"Eat Panpan Dali garden bread in the morning, eat white elephant instant noodles at noon, drink honey snow ice city in the afternoon tea..."
Since the sudden flood in Henan, a number of enterprises have reached out to help, but many of these donors have had a hard time.
However, it is precisely because of this spirit of self-denial that these brands have re-entered the public eye and won the favor of consumers.
The power of the masses is enormous, and the original crumbling enterprises have been robbed of their goods and sold out several times.
The most famous is Hongxing Erke, whose live broadcast room is full of "wild consumption" netizens, and the network golden sentences are frequent, which makes it a hot search for several days.
But at the same time that Hongxing Erke was embraced, there was also a former giant enterprise that also received attention, which was the White Elephant Group.
Looking back, white elephant instant noodles were once the memories of most people's childhood, but obviously, they have fallen behind.
This can't help but make people wonder, how can a generation of instant noodle giants not work?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" >01: The sinking market is competing</h1>
An enamel bowl and a bag of one-dollar instant noodles are the memories of youth of many post-80s generations.
Since the 1980s, China's economy has risen rapidly, and many people have gone out of the countryside to work in big cities.
In that era, it was inevitable that a green-skinned train would not be able to go around, eating, drinking, daily necessities, and throwing them into the carriage one by one, and the whole train was chaotic and a little sour.
A journey of more than ten hours is the norm, at this time, the existence of instant noodles is particularly important, and with the rapid expansion of the market for fast food products, more and more companies and capital have joined in.
In addition to the original Hualong 108 instant noodles, in the 1990s, brands such as White Elephant and Immalang were also born with the trend, and after several years of rapid development, they became industry giants in one fell swoop.
But today, the brand of white elephant is slowly being marginalized, and even if it were not for the donation to the disaster area, I am afraid that many people would think that it has long been delisted.
In fact, the white elephant is still alive, but not as good as it was then.
Once the white elephant, in response to the era dividend to the peak, do not know that the market for instant noodles is red in the eyes of everyone, everyone wants to share a piece of the pie, after several years of development, the blue ocean market has gradually turned into the Red Sea, began to compete for deer.
As we all know, the final winner is Master Kong and the unification of the two major brands, as for other enterprises, they have long been fragmented, and their competitiveness is getting sharper and weaker.
As one of the "losers", the white elephant was also full of spirit at his peak, and fought fiercely with the predecessor of Imabari Lang, "Hualong". It should be known that in terms of corporate history, Hualong can be established earlier than the white elephant, and the white elephant cannot gain the upper hand in both the background and the assets.
In the early days, the sinking market dominated by white elephants faced the price war attack of Hualong, so the chance of winning was very small.
In the case of increasingly fierce market competition, Yao Zhongliang, the founder of White Elephant, strives for change, leading his men to the streets and alleys to sell one by one, and even in order to increase sales, the salesman recruitment announcement released by White Elephant is "you can bear hardships".
Unfortunately, even after a rectification, the white elephant is still in the ascendant, and the 1 billion sales in 2001 are still inferior to Hualong's 1.5 billion yuan.
However, at this time, Hualong made a strategic mistake and created an opportunity for the white elephant.
At that time, Hualong was proud of the spring breeze in the sinking market, but its original intention was not only this, but a high-end market with higher profits, so it was unexpected by others, decided to give up the one-dollar market, and the expansion step was getting bigger and bigger, and it was not known that it collapsed in this step.
You know, the change of consumption habits is not a day's work, since Hualong does not want this one-dollar market, the white elephant is unceremonious and directly takes over.
In fact, although the competitiveness of the white elephant is not as good as that of Hualong, it is not the master of the loss-making business, and under the condition of ensuring the interests, the white elephant will reduce the net content of the noodle cake, and then restore the price to one yuan, successfully taking the next city.
In the eyes of the predecessors, the white elephant is still a rising star, it is not thinking of danger in times of peace but facing difficulties, even if the opponent is strong and not discouraged, it has been on the road to catch up, but the strength may not be used every time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="74" >02: Arrogant soldiers will be defeated and will decline</h1>
After gaining a firm foothold in the low-end market, the white elephant is very aware of the principle of "one mountain cannot tolerate two tigers", and for a long time in the future, it will face the fierce counterattack of Hualong.
