---
title: "Busy Launching New Products, Want Want: \"In Full Swing\" or \"A Mess\"?"
description: "Want Want has launched dozens of new products at once, seemingly hoping that one will hit the jackpot. The company has shifted from a professional producer to a jokester, raising questions about its strategy and leadership succession."
author: "梨叔"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2018-04-06"
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# Busy Launching New Products, Want Want: "In Full Swing" or "A Mess"?

> Want Want has launched dozens of new products at once, seemingly hoping that one will hit the jackpot. The company has shifted from a professional producer to a jokester, raising questions about its strategy and leadership succession.

FBC Special Contributor丨Li Shu
Want Want has launched new products again, and it's a swarm of dozens of products hitting the market at once. It's like buying lottery tickets, putting a little on each, hoping one will hit the jackpot.
A food company has transformed from a professional producer to a jokester. What kind of setbacks have driven Want Want to this point?
Are the successive new products just blind tinkering?
Want Want's new product "Bond Coffee"
When it comes to launching new products, being also a Taiwanese company, we still admire Uni-President's strong product strength and craftsmanship. Although they can't yet be labeled as "Uni-President's products are always premium," they at least stand out somewhat. We also admire Master Kong's strong channel strength; although their products aren't very original, they often catch up from behind with their strong market operation experience.
However, when it comes to Want Want, in the past you'd think of children's food, but now what comes to mind? Funny.
Let's look at the products Want Want has launched in recent years. One category is tweaking old products, like the black-and-white version of Want Want Boy, the enlarged version of Want Want Milk, and the square and bigger Want Want Senbei. Watching Li Ziming (the character from the ad) grow from a student to a teacher, besides sighing that Want Want's ads are still low-brow, what else is there? If these products were on Kuaishou or Douyin, they'd fit, since those platforms are dominated by "young children."
Another category is products that you can never remember which one they're pushing, but they do have new products. And they launch them all at once, crossing industries, hoping one or two will hit the jackpot.
Want Want's new "Shawa Wine"
In 2017, Want Want launched 48 new products, hoping that 3 of them would have sales exceeding 100 million. But in reality, we don't see any product with outstanding performance. A few days ago, Want Want launched alcohol, beverages, and daily chemicals all at once. Although it flooded social media, everyone was watching Want Want's performance with a mocking attitude.
Of course, this isn't a mistake only Want Want made; Uni-President also made similar mistakes back then.
Before 2015, Uni-President launched about one new product per year, and they performed well, like Sea Words, Xiao Ming Classmate, and Aqua Love. However, the industry's praise also made Uni-President lose its way. In 2016, Uni-President launched over a dozen new products at once, spanning juices, teas, milk drinks, etc., seemingly trying to knock down Master Kong in one go.
The "result" was that the numerous new products left Uni-President's team at a loss, and they ended up competing with themselves, weakening their former market mainstays. They also gave Master Kong, which was still in the midst of rumors, a chance to catch its breath. Finally, Master Kong streamlined its organizational structure, sold its OEM factories, acquired shares from Japanese companies, and eliminated all its unfavorable factors. That's why its data rose at the end of 2017 and in the first quarter of 2018.
Perhaps realizing the mistake, Uni-President stopped blindly launching new products and instead focused on internal regional competition, streamlining its product line. In its 2017 annual report, we saw Uni-President re-emphasize its black tea and green tea sales, rather than mentioning Xiao Ming Classmate. Its instant noodle business focused on Tang Daren and Laotan Sauerkraut.
The FMCG market in the past five years has been volatile. Once-praised single-product strategies like herbal tea, Mizone, and Red Bull have all encountered difficulties. People have found that while single products have strong vitality, their barriers are too low. Once someone starts a price war and consumer mindsets change, they are quickly eliminated.
Consumers' tendency to favor the new over the old has led some companies to blindly attribute their development difficulties to having too few products or being too single-product. They think that launching a wave of new products can trick distributors into paying.
Distributors welcome innovation because it provides new selling points and growth opportunities, allowing them to tell consumers that their products have been upgraded. However, if your innovation is just patchwork or pieced together, making consumers feel you lack respect for yourself, then you might fool them once or twice, but consumers won't have the patience for repeated deception.
This is why, over the past three or four years, Want Want has been laying off employees with over a decade of service; it's also streamlining its organization, but distributors are increasingly hard to find.
