---
title: "New Products Abound: Can the Second-Generation '90s Leader Steer Liziyuan Out of Growth Anxiety?"
description: "Liziyuan has recently launched two new products: an upgraded AD calcium milk and a new product line called VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water. The company has been frequently introducing new products to diversify its product lines and reduce reliance on its sweet milk bestseller, reflecting its growth anxiety. The second-generation leader, Li Bosheng, has taken over management and is driving these efforts, but the challenge remains to create a new blockbuster product."
author: "海枫"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-05-13"
categories: "Brand Marketing, Capital, Earnings & M&A, Management & Methods"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0BZN4Lx1JzwX_IB7iYOVeQ"
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citation: "海枫. “New Products Abound: Can the Second-Generation '90s Leader Steer Liziyuan Out of Growth Anxiety?.” New Distribution, 2025-05-13. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/new-products-abound-can-the-second-generation-90s-leader-steer-liziyuan-4e228c54/"
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---

# New Products Abound: Can the Second-Generation '90s Leader Steer Liziyuan Out of Growth Anxiety?

> Liziyuan has recently launched two new products: an upgraded AD calcium milk and a new product line called VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water. The company has been frequently introducing new products to diversify its product lines and reduce reliance on its sweet milk bestseller, reflecting its growth anxiety. The second-generation leader, Li Bosheng, has taken over management and is driving these efforts, but the challenge remains to create a new blockbuster product.

**Source**丨Gooods 好味司
Frequently launching new products, Liziyuan has introduced new items again.
Recently, Liziyuan launched two new products: one is the upgraded AD calcium milk, with a product specification of 220ml, priced at 29.9 yuan for 12 bottles on e-commerce, approximately 2.5 yuan per bottle.
The other noteworthy product is a brand-new product line, VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water, focusing on vitamin functional beverages, available in three flavors (chrysanthemum, red raspberry, and lemon). This series has a specification of 500ml, priced at 18.9-19.9 yuan for 4 bottles on e-commerce, approximately 5 yuan per bottle.
Liziyuan has been continuously launching new products. Recently, in addition to AD calcium milk and VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water, Liziyuan has also expanded its fruit and vegetable juice product line, introducing two new products: corn juice and double pomelo juice.
These are just a part of the new products Liziyuan has launched over the past year.
New products launched by Liziyuan in the past year, image source: Gooods chart
In the second half of 2024, Liziyuan also launched two new product lines: Lucky Bubble Milk and soda water, as well as two new plant-based protein beverages: Daily Five Black and Daily Five Red.
Liziyuan has always hoped to diversify its product lines to reduce reliance on its sweet milk bestseller.
Behind the frequent new product launches
is Liziyuan's growth anxiety
Liziyuan's intensive new product launches are not just a recent phenomenon; they began around its IPO in 2021.
Liziyuan went public in early 2021, with performance peaking that year, but since then, revenue growth has stalled, and net profit has fluctuated in recent years, almost returning to pre-IPO levels.
If Liziyuan frequently launched new products before its IPO to tell a new growth story to the capital market and avoid the risk of relying on the sweet milk bestseller, then after going public (especially recently), the frequent new product launches are to address the company's growth anxiety.
After going public in 2021, the company launched a lactic acid bacteria beverage product line and an electrolyte water product line, as well as several dairy beverages, including Liziyuan Milk Coffee, Liziyuan Coconut Milk, and fruit and vegetable yogurt beverages.
**The first step to solving the anxiety is to clarify the product strategy: when diversifying product lines, should the company extend more towards dairy products or beverages?**
For example, the Stinky Milk launched in 2019 was an exploration in the dairy direction, while the electrolyte water launched in 2021 was an exploration in beverages.
**Looking at the new products Liziyuan has launched over the past five years, the company has been going through a process of exploration and adjustment. In the early stages, there was some wavering and lack of clarity. It was not until around 2024 that the company clarified its focus on dairy beverages as the core and more resolutely pursued diversification and multi-brand operations in beverages.**
This is related to the second generation of the founding family taking over. According to Liziyuan's December 2024 announcement, Li Bosheng, son of actual controllers Li Guoping and Wang Xubin, became the company's general manager and entered the board as a director, taking full responsibility for operations and management. Li Bosheng joined Liziyuan in 2021, initially responsible for e-commerce and brand marketing. The brand upgrade and the frequent new product launches over the past year or so have been led by Li Bosheng.
Currently, Liziyuan's diversification exploration is just taking shape: in the dairy beverage direction, there is the sweet milk bestseller; in beverage diversification, it has expanded into fruit and vegetable juices, plant-based protein beverages, vitamin beverages, and other product lines. The vitamin beverage is also operated under the new brand VitaYoung™ Vitality Vitamins.
