The old brand has become an Internet celebrity, and the ostrich ink is "fragrant"!

At the 116th China Stationery Commodities Fair, Ostrich Company showcased new products. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

　　"The gift box is very beautiful, and there is a line draft inside", "The ink has a faint aroma, and it feels very warm and healing", "The time-honored brand is really genuine, and the materials are exquisite"... These are the comments of consumers on an online store called Eucalyptus Garden Scented Ink. It's hard to imagine that this gift box that makes young people "go up" is actually from Tianjin's old brand - ostrich ink. Click on the links of other ostrich ink products in the store: Chinese traditional color national style gift box, handbook ink, color fluorescent ink, all of which are new cultural and creative Internet celebrity products.

　　How to "fragrant" among young consumer groups? How to make old brands write "legends of immortality"? Recently, the reporter came to Tianjin Ostrich Ink Co., Ltd., located in Nankai District, to find out.

　　Founded in 1935, Tianjin Ostrich Ink is one of the first batch of Chinese time-honored enterprises recognized by the Ministry of Commerce. Special ink for calligraphy and painting, computer spraying printing ink, special ink for animation... Over the past decades, with the development of industrialization, the ostrich ink, which carries the splendor of several generations, has been constantly innovating and always maintaining a good development trend.

　　However, in the 21st century, with the gradual replacement of gel pens and the impact of imported stationery, the traditional bottled ink market has been shrinking, and the sales volume has decreased by 1 million bottles per year; With the advent of fountain pen capsules, bottled ink sales have decreased by 2 million bottles per year. The ostrich company was once in a development dilemma.

　　"We have calculated that a bottle of traditional ink is equivalent to 60 or 70 ink sacs, but the price is only one-tenth of the ink sacs. But people still prefer to use ink sacs because they are portable and don't get dirty on their hands. Ren Wenjuan, chairman of the company, said frankly.

　　"In 2021, the ink sac is already a red sea market," Ren Wenjuan said, "Big brands have been laid out, and the cost is getting lower and lower..."

　　Ostrich is in a dilemma: if the investment is too large at this time, it will reduce costs by increasing production capacity, not to mention the risk; And if you don't get involved in this field, sticking to the bottled ink market is destined to be abandoned by the times.

　　After repeated evaluation, Ostrich chose to enter the game from the heat-sensitive erasable ink sac sector, which was not very competitive at that time. "Thermal erasable ink products were previously only used in gel pens, not in fountain pens. At that time, there were already suppliers of this kind of raw materials in China, and after we got the raw materials, we carried out technological innovation and became one of the two companies in China with thermal erasable ink sac product technology. Ren Wenjuan said.

　　If the technology is excellent, confidence will naturally come. In 2022, Ostrich Company invested 3 million yuan to establish an ink sac production workshop, which not only enabled the thermal erasable ink sac with the registered trademark of "Ostrich Friction" to seize the opportunity, but also quickly opened up the ink sac market, and the production capacity and sales volume have been rising, and it is expected to achieve a total sales of 200 million in 2023.

　　"Following the pace of the times and seizing the opportunity to break through and innovate is the killer feature of Ostrich Company to deal with development problems every time." Ren Wenjuan has a deep understanding.

　　The hour hand is turned back to 2017. This year, Ostrich Ink entered the venue of the 13th National Games as a time-honored brand. Huang Qiang, general manager of the company, introduced: "At that time, there was a very popular picture book called "Secret Garden", which was a coloring book with colored pens, which gave us a lot of inspiration. We opened an athletes' stress relief bar in the National Games Village and tried to color coloring books with colored ink. "Unexpectedly, the decompression painting bar has been welcomed by athletes all over the country, and has almost become one of the hottest shops in the National Games Village, and sometimes in the middle of the night, the athletes are still reluctant to leave.

　　This attempt made the ostrich company realize that the old "ostrich" has a lot to offer in the field of color ink. Almost at the same time, the handbook culture is gradually emerging among young people, and if they want to "enter the pit", color ink is also a must-have item.

