Fancy marketing "520"
A holiday notice has put Tiandi No. 1 in the fruit vinegar beverage company on a hot search.
On May 9, a holiday notice from Tiandi No. 1 caused heated discussion online. The key content of the notice is just one sentence. On May 20, backend employees will be given a paid holiday for one day, and the reason for the holiday is to let employees "talk about love, talk about love, and create children." The holiday notice reads "According to the young people's childbirth wishes, our country's population will be less than 100 million in 300 years." In order to show importance, the notice also shouted a slogan, "If you don't marry, who will take the family incense! If I don't have a child, who will support the national rejuvenation!"
(Photo source: Tiandi No. 1 Weibo)
urges marriage and birth can easily make people feel disgusted, but they will not. Netizens who had just experienced the May Day holiday not long ago expressed envy when they saw the extra day of paid vacation out of thin air. Many people left messages, "Isn't it happy to find an excuse for you to have a vacation?" "What kind of holiday does it matter, you don't have to go to work."
"Financial World" Weekly called Tiandi No. 1. Ms. Zhu, the media manager, said that the notice is indeed true, and the company in 2021 has also issued benefits, and all employees were invited to watch the movie.
Regarding the reason why the company decided to take a holiday, Ms. Zhu explained that young employees pursue a sense of ritual, and the company also tried its best to surprise employees on special dates to meet everyone's needs. "Actually, you don't have to go in love. You can also spend time with your family and do things at odds. As long as it's a holiday, everyone is very happy."
not only sympathizes with employees, but also receives praise from passers-by. It has also become a hot search and is exposed. The move of Tiandi No. 1 is exquisite, and it can be said to be a kill of three birds with one stone.
In fact, this is not the first time that Tiandi No. 1 uses "520" to build momentum.
"520" is homophonic with "I love you". In many film and television works, love is often associated with jealousy. Tiandi No. 1 uses this to associate an originally ordinary day with its fruit vinegar beverage products and start "jealousy" marketing. As early as May 20, 2020, the Tiandi No. 1 official account posted a tweet titled "There is a kind of love called jealous of you."
In 2021, Tiandi No. 1 held the first "520 Jealous Festival" and launched a prize-winning collection event on the WeChat public account, inviting consumers to shoot videos to participate in the competition. In addition to online activities, Tiandi No. 1 also uses Guangzhou Tower to conduct offline publicity. On the night of May 20, the famous landmark Guangzhou Tower kept flashing slogans "Jiangsu only counts after eating jealousy". Several drones were flying in the night sky, spelling out slogans such as "Tiandi No. 1" and "520 Jealousy Festival".
In addition, Tiandi No. 1 has also put a lot of effort into beverage packaging to create digital cans specifically for the "520". In offline stores, digital cans are arranged as combinations with special meanings such as "520", "1314", "886", and "007", and are placed on the shelves.
(Photo source: Tiandi No. 1 official account)
Although Tiandi No. 1 has been making great progress in marketing using "520" in recent years, the ceiling above its head is very obvious. According to Wind data, the overall market of fruit vinegar in China in 2018 was 6.49 billion yuan, and the market size is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan in the next few years. However, compared with the market size of mineral water of 200 billion yuan and carbonated beverages of 86 billion yuan, the market space of fruit vinegar is very limited.
"Beitou" failed and the new product was weak
Tiandi No. 1 was born in 1997 and mainly engaged in the research, development, production and sales of vinegar beverages and other beverages. As a pioneer in the domestic vinegar and beverage industry, in the past 25 years, Tiandi No. 1 has been firmly the throne of the "top leader" of the fruit vinegar industry. According to data from the New Third Board Think Tank, from 2014 to 2019, Tiandi No. 1 fruit vinegar had a market share of more than Hengshun and Miaoyu, ranking first, with more than 40%. According to the 2021 financial report, Tiandi No. 1's revenue was 1.817 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 4.33%; net profit was 255 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.64%.
, the ever-growing and growing world number one has tried to sprint for the listing many times, but the results are not satisfactory.On March 10, 2022, Tiandi No. 1 passed the listing bill, which is its third preparation for the A-share IPO.
As early as 2013, Tiandi No. 1 planned an A-share IPO, but because the main product Apple cider vinegar drink was exposed to have quality problems, the company later announced the termination of the listing process.
