---
title: "Genki Forest PK Hankou No.2 Factory: Where Do They Differ?"
description: "This summer, who hasn't bought a bottle of Genki Forest sparkling water at a convenience store? And who hasn't been attracted by the packaging of Hankou No.2 Factory? On August 30, Genki Forest launched a new product, its first natural fruit juice drink - Micro-bubble Grapefruit. From the packaging and official introduction, this new product is a fruit juice sparkling water, continuing Genki Forest's tradition of \"no added sucrose,\" with all sweetness coming from fruit. The packaging features a visually striking grapefruit with water droplets on the upper part of the bottle, and prominently displays nutritional components such as VC, B1, B2, B6, VE, and Niacinamide."
author: "韩一个"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2020-10-22"
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# Genki Forest PK Hankou No.2 Factory: Where Do They Differ?

> This summer, who hasn't bought a bottle of Genki Forest sparkling water at a convenience store? And who hasn't been attracted by the packaging of Hankou No.2 Factory? On August 30, Genki Forest launched a new product, its first natural fruit juice drink - Micro-bubble Grapefruit. From the packaging and official introduction, this new product is a fruit juice sparkling water, continuing Genki Forest's tradition of "no added sucrose," with all sweetness coming from fruit. The packaging features a visually striking grapefruit with water droplets on the upper part of the bottle, and prominently displays nutritional components such as VC, B1, B2, B6, VE, and Niacinamide.

**This summer, who hasn't bought a bottle of Genki Forest sparkling water at a convenience store? And who hasn't been attracted by the packaging of Hankou No.2 Factory?**
On August 30, Genki Forest launched a new product, also its first natural fruit juice drink - Micro-bubble Grapefruit. From the packaging and official introduction, this new product is a fruit juice sparkling water, continuing Genki Forest's tradition of "no added sucrose," with all sweetness coming from fruit. The packaging features a visually striking grapefruit with water droplets on the upper part of the bottle, and prominently displays nutritional components such as VC, B1, B2, B6, VE, and Niacinamide.
Image source: Genki Forest Tmall flagship store
Not long ago, on August 17, Hankou No.2 Factory announced a collaboration with FISHEYE Coffee to launch a Qixi Festival cross-border love gift box, the "Heartbeat Box." This partnership also created a new way to drink: refreshing sparkling water with freeze-dried coffee powder.
Image source: @Hankou No.2 Factory official Weibo
**Sweet but sugar-free; energizing but weight-loss; tasty but also aesthetically pleasing.** While consumers are making increasingly high demands and standards for beverages, they also exhibit a contradictory psychology of "love and restraint."
Data source: Shiqu Insight Engine; Monitoring period: July 2019 – December 2019
From the emergence of Genki Forest's sparkling water, which focuses on 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories, to its current valuation of $2 billion, we have also begun to pay attention to another "internet-famous" beverage brand - Hankou No.2 Factory, whose product development speed and sales growth rate seem even more ferocious than Genki Forest's. In 2018, Hankou No.2 Factory's annual sales reached 90 million RMB, and in 2019, sales reached 300 million RMB.
**Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory, these two young beverage brands, have come on strong and quickly captured the youth market, winning a large number of young consumers' favor.** We are also curious: what are the excellent aspects of these two young brands? What do they each rely on to hit consumer pain points? And comparing their marketing actions in different fields, which one has the upper hand?
**-01-**
**The "Past and Present" of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory**
**1. Genki Forest**
Genki Forest was founded in Beijing in 2016 and is a health-focused beverage brand with high popularity on social networks. In its early days, it launched a Genki Forest fruit tea that was lukewarm. It wasn't until 2017 that Genki Forest launched Ran Tea, innovating the product by adding sucralose and erythritol - one a high-intensity sweetener, the other a sugar-free ingredient that doesn't produce glucose during metabolism. On one hand, the product had a sweet taste; on the other, it had no calories, gradually gaining consumer attention and affection.
In 2018, Genki Forest's project team launched a soda sparkling water series, focusing on 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories, quickly becoming a "hit product" in the sparkling water market. Today, Genki Forest has launched product lines such as 0-sugar milk tea and fruit juice sparkling water, with a valuation of $2 billion. It not only occupies the C-position in supermarkets and convenience stores offline, but also dominates major social platforms like Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu online.
**2. Hankou No.2 Factory**
Hankou No.2 Factory soda originated from an offline soda pop-up event in August 2017, an activity that let young people return to the past: the soda completely replicated the taste of the old Wuhan No.2 Factory soda made with soda water, coloring, and flavoring. As a result, 50,000 bottles were sold in three days. This marketing event became one of the most popular urban cultural events of 2017.
