Original title: "Caring for the Baby's Intelligent Development" column | Steady growth in turbulent times, childhood stories promote the realization of product power, channel power, and brand power
Author/Huanzi
"Childhood Stories is committed to becoming a mother and child nutrition brand that is easy to operate and can make money as a channel partner. ”
In the third issue of the "Caring for Baby's Smart Development" column, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Wang Hongzhi, Chairman of "Childhood Story". Talking about the "symbiosis and win-win" between maternal and infant brands and channels, Mr. Wang added in the interview: "Brands need channels to expand market coverage and increase sales, while channels rely on brand influence and high-quality products to attract more consumers, and the two are interdependent and mutually reinforcing partnerships." ”
In the previous two articles of the column, we focused on the innovation direction of maternal and infant DHA products, as well as the characteristic advantages of "Childhood Story" high-purity DHA algal oil products. In this article, we will start from the perspective of brand decision-makers, focus on the needs and desires of consumers and channel practitioners during the transformation period of the maternal and infant industry, and tell the product development and channel management strategies behind the high-quality growth of childhood stories.
Steady growth in turbulent times
Product power and channel power are indispensable
After bidding farewell to the high population growth in the past ten years, the trillion-dollar maternal and infant consumer market has gradually entered the stage of stock competition, with weak product sales, bottlenecks in operation, and even business shrinkage and decline. In the shadow of group growth, stable and high-quality growth is even more precious, and "Childhood Story" is one of the leading nutrition brands that have completed the "swimming stream".
"The maternal and infant consumer market is in a stage of rapid change. On the one hand, with the upgrading of the consumption concept of the new generation of parents, the quality demand of maternal and infant nutrition users is becoming more and more prominent, and the importance of building product power is self-evident. Wang Hongzhi, chairman of "Childhood Story", said in an interview: "On the other hand, the form of channels is constantly integrated, and the demand of channels has also changed from chasing profit products to pursuing brands with traffic, service and quality. Therefore, it is also important to strengthen its own channel strength. ”
Based on a keen insight into the changes in user and channel needs, "Childhood Story" focuses on production, empowerment, dynamic sales, incentives and other aspects, empowers channel power with product power, and feeds product power back with channel power, and then creates a professional and win-win brand label of "Childhood Story" under the "two-wheel drive" of the two.
In terms of production and R&D, in order to provide Chinese families with higher purity, more natural and better quality maternal and infant DHA products, "Childhood Story" has established and continuously improved the production management and quality control system, from the source of raw material procurement, to the processing and manufacturing in the production process, to the final product factory, "Childhood Story" has high standards and strict requirements for every detail of the entire production chain, creating a "ceiling" of quality and purity of baby smart nutritional supplements. At the same time, "Childhood Story" also actively promotes the integration and optimization of the supply chain, continuously strengthens the competitiveness of its products, and continues to deepen the brand impression of "80% high-purity DHA algae oil = Childhood Story DHA algae oil" in the minds of consumers.
In terms of professional empowerment, "Childhood Stories" has carefully created a variety of professional knowledge training programs for channel partners, striving to help cooperative channels and stores complete "professional transformation" as quickly as possible.
"With the increasing availability of information channels, it is an inevitable trend of market development that maternal and infant consumers are 'more professional' than store operators. In the interview, Wang Hongzhi observed the maternal and child industry: "This is both a challenge and an opportunity for brands and channels, and brands need to improve the professional level of channel partners through practical and effective training and empowerment." ”
Specifically, as early as 2019, "Childhood Stories" began to launch a series of professional training courses and internal training sessions on maternal and child nutrition across the country with a frequency of dozens of sessions per year, inviting industry leaders and well-known experts in the field of nutrition and health care to form a training and sharing team, and using rigorous and efficient academic communication classes to empower partner stores.
In the past five years, "Childhood Stories" has spread to dozens of cities across the country, including Shanghai, Qingdao, Zhengzhou, Linfen, Xiamen, Wenzhou, etc., disseminating the key points of nutrition business operation, product-related science knowledge, and practical skills of store landing to the front line of the market, bringing high-quality and efficient professional level improvement paths to the majority of channel partners.
At the same time, "Childhood Stories" is also supplemented by online high-quality courses to provide channel partners with information on cutting-edge research results, innovative product features and applicable groups in the field of science popularization, so as to ensure that channel partners can update their knowledge of nutrition products in a timely manner and further strengthen their professional capabilities.
In terms of store sales, "Childhood Stories" has continuously deepened its cooperative relationship with channel partners, and intensively launched novel channel sales activities around the pain points and difficulties such as the difficulty of attracting new customers and the low entry rate of terminal products in stores, so as to activate the atmosphere of terminal stores.
For example, in response to the nutritional needs of the new generation of parents who are concerned about the baby's intelligent development, "Childhood Story" takes the "high purity" advantage of its own DHA algal oil products as the basic anchor, and successively launches a series of dynamic marketing activities such as "Childhood Story High-Purity DHA Wisdom Cultivation" and "DHA Selection of High Purity, Hoarding Nutrition for Brain Power", through novel and interactive dynamic marketing activities, successfully penetrating into the post-90s, The young maternal and infant consumption circle of Generation Z not only effectively increased the sales of DHA products in terminal stores, but also further drove the sales of the brand's iron supplements, vegetable and fruit drink liquids and other products, injecting new momentum into the business growth of channels and terminal store partners.
In terms of store incentives, "Childhood Stories" focuses on store product display, store sales performance, customer satisfaction and other dimensions, and sets up multiple incentive mechanisms to tap the self-motivation of store partners' professional growth.
