In 2023, Li Tuchun, who has been in business for over 30 years, began to reflect on his past successes and failures. In Weiyi Xingcheng on Shaoshan North Road in Changsha, he founded the Zero Start Entrepreneurship Camp with a group of post-2000s youths. The aim is to provide entrepreneurs with all possible help, so they can avoid detours, deception, and unnecessary expenses. This simple intention inevitably reflects his personal ups and downs in the business world—he started by selling calendars, founded Prince Milk which was once extremely popular, quickly fell from grace, and now starts from zero again. Like the entrepreneurship camp, Li Tuchun's enthusiasm for the Zicheng Milk project is equally intense. Last summer, Li Tuchun disclosed the progress of this project on social media, and the next day it became a hot search topic. Leveraging the public's attention on Prince Milk, Zicheng Milk successfully captured a wave of traffic. Afterwards, Li Tuchun's son, Li Shuai, appeared in the live streaming room. Only then did people learn that the father-son duo were starting a new business. But the most frequently asked question was: "Where's your dad?" The general has returned, but the battle has already been lost. Li Tuchun, now in his sixties, is still traveling across the country to recruit old colleagues. The bankruptcy of Prince Milk has not diminished this business magnate's enthusiasm. Starting from zero, Li Tuchun still chooses the lactic acid bacteria beverage field he knows well. According to his plan, Zicheng Milk will achieve sales of 2.8 billion yuan in 2024, and strive to break through 10 billion yuan within three years. With new consumer brands emerging endlessly, can Li Tuchun make his dream come true? Starting from Zero Regarding the bankruptcy of Prince Milk, what Li Tuchun regrets most is that he failed to keep the Prince Milk trademark with the rising sun pattern. On the packaging of the new entrepreneurial product Zicheng Milk, only a trademark resembling the character "父" (father) can be printed, and it is still in TM status. On the bottle of this lactic acid bacteria beverage, it prominently prints "SINCE 1996", "Original Prince Milk Team", and a simple sketch of Li Tuchun's head in the center of the bottle. It seems to uniformly emphasize Li Tuchun's return. This time starting from zero, he did not choose Zhuzhou, where he rose to prominence, but placed the operation center in the core Shimao Global Financial Center in Changsha. From this office building, one can overlook the Xiangjiang River flowing north a few kilometers away, and Orange Isle lying quietly in the river. In June 2021, Li Tuchun's son, Li Shuai, registered and established Hunan Zicheng Biology, and the following year established Hunan Zicheng Trade, becoming the two main entities of Zicheng Milk. In Zhuzhou, the original Prince Milk headquarters park, which Li Tuchun spent billions to build, is nearly the size of 70 football fields, but it is now dilapidated. According to public information, Li Tuchun is not directly responsible for the operation of Zicheng Milk, but only serves as a consultant and brand ambassador, and helps with live streaming sales. "Zicheng Milk is Li Shuai, Prince Milk is Li Tuchun." Changes in the Industry Li Shuai, replacing Li Tuchun, stepped into the lactic acid bacteria beverage field again, upgrading the product to a sugar-free version, and the start was relatively good. Compared to the early high-profile Prince Milk, the father-son duo has shown obvious evolution in Zicheng Milk. It is currently clear that Zicheng Milk will not make large-scale investments or build its own factories; the products mainly rely on contract manufacturers. Li Tuchun stated externally that Zicheng Milk will not set very high sales targets, but must first grasp every detail and ensure quality. In the past year, Zicheng Milk was only sold in Changsha, and only at the beginning of January this year did it begin limited sales nationwide. On the one hand, this is out of consideration for carefully polishing the product; on the other hand, it is also testing market reactions, including testing the waters for live streaming business. In Li Tuchun's vision, the live streaming business will become diversified in the future, converting traffic into corporate members, or even product agents. This approach is very similar to the soda business that Lan Shili is currently developing. However, reshaping Prince Milk will not be as easy as imagined. Around the bankruptcy and restructuring of Prince Milk in 2011, the Chinese lactic acid bacteria beverage market changed dramatically. Mengniu launched Youyi C, and the following year, Yili Co., Ltd. launched Meiyitian. Later, Wahaha, Melodo, Junlebao, and Wei Chuan all entered the market. To differentiate, major companies innovated their products. Mengniu added Bulgarian bacteria, and Yili Co., Ltd. added Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium products. While major companies were fighting each other, Yakult took advantage of the situation and aggressively expanded its market. In 2020, its sales scale was about 6.6 billion yuan, reaching a peak in the Chinese market. Juneyao Health, the "first stock of lactic acid bacteria," was listed in 2020 as expected, but its operations are hardly optimistic. From 2021 to 2022, its lactic acid bacteria beverage product business revenue fell from 754 million yuan to 651 million yuan, and product sales volume dropped from 108,400 tons to 91,300 tons. According to data from the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, as early as 2015, the domestic room-temperature lactic acid bacteria beverage market had become saturated, with a market size of 7.72 billion yuan that year, and it is expected to reach 21.19 billion yuan by 2024, but the growth rate has declined sharply. A Multi-faceted Life Among entrepreneurs of the 1960s generation, Li Tuchun's image is particularly different. He comes from a grassroots background, and due to his turbulent fate on the entrepreneurial path, he has a somewhat tragic color. Therefore, when he came out again at the age of sixty, he chose to stay close to the grassroots. In his spare time, he combined his own business experience to compile ten courseware pieces, including essential business training cases for small and micro private enterprises, forming the prototype of the Zero Start Entrepreneurship Camp content. When talking about Li Tuchun, Prince Milk is unavoidable. This milk pushed him to the peak and also made him fall into the abyss. Prince Milk emerged in 1996, and alongside Wahaha AD Calcium Milk, Want Want Milk, and Robust AD Calcium Milk, it sold extremely well. During this period, Li Tuchun displayed the Hunanese character of toughness and adventurous spirit. By winning the CCTV advertising bid champion and with endorsements from Nicholas Tse and Twins, by 2005 Prince Milk had captured 70% of the market share in China's fermented lactic acid bacteria beverage market. This made Li Tuchun even more aggressive, and his ambition expanded. He established four major production factories nationwide, and the company headquarters was decorated as magnificently as a palace. In 2007, Prince Milk reached a watershed moment in its fate. With the injection of foreign consortium funds and Li Tuchun's failure in performance betting, he was forced to hand over Prince Milk. After bankruptcy restructuring, Prince Milk became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sanyuan Co., Ltd. In 2012, Li Tuchun regained his freedom and was silent for a decade. Now, he is unwilling to be lonely and has returned to the spotlight. PS: From March 14 to 16, 2024, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference and the 2nd China FMCG Hard Discount Conference & the 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference, hosted by New Distribution and co-hosted by Ande Zhilian, will be grandly held in Chengdu! The 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference will be hosted by New Distribution and co-hosted by Zhoupu Data. This conference will focus on the theme of "Supply Chain Revolution". Over three days, there will be one main forum, one China FMCG Hard Discount Conference, one China FMCG Distributor Conference, more than ten sub-forums and closed-door exchange meetings, and the first major debut of the [Ultimate Supply Chain] brand factory direct procurement meeting. It will be held with thousands of FMCG brand owners, distributors, retail transformers, and industry service providers from across the country in Chengdu, for continuous brainstorming, to jointly discuss the challenges and opportunities, changes and solutions in the era of supply chain revolution. In this era of supply chain revolution, a new business era will be born. We hope every participant will still have a place in this wave, and we believe this will be a worthwhile meeting! For business cooperation, please contact: 🔺Scan the code for ticket consultation🔺**