The rapid sell-out of the "replicated" old soda changed the team's entrepreneurial direction. They were no longer satisfied with replicating and nostalgic for old soda, but wanted to create "trendy drinks" that fit today's youth aesthetics, bringing domestic soda back into the view of the post-90s and post-00s generations. Since Hankou No.2 Factory launched in 2018, in less than two years, almost every product it launched became a hit, going viral on social platforms like Moments and Weibo, becoming the new national trend in the hearts of young consumers.
According to data provided by the Hankou No.2 Factory team, the brand's annual sales in 2018 were 90 million RMB, and in 2019, sales are expected to reach 300 million RMB. Currently, it has entered more than a dozen major offline retail channels, including FamilyMart, Lawson, Hema Fresh, and Ole' Premium Supermarket, covering more than 30,000 stores. At the same time, in 2019, it also expanded into e-commerce channels, with products now available on multiple platforms such as Tmall, Youzan, and Xiaohongshu.
**-02-**
**The "Inside and Outside of the Viral Success" of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory**
Data source: Jieshu Consulting, Taobao data from March 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020
According to Jieshu Consulting's monitoring of online sales data for Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory on Taobao, it can be seen that Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory rank No. 1 in the Taobao market for drinking water and carbonated beverages, respectively, with very impressive sales performance in transaction amounts.
Comparing the transaction amounts, visitor numbers, and search numbers of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory, Genki Forest's data is far higher than Hankou No.2 Factory's. In terms of average order value, Genki Forest is 75.45 RMB, while Hankou No.2 Factory is 63.48 RMB, related to their packaging specifications and unit prices, so the difference is not significant.
**Besides sales data, let's look at the comparison of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory in other aspects.**
**1. High packaging aesthetics, but prices are not "beautiful"**
"Without aesthetics, a brand will be lackluster. This is an era of appearance-based economy where all external visuals and senses are used for commercial profit. To some extent, appearance is becoming a brand's new productivity."
From the product packaging, Genki Forest deeply understands consumer psychology. The aesthetics of each product are commendable, basically adopting a clean Japanese-style bottle with large white and black areas and a touch of light color. For example, the large characters "气" (Qi) and "燃" (Ran) on the packaging, with simple and high-quality design, give the product enough visual appeal, fresh and lively, attracting many young people.
Searching "Hankou No.2 Factory" on Weibo Plaza, "nice packaging" and "high appearance" are the first impressions most consumers have of the brand. It can be said that appearance is Hankou No.2 Factory's most formidable "core competitiveness." **Compared with Genki Forest, Hankou No.2 Factory puts more effort into packaging aesthetics.**
First, for example, they upgraded ordinary glass bottles to use cosmetic-grade glass with higher transparency, and designed raised vintage patterns on the bottle body; the capacity was reduced to 275 ml, and the bottle cap borrowed the twist-off design of imported sodas.
Later, they upgraded the bottle's two-dimensional design: tear off the bottle label, heat it with warm water or a "lighter," and a cheesy confession appears. **Among a host of retro sodas, Hankou No.2 Factory stood out especially quickly thanks to its novel, high-appearance packaging design.**
Image source: Genki Forest flagship store
Image source: Hankou No.2 Factory flagship store
In terms of price, taking popular items from the official flagship stores of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory as examples, the average price per bottle of Genki Forest White Peach Soda Sparkling Water is 5.24 RMB; while the average price per bottle of Hankou No.2 Factory fruit juice soda is 9.75 RMB, nearly 10 RMB per bottle, almost double that of Genki Forest's White Peach Soda Sparkling Water.
In fact, good appearance is a plus for beverage products, **but after gaining popularity through appearance, the repurchase rate of Hankou No.2 Factory soda has become a big problem.** Setting aside appearance and only considering the product itself, whether consumers are willing to keep buying soda at 10 RMB per bottle remains a question.
**2. Focusing on the health card, product flavors are also "sweet"**
Food safety issues are endless, bringing people's attention to food health. Consumers are increasingly shifting from simple taste satisfaction to nutritional health needs. This is mainly reflected in users beginning to pursue natural and authentic flavors, with more and more pursuit of zero additives and pure taste. For food, user consumption upgrades are reflected in higher-level demands for products, such as clean labels and sugar reduction, and they are more willing to pay for health.
In terms of flavor, besides the three flavors of Calamansi, White Peach, and Cucumber, the most important measure of Genki Forest's soda sparkling water is meeting consumers' need for sugar-free and tasty. Adding erythritol ensures sweetness while avoiding calories, making it a sugar-free, tasty, and guilt-free beverage.
Hankou No.2 Factory, in terms of flavor innovation and ingredient optimization, also chose real fruit juice concentrate instead of flavoring. Among them, the orange juice soda has a juice content of 60%. Strictly speaking, it is a carbonated juice, ensuring taste and making carbonated beverage lovers "more at ease."
