---
title: "Huiyuan's Road to Revival Remains Long as Hype Fades Again"
description: "Recently, Xin Jifei sparked heated discussions about food safety by revealing food additives in short videos. As Xin Jifei deactivated his account and disappeared from public view, the buzz around 'technology and ruthlessness' gradually subsided. This storm affected many brands, with the leading soy sauce company losing nearly 300 billion yuan, while Huiyuan Juice, the former 'national beverage', gained renewed popularity thanks to Xin's positive comments. Within just over ten days, Huiyuan's official flagship store gained nearly 340,000 followers on a short-video platform. This is not the first time Huiyuan has been boosted by traffic. Last year, during the severe floods in Henan, Huiyuan, on the brink of bankruptcy, still donated goods worth millions, making it another domestic brand supported by 'irrational consumption' after Erke and Baixiang. However, as the hype cools and consumers become rational, the brand gradually returns to its original position. Clearly, fleeting traffic can bring exposure and sales spikes but cannot truly revive Huiyuan."
author: "​任孟瑶"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-10-31"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZqY8OTGaKuJ3nnu3i7pSvQ"
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# Huiyuan's Road to Revival Remains Long as Hype Fades Again

> Recently, Xin Jifei sparked heated discussions about food safety by revealing food additives in short videos. As Xin Jifei deactivated his account and disappeared from public view, the buzz around 'technology and ruthlessness' gradually subsided. This storm affected many brands, with the leading soy sauce company losing nearly 300 billion yuan, while Huiyuan Juice, the former 'national beverage', gained renewed popularity thanks to Xin's positive comments. Within just over ten days, Huiyuan's official flagship store gained nearly 340,000 followers on a short-video platform. This is not the first time Huiyuan has been boosted by traffic. Last year, during the severe floods in Henan, Huiyuan, on the brink of bankruptcy, still donated goods worth millions, making it another domestic brand supported by 'irrational consumption' after Erke and Baixiang. However, as the hype cools and consumers become rational, the brand gradually returns to its original position. Clearly, fleeting traffic can bring exposure and sales spikes but cannot truly revive Huiyuan.

Recently, Xin Jifei sparked heated discussions about food safety by revealing food additives in short videos. As Xin Jifei deactivated his account and disappeared from public view, the buzz around 'technology and ruthlessness' gradually subsided.
This storm affected many brands. The leading soy sauce company lost nearly 300 billion yuan due to this incident, while Huiyuan Juice, the former 'national beverage', gained renewed popularity thanks to Xin's positive comments. Within just over ten days, Huiyuan's official flagship store gained nearly 340,000 followers on a short-video platform.
This is not the first time Huiyuan has been boosted by traffic. Last year, during the severe floods in Henan, Huiyuan, on the brink of bankruptcy, still donated goods worth millions, making it another domestic brand supported by 'irrational consumption' after Erke and Baixiang.
But as the hype cools and consumers become rational, the brand gradually returns to its original position. Clearly, fleeting traffic can bring exposure and sales spikes but cannot truly revive Huiyuan.
Looking back, Huiyuan was once a well-known national brand, but later it became heavily indebted, went bankrupt, and was delisted, which is regrettable. Currently, Huiyuan has recovered some vitality but is no longer as glorious as before. This article will analyze the ups and downs of Huiyuan Juice's development.
**01 From 'Bankrupt Canned Food Factory' to 'Juice Empire'**
**How did Huiyuan achieve this?**
In the 1990s, as society transitioned from a planned economy to a market economy, a wave of entrepreneurship swept the country. According to statistics, in 1992, 120,000 civil servants resigned to start businesses, and Zhu Xinli, the founder of Huiyuan, was one of them.
The county where Zhu Xinli lived mainly developed fruit cultivation, but due to transportation and information constraints, a large amount of fruit was unsold, and fruit farmers could only watch it rot.
Zhu Xinli noticed this problem. After giving up his 'iron rice bowl', he took over the only canned food factory in the area, transformed it, and established Shandong Zibo Huiyuan Food and Beverage Co., Ltd. He turned the unsold fruit into juice, solving the problem of unsold fruit for farmers.
But at that time, domestic consumers were not accustomed to drinking juice, so the juice produced did not sell well. To open up sales channels, Zhu Xinli carried pancakes and brought a translator to attend a food exhibition in Germany, eventually securing a large order of 5 million yuan, which was the first pot of gold for Huiyuan's start.
