Click to read the original text for details Last year, Jinmailang's overall revenue surpassed the 20 billion yuan mark, achieving strong growth after years of ups and downs since its founding in 1994. Jinmailang Group has five major business divisions: instant noodles, beverages, flour, dried noodles, and comprehensive. It has established 10 instant noodle production bases, 14 beverage production bases, 7 flour production bases, 2 dried noodle production bases, and 3 comprehensive production bases nationwide. It is a national key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization and a leading enterprise in the integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas. Its products are sold nationwide and exported to more than 40 countries and regions. In the early 1990s, instant noodle brands such as Master Kong and Uni-President targeted cities. During that period, these two brands occupied a large share of the first- and second-tier markets, and it was then that they became known to urban Chinese consumers, who were a generation with relatively high consumption levels at that time. While Master Kong and Uni-President focused all their energy on cities and could not attend to rural areas and townships, Jinmailang's predecessor, Hebei Hualong Flour Industry Group, saw the huge potential of the rural market and thus focused on the mid-to-low-end market. By avoiding direct competition with major brands, Hualong became a highly influential regional brand in rural and township areas within a few years, becoming the leader in China's rural and township markets. However, soon after, brands like Master Kong and Uni-President began channel下沉, focusing on the rural market, which posed a significant threat to Hualong. As a company primarily offering mid-to-low-end products, Hualong had no ability to compete with these brands except for price advantages. So Hualong understood that to defend its rural market share and enter the urban market, it had to create a new mid-to-high-end product. Thus, Jinmailang was born. According to statistics from Ries Consulting, from 2017 to 2018, Jinmailang's growth rate increased by 20% year-on-year, while Master Kong's growth rate was 5.7% and Uni-President's was 3.7% during the same period. In 2018, Jinmailang's instant noodle business exceeded 7 billion yuan, ranking third after Master Kong and Uni-President, becoming one of the top three in China's instant noodle market. Image source: Ries Consulting In recent years, although the growth rate of instant noodles in China has improved, it remains weak. Despite the overall poor market conditions, Jinmailang has maintained double-digit compound annual growth, gradually narrowing the gap with Master Kong and Uni-President. In 2018, Master Kong and Uni-President's sales were 23.917 billion yuan and 8.425 billion yuan respectively. It is predicted that in 2019, Jinmailang's sales will exceed Uni-President's. This is not unfounded. In 2018, Jinmailang's products "One Barrel Half" and "One Bag Half" achieved an impressive year-on-year growth of 70% compared to 2017. The "One Dish One Noodle" product, targeting those who crave the taste of home, achieved gratifying results; the high-end brand "Noodle House Noodles" entered the global market, with sales and reputation reaching new highs, becoming a hot product recommended by netizens! Jinmailang Chairman Fan Xianguo speaks at the 2019 Hebei Agricultural Product Processing Industry Development Conference Image source: Great Wall Net Of course, besides instant noodles, Jinmailang's second largest segment, beverages, is also developing rapidly. According to research data released by Nielsen, as of the third quarter of 2018, Jinmailang's beverage growth rate surged 37% year-on-year, ranking first nationwide. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Jinmailang's beverage business ranked first again with a growth rate of 46%, far exceeding Nongfu Spring (second) and Ganten (third). The sales growth rate of its beverage segment also far surpassed domestic and international beverage giants such as Master Kong, Uni-President, Wahaha, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. Currently, Jinmailang's beverage products include bottled water, fruit juice, ready-to-drink tea, light beverages, and functional drinks. It is worth mentioning that in the summer of 2019, Jinmailang's sales staff vigorously promoted the rapid sell-through of terminal beverage products by leveraging the "Four Seize Spirit" – seize shelf space, seize refrigerators, seize displays, and seize inventory. To expand production capacity, in March this year, Jinmailang Group began promoting the Jinmailang Food & Beverage (Heyuan) Production Base project, planning to invest 1.7 billion yuan to build a flagship base in the South China in Heyuan High-tech Zone, mainly producing and selling packaged drinking water, tea beverages, fruit and vegetable drinks, and instant noodles. After full production, the project is expected to generate an output value of over 2 billion yuan. Jinmailang's success today is inseparable from its marketing strategy. After dominating the rural market, Jinmailang began to enter cities. To compete with the giants in cities, Jinmailang's innovation has been fully demonstrated. In the instant noodle business, Jinmailang successfully won consumers' hearts with hit products like "Springy Noodles" and "Premium Beef Noodles," capturing a significant market share and successfully becoming the third force in the industry. In addition, Jinmailang's product innovation is worth analyzing. Innovation is the foundation for long-term development. Although products only play a supporting role in the innovation process, in the instant noodle market, new products emerge every year, but very few succeed, with major single products accounting for less than 0.2%. Every industry has competition, so to be a leader, you must truly be different from others. Through Jinmailang's products over the years, we can see that it is very down-to-earth. Taking the high-end product "One Dish One Noodle" as an example, its taste and flavor perfectly restore the original taste of tomato and egg, and it makes the traditional instant noodle seasoning packet visible and tangible, saying goodbye to the industrialized taste. The subsequent "One Barrel Half" and "One Bag Half" are full of obvious "Fan-style wisdom." Every instant noodle eater has had the experience of one bag not being enough and two bags being too much. Jinmailang seized this human selling point and launched such a product. The biggest innovation of this product is its insight into consumers. From Hualong to Jinmailang, although Jinmailang currently ranks third in the market and faces resistance from Master Kong and Uni-President, it should thank Master Kong and Uni-President for its third-place position. It is precisely because of the years of rivalry between Master Kong and Uni-President that Jinmailang was able to implement the strategy of encircling cities from rural areas, giving Jinmailang the opportunity to enter the competition among the top players. Now, Master Kong is committed to market education and influencing young consumers, while Jinmailang focuses on product development and self-improvement. In recent years, Jinmailang's "Four-in-One" project (personnel, vehicles, machines, and regions) – involving sales staff, vehicles, mobile clients, and the regions responsible for sales staff – has achieved good results in strengthening terminal control. By using vehicles to cover outlets and through regional contracting, small workers are promoted to partners. Through terminal machines, the entire supply chain process including personnel, channels, products, inventory, orders, stores, logistics, finance, and ERP is intelligently managed. This has improved Jinmailang's business, channels, and management. From the initial pilot with 28 distributors to the participation of over a thousand distributors now, the "Four-in-One" project has allowed Jinmailang to capture a larger market share. While creating benefits for distributors, it also provides a winning foundation for Jinmailang's new product promotion, channel construction, and brand promotion as it advances from rural to urban areas. Half of 2019 has passed. We will wait and see what achievements Jinmailang will make this year. We also welcome you to leave a comment at the end of the article with your predictions. Compiled and edited by