---
title: "Nice vs Liby: Alibaba vs Tencent in the Daily Chemical Industry"
description: "In the daily chemical industry, P&G, Unilever, and L'Oréal dominate all market segments, but two Chinese companies, Nice and Liby, have managed to stand firm and counterattack, each with annual sales exceeding 15 billion yuan in 2016. This article analyzes their strategies in product segmentation, channel management, and brand marketing, highlighting their different approaches and outcomes."
author: "纳兰醉天"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-02-17"
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# Nice vs Liby: Alibaba vs Tencent in the Daily Chemical Industry

> In the daily chemical industry, P&G, Unilever, and L'Oréal dominate all market segments, but two Chinese companies, Nice and Liby, have managed to stand firm and counterattack, each with annual sales exceeding 15 billion yuan in 2016. This article analyzes their strategies in product segmentation, channel management, and brand marketing, highlighting their different approaches and outcomes.

**Click image for details**
The daily chemical industry has always been like a coalition besieging a city, with P&G, Unilever, and L'Oréal controlling all product segments from high to low end. With their strong capital strength, they have been encircling and suppressing local Chinese daily chemical companies.
Against this trend, two companies have gradually gained a foothold and formed a counterattack thanks to their own qualities and grasp of the market. They are Nice and Liby. In 2016, **both had annual sales exceeding 15 billion yuan. Although they cannot shake the three giants, they have found a space for local daily chemical companies.**
In the growth of these two companies, there are traces of mutual imitation and competition in their products, channels, and marketing strategies.
**Product Segmentation: Blue Ocean Orientation vs User Orientation**
Laundry powder, laundry soap, laundry liquid... The main markets where Nice and Liby focus are concentrated in the washing and chemical field. Although their products are similar, their approaches are different.
**Nice: Seeking Blue Ocean**
In the early 1990s, China implemented "retreat of the state and advance of the private," causing many state-owned enterprises to withdraw from business operations and introduce a large amount of foreign capital, which also led to the "collective demise" of local daily chemical companies. The once-famous Panda laundry powder was acquired by P&G in 1994; Vital 28 was acquired by Germany's Henkel in 1996.
In contrast, the then-unknown Nice carried out a shareholding system reform in a timely manner, allowing employees to become masters of their own business, unleashing unprecedented vitality.
First, in the field of laundry powder and laundry soap, Nice used the "Diao" brand to conquer the market. At that time, washing and chemical products were fragmented, and brand regionalism was obvious. With no significant difference in products, Nice used advertising to seize consumer mindshare. In the Diao brand advertisement featuring laid-off female workers, the child's line "Mom, I can help you with work" warmed many people's hearts. This also made Diao the first to break out of regional boundaries and become a national brand.
Second, Yayale toothpaste targeted the children's market, peeling back the layers of oral care. As consumers' material and cultural needs increased, the Diao brand image and product design could no longer meet demand. So Nice used oral care as a breakthrough and launched the "Nice" brand. Its products used a unique transparent paste, giving a sense of nutrition and health, quickly attracting consumer attention. However, the toothpaste market was highly competitive at the time, and the three giants had formed a monopoly on the adult toothpaste market. Nice began to focus on the children's market, launching the "Yayale" brand, emphasizing its rich VC content. Currently, Yayale toothpaste has annual sales of around 500 million yuan and is the number one brand in the children's toothpaste market.
Finally, with the rise of the laundry liquid market, Nice timely launched Chaoneng laundry liquid, seizing the market with the slogan "Chaoneng women use Chaoneng." After years of cultivation, Nice has developed steadily in the mid-to-high-end market. By 2015, its high value-added products accounted for 67% of output value. At the same time, its sales exceeded 19 billion yuan, ranking fifth in the world's daily chemical industry.
**Liby: Close to Users**
Liby was established in 1994, when the washing and chemical market had gradually opened up. Liby followed the market and gradually gained a latecomer advantage.
At that time, it was the era of laundry powder and laundry soap. Liby also launched related products in line with market demand, meeting users' personalized needs and innovatively adding fragrance to laundry powder. With economic development, consumers' consumption concepts changed. People who were once price-oriented began to pay attention to health, "fearing that daily chemical products would hurt hands and leave toxic residues." So Liby proposed the concept of "Liby that doesn't hurt hands," directly attacking the laundry powder market. During the same period, Liby's dishwashing liquid also seized consumer psychology, launching the slogan "doesn't hurt hands, no residue," catering to the segmented market and achieving good results. Currently, Liby dishwashing liquid and Diao dishwashing liquid are recognized as kings in the dishwashing liquid category, while the former leading brand White Cat has disappeared.