In 1994, Zhu Xinli led his team to Beijing and founded Beijing Huiyuan Food and Beverage Co., Ltd. As the market gradually opened up, Huiyuan's production bases expanded from Beijing and Shandong southward, even establishing Asia's largest juice production line in Chongqing.
2007 was the peak moment for Huiyuan since its inception. Not only did it successfully list in Hong Kong, but it also set the record for the largest IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that year. Zhu Xinli also ranked 91st on the Forbes rich list with a net worth of 6.13 billion yuan.
From obscurity to household fame, Huiyuan's 'overnight success' was closely related to the macro environment at the time.
The 1990s was an era of mass communication marketing. At that time, media forms were single, information channels were narrow, and the most widely received and credible channel was undoubtedly CCTV. The time slot from News Broadcast to Weather Forecast was the golden period in advertising, and whoever could secure it became the 'bid champion'. Most brands that won this slot could leap forward and become national consumer brands.
Huiyuan Juice was one of the bid champions.
In 1996, Zhu Xinli spent 70 million yuan to secure the five-second bid advertising rights on CCTV.
It is worth noting that Huiyuan's annual sales at that time were less than 70 million yuan. But it was precisely this bold strategy that made 'Drink Huiyuan Juice, Walk the Road to Health' famous nationwide overnight.
From a canned food factory with millions in debt to a leading enterprise, Huiyuan became famous overnight through CCTV advertising, and its development flourished thereafter. By 2007, it had maintained the largest market share in the domestic market for over a decade. Until 2008, Huiyuan began to decline sharply.
**02 Coca-Cola Acquisition Rejected**
**Huiyuan's Fate Takes a Turn**
One of the key reasons for Huiyuan's decline was the 'Coca-Cola acquisition case'.
As the saying goes, 'A tall tree catches the wind.' Such excellent performance naturally attracted the attention of the commercial giant Coca-Cola.
In September 2008, Coca-Cola announced the acquisition of all shares of Huiyuan Juice for HK$17.92 billion, about twice the company's market value at the time. Zhu Xinli also considered that the juice market was gradually saturating and wanted to shift to the upstream supply chain of juice beverages, so he was happy to accept the acquisition.
To get a good price, Zhu Xinli took a series of radical measures:
1. Invest heavily in upstream raw material supply chain to prepare for the upcoming corporate transformation;
2. Massively lay off sales personnel and adjust sales channels, causing the sales system to collapse.
Just as everything was ready and Zhu Xinli was happily preparing to attack the upstream business, the Ministry of Commerce's ruling caught him off guard.
In 2009, the Ministry of Commerce vetoed the acquisition on anti-monopoly grounds, and the plans of Huiyuan and Coca-Cola ultimately failed.
The west wall was not repaired, and the east wall they wanted to rely on also collapsed, leaving Huiyuan severely weakened.
Although the acquisition case was a critical blow to Huiyuan's decline, internal debt and management issues had already emerged.
Zhu Xinli always had a 'farming dream' and was keen on investing in the upstream industry chain of juice products, including fruit tree planting and cultivation and deep processing of fruits and vegetables, with cumulative investments exceeding 2 billion yuan.
Due to the failure of the acquisition, Huiyuan faced heavy financial pressure. Even so, Huiyuan continued to invest in production lines and equipment, with cumulative investments reaching 6 billion yuan.
The aggressive investment strategy left the already declining company heavily indebted. By the end of 2017, the company's total liabilities reached 11.4 billion yuan.
In addition, Huiyuan's family-style management has been criticized by the outside world.
Most of Huiyuan's senior managers were family members of Zhu Xinli. Although family businesses have strong cohesion and high decision-making efficiency, they lack the professionalism to manage a large enterprise, and the complex interpersonal relationships make it difficult to handle right and wrong.
Although Zhu Xinli intended to hire professional managers, the deep-rooted family forces made it difficult for outsiders to stay long. According to data, from 2013 to 2018, Huiyuan Juice changed four presidents, each serving less than two years.
Clearly, internal debt and management issues had affected Huiyuan's foundation, causing internal worries. But besides 'internal troubles', 'external threats' also surrounded it.
**Intense market competition:** The juice beverage market has low entry barriers, and with consumption upgrades, consumers' demand for healthier and more personalized drinks has increased, prompting many beverage brands to enter the juice category.
Although Huiyuan seized the first-mover advantage in the juice market, it only holds a high share in the high-concentration juice market. The low-concentration juice market is fiercely competitive, with old brands like Uni-President, Master Kong, and Wahaha vying for share, and new consumer brands trying to get a piece of the pie. Additionally, new-style tea drinks like Heytea and Luckin Coffee are emerging. Intense market competition is also one of the reasons for Huiyuan's poor performance.
