#精品长文创作季#
The veteran juice giant Huiyuan may enter the beauty and daily chemical industry next.
The New Year is approaching, Huiyuan Juice launched a new self-operated gift box last month, with a price of 79 yuan, which caused a heated discussion on the Internet.
It stands to reason that as a well-known domestic brand, although a holiday gift box is not cheap to sell for dozens of yuan, it does not seem to be too much, why does it attract such a high degree of attention?
The reason is very simple, what attracts the attention of netizens is not the pricing, but the product content in the gift box.
In addition to the juice that Huiyuan has been the main product for many years, there are actually five masks in the gift box, and they are also Huiyuan's self-operated products.
Named "Huiyuan Sea Buckthorn Series", the gift box includes 10 bags of puree juice made from sea buckthorn pulp, and 5 pieces of "Sea Buckthorn Moisturizing and Translucent Mask" with sea buckthorn seed oil as the core functional ingredient.
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It is worth mentioning that if we open the e-commerce app and search for "Huiyuan Mask", we can see this product in a prominent position at the top of the search results, priced at 69.5 yuan.
In other words, in this 79 yuan gift box, the product that accounts for the majority of the value is not the juice that helped Huiyuan start, but this set of masks, which shows that Huiyuan attaches great importance to this product.
However, according to the current sales data, this gift box has only sold a few hundred copies on an e-commerce platform since it was launched for nearly a month, and only 40 orders have been sold for the mask's exclusive product link.
Obviously, netizens may be interested in Huiyuan's attempt to enter the beauty track, but they are not ready to become consumers and are still holding a wait-and-see attitude.
In the past few years, it was first failed to be acquired by the international beverage giant Coca-Cola, and then delisted and restructured its assets, and last year it regained its vitality in the boom of domestic product revival;
The development of Huiyuan can be described as twists and turns, forging ahead in the struggle to find new breakthroughs.
Compared with the traditional beverage industry, the beauty track with high requirements for production and research seems to be "more volume", and it is impossible for Huiyuan senior management not to know how difficult it is to tear out a piece of the world on this road.
Is it really a helpless choice for Huiyuan to retreat from the beauty track this time?
From a must-have for the New Year and holidays to being hung on the shelves of shopping malls and no one cares about it, the development of Huiyuan juice in the past 30 years has not been smooth.
Huiyuan's predecessor was a state-owned canning factory in Yiyuan County, Zibo, Shandong Province, and when founder Zhu Xinli took over in 1992, the factory was on the verge of bankruptcy with debts exceeding 10 million yuan.
is such a mess, Zhu Xinli only took two years to make it "come back to life", relying on not taking the usual path.
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It is well known that the mountainous areas of Luzhong are rich in fruits, especially peaches and apples, but before the 90s, local fruit farmers were never able to make a fortune from fruits.
As for the reason, it is also easy to understand, at that time, the transportation and processing level in the mountainous areas was still relatively backward, the fresh fruit was too late to be shipped out, the market demand for canned products was limited, a large number of fruits could only rot in the ground, and the efforts of fruit farmers for most of the year could only be wasted.
However, Zhu Xinli, who used to work in the Economic and Trade Commission, had already planned to transform his business before taking over the cannery, that is, to give up canning and change to concentrated fruit juice, which foreigners love to drink.
In the early 90s, there was no market for fruit juice in China, but it was deeply loved in Europe and the United States.
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The idea is very beautiful, but the reality is very skinny, opening up a new production line means that a whole set of new equipment is needed, where will the funds come from?
In the face of this problem, if you are an ordinary entrepreneur, your first reaction will probably be to "smash the pot and sell iron" to raise money for equipment, and engage in a career like a shipwreck, leaving no way back for yourself.
But Zhu Xinli's brain circuit is completely different, do you have to spend money to buy the equipment?
The reason why he was able to lead the early Huiyuan all the way to take off was that Zhu Xinli relied on his brain, and he didn't have any cash in his hand, so he could draw cakes first!