's dream of listing was pressed, and Tiandi No. 1 moved to the New Third Board again and was officially listed in August 2015. On the day of listing, Tiandi No. 1's share price reached 30 yuan per share, with a total market value of up to 13 billion yuan. Chen Sheng, chairman of Tiandi No. 1, who holds more than 80% of the shares, has a net worth of more than 10 billion yuan, ranking second among shareholders of the New Third Board companies at that time, only under Wu Gang, chairman of Jiuding Investment.
This year, Tiandi No. 1's performance has also made a big leap. In 2015, Tiandi No. 1's revenue increased by 98.79% to 1.574 billion yuan; net profit reached 442 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.8%.
Whether in terms of revenue scale or growth speed, Tiandi No. 1 has achieved remarkable results, but Chen Sheng is not satisfied with the listing of the New Third Board, which lacks liquidity. In February 2016, Tiandi No. 1 restarted its listing plan and entered the listing guidance period. However, this time, Tiandi No. 1 not only failed to successfully hit A-shares, but its performance also took a sharp turn for the worse. In the second year of listing, Tiandi No. 1 ushered in a double decline in revenue and net profit, with operating income falling 11.02% to 1.40 billion yuan, while net profit fell 48.43% to 228 million yuan.
performance decline is closely related to the "Beijing Expo Plan" launched in 2016. According to the official website, in 2016, Tiandi No. 1 accounted for 90% of Guangdong's vinegar beverage market share, but only accounted for 40% of the country. Tiandi No. 1 is not satisfied with dominating Guangdong and has taken the pace of expanding its market outside the province.
However, although this step is large, it is not stable enough. Due to problems with Tiandi No. 1 in the early price adjustment arrangements and changes in key personnel during the "Northern Expansion", in the first half of 2016, Guangdong's market sales revenue directly fell by 34%. Emerging markets have not yet gained a foothold, but sales in the Guangdong market of "base camp" have declined sharply. Tiandi No. 1's overall revenue has been dragged down and its performance is bleak.
After experiencing a crisis of performance decline, Tiandi No. 1 recovered from 2017 to 2019, and its revenue and net profit increased three consecutive times. Operating income increased from 1.684 billion yuan to 2.585 billion yuan, and its net profit also increased from 286 million yuan to 400 million yuan. Although the performance has been rising year by year, from a regional perspective, its source of income is mainly traditional markets dominated by "Tianjin and Guangxi". In the past three years, emerging markets have only contributed 12.5%, 16.23% and 20.59% of revenue.
In the northern market, Tiandi No. 1 is very slow. Chen Sheng, the founder of Tiandi No. 1, said in an interview with the media that as of December 9, 2020, Tiandi No. 1 is still in a loss state in the market outside the province.
In addition to the mediocre performance in emerging markets, the poor research and development of new products is also a major pain point for Tiandi No. 1. Tiandi No. 1’s main business is the research and development, production and sales of vinegar beverages and other beverages, and apple cider vinegar is the largest “pillar”. Although it has been established for 25 years, the two apple cider vinegar drinks launched in 2007 are still the most important "money tree" of Tiandi No. 1, contributing a total of about 90% of its operating income.
In 2021, the revenue of 330 apple cider vinegar was about 830 million yuan, and the revenue of 650 apple cider vinegar products was about 900 million yuan, accounting for 95.6% of the total operating income. In 2019, the operating income of these two products accounted for as high as 97%.
Tiandi No. 1 tried to incubate new products and broke the situation, but the results were not satisfactory. At the end of 2012, Tiandi No. 1 launched the functional beverage "Chenfeng No. 1", hawthorn-flavored plant beverage "Baicao No. 1" and pure water "Bama No. 1", but most of the sales volumes were bleak, and the total revenue share of new products per year only fluctuated around 10%. Among them, "Chenfeng No. 1" and "Baicao No. 1" were even suspended in 2017 and 2018 due to poor sales.
