Preface
With the continuous development of the mainland's economy, many domestic brands have begun to go global, and "made in China" has spread to all countries and gained the love of countless people.
However, what many people don't notice is that in this process, many familiar domestic brands are quietly being "exchanged for princes": Chinese toothpaste, panda laundry detergent, prince milk, silver heron....
These national brands, which once made us proud, have now existed in name only, become foreign-funded enterprises, and even begin to gradually decay and gradually die.
What's even more heart-wrenching is that the main reason why they will be "dismembered" by foreign capital is that they have encountered the betrayal of "traitors"!
Prince's milk
The theory of "internal mole" is not unfounded, and what happened to the prince's grandmother is the best example:
In 1996, a young man named Li Tuchun resigned from a state-owned enterprise and started his own business after taking out a bank loan, establishing Zhuzhou Prince Milk Dairy Company.
While people thought that this young man would have to experience at least a few failures, he made it all the way through with unstoppable momentum, reaching 30 million in sales in the first year alone.
And Li Tuchun was not satisfied, he directly took out the sky-high price of 88.88 million in the third year and won the advertisement of the golden section of CCTV, this seemingly "crazy" behavior once again proved Li Tuchun's ability:
Unlike now, at that time, it could be said that every family had a TV, and everyone watched TV, and after this advertisement, the sales of Prince Milk opened up all of a sudden.
In the period from 2001 to 2007, Prince Milk was brilliant, accounting for 76% of the fermented milk market, and its sales reached an astonishing 3 billion in 2007.
But from his previous actions, it can be seen that Li Tuchun is a person who will not be satisfied with the status quo and has always pursued aggressiveness, so for the better development of the company, he decided to lead the company to go public.
To this end, he accepted the cooperation of private equity funds such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan, and took loans from six foreign banks, including Citigroup and British Union.
However, in retrospect, this move is tantamount to luring a wolf into the house and planting a bomb for the "demise" of the prince's milk...
In 2008, the "Sanlu milk powder" incident was exposed, and its addition of melamine caused urinary problems in 294,000 infants.
Those involved were quickly punished, but at the same time, the entire milk industry was hit hard, including companies in the same industry such as Prince Milk, and profits continued to decline.
After learning about it, several overseas banks immediately fell into the trap and demanded that the prince's milk repay the debts immediately, and it is self-evident what kind of calculation they made.
It was when the prince's milk was in danger that the inner ghost also appeared, that is, Wen Dibo, the chairman of "Gaoke Dairy", who had always been greedy for the prince's milk, wanted to take over by this opportunity.
So he proposed to pay 100 million yuan as a transaction in exchange for Prince Milk to fully entrust all assets and business to Gaoke.
Although this transaction is unfair, for the sake of the company he founded, Li Tuchun finally agreed.
However, Wen Dibo did not intend to let Li Tuchun go, and even directly asked his wife, Ling Ya, the female public security chief of Zhuzhou, to arrest Li Tuchun and the prince's grandmother for the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits.
In order to get Li Tuchun to admit the crime, Ling Ya forced his family, brothers, and employees to frame him.
In the end, Li Tuchun's uncle committed suicide by cutting his wrists, Li Lijun, one of the founders of Prince Milk, was drewn to death, Li Tuchun's younger brother was forced to confess to the point that he was paralyzed, and a female employee was caused to have a miscarriage...
Although everything came to light in 2013, and Ling Ya is now being investigated for serious violations of discipline and law, Prince Milk, an originally excellent national enterprise, has also been completely lonely under internal and external attacks.
Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean, an old domestic drink with the logo of a cute snow-capped white bear, was registered by the Arctic Ocean Food Company in 1950.
At that time, there were not many soda drinks in China, and cold carbonated drinks were irresistible to everyone, and the Arctic Ocean soon became bigger and bigger, spreading to the national market and becoming a well-known brand in China.
At its peak, it once dominated the national market, with an output value of over 100 million yuan and a profit of up to 10 million yuan.
After the reform and opening up, Arctic Ocean chose to cooperate with foreign companies with higher technology, and the goal was the famous "Pepsi", and Pepsi also happened to want to open the Chinese market, so the two sides hit it off and started cooperation.
But although the Arctic Ocean is really for learning, Pepsi doesn't have any confidence in thinking:
As Pepsi used various means to suppress the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean gradually fell into a business crisis, and Pepsi seized on this almost and directly tried to take away all the controlling stakes in the joint venture.
In this way, the Arctic Ocean completely became a stepping stone for Pepsi, and was completely abandoned after Pepsi opened the Chinese market.