**However, blindly launching new products cannot solve Liziyuan's current growth problems, especially since some new products are follow-up or imitative, lacking strong market competitiveness. What Liziyuan needs is a potential blockbuster product.**
**Market competitiveness and potential analysis:**
Liziyuan AD Calcium Milk + VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water
Do Liziyuan's two new products, AD calcium milk and VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water, have the potential to become blockbusters?
**First, the conclusion: AD calcium milk faces many difficulties and huge challenges, while the vitamin water depends on the resources, determination, and corresponding organizational capabilities the company invests.**
The upgraded AD calcium milk is more of a replication of Wahaha's classic AD calcium milk product, with packaging design and bottle shape as close as possible to Wahaha's AD calcium milk, and the formula is also quite similar.
Comparison of Liziyuan's upgraded AD calcium milk new product with Wahaha, image source: Gooods chart
From a product perspective, the biggest difference is the brand. In this case, it is difficult to compete effectively with Wahaha AD calcium milk, especially since Wahaha AD calcium milk has a history of over 20 years, with advantages in sales network and channels, brand awareness, and product recognition.
From a product portfolio perspective, AD calcium milk can serve as a supplement to Liziyuan's sweet milk, with similar product types, sharing sales networks and channels. Relying on Liziyuan's foundation, AD calcium milk has certain revenue potential, with annual revenue of 100-200 million yuan possible, but becoming a 1-billion-yuan blockbuster is a huge challenge.
VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water, positioned as a functional beverage, is launched under a new brand, almost equivalent to internal entrepreneurship.
Currently, the leaders in China's vitamin beverage market are Mizone and Nongfu Spring's vitamin water. Alien (Waixiangren) also launched a vitamin water in the past year, becoming a follower in the industry. Relying on the Alien brand foundation and Yuanqi Senlin's sales network, channels, and production supply chain, Alien is likely to be the main and most direct competitor VitaYoung Vitality Vitamins needs to face.
Image source: Gooods chart
From a product differentiation perspective, VitaYoung Vitality Vitamins currently promotes a "6-zero" minimalist formula. Although there are some product differences, from a market competition standpoint, these are not the core factors. Therefore, relying solely on formula differences is unlikely to bring strong competitiveness. For vitamin beverages, brand awareness, terminal channel distribution capability, and marketing promotion are more critical determinants, and Liziyuan lacks competitive advantages in these areas.
There have been similar precedents. The new popular player in the sugar-free tea category, Guozishule, before its sugar-free tea product line became popular, also launched a vitamin water product line with more youthful packaging, low sugar, and multiple flavors. However, due to low brand awareness, it could not bring competitive advantages to the vitamin water line, and the product never took off, now being a marginal product line for Guozishule.
Between the two new products, VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water clearly carries more expectations than AD calcium milk.
As early as the Spring Sugar Fair in April, VitaYoung appeared at the same investment booth as the main brand Liziyuan, as a key investment target. It is also operated as an independent brand, with independent social media accounts and e-commerce stores.
The product also shows the brand's effort: VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water pioneered the "6-zero" minimalist formula (zero sugar, zero calories, zero preservatives, zero flavors, zero fat, zero added colors), with an ingredient list close to the clean label concept, and adds different types of vitamins on this basis.
All this determination may be due to missed opportunities.
In 2021, Liziyuan launched an electrolyte beverage, but at that time, Liziyuan's product strategy was unclear, so investment in this electrolyte water was very limited, and the product ultimately failed and was withdrawn from the market.
Looking back now, in the past few years, electrolyte beverages have been one of the few beverage categories with explosive growth besides sugar-free tea, producing several blockbuster products. Products like Alien and Bushuila have achieved good growth.
If Liziyuan had been clearer about developing beverage products in 2021 and made corresponding adjustments in company strategy and organizational capabilities, the explosion of the electrolyte category might have brought different results for Liziyuan.
Now that the product direction is clear and the company shows stronger determination, this is also one of the keys to VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water's future development. Similarly, because it differs from Liziyuan's original dairy beverage-focused product types, corresponding adjustments need to be made in distribution networks, organizational capabilities, and marketing promotion.
Why Liziyuan
must break free from dependence on sweet milk
The core reasons are two-fold.
On one hand, Liziyuan is a listed company, and investors expect long-term sustainable growth in performance. If there is no growth or a decline, the company will face enormous pressure from the capital market, especially from stock price performance, which is the most direct pressure.
On the other hand, Liziyuan has been stuck in growth stagnation for three years. From 2022 to 2024, performance has been basically stagnant, even slightly declining. The dairy beverage business centered on sweet milk, even if there are future growth opportunities, has a relatively low ceiling.
Therefore, as a listed company with stagnant performance, breaking free from dependence on sweet milk is a must, and it is becoming increasingly urgent.
**But breaking free from dependence on sweet milk does not mean abandoning sweet milk or the dairy beverage segment; it means making product lines and business lines more diversified.**
For the current Liziyuan, the sweet milk bestseller is the company's core product portfolio, dominating the sweet milk dairy beverage segment and serving as the most core asset of the listed company.
