---
title: "Farewell, Billion-Yuan Products!"
description: "Once upon a time, there were many billion-yuan products that were household names, riding the wave of reform and opening-up and accompanying a generation's growth. Now, the era of billion-yuan products seems to be fading, and those super products are facing new challenges. With the rise of the millennial generation and the impact of digitalization, these once-dominant products are weathering storms—some fading away, others keeping pace with the times. Today, New Distribution reviews those once-ubiquitous beverage billion-yuan products for our readers..."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2019-04-26"
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---

# Farewell, Billion-Yuan Products!

> Once upon a time, there were many billion-yuan products that were household names, riding the wave of reform and opening-up and accompanying a generation's growth. Now, the era of billion-yuan products seems to be fading, and those super products are facing new challenges. With the rise of the millennial generation and the impact of digitalization, these once-dominant products are weathering storms—some fading away, others keeping pace with the times. Today, New Distribution reviews those once-ubiquitous beverage billion-yuan products for our readers...

Once upon a time, there were many billion-yuan products that were household names, riding the wave of reform and opening-up and accompanying a generation's growth.
Now, the era of billion-yuan products seems to be fading, and those super products are facing new challenges. With the rise of the millennial generation and the impact of digitalization, these once-dominant products are weathering storms—some fading away, others keeping pace with the times.
Today, New Distribution reviews those once-ubiquitous beverage billion-yuan products for our readers, interpreting their history of change to provide new thoughts and inspiration for industry practitioners.
01 Wahaha Nutri-Express
Wahaha Nutri-Express is a brand that had already surpassed 10 billion yuan in the food sector. Since its launch in 2004, Nutri-Express exceeded 10 billion yuan in 2009, reached 15 billion yuan in total sales in 2011, and peaked at over 20 billion yuan in 2013. However, according to Economic Observer, Nutri-Express's revenue had fallen back below the 10 billion yuan mark by 2016. From over 20 billion yuan in sales to under 10 billion yuan, this took only three years.
02 Want Want Milk
Want Want Milk was once a hit product. In its heyday in 2013, it sold about 10.8 billion yuan in a year, and at its peak in 2014, sales were approximately 11.5 billion yuan. In 2015, it was about 10 billion yuan. But starting in 2016, it fell below 10 billion yuan, and in 2017-2018, sales were around 8-9 billion yuan.
03 Red Bull
In 1995, Red Bull came to China with a global strategic vision, establishing Red Bull Vitamin Beverage Co., Ltd. and vigorously developing the domestic market. It took 8 years to go from 0 to 1 billion yuan in sales, another 8 years to go from 1 billion to 10 billion yuan, and only 2 years to go from 10 billion to 20 billion yuan, with peak sales of 23.07 billion yuan in 2015.
In 2015, Red Bull's sales in China reached 23.07 billion yuan, not only securing the top spot in functional beverages but also setting a record for single-product sales in the domestic beverage industry. In 2016, Red Bull's sales remained stable at 22.18 billion yuan. In 2017, sales were 19.6 billion yuan. Due to the trademark dispute starting at the end of 2016, Red Bull's market share was seized by competitors, and performance declined, but it remained the leader in China's functional beverage industry.
04 Wanglaoji
Red-can Wanglaoji had sales revenue of 16 billion yuan in 2011. According to multiple public sources in 2015, Wanglaoji's herbal tea beverage sales had exceeded 20 billion yuan by FMCG standards.
05 JDB
Starting from 2003, JDB took the beverage stage and quickly staged a legend of sustained high growth, expanding from regional to national markets, becoming a national big brand. Even its canned beverage performance and single-product performance surpassed Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Over the 20 years from 1997 to 2016, cumulative sales exceeded 150 billion yuan. In 2017, performance exceeded 20 billion yuan, making it one of the few super single products in China with performance exceeding 20 billion yuan.
06 Yangyuan Six Walnuts
Six Walnuts' founding company is Hebei Yangyuan Zhihui. In 2006, Six Walnuts' sales reached 30 million yuan; in 2008, total sales were 300 million yuan; in 2009, sales were 1 billion yuan; in 2010, 1.5 billion yuan; in 2011, nearly 3 billion yuan; in 2012, nearly 6 billion yuan; and in 2013, sales broke 10 billion yuan! After that, it declined somewhat. From 2014 to 2017, revenues were 8.262 billion yuan, 9.173 billion yuan, and 7.74 billion yuan respectively, and in 2018, total operating revenue was 8.144 billion yuan.
**Farewell, Billion-Yuan Products!**
Strictly speaking, the success of the above billion-yuan products was largely due to finding a practical value that met rigid needs, such as brain nourishment, refreshing, breakfast, nutrition, or reducing internal heat. The next step was to lay out terminals and spend heavily on advertising. But now, this seems to be less effective. Marketing expert Miao Qingxian once explained:
