging and other forms, the characteristics of spicy strips and other products with more oil, salt and spicy are still facts, and how to develop and improve or launch more healthy products to meet the current consumer demand for food health and low fat is still a problem that Weilong needs to solve in the future." The aforementioned industry insider added.
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