　　A revolution is underway – adjusting the dosage of ingredients, polishing the color brightness... With the technical difficulties being overcome, the company has gradually developed more than 700 kinds of colors and gold powder series inks in multiple systems such as dyes, pigments, fluorescence, etc., and launched official double micro, opened online stores such as Taobao and Jingdong, etc., and changed from offline agents to omni-channel sales.

　　Facts have proved that with the blessing of product innovation, the opening of the online "second battlefield" has made a qualitative change in the sales of ostrich ink products. In 2022, online sales have increased by 3 times compared to 2019, surpassing offline sales.

　　With the support of the Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Commerce, Ostrich has expanded its overseas sales channels since 2017, registered overseas trademarks in more than 10 countries such as the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and Japan, and became the designated supplier of stationery for the United Nations in 2021. At present, the company's export business has accounted for 20%.

　　In recent years, Ostrich has realized that if it wants to realize the rejuvenation of the brand and build the old brand into a "trendy brand", it is necessary to deeply explore the brand connotation of domestic products, and effectively attract young users by cooperating with Chinese traditional colors, the Palace Museum, Tianjin Museum, etc. The launch of cultural and creative products such as "Buddhist Life Copying Ink Series", "Damei Tianjin Series Handbook Cultural and Creative Souvenirs", "Treasured Edition Ink for the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China" has also made many fans applaud "absolutely", and even become a cultural and creative souvenir for foreign tourists to check in Tianjin.

　　"The success of cultural and creative products has allowed enterprises to find the right direction, improve product quality, change consumers' perception of our brand, and 'ostrich ink' has returned to the lives of young people." Huang Qiang said, "In the future, we will be more active in adapting to the development of the times and market demand, integrating more modern fashion elements, creating more new products, and continuously enhancing the vitality of the brand." ”

　　"Some of the companies in the same period as Ostrich Ink have withdrawn from people's memories, but we hope that we can grow new branches from old trees, live better and live more exciting." Ren Wenjuan said.

　　Just like the "ostrich" we are familiar with on the packaging, it has full wings, its head is high, and with its perseverance, it can run and trek even in the desert.

　　■ Reporter's words

　　New opportunities for old brands

　　Ren Wenjuan, chairman of the ostrich company, told a story to reporters, once she took a taxi to the company, and when she got off the car, she heard two mutters from the taxi driver, the first sentence was, "The ostrich is here!" The second sentence is, "Still alive!" These two mutters are clearly the current situation of many old brands: the brand is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the survival of the enterprise is difficult.

　　Ostrich ink has gone through 88 years of ups and downs. In the era when foreign ink dominated the world, ostrich ink sprung up as a domestic product; In the era when pocket pens were fashionable, ostrich ink was all the rage as a necessary match. However, with the development of society and product iteration, the bottled ink that we were once very familiar with is no longer a necessity of life.

　　How many brands have fallen silently like this. But for older brands, we always have special expectations. It is like the "Xueba" among many brands, despite the changes of the times and the different environments, we still believe that with its ability and courage, we will be able to regain its glory.

　　Of course, the premise is that as an old brand, there is no such endogenous motivation. As a bystander, it is easiest to "point the fingers", for example, old brands cannot "eat the old book", they must be honest and innovative, they must be sincere, and so on. In fact, any old brand, all of which started as a trendy brand, all rely on innovation and development, if there is no sincerity, can it become an enduring time-honored brand?

　　Therefore, the bell must also be tied to the bell. The good or bad of the development of the old brand may only be a topic of conversation for us, but it is related to the vital interests of the employees of the enterprise. The new opportunities for the old brand lie in whether the person at the helm is willing and can exert their subjective initiative. If you want to get up, there will always be a way; If you want to lie flat, then you can't help it.

　　Ren Wenjuan said that when she heard the taxi driver's two words, she felt very uncomfortable in her heart, but it was not frustration, but a belief that rose from the bottom of her heart: live, live well, for this 88-year-old brand, for the generations of ostrich people along the way... (Reporter Liu Hongwei, Hu Mengwei)