In the laundry liquid brand, Liby, while adhering to the "doesn't hurt hands" appeal, upgraded to "washing and care in one." At the same time, it adopted a dual-brand strategy, with Liby laundry liquid and also "Qubba." Since "Qubba" could not be registered as a trademark, it was renamed "Good Daddy," and invited Huang Lei and his daughter, who became famous from "Dad, Where Are We Going?" as spokespersons.
In the toothpaste market, Liby lags far behind Nice. Compared to Nice Group using two brands, "Nice" and "Yayale," for toothpaste, Liby still uses the "Liby" brand. In 2003, despite spending heavily to invite Lin Xinyue, who became popular from "My Fair Princess," to promote it, it still could not change consumers' rejection. Because using Liby toothpaste felt like pouring laundry powder or dishwashing liquid into the mouth. Later, Liby acquired Lantian Liubizhi to try to make a comeback, but after all, this brand had aged, and no one could reverse consumers' elimination of it.
Comment: Both sides have no particular achievements in the shampoo field. In 2006, Liby acquired Chongqing Olive, but Hong Kong Olive stated that it had obtained 20 years of use rights for Chongqing Olive in 2004, and in November of that year sold the "Hong Kong Olive" and "Centennial Hair Care" brands to Nice. After that, there were six years of litigation.
And now, whether it is "Olive" or "Centennial Hair Care," neither has performed well in the market.
**Channel Competition: Distributors Determine Strength**
Terminals are an important channel for daily chemical products. Nice is unhurried about terminals, while Liby has a special preference for them. Their different attitudes have also led to different results.
**Nice: Emphasizing Distributors**
First, Nice has accumulated channel momentum. As a company that started with laundry powder and laundry soap, Nice has an inherent advantage in channels. Whether it is terminal supermarkets, washing and chemical CS stores, or mom-and-pop shops, Nice products can be distributed in a timely manner. This not only ensures that large supermarkets can become an important channel but also prevents over-reliance on them.
Currently, large supermarket costs are high, but Nice, with its multiple product categories, ensures that promoters have relatively high per capita output, and costs are reasonable under shared expenses. When Blue Moon promoters contribute less than 20,000 yuan per person per month in terminal supermarkets, Nice promoters can contribute 40,000 yuan.
Large supermarkets pressure payment terms, increase fees, and companies engage in vicious competition, deliberately raising display fees. For daily chemical companies, terminals are like a profit squeezer. Nice neither resists nor complies with terminal supermarkets. When entering terminals, Nice strictly controls funds, negotiates slowly with supermarkets, and provides limited financial support to supermarkets. Its branches do not support distributors' expenses for entering supermarkets in principle. Therefore, distributors are extremely cautious in their purchases, trying to minimize products related to terminals. Instead, they use more strong resources to grasp circulation channels. Although this strategy reduces Nice's contact with consumers, it ultimately ensures corporate profits.
Unlike Blue Moon founder Luo Qiuping's misjudgment of community consumption, Nice Chairman and President Zhuang Qichuan is very calm. Stabilize circulation, do not increase terminal investment, and invest the saved expenses in online e-commerce channels. Currently, Nice has achieved good results in online washing and care, ranking first in daily chemical sales during "Double 11."
Second, timely reform. With the expansion of the company in recent years, the problem of bloated personnel and institutions has become increasingly prominent. Competitors are even more aggressive. Local companies are increasing display fees and activity fees in terminals, intending to remove Nice from terminals; international brands such as P&G, Unilever, and L'Oréal are compressing Nice's living space with strong brand power and product power.
To this end, Zhuang Qichuan formulated a contract system. Channel leaders in various provinces and cities contract their respective channels. The company provides a base price to the leaders, who jointly operate products with distributors. This ensures corporate profits and greatly mobilizes team enthusiasm.
In 2016, Nice upgraded the contract system and launched a national internal purchase meeting, turning everyone—not only company personnel and distributor personnel but also social personnel—into distributors. Everyone becomes a second-tier distributor, everyone does distribution. The internal purchase meeting greatly stimulated cash turnover and promoted the digestion of distributor inventory. The company also formulated corresponding price protection mechanisms to ensure product prices in the market and guarantee everyone's profit system.
However, in recent years, Nice has had few achievements in new products. Nice proposed the "Thunder Action" systematic project, which comprehensively and systematically calculates the bills of manufacturers, distributors, stores, and consumers, reasonably distributes benefits at all levels, and uses maximizing consumer benefits to force stores, distributors, and manufacturers to improve. According to the different performance of each distributor, it changes corresponding publicity, service, and management, making quick money and long-term money.
Although these manufacturers all want to use new products to increase sales and profits, in actual operation, they do not truly treat new products as a new industry, but hope to use old channels, old distributors, and old personnel to create miracles.