In order to consolidate its position, White Elephant decided to defend the attack and launched the subdivision of "Big Bone Face" in 2003. Judging from the subsequent sales, "big bone noodles" have indeed become the most successful products of white elephant enterprises.
At that time, at the beginning of the new century, the people's concept of diet had changed from "being able to eat enough" to "being able to eat well", and more attention was paid to food health.
This made the big bone noodles, which had been positioned as "nutrition and health" at the beginning, very popular, and soon became popular all over the country, and the sales volume exceeded 100 million packs in the year of listing.
In 2004, it not only achieved an annual output of 5 billion packs, but also exceeded 2.3 billion yuan in sales, firmly occupying the third place in the domestic instant noodle market.
In the following years, the development of white elephant is booming, and finally in 2011, the sales exceeded 4 billion yuan, achieving a reversal of Jinmalang, and the company reached its peak.
However, the development since then has been very dramatic, quite a bit of "Guan Yu lost Jingzhou - arrogant soldiers will be defeated" flavor.
Immersed in the miracle of "big bone noodles", the white elephant was greedy and adventurous, and even raised the original 1 yuan bag noodles directly to 2.5 yuan.
Unexpectedly, on the other side, the tiger-eyed Imabari Lang suddenly returned from the mid-end market and listed the "Big Imano" priced at 1.5 yuan.
This contrast between rising and falling eventually led to the white elephant being abandoned by consumers, a large number of products can only be backlogged in the warehouse, and the low-end market that was originally hard-working was taken back by Jinmalang.
The white elephant, which had lost its place, began to decline.
At the peak of the development of white elephants, the management was blinded by short-term interests, misjudged the market demand, and caused irreparable losses. The mall is like a battlefield, and the example of a momentary mistake that leads to a full loss, the white elephant is not the first, nor is it the last.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="76" >03: The quest for transformation is a miserable obstacle</h1>
After the collapse of the sinking market, the sales performance of the white elephant plummeted, and in order to save the decline, the company must find a new way to develop.
After some searching, the white elephant set its sights on fresh pasta.
There are many reasons to choose fresh pasta, but there are two main ones, first of all, the predecessor of White Elephant is a grain enterprise, which has a certain foundation for the staple food business such as fresh pasta;
Another very important reason is that Yao Zhongliang has done market research and predicted that fresh pasta will be a market with a scale of 300 billion yuan, and the prospect is particularly gratifying.
As a result, management quickly set up a strategy of "entering the fresh pasta", and the whole company also took action.
In 2011, after the opening of the first store, Fuxi Noodle Workshop, Baixiang established chain stores in Zhengzhou, Anyang, Jiaozuo and other places, and the initial situation was very good.
However, the white elephant expanded too fast and failed to control the cost of the store.
In order to ensure the quality of the products sold in various places, the pasta products of all stores in White Elephant need to be uniformly produced by the central staple kitchen and then transported.
This practice brings heavy operating costs, so in the context of the already low profit of the fresh pasta industry, it is undoubtedly a fool's dream for white elephants to make a profit.
Even so, the white elephant still did not give up, and even did not hesitate to withdraw huge funds from other businesses to subsidize the deficit of fresh pasta, only hoping that fresh pasta would one day be able to turn a profit and lead the company to rise again.
But what is disappointing is that until the 200th store, the white elephant has not been profitable, and the transformation that Yao Zhongliang had high hopes for has finally ended in a tragic failure.
After this, The White Elephant has also made other attempts to launch an impact on the high-end market, such as the cooperation with Single Grain in 2019, developing products such as noodles, plates, rock apes, etc., but unfortunately, the sales performance after the listing is very dismal.
Today's white elephants are not only facing the suppression of Master Kong and the two giants of Unification, but also suffer from the dumping of takeaway services, and their survival situation is becoming increasingly difficult.
At the beginning of the white elephant's fortune, relying on the accurate judgment of business opportunities, it successfully seized the sinking market, but after the development reached its peak, it also made the mistakes of the opponent and handed over the foundation of the establishment to others, which can be described as success and defeat, and xiao He, although it has struggled several times, it is still stagnant.
The ups and downs of the commercial sea, the waves are strange, the business opportunities are often fleeting, the decline of the white elephant has now become a fact, perhaps only by successfully grasping the next industry outlet, can we restore the glory of the past.
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Author: Xiang Nan