**Insufficient product innovation:** In the 1990s, Chinese people did not have the habit of drinking juice. Huiyuan's juice drinks opened up the juice beverage track. When others saw this track, various juice products were developed with creativity.
Uni-President launched 'Fresh Orange Duo', Master Kong followed with 'Daily C', and PepsiCo was not to be outdone, launching 'Ledu' and 'Guo Binfen' juice drinks. Seeing so many competitors, Huiyuan also felt anxious and blindly followed other brands to develop new products. In June of the same year that 'Fresh Orange Duo' was launched, Huiyuan launched 'Zhen Xian Cheng', but it was soon drowned out by various new drinks.
**Sharp decline in sales channels:** Due to the Coca-Cola acquisition case, Zhu Xinli laid off a large number of sales personnel.
Data shows that at that time, the 21 provincial managers in Huiyuan's 21 national sales regions had basically left, and the number of employees decreased from 9,722 at the end of 2007 to 4,935 at the end of 2008, with sales personnel dropping from 3,926 to only 1,160. This meant that the sales system that Huiyuan had built over 16 years almost collapsed.
In addition, with old players in the juice track and new entrants constantly emerging, channel competition was fierce, so it gradually became difficult for consumers to find Huiyuan on shelves.
With aggressive strategies leading to high debt, internal management constraining development, and declining profitability under competitive pressure, Huiyuan was already struggling, and the illegal related-party transactions became the last straw.
In January 2021, the Stock Exchange announced that Huiyuan Juice's listing status would be cancelled.
The national beverage that accompanied a generation finally exited the stage.
**03 Wildfire Cannot Burn It Down, Spring Wind Revives It**
**Can Huiyuan Return to Its Peak?**
After the delisting incident, the appearance of a 'white knight' brought new hope to Huiyuan.
In 2021, Shanghai Wensheng Asset Management Co., Ltd. planned to invest 1.6 billion yuan as a restructuring investor. This capital could effectively resolve Huiyuan's most critical funding chain issue.
But for Huiyuan to return to the A-share market, the most important thing is to build products, strengthen the brand, improve business structure and marketing models, and enhance the company's own profitability.
In recent years, Huiyuan's efforts to make a comeback have been evident.
**1. Innovate and upgrade products:** Huiyuan, which previously relied on a single large product, has now begun to deeply cultivate the fruit and vegetable juice segment. Targeting different consumer groups, it has launched various juice products, such as 'Fruit and Vegetable 5+7' designed for children, and NFC juice (not from concentrate) for health-conscious young consumers.
In addition, different packaging specifications have been designed according to different consumption scenarios. Huiyuan's categories have become richer, and products are gradually updating towards youthfulness, health, and personalization, better meeting the current beverage market demand.
**2. Promote brand rejuvenation:** In August 2022, Huiyuan announced that traffic star Jackson Yee became its new spokesperson, which attracted high attention, with the official Weibo post receiving over 1 million likes and shares. In addition to signing a young traffic spokesperson, Huiyuan also planned a series of online activities to reach consumers in different fields: cross-brand collaborations with multiple brands such as Tmall and Man Xiaobao; forming a 'food and drink alliance' with Baixiang, Qiaqia, Taoli Bread, etc., to interact with netizens and promote on online platforms.
**3. Explore digital supply chain:** Huiyuan's previous warehousing and logistics mainly relied on self-built warehouses across the country, with third-party logistics companies for distribution. But with the rise of online channels, the traditional supply chain is increasingly struggling to cope with new channels and demands. How to find the optimal solution for supply chain transformation? Huiyuan decided to cooperate with JD Logistics to build an integrated supply chain. JD Logistics not only helped integrate Huiyuan's To B and To C business segments but also used the 'one inventory' approach to integrate Huiyuan's various channels. The digital supply chain built by the two not only improved logistics efficiency but also made channel management and decision-making more efficient.
After various efforts, Huiyuan's current operating conditions are improving. According to Huiyuan Juice's official website, from January to July 2022, sales performance increased by 5.1% year-on-year, with online channels increasing by 114.1% year-on-year.
After a turbulent half-century, can Huiyuan defeat beverage giants like Master Kong, Wahaha, and Coca-Cola, as well as ambitious new consumer brands, in the fiercely competitive juice beverage market and regain the top position in the juice category? We will wait and see its road to revival.
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