How long has it been since you've eaten Lao Gan Ma hot sauce?
I thought back to it, the last time I ate Lao Gan Ma was two or three years ago.
At the beginning of this year, a news that "Lao Gan Ma's revenue decreased by 1.2 billion yuan" once again brought the former "national goddess" back to the public's attention.
According to the report, in 2022, Lao Gan Ma's revenue will plummet by 1.2 billion, and it will directly fall out of the top ten of Guizhou's private enterprise list.
You must know that Lao Gan Ma was once regarded as a benchmark for private enterprises in Guizhou, and her revenue, profits and taxes were very eye-catching.
Since 2014, when Guizhou Province issued the top 100 list of private enterprises for the first time, Lao Gan Ma has never fallen out of the top 10.
Why did the former "national goddess" Lao Gan Ma fall off the altar, why did the highly sought-after Lao Gan Ma hot sauce suddenly not smell good?
From "Internet celebrity" to "off the net"
The same thing that attracted attention as the sharp drop in the revenue of the old godmother was the "withdrawal from the network" of the old godmother.
According to a report by the Beijing News, Lao Gan Ma's Weibo account "Lao Gan Ma Flavor Food" at the beginning of this year showed that the company's qualifications had not undergone annual review.
According to Sina Weibo's rules, verified corporate Weibo Blue V users are required to resubmit their materials and fees for annual review every year to confirm that they still have the corresponding qualifications.
And Lao Gan Ma gave up the annual review, obviously giving up the corporate Weibo, and at the same time, Lao Gan Ma's WeChat public account has also been stopped for nearly 1 year.
In addition, Lao Gan Ma's official Douyin account has also been interrupted for more than two months, and Lao Gan Ma's "withdrawal from the Internet" seems to have become an indisputable fact.
However, before that, Lao Gan Ma was undoubtedly an "Internet celebrity" with her own traffic.
Unlike many domestic brands, Lao Gan Ma's Internet celebrity road first started from overseas.
In 2000, a new wave of studying abroad was formed in China, and Lao Gan Ma accompanied their pace to spread overseas, and more and more foreign netizens became fans of Lao Gan Ma.
In 2013, Gilt, an American luxury e-commerce company, rated Lao Gan Ma as "the world's top noble condiment" and was sold frantically at a price of 79.1 yuan for two bottles.
In 2015, the Los Angeles Times asked two celebrity chefs and a food critic to blindly select the world's most delicious chili sauce, and Lao Gan Ma won the championship again to raise the price even further.
On most foreign shopping websites, Lao Gan Ma is translated as "Lao GanMa", but there are also fans who worship it and respectfully call her "The godmother" (godmother).
The logistics cost coupled with the cost of the channel makes it difficult to find a bottle in some areas.
The popularity of Lao Gan Ma overseas was transmitted to China through the Internet, accompanied by the emotion of national pride, forming the content spontaneously spread by netizens.
For example, in the 2018 Spring Festival Gala, the host Liu Tao's lipstick was called "Lao Gan Ma Color" by a blogger, and related topics became hot searches the next day, with more than 160 million views.
found that the old godmother with such a huge network communication power also put aside the founder Tao Huabi's principle of "no advertising" and began to frequently cross the border.
In September 2019, Lao Gan Ma refreshed people's cognition with an advertisement on Weibo, in which Lao Gan Ma turned into a girl, and impressed everyone with the dance steps and brainwashing divine comedy of ghost animals.
In the same month, at the New York Spring and Summer Fashion Week, an old godmother sweatshirt appeared on the runway, attracting the attention of the whole network.
This sweatshirt with a red background, Tao Huabi's head printed on the chest, and "National Goddess" and "Sauces Queen" printed on the sleeves respectively, became a hit for a while.
Lao Gan Ma took the opportunity to launch activities on Tmall, including the "99 bottles of Lao Gan Ma + Custom Sweatshirt" package priced at 1288 yuan, as well as a custom sweatshirt for 1999 and a custom apron for 999.
According to Tmall statistics, the sales of Lao Gan Ma increased by about 20% during the event.
However, why do old godmothers with traffic and fans want to "withdraw from the network"?
The second generation is not smooth, and competing products have risen
In 2014, Tao Huabi, the founder of Lao Gan Ma, handed over the last 1% of his shares to his second son Li Miaoxing, and he gradually faded out of management.
However, in the second year, "Lao Gan Ma's taste has changed" was on the hot search, and the explanation given by the company was that it used to be Guizhou chili, but now it has been changed to Henan chili, so the taste has changed.
At that time, Guizhou chili peppers were 12 to 13 yuan per catty, and Henan chili peppers were only 7 yuan per catty, and Henan chili peppers could almost solve about 50% of the cost.
Li Miaoxing's method seems to be smart, but it directly endangers the reputation of the old godmother.
In addition, it was reported because of the problem of oil smoke pollution, and at the same time was named by the central environmental protection inspection team, employees brought product formulas and other trade secrets to competitors, and two fires in the Guizhou factory, which directly affected one-third of the production capacity.
In 2019, Tao Huabi, an old godmother who is over 70 years old, had to return to the rivers and lakes and take charge of the situation of the old godmother.
The first thing Tao Huabi did after returning to the helm of the company was to reuse Guizhou chili peppers, a move that won back the fans of the past and also made Lao Gan Ma's sales rise again.
However, Tao Huabi is still the old godmother, and the rivers and lakes of hot sauce are no longer the rivers and lakes.
In the Internet era, new brands of hot sauce have risen one after another, threatening the status of the former "national goddess" in various ways.
Founded in 2015, Hubang Hot Sauce takes takeaway as the basic plate and launches small packages and low-cost hot sauce, which is sought after by young people.
Chuanwazi, which was also established in 2015, focuses on the Internet in marketing, and comprehensively expands online through live broadcast, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Douyin and other platforms.
In terms of products, all kinds of Internet celebrity hot sauces are more expensive, such as "devil's spiciness", "super large grain beef", "0 fat light food", "Korean style" and other flavors as the selling point of hot sauces emerge in endlessly.
Although Lao Gan Ma also has new products with different flavors, it is always one step behind the market.
In addition, new hot sauce companies basically have capital blessings.
Tao Huabi once said that his company insisted on not financing, not lending, and not going public, which was no problem in the past, but it seems to be a bit out of place at the moment.
According to public information, in 2019, Hubang Hot Sauce completed Series A financing, and in 2020, Fan Saoguang received hundreds of millions of yuan in Series B financing from Shenzhen Capital Group.
In 2020, the listing of Zhongjing Food, the first share of hot sauce, will undoubtedly make capital and the market pay more attention to the track of hot sauce.
In 2021, Chuan Wazi completed the A round of financing, and Jiadian completed the financing of more than 100 million yuan.
In 2022, Xi'an Sun Food announced the completion of capital increase and share expansion, and the newly introduced shareholders include Yuanqi Forest, whose main product is "Ah Xiangpo" hot sauce.
Obviously, with the blessing of capital, competing products have already risen one after another and conquered the market in the market, but Lao Gan Ma still adheres to her own business route and sees the market being gradually eroded.
Of course, there is no superiority or disadvantage in the company's operation, but the times are different, and making changes to conform to the times may be the most in line with the company's development path.