However, based on current market consumer feedback, if Genki Forest's "0 sugar" health card has withstood consumer testing, then **as a soda brand, Hankou No.2 Factory's soda genes and high price point make it difficult to stand out among a host of health beverages.** Although Hankou No.2 Factory also emphasizes that its products contain original fruit juice and healthy ingredients, the "flavoring taste" is still the real experience of many consumers.
**3. Grasping both online and offline channels, Hankou No.2 Factory finds it "hard to blossom" offline**
Genki Forest's online e-commerce sales data is already impressive, but according to reports about Genki Forest, 60-70% of its revenue actually comes from offline channels, with e-commerce accounting for less than 30%. This is closely related to Genki Forest's deep cultivation of convenience stores in first- and second-tier cities since its inception. Precise channel reach targets the brand's core middle- and high-income groups, and it also rode the wave of the convenience store boom. Later, it pushed into e-commerce, accumulating millions of fans, providing stocking guidance, educating consumers on repurchase, and cultivating loyal and stable drinking habits.
In contrast, Hankou No.2 Factory, although born in Wuhan, focuses its efforts on first-tier cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen, followed by cities with tourism attributes like Xi'an and Chengdu. In these urban areas, it also targets mid-to-high-end retail channels such as convenience stores, Hema Fresh, and China Resources Ole. Similarly, after completing offline exposure and accumulation, it began to lay out online e-commerce channels.
In Hankou No.2 Factory's growth process, convenience store channels have also contributed significantly. **But high price is a very important reason for its offline difficulties.** Initially, the pricing of Hankou soda in supermarkets was 5.5 RMB per bottle, already higher than the unit price of traditional carbonated beverages; later, its Tmall flagship store's lychee, cherry blossom, and breakup series also sold for nearly 10 RMB per bottle. Some industry insiders also reported that Hankou No.2 Factory is not very active in offline distribution. **In addition, the glass bottle packaging is not portable enough, increasing the difficulty and cost of product transportation, which continuously hinders Hankou No.2 Factory's offline sales channels.**
**4. "Good at playing": high dependence on marketing, significant impact on sales**
All along, Genki Forest's marketing promotion strategy has been **the biggest communication point is driven by the product itself.** From the prominent and iconic "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories" on the packaging, to consumers' spontaneous secondary dissemination and KOL word-of-mouth marketing, everything closely revolves around Genki Forest's product characteristics.
In terms of celebrity resources and variety show placements, initially, Wei Daxun served as the image ambassador for the sub-brand Ran Tea, accompanying Genki Forest along the way. Recently, Genki Forest chose the popular sister Zhang Yuqi as the brand ambassador for its sparkling water, and laid out a large number of online and offline advertisements to increase exposure. This year, Genki Forest also launched a co-branded product with the popular Luosifen (snail rice noodles), continuously exposing Genki Forest to young consumers and narrowing the distance with consumers, spontaneously generating a lot of dissemination.
Because it deeply understands the psychology of young audiences, Hankou No.2 Factory launched the "Cheer for Lychee" inspirational soda, the "City Commemorative Edition" orange juice soda, the "Confession Bottle" love soda, and the "Face-Changing Bottle" Meow soda. Since its inception, almost every product launched by Hankou No.2 Factory quickly became a hit, causing large-scale online self-generated dissemination.
After the pandemic ended, it hitched a ride on the "assisting Hubei enterprises" bandwagon, becoming a "star" in live-streaming rooms of internet celebrities like Li Jiaqi and Viya. Even in the activity where Taobao joined forces with CCTV hosts to promote goods from Hubei, Hankou No.2 Factory soda was one of the products promoted, directly gaining official endorsement. Hankou No.2 Factory continuously creates hot topics, igniting young people's Moments, and becoming a true internet-famous brand.
**In addition, the young Hankou No.2 Factory is also the soda brand that does the most interesting new media content marketing, often collaborating with various public accounts in the food and consumption fields.** Hankou No.2 Factory is also skilled at multi-brand cross-border collaborations, continuously communicating soda consumption scenarios with young people. It co-branded with Xiaomi Youpin to launch "Salted Pineapple SODA," aiming to win over the younger generation of "Mi fans"; the collaboration with Li Ning clearly shows the intention to combine with national trend. The cooperation with Wuhan's time-honored brand Wang Yuxia strengthens Hankou No.2 Factory's sense of history.
Image source: @Hankou No.2 Factory official Weibo
**In general, the viral success of Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory is a product of the social media era.** Their main target consumers are heavy users of social platforms, immersed in various social apps daily, and both users and KOLs have a significant impact on consumer behavior.
The positioning of both brands also fits this generation's pursuit of individuality, and they provide many marketing inspirations for other traditional brands. From this perspective, both Genki Forest and Hankou No.2 Factory can be considered successful young brands. But how to become a successful brand, there is certainly still much room for optimization and breakthrough.
Source: Shiqu Research Institute (ID: SocialTouch2020)


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