(Width of both product lines)
**Liby: Starting from Channels**
Liby has good channel management capabilities. If Zhejiang merchants emphasize culture, then Cantonese merchants emphasize modern management. As a latecomer, Liby has developed in channel and distributor management. It introduced management models from the beverage and other industries, changing distributors' style from sitting wholesalers to traveling merchants; requiring distributors to move out of wholesale markets, buy cars, rent warehouses, and hire people for door-to-door delivery, changing the traditional business model.
Although the influence of terminal supermarkets has declined, output has decreased, and costs continue to rise, they are still very effective for brand display. For example, when Blue Moon withdrew from supermarkets, rumors circulated that "Blue Moon was removed from shelves due to product quality issues." So Liby would rather suffer losses than give up the brand image in terminals.
To ensure brand status, Liby requires distributors to only operate its own brand and emphasizes payment before delivery, refusing debt.
However, relatively backward reforms have led to Liby's decline. Liby leaders value relationships, and many veteran distributors are enshrined. People no longer focus on brand management but consider how to consume company expenses and how to get more support from the company. Distributors have outdated thinking, lack ambition, and have poor learning ability. Under Liby's kinship management system, they are comfortable and complacent. This has led to Liby's biggest current problem: bloated personnel, distributors cannot be moved, and sales personnel cannot be moved. Provincial regions are also severely corrupt, with eating, taking, and demanding, and many expenses that should be invested in the market become relationship fees.
Perhaps aware of this problem, Liby has also begun to learn from Nice's contract system. However, those who are used to the "big pot" and see through Liby's current situation feel that their deposits may not be returned, so their participation enthusiasm is not high. Some provincial leaders, relying on relationships, hold onto expenses and do not implement them in the market, causing a large number of terminal employees to resign.
Before the contract system was finalized, they were eager to learn the internal purchase meeting, and in the end, neither project was implemented.
Comment: Nice is adept in laundry powder channels but frequently fails in new product promotion, which has become a major pain point. Liby was methodical and successful in its early development, but as the company grew and the FMCG industry cooled, it still needs to work on its channels.
**Brand Marketing: Large Investment vs Targeted Investment**
In terms of publicity, both Nice and Liby are experts. However, Nice focuses on emotions, with large platforms and large investments.
In the early days, the auntie said, "I have trusted Diao for so many years"; the child of the laid-off female worker said, "Mom, I can help you with work"; adapting Liu Huan's "Start Over" to "Effort Brings Opportunity"... all had outstanding effects. After acquiring "Centennial Hair Care," it even reused the classic scene from "A Moment of Romance," imitating Chow Yun-fat washing his lover's hair, faithfully reproducing it; when launching Chaoneng laundry liquid, the slogan "Chaoneng women use Chaoneng" systematically highlighted the image of women as independent, upward, and good wives.
In the Yayale toothpaste advertisement, a large number of VC cartoon images are used to attract children's attention; in adult toothpaste, it proposes that toothpaste differs for men and women, digging into consumers' deep needs and segmenting the market. It can be said that every Nice advertisement can touch people's hearts and is always associated with hot events.
In terms of brand communication, Nice pays more attention to CCTV platforms, mainly investing in prime-time TV programs with high female viewership. For example, the prime-time dramas on CCTV-1 and CCTV-8, the Golden Eagle Theater on Hunan Satellite TV, and various TV festival selections.
Relatively speaking, Nice's communication is stable, effective, and without sharp edges, just routinely paying attention to the preferences of its product audience.
Liby is different. In marketing communication, Liby is undoubtedly a topic expert. Its standard for choosing spokespersons is whoever is popular, and its platform choice is whatever program is hot to sponsor. From Chen Peisi to Xiao Shenyang, from Meng Fei to Huang Lei, from Lin Xinyue to Yuan Li, all follow this trend. Mention Liby, and naturally think of "I Am a Singer"; mention "Good Daddy," and it reminds people of "Dad, Where Are We Going?" This is the effect of Liby's entertainment-oriented approach—not necessarily naming rights, but definitely association. Maybe you can't remember the naming sponsor of "Dad, Where Are We Going?" as "999 Cold Medicine," but many Good Daddy laundry liquid ads will come to mind.
Being able to change a brand that has been used for six years at will also fully demonstrates Liby's boldness. In the face of communication, the brand must make way. This is why "Qubba," which emerged with the 2008 Olympic sponsorship, was renamed "Good Daddy" in 2014. At that time, online discussions about the name change also laid the foundation for Liby's secondary communication.
Comment: There is a clear difference in value communication between the two—Chaoneng laundry liquid and Liby laundry liquid form a sharp contrast. The former promotes the image of women as independent, hardworking, and all-around homemakers, proposing "Chaoneng women use Chaoneng"; the latter changes the traditional image of men outside and women inside, calling out "I am a woman, not a superhero, I need care."
**Source: FMCG Disciples**
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