Author / Speedway.com Hao Danchun
On October 29, Wahaha announced the launch of a new sugar-free series of products for Very Cola. It is reported that the new products have four flavors of ginseng, oil citrus, plum and original flavor, and the packaging pattern design adopts the more popular "national tide style".
At present, the series has officially begun to be sold online, 500ml specifications per bottle unit price of 2.2 yuan, but if calculated according to the original price of 15 yuan, each bottle unit price of nearly 4 yuan. Very Coke is only sold in the Tmall Wahaha Creative Flagship Store, with only 7383 fans and does not appear in the official Wahaha flagship store.
According to the data, Very Coke was born in 1998. That year's "Coke" market was still in a situation where Coca-Cola and Pepsi were at peace. At that time, Wahaha founder Zong Qinghou took "Chinese their own Coke" as a slogan, adopted the sales strategy of "rural encirclement of the city" to do market layout, and quickly seized his own place in the market. It is reported that at its peak, Very Cola contributed more than 2 billion yuan in annual revenue to Wahaha, and was the best-selling Coke product in the Chinese market outside of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
However, with the lack of subsequent development, the radius of offline sales of very cola today is very limited. However, Wahaha Group has disclosed to the outside world: "Very cola is still a normal product, but it is mainly sold in the midwest."
In recent years, Wahaha has continued to experiment with new formats in order to drive performance growth. However, the return of very cola can really harvest a wave of dividends for Wahaha?
The return of very Coke, in addition to the "Coke" attribute of the predecessor, the biggest change is the addition of the "sugar-free" label, hoping to share another piece of the Coke track through the outlet of "health drinks".
On the one hand, in the past two years, the soda category has seen a "warming" phenomenon. According to Coca-Cola's financial report, in the first half of 2021, Coca-Cola's global soda business increased by 14%. Among them, COFCO Coca-Cola's soft drink business increased by 16.7%, and Swire Cola's mainland soda business increased by 23%. On the other hand, Master Kong's revenue from carbonated beverages and other businesses in the first half of the year was 8.362 billion yuan, an increase of 24.69% year-on-year.
On the other hand, the sugar-free drink track has also been favored by capital in recent years, and brands such as Yuanqi Forest, Heytea, Cocoa Full Score, and Ten O'Clock Have frequently obtained financing. According to statistics, from 2014 to the first half of 2021, 28 brands in the 200 sugar-free beverage samples collected by Food Industry Toutiao received a total of 64 financing rounds, and the average financing round of financing brands was 2 times. Since the beginning of 2020, the number of financings received by enterprises has increased rapidly, reaching 23 times, and the known amount of financing is about 3.7 billion yuan.
The "2020-2024 China Sugar-free Beverage Industry Market Supply and Demand Status and Development Trend Forecast Report" shows that with the continuous improvement of the market penetration rate of sugar-free beverages, nearly 60% of consumers have tried sugar-free beverages, and the sales of sugar-free beverages in 2019 increased by 10% year-on-year, much higher than the overall growth rate of beverages.
Therefore, in the view of Speedway Network, choosing to let "very cola" return at this time can not only broaden the product category of Wahaha, but also increase the exposure of the brand to a certain extent and increase the source of income.
Only, can very cola really save Wahaha's tired growth performance?
According to Wahaha's financial report, Wahaha's revenue in 2020 was 43.98 billion yuan, the lowest performance in a decade. According to public data, wahaha's revenue from 2014 to 2017 was 72.8 billion yuan, 67.7 billion yuan, 52.9 billion yuan and 45.6 billion yuan, with a five-year contraction of more than 30 billion yuan, a decline of 42%, and the revenue has hovered around 40 billion yuan in the following four years.
According to the observation of Speedway Network, in order to break through the bottleneck of development, many beverage brands have already embarked on the road of brand upgrading, some from the product point of view, some in the marketing method, and some focus on business model innovation, and even upgrade the brand from the dimension of the whole industry chain, trying to retain old customers with new brand experience and seize the new generation of customers.
With the single drawbacks of Wahaha mineral water and ad calcium milk category gradually becoming prominent, Wahaha has also opened its own innovation road in recent years. He has launched functional drinks - Qili, beer drinks - beer and beer, and even founded his own mall. However, as of now, Wahaha still has no "explosive" single product that can be as famous as ad calcium milk and mineral water.
In addition, in the first half of this year, Wahaha's milk tea shops in many places have been open for several months, from the "door to the market" when they first opened, to the situation of "almost closed" now, which also casts a shadow on its goal of "opening 10,000 stores" in the first ten years.
From the perspective of the return of very Coke, Wahaha did not give up the attempt at new products, this bet on the outlet of sugar-free drinks, focusing on the construction of very Coke in the market in the early years has provided the groundwork and experience for the current return, coupled with the accumulation of brand favorability in the early years, creating opportunities for "breaking the circle".
However, at present, very Coke is in the stage of just returning, as for how much "sugar-free Coke" can contribute to the overall revenue, whether Wahaha can "diversify and develop successfully" is also a question worthy of discussion.