For example, on the eve of Women's Day not long ago, "Childhood Story" launched the "38 Iron Display PK Competition" according to the attributes of the festival, and set up a cash prize pool of more than 80,000 yuan for this purpose. This activity not only effectively mobilized the enthusiasm of cooperative stores to study and improve the display level, but also accumulated richer, more real and more down-to-earth material materials and practical cases for follow-up product promotion activities and training empowerment.
"In 2024, I think the vast majority of maternal and infant colleagues will feel that the market is 'getting more and more volume'. Wang Hongzhi, chairman of "Childhood Stories", said in an interview: "We have also personally felt the unprecedented challenges and pressures, thanks to our long-term and stable investment in channels and products in recent years, Childhood Stories has maintained steady growth in the first quarter of this year." ”
The "halftime whistle" of maternal and child nutrition sounded
Childhood stories are multi-dimensional upgrades to consolidate the lead
According to the "2023 Maternal and Child Nutrition Industry Trend White Paper" released by Maternal and Child Industry Observation, the market size of maternal and infant nutrition products in mainland China is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2024. With the continuous expansion of the scale of players in the track, the continuous deepening of user education, and the improvement of regulatory regulations and policies, the previous business strategy of relying on the concept of ingredients to achieve "lying to win" is no longer effective. When the "halftime whistle" of the maternal and infant nutrition market sounds, how should the leading brands of nutrition products represented by "childhood stories" maintain or even further strengthen the leading edge in the "first half"?
"The challenge lies in the fact that the current nutrition market is becoming more and more competitive, and Childhood Stories needs to put more effort into channel empowerment, product innovation and brand building in order to maintain its market position. Wang Hongzhi, chairman of Childhood Story, said in an interview: "Opportunities also exist at the same time, and the more rational consumption concept of maternal and infant families has increased the proportion of healthy competition in the nutrition market." I always believe that only when the market is healthy and the category is bigger, can the brands have long-term development. ”
In the interview, Wang Hongzhi, chairman of Childhood Story, revealed to us the brand's future multi-dimensional upgrade actions such as product innovation and channel empowerment.
The first is to iteratively innovate the DHA product matrix.
At present, in addition to the large single product "Childhood Story DHA Algae Oil 80%", the DHA product matrix of "Childhood Story" also includes innovative products such as "Childhood Story DHA Algal Oil 88%", "Childhood Story Compound Phosphatidylserine Gel Candy", "Childhood Story Compound Lutein Ester Gel Candy", etc., with a rich product matrix to undertake consumers' personalized needs for product purity, taste dosage form, compound nutrition and other dimensions. In the future, "Childhood Stories" will also focus on Chinese babies of different ages and different nutritional supplement needs to launch "Step-by-Step DHA" products, and continue to iteratively optimize the DHA supplement program of "Childhood Stories".
The second is to strengthen and upgrade professional training and empowerment.
While steadily promoting "regular empowerment projects" such as maternal and infant nutrition professional classes and internal training meetings, "Childhood Stories" also actively seeks in-depth cooperation with authoritative institutions to carefully create public welfare activities full of dry goods around hot topics in maternal and infant marketing.
"Maternal and Child Industry Observation" learned that since February this year, "Childhood Story" has held a number of national tour training sessions in Zhengzhou, Cangzhou, Taiyuan, Changchun, Hefei and other places, through an expert group composed of teachers at or above the level of local well-known department heads, to help stores improve their ability to solve common nutritional intervention problems of consumers, and not long ago on March 24, "Childhood Story" and the Population and Culture Development Center of the National Health Commission jointly organized the first phase of the "Child Health Care Program Project - Science Popularization Campaign" Kicking off, the first phase of the activity focused on sports health, height management, brain development and other aspects, and has initially formed the construction of children's health knowledge matrix. It is reported that the series of activities will be held three times this year, providing more practitioners and consumers with a window to understand the cutting-edge knowledge of children's nutrition.
The third is the planning of dynamic sales activities of refining stores.
"Childhood Story" will continue to optimize the marketing rhythm throughout the year, and carry out related marketing activities such as iron, zinc, DHA, and immunization in combination with seasonal hot spots, so as to continuously enhance the brand potential of "Childhood Story" and eventually transmit it to terminal stores. The linkage projects between stores and consumers, such as the parent-child sports meeting, have created an effective starting point for stores to increase consumer stickiness.
Fourth, pay attention to the linkage of maternal and infant + medical channels.
With the continuous influx of highly educated and high-income "fresh blood", the two channels that originally developed in parallel have also intersected due to the increasing emphasis on "professional attributes" of maternal and infant consumers, and have shown considerable growth potential. With this in mind, the "Childhood Stories" programme has assisted some key medical channel distributors to continue to explore the unique service models of the medical channel. At the same time, through online and offline training, regional activity linkage, brand planting exposure and other means, it provides all-round support and empowerment for maternal and infant channels, fully links maternal and infant and medical channels, and forms resource sharing and complementary advantages between the two.
Fifth, continue to increase investment in brand building.
As mentioned above, the competition in the maternal and infant nutrition market is becoming increasingly fierce, and if the leading brands want to maintain their market position or even achieve "one step further", the brand building work built by product promotion should not be ignored. In the interview, Wang Hongzhi, chairman of "Childhood Story", revealed that the investment cost related to brand building is expected to be doubled in 2024, and comprehensive upgrades will be carried out in social media exposure, domain experts, content cooperation with mother and child KOLs, consumer interaction, professional forum building, brand visual optimization, etc., so as to jointly strengthen the brand influence of "Childhood Story".
"The maternal and infant nutrition industry needs the common love of brands, channels and all practitioners. At the end of the interview, talking about the sentence that he wanted to convey to the majority of colleagues in the maternal and infant industry through the column of "caring for the intelligent development of babies", Mr. Wang added with emotion: "Don't forget the original intention, forge ahead, and strive to make every Chinese parent who meets us lucky." ”