In order to get the equipment as soon as possible, Zhu Xinli came to the bank to apply for a foreign trade "letter of credit", which is equivalent to asking the bank to endorse himself and prove to the German equipment manufacturer that he has the ability to pay;
It's just that the turnover is not open for the time being, so I will move the equipment home first to start production, and then I can pay when the product makes money.
Using the equipment of foreign merchants to complete production, and then using the products to make money from foreigners, and paying off the money owed to foreigners, in foreign trade terminology, this is called "compensation trade", and in popular terms, it is "white wolf with empty gloves".
Relying on this trick to win, Zhu Xinli successfully solved Huiyuan's urgent need, and as of 1994, Huiyuan has achieved a turnaround.
In the following ten years, it can be described as a period of rapid rise of Huiyuan, and gradually broke out of the encirclement on the track of domestic fruit juice drinks and rushed to the leading position.
In 1996, Zhu Xinli spent 70 million yuan to grab the precious advertising space of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala that year, and deeply implanted the excellent advertising slogan "There is a source to call the New Year" into the minds of the people.
At the turn of the millennium, Huiyuan has seized more than 20% of the domestic market share of fruit juice drinks, and even the international giant Coca-Cola can only hope to match it.
In February 2007, Huiyuan Juice, which raised 2.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, proudly landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first fruit juice beverage company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
This year, Warren Buffett, who is far away across the ocean, focused on two Chinese companies, one is BYD, which had not yet developed at that time, and the other is Huiyuan juice, and has high hopes for both.
No one expected that this year would be the peak of Huiyuan.
In 2008, Huiyuan came to the most critical crossroads since its founding, and a $2.4 billion acquisition plan from Coca-Cola caused the decision-making of Huiyuan's top management to waver.
In 2007, it went public with a market value of 2.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, and in 2008, it ushered in Coca-Cola's acquisition intention of 2.4 billion US dollars.
Don't look at the same "24", after converting the exchange rate, the latter is 7.8 times that of the former, and the difference between the two is more than 10 billion yuan!
In other words, once the acquisition is successful, Huiyuan can get tens of billions of cash, of which more than 70% will belong to Zhu Xinli personally.
Billions of real money are placed in front of him, who is not confused when he sees it? Zhu Xinli is no exception.
In order to facilitate this acquisition, Zhu Xinli showed 100% sincerity to the person in charge of Coca-Cola.
Before the eight characters were skimmed, they had already begun to lay off their distribution and procurement teams, waiting for the relevant staff of Coca-Cola to settle in at any time.
However, at this critical juncture in 2008, the news of Huiyuan's "selling foreign capital" sparked heated discussions in all walks of life.
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I believe that for every Chinese, 2008 has a very unique significance.
At the beginning of this year, most of the southern part of the mainland suffered a rare "ice disaster", and the extremely bad rain and snow weather caused the transportation and power systems to be almost paralyzed, and the lives of residents were seriously affected.
On May 12, the magnitude 8.0 earthquake that occurred in Wenchuan, Sichuan, was an unprecedented disaster, which grabbed the hearts of Chinese people around the world.
The Chinese finally overcame the natural disaster and successfully held the Olympic Games in August, showing the world the spirit of the Chinese people working as one, and the national pride of the people reached its peak.
In such a context, as a famous local enterprise with a business card, Huiyuan decided to sell to foreign capital, and the pressure of public opinion can be imagined.
The end result is already known from God's point of view.
In the spring of 2009, the Ministry of Commerce halted the merger on the basis of the Anti-Monopoly Law, and Huiyuan's share price plummeted for several days, with 56% of its current market value in smoke and an annual net profit deficit for the first time.
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What's even more terrifying is that the chain reaction caused by the failure of the acquisition has become a constraint on the development of Huiyuan in the following years.