Underestimating Education, Leading to Succession Problems
Worldwide, especially in China, the best way to inherit a business is from father to son, a family dynasty. Even Huawei can't escape this, except Ren Zhengfei is passing it to his daughter (recently media revealed that Ren's daughter is about to take over...).
Father-to-son succession ensures the family's imprint on the company to a certain extent. The father has a long time to cultivate the child, helping them get started and supporting them along the way, which can stabilize relationships among various factions.
However, the biggest problem with father-to-son succession is also among factions. Whether the young master can inherit the old master's will, and whether old ministers will obey the young master, are all issues. Back then, Zong Qinghou also tried hard to cultivate Zong Fuli, but because she was too willful in handling personnel relations, Zong Qinghou had to hand over Wahaha's upstream industry to her, letting her create Hongsheng Beverage.
In 2017, Zong Fuli attempted to go public by acquiring China Candy, but the acquisition offer failed. In the end, Wahaha's 30th anniversary gift didn't materialize; instead, Zong Qinghou himself stepped in to personally handle Wahaha's listing.
In cultivating a successor, Tsai Eng-meng has also had his twists and turns.
His eldest son, Tsai Shao-chung, is mainly responsible for Want Want's media empire. But Want Want made its fortune in the FMCG system, and Tsai Eng-meng has always wanted his second son, Tsai Wang-chia, to take charge. However, Tsai Wang-chia's several minor reforms hit the interests of some old ministers, especially when he demoted Tsui Yu-man, whom Tsai Eng-meng had arranged for him, to a sinecure, sparking backlash from some old ministers.
As a result, after two years of delegating power, with various regions citing declining sales, falling profits, and low team morale, Tsai Eng-meng returned to the front line.
Tsai Eng-meng has always advocated the uselessness of education, so his children entered the Want Want Group at a young age, starting from the bottom. In the era of rapid FMCG development, practice was indeed more important than theory, but thinking education is useless because of a temporary small victory is a big mistake. Especially in this information-rich era, more and more wealthy people succeed with high education.
We're used to low education in FMCG because without education, we can shamelessly sell goods. But after a dozen years, their practical experience hasn't been transformed into a knowledge system. When they take management positions, they expose many problems in management direction and team command. Simply put, their knowledge system is insufficient to cope with modern business competition.
But they hold key positions in the company and are resistant to new people and new things. More seriously, when a company "ages" to a certain degree, how can it reform? How can it drive these people forward? When you encounter difficulties, you realize that education may not fully represent ability, but it plays a role that cannot be ignored at such times.
This isn't just Want Want's disease; it's a problem across the FMCG industry—practitioners don't value education. Some say Alibaba's China Supply Iron Army and JD's delivery staff also lack education. But those without education are at the execution level, while many "low-education" people in FMCG are at the decision-making level. Short-sightedness and assumptions about consumers limit company development.
Youthfulness, Not Immaturity
Want Want has another big problem—brand rejuvenation shouldn't mean becoming childish.
Although Want Want's main consumer group is children aged 8 and above, that doesn't mean your products can lack themes, concepts, or culture. It's all about singing, being funny, and being as childish as possible.
"O-Pao Lactic Acid Water"
In an era of short supply, Want Want could be willful and rely on advertising for a wave of dividends. Now, with abundant products, how can your product "break out" from the many competitors? Still relying on self-created ads like "O-Pao, O-Pao, I want O-Pao"; "Look again, look again, and I'll drink you up"; "Body prosperous, career prosperous"... These ads don't even say what they're selling.
Products either sell scene marketing or positioning marketing, but Want Want's boss is still immersed in the past. Want Want relies solely on mechanical advertising marketing. When Want Want has profits, distributors can treat its new products as "protection fees," but when old products have no profit and new products have no market, will distributors continue to "subsidize" the manufacturer?
In short, launching new products requires extensive market research; you can't just make any product and call it new. It's said that Want Want spends a lot on new products each year, but it still maintains the rhythm of launching new products annually and seeing them die annually.
Of course, the most urgent issue for Want Want is how to reduce the impact of the Want Want brand on its new products. The best way is to let the Want Want team start anew, with each person managing their own new product. Let Tsai Wang-chia and other Tsai children each form their own system, without using the Want Want brand—this seems like the best approach.
It must be said that an overly old brand harms new products!
Source: Food Business Observation (ID: fbc180)
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