Although in 2007 Arctic Ocean managed to regain brand ownership, it also signed an agreement that was excessive: "no carbonated beverage products will be produced at home or abroad for four years"
By the time the Arctic Ocean returned in 2011, the market had already been re-divided, and this once glorious brand was completely lonely.
Chinese toothpaste
Speaking of this domestic toothpaste with the name "China", I believe that most people must have heard of it even if they have not used it.
Its history is very long among many brands in China, it was launched in 1954 by Shanghai Fu Xin Hong Toothpaste Factory, but although the name was very big at that time, it did not cause any reversal.
It wasn't until two years later, when the entire toothpaste factory was merged into the China Chemical Industry Corporation and the toothpaste formula was improved, that it exploded.
Later, in order to revitalize the national industry in the mainland, with the support of the state, the toothpaste factory once again upgraded the technology of Chinese toothpaste, so that it had a qualitative leap in both quality and output.
Relying on this opportunity, China toothpaste successfully occupied the leading position in China's toothpaste market, especially in the 80s of the last century, and ushered in its own peak:
At that time, the market share of Chinese toothpaste was as high as 40%, which is enough to occupy half of the domestic toothpaste, and it is worthy of the name of the first brand of Chinese toothpaste.
It stands to reason that such a popular national brand, after encountering the reform and opening up, should be a big fire with the support of the Chinese people, why is it rarely seen now?
This also starts from the crazy influx of foreign-funded enterprises into the country:
At that time, the arrival of international toothpaste brands such as Colgate and Crest brought a lot of pressure to Chinese toothpaste, but although the technology of these foreign brands was indeed more advanced, the people were used to using only Chinese toothpaste.
In desperation, the ambitious British Unilever decided to cooperate with China Toothpaste.
At that time, the toothpaste factory of Zhonghua Toothpaste also realized that there was a certain gap between its own technology and foreign countries, so it decided to carry out an exchange, that is, to exchange the market for technology, so it also agreed to cooperate.
Soon, Unilever invested $18 million and obtained the permanent lease rights of the Chinese toothpaste brand, and the condition was that it must promote Chinese toothpaste at the same time as Unilever, with a ratio of about 4:6.
However, after the transaction was actually completed, Unilever did not keep its promise, but hid the Chinese toothpaste.
But what they didn't expect was that at that time, the domestic Chinese toothpaste was very popular, even if there was no publicity and promotion, the people only recognized this brand, and the sales far exceeded Unilever.
In the end, the greedy Unilever decided to restart the "Chinese toothpaste", modified its packaging, and began to vigorously promote it.
It's a pity that under Unilever's improper or deliberately improper management, Chinese toothpaste is gradually declining, although it occasionally appears in front of our eyes, but it is far from the glory of the year.
Of course, it is worth mentioning that although the permanent lease operation right of Zhonghua toothpaste belongs to Unilever, it can still be redeemed and returned to the domestic brand.
It's just a pity that even if it is really acquired, I am afraid it will not be able to regain the glory of the past. Finally, black toothpaste is actually a domestic product.
Silver Heron
As a well-known brand in China, Yinlu's eight-treasure porridge is well-known throughout the country and is loved by many people in the mainland.
However, in 2011, Chen Qingshui, the founder of Yinlu, decided to cooperate with the internationally renowned brand Nestle in order to learn more advanced technology, experience and concepts, so he handed over 60% of the shares to Nestle at a price of 1.5 billion.
Chen Qingshui originally hoped to take this to take the silver heron to a higher level, but he didn't expect that Nestle did not apply its own technology and concepts to the silver heron, nor did it formulate a development strategy for it and carried out "stocking".
This led to a continuous decline in Yinlu's performance, less and less profits, and Chen Qingshui became more and more dissatisfied.
After that, Nestle took advantage of the weakness of Yinlu to directly acquire the remaining 40% and was completely controlled by foreign-funded enterprises, but I didn't expect that even so, Nestle still seems to look down on Yinlu and has not carried out various upgrades.
Finally, in 2020, Nestle sold Yinlu for 1 billion, and the buyer was the owner of a small company named Chen Qingshui.
Yes, Chen Qingshui was reluctant to give up his "child" in the end, spent money to buy it back, and decided to take care of it himself, hoping that he could lead Yinlu back to the top in the future.
brief summary
In addition to the four domestic brands we talked about in detail, there are also Harbin Beer, Vitality 28, Robust, Totole Chicken Essence, Nanfu Battery, Little Nurse and so on.
They were all industry leaders in the mainland and the pride of the Chinese people, but in the end they either fell into foreign capital or went into decline under various suppressions, which is a pity.
But you don't have to worry, now Huawei, Wahaha and other well-known state-owned enterprises are also internationally renowned, more and more Chinese brands to the world, I hope you will support more domestic products, for the rise of domestic goods.