To continuously solve the growth stagnation problem, Liziyuan needs more initiative. While seeking growth space and opportunities in the sweet milk and dairy beverage segments, it should also expand other product lines, increase their revenue scale and proportion, and develop new business pillars, enabling it to walk on two or even multiple legs. This way, even if sweet milk encounters growth bottlenecks in the future, the company can maintain overall growth through other product lines.
**Recreating a Liziyuan sweet milk**
**The difficulty and challenges of such a blockbuster product**
Liziyuan's dairy beverage business generated revenue of 1.354 billion yuan in 2024. Gooods estimates that sweet milk's revenue scale is around 1.1-1.2 billion yuan (estimated at 80-90% of the total). **A 1-billion-yuan blockbuster product is already a very impressive achievement.**
Liziyuan's market also covers three major regions: East China, Central China, and Southwest China. It has established a solid foundation in supply chain, production systems, sales networks, and consumer awareness.
Liziyuan sweet milk is a product with over 20 years of history. To a large extent, **sweet milk is equivalent to Liziyuan**, integrating market position, product lines, and brand awareness. Moreover, the strong binding between Liziyuan and sweet milk continues. Since 2024, Cheng Yi has become the brand ambassador, and from the perspective of promotion and resource investment, more focus is on sweet milk products, further strengthening the association between Liziyuan and the sweet milk blockbuster.
**This brand binding has two sides. The strong binding between sweet milk and Liziyuan, to some extent, also limits the development of new products under the Liziyuan main brand.**
If Liziyuan wants to recreate a blockbuster product, the Liziyuan main brand brings certain advantages, mainly in the dairy beverage category mindset, which is more suitable for developing dairy beverages rather than other beverage categories. However, in dairy beverages, competition is fierce. Whether it is sour milk beverages, lactic acid bacteria beverages, or flavored milk beverages like AD calcium milk, the opportunities for Liziyuan to create a blockbuster are extremely scarce.
For other beverage products that Liziyuan is determined to develop, if placed under the Liziyuan main brand, the endorsement is limited and cannot bring strong brand competitive advantages. To create a strong association between the Liziyuan main brand and other beverage products, the company would need many years of brand building and investment.
If Liziyuan wants to create new brands for other beverage categories, the main brand's endorsement is limited and cannot bring strong brand competitive advantages. It will encounter the same problem as VitaYoung Vitality Vitamin Water, where many aspects are equivalent to starting from scratch. This means the company needs time, accumulation, long-term investment, market opportunities, and to some extent, a bit of luck.
**What is the key to Liziyuan's successful diversification transformation?**
What Liziyuan is currently doing is: breaking free from dependence on sweet milk and becoming a multi-product-line, even multi-brand, beverage company.
What are the possible approaches to solving this problem?
**First, focus on the most core product.** As mentioned earlier, Liziyuan frequently launches new products, but many are follow-up or imitative, lacking the potential to become blockbusters. From a product development perspective, developing products with differentiation and potential to become blockbusters is the core capability Liziyuan needs to improve.
**Then, brand building.** Based on the company's product launches, vitamin water is a reserve for the beverage product line, carried under a new brand. How to build a new brand from 0 to 1 and open the market without brand influence is also an organizational capability that Liziyuan needs to pay special attention to. It should be noted that this is a completely different brand capability from the current brand building and promotion for the Liziyuan main brand.
**Correspondingly, the current sales system, distributors, and terminal channel network** are more focused on dairy beverages centered on sweet milk, with relatively little experience in non-dairy beverages. Therefore, Liziyuan's sales system, distributors, and terminal channel network also need to be adjusted in line with the company's diversified product lines.
**Organizational structure and capabilities also need adjustment, and this work is no less important than the first three.** On one hand, it needs to adapt to beverage product lines beyond dairy; on the other hand, it needs to adapt to diversified product lines and even multi-brand beverage operations.
**For Liziyuan to successfully achieve diversified product transformation, it is no less difficult than recreating another Liziyuan.**
This is extremely challenging and cannot be completed in a short cycle. It requires the company's organization, from top to bottom, to have strong strategic determination and high-quality decision-making.
**Of course, in my view, diversified product transformation is not the only direction.**
Liziyuan has a completely different choice: relying on its R&D, supply chain, and self-owned factories, it can **serve excellent retailers and become a private label product supplier.**
Currently, China's retail industry is undergoing transformation for many different types of retailers, all moving away from KA (key accounts), especially supermarkets and hypermarkets, which are changing their original business models, strengthening private labels, product power, and product development capabilities.
For these retailers that are transforming or have successfully transformed, as well as some leading retailers, what they need is a high-quality supply chain, which is exactly where Liziyuan fits well.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 海枫
- Published: 2025-05-13
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/new-products-abound-can-the-second-generation-90s-leader-steer-liziyuan-4e228c54/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0BZN4Lx1JzwX_IB7iYOVeQ

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