Due to the previous "self-defeating" layoff of a large number of distribution and procurement teams, Huiyuan had to rebuild the sales system, not to mention the cost of capital, and the business experience of employees also needed to be trained from scratch, which seriously slowed down the business process.
Moreover, in Huiyuan's original plan, after being acquired, it planned to transform into a raw material supplier for Coca-Cola, so it spent a lot of money to invest in the raw material production base, but in the end it turned out to be a failure.
After 2010, Huiyuan's performance took a sharp turn for the worse, and it became difficult to keep walking on two legs.
In 2018, after being suspended by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange due to business violations, Huiyuan, which was burdened with huge debts, ushered in a three-year dark period.
During this period, although the Zhu family and daughter had repeatedly sought foreign assistance, they still failed to save Huiyuan's business situation, and finally delisted in 2021 due to the inability to meet their debts, and the father and daughter also resigned from their positions one after another.
Since then, Huiyuan juice, which was held up by Zhu Xinli, has no contact with the Zhu family.
In 2022, the dying Huiyuan Juice will change hands, and Beijing Wensheng Asset Management will promise to invest 1.6 billion yuan in Huiyuan, of which 90% will be used for Huiyuan's production and operation upgrades.
In order to regain its former glory, Huiyuan has also begun to actively deploy new online and offline channels in the past two years, and refuses to follow the pace of the times.
Mainstream e-commerce platforms have settled in, official social media have also been registered, and the New Year's Eve party with high exposure has also sponsored and shown its face.
Although it is not yet possible to quickly expand sales channels, for Huiyuan, which has already experienced bottoming out and has begun to rebound, any change can be regarded as a good attempt and a good start.
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Back to the question at the beginning of the article, is it really Huiyuan's "helpless move" to make facial masks across borders?
In a way, maybe, but not exactly.
As we said just now, as long as you don't lie flat after hitting the bottom, then any "toss" is actually a form of rebound.
Although the track of beauty and daily cosmetics is admittedly difficult to walk, it can't stand a "what if?".
Moreover, in the new era of consumption, the arbitrary consumption behavior of contemporary consumers has begun to revolve around "quality", and the health signboard of "cosmetics and food research" is indeed very attractive.
Prior to this, Dong'e Ejiao had already taken the lead in cross-border experiments, launching donkey milk soap that can be used for skin rejuvenation, and Luzhou Laojiao also planned to launch "wine meal beauty", which obviously has quite an idea for the hugely profitable beauty market.
Therefore, in the author's opinion, Huiyuan, a veteran player who is also from the food industry and has achieved great success, may not have no opportunities in this cross-track.
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Roughly calculated, Huiyuan juice has gone through 32 years since its establishment.
If we take the peak of 2008 as the watershed, the uphill road of Huiyuan in the first 16 years can be described as infinitely beautiful, and the long downhill road of "magnificent" after that, 2024 should come to an end.
As a Shandong baby who grew up drinking the peach juice of the Huiyuan family, the author sincerely hopes that Huiyuan can regain confidence, no matter what way, get up from the trough as soon as possible.
Of course, if Huiyuan really makes a name for itself in the beauty industry one day, don't forget to continue to insist on your juice business.
As a Shandong man, before the arrival of the "three highs", Huiyuan juice can continue to drink, and I really can't stick the mask.
-End-
Resources:
New Retail Business Review: "Huiyuan Sells Facial Masks, Does the Ingredient Party Buy It?"
China Entrepreneur Magazine: "Without "Technology and Ruthlessness", Huiyuan Juice Unexpectedly Became Popular
Tencent Finance: "200 Million US Dollars Outstanding, 7.2 Billion Funds Unknown: Huiyuan Juice Encounters Overseas Creditors "Chasing"
Beverage Observer: "From a net worth of 10 billion to a debt of 10 billion, who "killed" Huiyuan?
Food Times: "Huiyuan Juice Turns Red, Why Does Everyone Start Drinking "Unpalatable" Drinks?"
Author: Lu Yao
Editor: Ichiyigi