2015 Tiandi No. 1 annual report still has 6 products, including apple cider vinegar, aged vinegar, Baicao No. 1, Zhengfeng No. 1, Bama No. 1 and others. However, starting from 2017, other products except apple cider vinegar in the annual report have been directly merged into "other".
new products are slightly declining, and Tiandi No. 1 has begun to increase its investment in juice drinks, successively investing in concentrated juice producers and suppliers Andri Juice, Haisheng Juice and Mingmei Food. In 2019, Tiandi No. 1 also signed a framework agreement with Huiyuan Juice and planned to establish a joint venture, but eventually terminated the cooperation due to the immature transaction conditions.
In addition, Tiandi No. 1 has also been attacked by competitors in recent years. Not only local brands such as Yineng and Xianluyuan have entered the fruit vinegar track, but also seasoning companies such as Hengshun and Haitian have also launched fruit vinegar products one after another. On the one hand, the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and on the other hand, vinegar beverages are relatively niche, which makes Tiandi No. 1's growth space very limited. Revenue in 2020 and 2021 has declined for two consecutive years. In 2020, revenue fell by 26.52% to 1.899 billion yuan, and fell by another 4.33% in 2021.
In order to save costs, Tiandi No. 1 began to save money, and its core measure was to lay off employees. Data shows that the number of employees of Tiandi No. 1 has dropped from 6,446 in 2019 to 4,137 in 2021, a decrease of more than 2,000 in just two years, a decrease of nearly one-third. Among them, the layoffs of sales personnel and production personnel were the most serious, with a decrease of 38.07% and 34.02% respectively.
The boss of a poor student made his fortune by vinegar
Tiandi No. 1 was founded by Chen Sheng, a senior student at Peking University.
Chen Sheng, born in a rural area of Zhanjiang, Guangdong, has a poor family. Like some of the big guys who later became famous, he also relied on the support of his fellow villagers to successfully complete his career in Peking University. Later, he became a billionaire worth tens of billions. In order to thank the villagers, Chen Sheng invested 200 million yuan to build a villa in 2014 and distributed it to the villagers for free.
After graduating from Peking University, Chen Sheng did not do business at the beginning, but instead found a decent job "in the system". However, after working for several years, he found it boring and decided to resign in the wind of reform and opening up. He has sold vegetables, tried the liquor and real estate industries, and achieved some results, but the ambitious Chen Sheng has been looking for a "big business".
In 1997, a drink with aged vinegar mixed with Sprite swept across Guangdong, setting off a "ageing vinegar drink" trend. Chen Sheng, who is in the wine business, targeted the gap in the domestic vinegar beverage market and decided to develop such a drink himself, so "Tiandi No. 1" was born.
Chen Sheng once said, "We have directly opened up a market, which is equivalent to working in the unmanned Beiwu. It is not easy." The official website shows that after Tiandi No. 1 was officially launched on July 1, 1997, it achieved profitability in three months, with sales exceeding 20 million yuan that year, and by the summer of 1998, it was almost out of stock. Due to seizing the market's initiative, Tiandi No. 1 has been leading the way in the vinegar beverage industry and eventually became the leading brand in the fruit vinegar industry.
In 2015, Tiandi No. 1 listed on the New Third Board, making Chen Sheng the second richest list of the New Third Board. However, apple cider cider is not Chen Sheng’s most resounding code name. He also has a more well-known label from the outside world - "Pork King".
(Photo source: Chen Sheng Weibo)
Tiandi No. 1 After the success of the keen Chen Sheng smelled business opportunities in the local pig industry again. He found that there were rich chicken brands on the market, such as Zhanjiang chicken, Qingyuan chicken and Yangjiang chicken, but the most commonly consumed pork did not have a well-known brand, so Chen Sheng decided to start a pork business.
In 2007, in the tenth year of its establishment, the pork "No. 1 Local Pig" brand that focuses on high-end pork demand emerged. At first, the outside world did not recognize it, thinking that after graduating from Peking University, a student took up the "pig-killing knife" and quit his "iron rice bowl" to switch to business and sell pork. This was a mistake. Chen Sheng also laughed at himself as a "negative textbook for Peking University." Chen Sheng, who was not understood by the outside world, later expanded the pork business. In 2009, he planned to build a "butcher school" to cultivate high-quality butchers; in 2021, he built a breeding base in his hometown. At present, the territory of No. 1 local pig has expanded to more than 30 cities across the country, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Chen Sheng has also become a "Peking University pork talent" who sells pork to the level of Peking University.
