"You can all label this water and sell it as drinking water!" At the end of 2023, when Sa Beining visited the Haitian Flavor factory, he praised the brewing water of Haitian Flavor.
Now, that compliment is expected to become a reality.
In March this year, the name of the drinking water "Haitian Chun" was mentioned in the new product article released by Haitian Flavor, but there were no relevant product pictures at that time.
A few days ago, on the WeChat public account of Haitian Flavor Industry, a bottle of bottled drinking water marked with the name "Haitian Chun" appeared on the cover of the article. As you can see from the picture, Haitian Pure Drinking Water is a drinking purified water, and according to some pictures on the Internet, Haitian Pure's product specification is 350ml/bottle. Does this mean that Haitian Flavor, the "first brother of soy sauce", will also start selling drinking water?
01
In 3 years, more than 20 new cross-border products have been launched
In fact, in addition to drinking water Haitian Pure, Haitian Flavor has also been carrying out diversified development layout in recent years and has begun to get involved in products in different fields. Recently, Haitian Flavor has also launched 1 lemon tea drink and 1 cereal and nut drink.
And as early as 2021, Haitian Flavor launched apple cider vinegar flavored and soy sauce-flavored ice cream, but it was not widely publicized at that time. According to Haitian Flavor's 2022 ESG report, under the new trend of advocating health management in society, Haitian has created a number of popular products with "light fat, light trucks and light burden", which can meet the health needs of consumers who want to be healthy and "tasteful". As of the end of the 2022 reporting period, Haitian has launched a total of 17 low-fat or reduced-fat products, including Haitian Fruit Lovers Apple Cider Vinegar, Haitian 0-fat vinaigrette, Haitian Joy Carrot Juice, Haitian Joy Small Lime Juice, etc.
In recent years, Haitian Flavor has launched more than 20 cross-border products of beverage ice cream, but only 1 beverage is listed on the official website of Haitian Flavor. In its e-commerce flagship store, there are only 3 drinks and 2 ice creams left, and 1 of them is one of the new products that have been launched recently.
Some experts said that Haitian, as the "first stock" of soy sauce in China, had a market value of more than 400 billion yuan at its peak, and extended from soy sauce to multiple condiment industries. However, after years of development, the growth has been significantly sluggish in recent years, and the performance growth is under great pressure, so Haitian is also looking to diversify, including trying cross-border food and beverage.
The drinking water sector is based on Nongfu Spring, which actually has huge room for growth. Therefore, Haitian's cross-border water sales are obviously not only to expand the brand voice, but also to increase profits, but it is obviously difficult to really expand the market. The reason is that Nongfu Spring's leadership position is difficult to shake, and Wahaha, C'estbon, Master Kong, Uni-President, Coca-Cola, etc. are all making water, and the competition in the water industry itself is very fierce. In addition, after Nongfu Spring launched pure water this year, it also sold the original price of more than a piece to a few cents, so pure water is almost unprofitable at present, and it may lose money. Therefore, it is difficult for Haitian Pure to achieve revenue in the short term. ”
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The subdivision track has grown significantly
Regarding Haitian's launch of cross-border products, Pang Kang, chairman of Haitian Flavor, once said that with the great changes in the external market, channels are becoming more and more fragmented, consumer demand is becoming more and more diversified, and industry competition is intensifying. Under the current consumer trend, the company will pay more attention to customer needs, continue to improve product quality, produce more personalized and diversified products, provide users with high-quality products and application service solutions, and increase investment in product research and development to develop more nutritious and healthy products.
Haitian Flavor Industry also previously said that in the future, consumers will pay more and more attention to food safety, high quality, good brand, and cost performance, which provides more development space for enterprises that continue to work product upgrading and brand upgrading; With the improvement of people's living standards, the trend of upgrading consumer demand and diversification of consumption channels has been reflected in the condiment industry.
According to the data, Haitian Flavor has set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Joy Food Technology Co., Ltd., since 2021 and invested 50 million yuan, and has invested 7 million yuan and 6 million yuan respectively in 2022 and 2023. At that time, Haitian Flavor Industry said that the establishment of Joy Products was due to the needs of business development.
And since 2021, Haitian Flavor has begun to add the "other" category to the category classification items in the financial report, and in this "other" category, it includes at least dozens of single products such as cooking wine, vinegar, chicken essence, and rice noodles. The year-on-year change in the "Other" category showed a more significant increase. According to the financial report, in 2022, the revenue of Haitian Flavor's "other" products will increase by 32.61% year-on-year; The gross margin was 27.18%. In 2023, Haitian Flavor's "other" product revenue will increase by 19.35% year-on-year; Gross margin was 21.88%.
However, some people in the industry believe that although Haitian Flavor frequently tests new products in different fields to actively find new growth points for the company, most of the products are more like using existing channels or supply chain resources to "follow" popular categories in the market. Behind these practices, to a certain extent, it reflects the company's anxiety about its own development, which also means that enterprises need to be more patient and more visionary in diversifying their layout and finding new growth points......