Dali Garden egg yolk pie, Lehu drink, Cobique potato chips, delicious soda crackers...
It may be hard for you to imagine that these childhood delicacies that once made the post-90s generation crazy obsessed with are actually from a company.
This company is called Dali Group, and its founder Xu Shihui has also been the richest man in Fujian for many years by virtue of this successful entrepreneurial experience.
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However, although Xu Shihui's entrepreneurial story is inspirational, every product he initially launched has some "plagiarism" controversy.
Dali Garden's egg yolk pie and chocolate pie are very similar to the Korean brand Holiyou in terms of appearance and taste;
The earliest flavors of Cobick potato chips also "collided with precision" with the international giant Lay's;
Not to mention the herbal tea, from the packaging to the taste, no matter how you look at it, there is a little bit of Wang Laoji's shadow.
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Despite the suspicion of "copycat starting", we must admit that through nearly 30 years of savage growth, Dali Foods has successfully captured the post-90s, 00s and even post-10 consumers, and the products have filled the childhood of three generations, which is definitely a great feat.
However, when the time comes to 2023, Dali Foods has already shown its decline, and has been recommended by relevant financial institutions to privatize it as soon as possible.
On September 1 this year, Dali Foods was officially delisted from the Hong Kong stock market, and the remaining market value of 51 billion yuan was only about half of its heyday in 2018.
In just five years, what happened to Dali Foods, the "first brother of snacks", and how quickly it came to the point of miserable delisting?
You may not know that this food group, which once had a market value of nearly 100 billion, was actually a food factory with only 3 employees.
And now Xu Shihui, who is worth more than 60 billion, lives in a mansion of 800 million, and owns a private jet, was just an assembly line worker back then.
Unlike the vast majority of business tycoons with second-generation backgrounds we see today, Xu Shihui is self-made in the true sense.
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Born in a poor village, Xu Shihui was forced to drop out of school and work before finishing primary school, Xu Shihui's career started in a difficult mode.
In order to earn more money to help support his family, Xu Shihui left the village early at a young age and came to a food processing factory in Quanzhou City to work as an assembly line worker.
For more than ten years, Xu Shihui has grown up with the replacement of new equipment from generation to generation, and with his own hard work, he has worked all the way from an assembly line worker to a factory director, and finally lived a life of food and clothing that he once wanted.
However, the natural business acumen of Fujian people makes Xu Shihui never accept the status quo.
In 1989, Xu Shihui left the food factory at the right time, took out all his savings, and set up a factory of his own in his hometown Hui'an County, where the first product of Meili Foods, "Meili Biscuits", was also born.
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Why choose to start with cookies?
Because at that time, soda biscuits were a must-have for wedding candy in Fujian.
Because of this, Xu Shihui's food factory started with biscuits, which can ensure a stable local market, accelerate the return of investment funds, and then expand new product lines.
Xu Shihui's strategy was quickly verified by market results.
The relatively high-end packaging and affordable and reasonable price have made the Murray brand biscuits quickly stand out among the competing products, and have won the love of consumers as they wished, becoming a good wedding hospitality product in this period.
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It is worth mentioning that this Meili brand biscuit not only sells well in Fujian Province, but also has a good sales performance in other provinces, which has made Xu Shihui's small workshop well-known in one fell swoop.
However, as a newly opened food factory, if it only produces one product, once the people's freshness is over, maybe the sales will decline, and the ability to resist risks is too weak.
However, at that time, there were too few tricks in the domestic snack market, so what kind of strange products could you try to make to attract the attention of consumers?
Xu Shihui, who is active in thinking, came up with a way to imitate overseas hot-selling products.
And this decision has also laid the foundation for the future status of Dali Food.
The first overseas brand that Xu Shihui imitated was Holiyou, a new pastry brand from South Korea.
In 1995, South Korea's Holiyou landed in China and built a factory in Langfang, Hebei Province, producing its egg yolk pie, chocolate pie, chewing gum and other snack foods, which quickly set off a whirlwind in the domestic market.
Walking into many large supermarkets at that time, you will find that Holiyou's products often fill an entire shelf, which is deeply loved by children.
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However, similar to in South Korea, Holiyou has always taken the route of mid-to-high-end, with small products and exquisite packaging, and a box of four pies will be sold for 10 yuan, which is not a small amount around 2000.
Because of this, it was extremely difficult for Haoliyou's products to penetrate into the third-tier cities at that time.
At this time, Xu Shihui quickly smelled the business opportunity and opened up a new product line, launching pastries that are very similar to Holiyou's two main products, egg yolk pie and chocolate pie, but the price is much lower than Holiyou's, and the portions are much larger.
