- Chief Business Intelligence
- Chief Business Intelligence
Convenience store freezers and supermarket shelves are the arena for beverage products.
Through the glass cabinet door, you can see the evolution of the beverage track from the colorful bottles.
Among them, milk drinks always seem to have a stable place.
The category of milk drinks has been brilliant for many years as a "milk replacement", and it can be said to be a "national" product in the hearts of many post-80s and 90s.
Why did you say it was?
Because after a glorious history, they all inevitably fall into silence, such as the plum orchard, which once relied on a sweet milk drink for 30 years.
The once-glorious "milk drink"
"Is plum orchard sweet milk milk? Is AD calcium milk milk? Is yogurt yogurt? It can be called the three major myths of the post-80s and 90s childhood.
When it comes to "milk drinks", you may feel unfamiliar, but I don't think there are many people who don't know a few words such as AD calcium milk, nutrition express, yogurt, plum garden sweet milk, etc.
These milk drinks occupy a lot of the childhood of the post-80s and 90s, and they are all childhood favorites. The taste of childhood, some classics have not been changed until now.
In the 90s of the last century, the development of the milk industry in the mainland lagged behind, limited by milk production, processing technology and logistics conditions, milk is a very precious nutrient, so it is difficult for most families to drink liquid pure milk.
Therefore, at that time, many parents will seek milk replacement products, which gives many manufacturers room to play.
Manufacturers will package the few milk raw materials on hand into nutritious beverage products, and the AD calcium milk and Robust milk produced by Wahaha and Robust accurately met the needs of consumers at this time, and "milk drinks" began to appear in the eyes of consumers.
As a "replacement for milk", milk drinks contain "milk" with a layer of "nutritional halo", and consumers do not have a clear understanding of it, so many milk drinks have enjoyed category dividends in that era.
Taking AD calcium milk as an example, according to public information, the revenue of this product exceeded 685 million yuan in 1997, and the output reached 1.07 billion bottles.
However, the gift of fate has already been secretly marked with a price.
After 2000, the milk industry in the mainland developed rapidly, pure milk became popular, and drinking milk was no longer an uncommon thing.
Consumers have also begun to generally understand the nutritional value of milk drinks, those calcium milk, fruit milk have returned to their beverage base, milk drinks have lost their glory, and have become a memory carrier for adults to miss their childhood.
For example, the sales of Nutrition Express have fallen from more than 20 billion at its peak to less than 10 billion.
Those consumers who used to drink dairy drinks have grown up, and it's hard to pry their wallets with all the bells and whistles of advertising.
In addition, dairy beverages often add sucrose and flavors for the sake of flavor, and they are gradually not in line with the current consumption trend in the era of health.
After a period of rapid growth, the growth rate of dairy beverages has gradually stabilized, and has gradually declined in recent years.
It can also be learned from the prospectus of Jule shares that the sales output value of the domestic dairy beverage and vegetable protein beverage manufacturing industry decreased from 116.47 billion yuan in 2017 to 86.02 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of -9.61%.
Jule share prospectus
Those milk drinks that once rubbed the concept of "milk" urgently need to find a new way out and performance growth points.
The plum orchard is not "sweet".
Under the banner of "Is youth sweet or not? Drink a bottle of plum orchard", the early plum orchard won the hearts of primary school students by virtue of this sweet taste.
In 1994, the Liziyuan brand was established, at that time, Bright Dairy and Mengniu had not yet been launched. Li Ziyuan, which seized the blank market, launched a sweet milk drink, which once became a hit at that time.
A milky white bottle with a green cap of liquid milk quickly occupied all kinds of shops in East China.
Whether it's a big breakfast shop or a small cart stall, you can see plum orchards.
It can be said that plum orchards can be seen everywhere, and there is no one in East China who does not know it.
But now this old company is facing its own mid-life crisis, and its performance is not "sweet".
In 2023, Li Ziyuan will achieve revenue of about 1.412 billion yuan, a slight increase of 0.60% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the parent company was about 237 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.20%; The net profit after deduction was about 219 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.65%.
Although Li Ziyuan's revenue and net profit will increase in 2023, Li Ziyuan's revenue has been hovering at the level of 1.4 billion for three consecutive years, and it has not made a further breakthrough.
And judging from the latest financial report for the first quarter of 2024, the pressure on Li Ziyuan still exists.
On the evening of April 29, Li Ziyuan released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, showing that the company's operating income was 334.4 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.17%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 56.96 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.79%.
According to the 2023 annual report, the overall sales volume of Li Ziyuan fell by 3.14% year-on-year. Even its main milk-containing beverages saw their sales fall by 1.67% year-on-year, and the most serious decline was milk-flavored beverages, which fell by 60.38% year-on-year.
From the financial report, it can be found that most of Li Ziyuan's revenue is contributed by "sweet milk", from the beginning of its establishment, Li Ziyuan has adhered to the strategy of large single products, and its sweet milk drinks account for more than 90% of the company's total revenue all year round.