The past product logic of "one Spring Festival Gala satisfying the whole nation" is no longer applicable. Remember the advertising slogan of a certain jelly: "Have one for leisure and entertainment, have one for outings, have one for friend gatherings..." This kind of product and communication method that sets up N consumers and N consumption scenarios will become increasingly inefficient.
The fragmentation of society has led to the so-called "mass" consumer no longer existing in many aspects: many people want to be distinct from mainstream society or culture. In today's society, everyone is "non-mainstream."
Looking back at changes in consumer demand over the past 10 years in China, He Yabin, President of Consumer Insights at P&G, said at a meeting: 10 years ago, if a housewife went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of shampoo, usually the whole family used the same bottle, and the whole family used the same bar of Safeguard soap. But today, housewives have their own brands, children have children's brands, the elderly have elderly brands, and even men have their own brands. In the past, we often said that men's commercial value is lower than that of dogs, but when you see a trend where even men want to use their own brands, it's a magical thing. This shows that small and beautiful, segmented markets have fully arrived.
This is an era of consumption upgrading, and even more so an era of consumption stratification. In the era of consumption stratification, billion-yuan products no longer have the soil to survive. In the past, consumers valued the physical functional value of goods and pursued pragmatism, and the perceived value of a product in terms of function was not great. Now it has upgraded: function becomes a rigid need, while emotion becomes a strong need. The demand for emotional and spiritual value of goods far exceeds functional needs.
Emotion is very subjective, and the perceived value brought by emotion varies from person to person, and greatly so. It varies by person, by time, and by place. Because there are multiple variables behind emotion, it is impossible for enterprises to use one product, one value, or one emotional appeal to satisfy everyone.
**Future: Ten-Billion-Yuan Products!**
Previously, Liu Chunxiong also explained "billion-yuan and ten-billion-yuan products": **Will there be 10-billion-yuan products in the future FMCG industry?** **Perhaps there will be, for example, regional categories going national; or innovative categories that may give birth to super single products.** **But they will be rare.** **Ten-billion-yuan products may be the super single products of the future, especially with the upgrading and stratification of original categories.** **Of course, the threshold for big single products varies by industry.**
In summary, big single products still exist, but their scale may be much smaller than before. At the same time, the approach to creating big single products has fundamentally changed.
In the past, FMCG companies created big single products by having R&D departments develop many innovative single products based on trend reports from relevant research institutions, market feedback from marketing departments, and consumer research, then conduct market validation, test sales in small regional markets, and have marketing and business departments cooperate with distribution and vivid display.
It was like throwing seeds into the market, where the fittest survive. If they sold well, they were gradually supported; if not, they were phased out and eventually died. Or some products, due to the unique strategic vision of corporate decision-makers, persisted and eventually became big single products.
Now the logic for creating big single products is: first gather a group of seed users who have a unique preference for this product category and are relatively authoritative. Users have sufficient judgment about the product. Through feedback from seed users, iterate and optimize. Products that gain recognition from these users at least prove that the product itself has no major problems and has the potential to become a big single product. Finally, leveraging the influence of seed users, create a fission effect and become a big single product. This greatly increases the probability of success.
When consumers have more choices and brands have more options, the sales volume spread across each big single product will certainly not be as large as before. At the same time, the life cycle of big single products will shorten. For example, in the past, a big single product like iced tea had a life cycle of 15 years. But now, with the faster pace of the times, faster information flow, and faster changes in consumer taste preferences, a product that could "stay hot" for 15 years may now only survive 5 years. Products may experience rapid birth and death.
In the past, companies had the opportunity to push a big single product to 10 billion yuan, or even 20 billion yuan. But now, the consumption environment changes too quickly. Even very good products may hit a bottleneck at 1 billion or 5 billion yuan in sales, with consumption weakening as consumers are diluted by new flavors and new products.
The pace of consumer change is accelerating. For companies, the strategy of building big single products has not changed, but the process of achieving them has transformed. Every marketing practitioner must maintain a sense of crisis, observe consumers, and understand consumers!
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.
**China FMCG + Internet Professional New Media**
**Committed to FMCG manufacturers' transformation and upgrading and channel digital solutions**


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