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With an extremely obvious price advantage, Dali Garden quickly seized the sinking market that Haoliyou has not yet broken through, and has been loved by the general public, and its popularity has also been greatly improved.
After tasting the sweetness, Xu Shihui did the same, launching the potato chip brand Cobick that benchmarks Lay's and the energy drink brand Lehu that benchmarks Red Bull.
All in all, Xu Shihui will imitate whatever product is popular and keep up with the trend of the times.
After all, following the footprints of predecessors is the least likely to step on the pit.
Not only that, Xu Shihui is also well versed in marketing and knows how to handle consumers.
He chooses spokespeople, and he never cares about the cost, and there is only one principle: who is popular invites whom.
Around 2000, the CCTV version of "Smiling Proud Jianghu" was on the air, and the actress Xu Qing, who played Ren Yingying, was popular all over the country, and the first endorsement she contacted was Dali Garden;
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In 2003, Jay Chou swept the mainland with "Sunny Day" and "East Wind Break" in the album "Ye Huimei", and Xu Shihui immediately sent someone to "take it down" and invited him to the platform for Kebik.
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It is no exaggeration to say that in the first wave of star effect dividends around the millennium, Xu Shihui and Dali Group can be said to have eaten quickly and accurately, and the brand awareness has quickly increased.
Along with the fame, of course, there is also the production scale of the High Fashion Group.
In order to be able to supply the growing market demand, Xu Shihui personally took a plane to visit all parts of the country and choose a suitable factory site.
Once the local location advantages are judged, such as whether the transportation is convenient and whether it is convenient for dealers to cooperate with the transfer of goods, Xu Shihui still does not care about the price, and will definitely take it down with a wave of his hand and immediately start building a factory.
As of 2015, when Xu Shihui took High Fashion Group to Hong Kong for listing, High Fashion had as many as 40 large-scale production bases in the country.
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Three years after its listing, High Fashion Group's market capitalization reached its peak in 2018, with a total valuation of nearly 100 billion yuan, ranking at the forefront of the entire food industry.
Xu Shihui's net worth has also reached 67.2 billion, and he has firmly sat on the throne of the richest man in Fujian, and he has been in the limelight for a while.
But the Chinese have an old saying, "the moon is full of losses, and the water is full of overflow", no one can go uphill all the time, and the glory of Dali Group finally stayed in 2018.
In 2017, High Fashion Group launched a new brand Doubendou with a 2.5 billion R&D investment and decided to enter the soybean milk industry.
In order to accelerate brand promotion, High Fashion Group also invited the popular actress Sun Li, who had just starred in the hit drama "The Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Full That Year", to endorse, in an attempt to replicate the popularity of Dali Garden and Kebik.
However, this time, the successful template of "making new products - inviting Red Star to endorse - laying advertising" in Dali Park actually failed.
The products cannot be sold, and it is not only Dali Group that is anxious, but also countless dealers across the country who trust Dali Group and advance funds to purchase goods in large quantities.
A large amount of soy milk was hoarded in the warehouse, and the distributors tried to contact High Fashion Group to return the goods, but they were not properly handled by High Fashion Group, and the conflict intensified.
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While the traditional offline sales channels are thundering, the expansion process of High Fashion Group's online sales channels is not smooth.
Compared with emerging snack brands such as Three Squirrels, Baicaowei, and BESTORE, they were born in the era of high Internet development after 2010, and they were "born" with their own e-commerce attributes, while the situation of old brands such as Dali Garden is even more difficult.
In the past two decades, High Fashion Group has not been able to catch the ride of the rise of e-commerce in time, so it has not been able to enjoy the first e-commerce dividend.
And this also means that when e-commerce gradually becomes the most important business model in the new era, the traditional brand Ragnarok has arrived.
The voluntary delisting in 2023 is more like the last effort made by Dali Group, whose market value has been cut in half compared to its peak, in order to maintain its dignity.
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Looking back on the development history of High Fashion Group, it seems that the reason why the brand has fallen into today's predicament has long been traced.
In the early days of entrepreneurship, High Fashion Group's main products basically relied on "copycats", and the innovation gene was insufficient, but it has not been able to make up for it.
The ship is difficult to turn around, and entering the era of mobile Internet, the 30-year-old "old man" who is accustomed to the offline retail model will only be more difficult.
Fortunately, the emaciated camel is bigger than the horse, and this huge food group, which still retains a market value of 51 billion, still has the strength and capital to turn around.
Recently, there has been news that High Fashion Group still has plans to re-list on A-shares, but it has not yet been confirmed.
Whether it is the end of the heroic road Ragnarok, or the courage to wait for the opportunity to make a comeback, Uncle Chai will continue to pay attention to the next move of Dali Group.
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Author: Lu Yao
Editor: Ichiyigi