Although it shows that Li Ziyuan occupies a leading position in the "sweet milk" category, the single product line is also the biggest stumbling block to its development.
The revenue that does not advance or retreat is the best illustration that if Li Ziyuan wants to maintain continuous growth in performance, sweet milk alone is not enough.
Li Ziyuan is also aware of the current market risks faced by the company, and stated in last year's annual report that if it is relied on for a long time, it may have a greater impact on performance.
To add insult to injury, the proportion of Liziyuan's e-commerce business has continued to decline in the past three years. According to the data, in 2023, Li Ziyuan's income from e-commerce will be 40.16 million yuan, accounting for 2.86% of the operating income, showing a downward trend from 50.93 million yuan and 40.73 million yuan in 2021 and 2022.
On the Douyin and Xiaohongshu platforms that young people are keen on, Li Ziyuan's shortcomings are also obvious.
The official flagship store on Douyin has only a few hundred thousand fans, while its competitor, Want Want Food, a subsidiary of Wangzi Milk, has more than 2 million fans. Xiaohongshu will only be settled in mid-August 2022.
In the era when traffic is king, brands are striving to create a self-media matrix to bring traffic and exposure to the brand in multiple directions, and then use traffic to bring conversion rates.
In the iteration of marketing methods, Li Ziyuan did not keep up with this wave, was slow to respond to online channels, and missed the bonus period of its growth.
In addition, in the Internet era, the channels for everyone to obtain information are becoming more and more convenient, and most consumers have realized that "milk drinks ≠ milk".
The post-80s and post-90s generation has also grown up and has become sensitive to sweet and greasy tastes.
The post-00s who grew up in the era of appearance sneered at it.
The plum orchard, which is still "eaten all over the world with one trick", seems to have entered an "embarrassing period".
"Milk candy water" can't please young people
In fact, Li Ziyuan is not without efforts.
As early as 2005, Li Ziyuan launched a corn juice, which was a product in cooperation with the School of Bioengineering of Zhejiang University of Technology, and even increased the corn juice content to 25%, while the average domestic enterprise could only reach 10% at that time.
Later, Li Ziyuan developed a series of "boiled" drinks such as "milk boiled coffee" and "milk boiled coconut".
At the dealer conference at the end of 2018, Li Ziyuan even released 4 series of 18 new products in one go.
Including coffee drinks, room temperature yogurt, "stinky milk", etc., but they have not been able to make big waves in the market, and many products have not even heard of it.
In last year's annual report, Li Ziyuan also said that in 2024, it will launch aseptic canned cup fruit juice drinks, sparkling milk flavored drinks, and fruit juice drink products.
Despite efforts to promote new products and cater to young people to develop new flavors and try to find the company's second growth point, the status of "sweet milk" is still difficult to shake, and the company's non-dairy beverage business, revenue scale and profitability are also very unoptimistic.
In 2023, the revenue of milk-flavored beverages, compound protein drinks and other products will be 8.4919 million yuan, 5.4049 million yuan and 9.8637 million yuan respectively, accounting for about 1.69% of the company's total revenue, and the contribution can be said to be minimal.
In addition, the gross profit margins of the three were 7.44%, -2.55% and 14.81%, respectively. Not only did it not contribute to the plum garden, but it also became a laggard.
Judging from Li Ziyuan's various new rhythms, coupled with the recent invitation of the new generation of actor Cheng Yi as the new spokesperson, it can be seen that Li Ziyuan has been currying favor with young people and getting rid of their dependence on a single product.
It's just that today's young people are becoming more and more "picky", especially at the moment of consumption downgrading, consumers are increasingly pursuing the "quality-price ratio", that is, good things are not expensive, and on the basis of cost performance, the quality of products is required to be in place.
As for the sweet and greasy taste of Plum Garden, many consumers say that it has a cheap flavor flavor, like a product blended with water.
"The taste is so bad, I bought it once and I didn't buy it again, it feels like a flavor drink."
Whether it is in the market of room temperature milk or beverages, health-conscious consumers have better choices, Mengniu and Yili's pure milk, Yuanqi Forest's 0 sugar sparkling water, both in terms of price and taste, are much better than Li Ziyuan.
Li Ziyuan, which started from milk drinks, seems to want to give up this road, and has been locked in the dairy beverage track, constantly pushing new products around "milk drinks".
However, Li Ziyuan's new products do not have many bright spots, neither meeting the needs of young consumers, nor following the current consumption trend.
In addition, consumers can only be harvested by feelings.
At this moment, Li Ziyuan urgently needs to launch a new product that is differentiated and can be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, rather than living in the story of the past.
Do people still buy plum orchards now? What's your favorite flavor? We reminisce about the years together in the comment area, welcome to leave a message to discuss, express your opinions or opinions, thank you.
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