In recent years, due to the downward economic cycle, consumers have increasingly valued the 'quality-price ratio' of products. This shift in consumption attitudes has posed sales challenges for high-end market categories with high production costs. In this context, quality factories capable of cost control and efficiency improvement will encounter new market opportunities. The case introduced in this article—GanNing brand, which started with fresh orange business. In 2022, based on insights into consumption trends, it ventured into NFC orange juice, offering products of uncompromised quality at half the industry price, striving to break the boundaries of the high-end market. During 2022-2023, GanNing continuously strengthened its production capabilities. By the first half of 2024, it fully promoted its NFC orange juice, achieving multi-channel coverage both online and offline. Online, it has laid out on mainstream e-commerce platforms, community group buying, and others; offline, it has entered snack discount channels, circulation channels, and more. This year, it will focus on single-point breakthroughs in channels, and it is expected that by the end of the year, sales will see a significant increase. Agricultural Original Aspiration The Future of Orange Juice "The core founding team of GanNing does not have a background in the beverage industry. What opportunity led you to decide to enter the NFC orange juice field?" the author asked. "The original aspiration for making juice was to develop agriculture." Co-founder Mr. Chen replied. The GanNing brand started with fresh orange business, closely linked to agriculture, as the old saying goes, "Agriculture depends on the weather." The core base of GanNing's fresh orange business is located in Yichang Zigui, a relatively poor area. Local farmers work under harsh conditions; they need to plant oranges on slopes of 70 degrees and, when ripe, carry them down the mountain manually in baskets, each weighing about a hundred jin. The younger generation is rarely willing to engage in agriculture, so most local farmers doing basic labor are over fifty, and some are even over seventy. With oversupply of fresh oranges leading to price drops, relying solely on fresh fruit sales not only has low added value but also makes it difficult to provide stable support for long-term agricultural development. For sustainable development, the GanNing brand began exploring other forms of fresh oranges. Orange juice, as a product that is easy to transform and has stable market demand, can better feed back into agriculture. The reason GanNing chose the NFC segment is based on two considerations. First, high-concentration juice has huge potential. Compared with foreign countries, the per capita annual consumption of NFC juice in the United States is 307 times that of China, and in Japan it is 192 times that of China. It can be seen that NFC juice already has a mature consumer market abroad, while in China there is still huge room for growth. Comparing the compound growth rates of juices with different concentrations, high-concentration juice grows fastest, while traditional low-concentration juice grows less than 1%. In the future, China's medium- and high-concentration juice market will continue to expand. Second, determine direction based on own strengths and weaknesses. GanNing has significant advantages in supply chain and raw material supply, but lacks experience in low-concentration juice blending technology. The characteristics of the NFC juice industry—pure fresh fruit and zero additives—perfectly align with GanNing's core competitiveness. Roll, roll, roll! Roll out own advantages Since deciding to enter the NFC orange juice market in 2022, the GanNing brand has not rushed to seize market share. Instead, the founding team spent two years consolidating the foundation. In 2022, they spent a lot of time debugging product taste, and in 2023, they further strengthened supply chain efficiency. Currently, GanNing is in the industry's top tier in both product taste and supply chain efficiency. 1. Rolling core processes In the juice industry, the stability of product taste is crucial. However, oranges of different seasons and varieties have significant differences in taste after juicing. How to ensure consistent taste of orange juice supplied throughout the year? In the industry, many companies solve this by stocking large quantities of the same variety in a certain season, but this leads to increased storage costs and decreased freshness. In 2022, through a full year of continuous research and testing, GanNing understood the taste differences after juicing different orange varieties and pioneered an innovative solution. GanNing adopts a unique blending process, adjusting the natural acidity and sweetness of different orange varieties, minimizing the impact of limonin and sugar-acid ratio on taste during production, ensuring the optimal ratio deviation per bottle does not exceed 0.5. In random blind tests conducted by the company, consumer feedback showed that GanNing's taste is not inferior to major brands. 2. Rolling supply chain GanNing's raw material supply chain originates from the birthplace of navel oranges—Yichang Zigui, where fresh oranges are produced all year round, with rich varieties and superior quality. Although many other brands also purchase oranges here, the entire Yangtze River basin has over 200 varieties of oranges, and the subtle differences between varieties are often difficult even for local farmers to fully distinguish, posing a challenge for brand owners. The foundation laid by GanNing in 2022 gives it a significant advantage. In addition to upstream supply chain advantages, GanNing's midstream processing can complete from picking to bottling within 72 hours, maximally preserving the freshness and nutritional value of the orange juice. 3. Rolling price system NFC orange juice, as a widely favored beverage, has a huge potential consumer base, but the high cost leading to high prices may become an obstacle to its popularization. For example, in the currently popular discount channels, most products sold are low-priced concentrated reduced juices, and high-priced NFC juices are rarely seen. GanNing adopts an extreme cost-performance strategy. By controlling the entire supply chain from orange to juice, improving the juice yield of varieties, and establishing its own sorting and cold-chain transportation factories, it directly reduces production costs, turning NFC juice from a mid-to-high-end beverage into an ordinary consumer beverage, with prices that can be half of the industry's. The price of one bottle of ordinary NFC orange juice is approximately equal to two bottles of GanNing NFC orange juice. GanNing's extreme cost-performance strategy has enabled it to successfully enter discount channels, and in the future, it is expected to gradually break this category limitation. 3. Supply chain driven, with affordable orange juice as the core, diversifying in parallel In the high-end positioned NFC juice market, why did GanNing choose a different path and position itself as affordable? One is strategic direction consideration. In recent years, domestic overcapacity has led to a wide variety of products in the market, giving consumers more choices. Coupled with the impact of various uncertain factors, consumers are increasingly inclined to rational consumption and begin to value product quality-price ratio. "Future commercial products either achieve extreme service with good products, and such brands have strong pricing power; or achieve extreme cost-performance and fight price wars," Mr. Chen explained. GanNing chose the latter. The other is supply chain genes. Relying on the foundation of fresh fruit business, GanNing has now formed a mature ecological industry chain. From breeding to ensure seed quality, to orchard cultivation, to factory juicing and bottling, it can ensure sufficient raw materials, increase juice yield by 3-5%, and have its own sorting and cold-chain transportation partner factories, giving it a significant cost advantage and the ability to offer low prices. Based on production cost advantages, co-founder Mr. Chen is now not only limited to the GanNing brand. In addition to continuing the fresh orange business, the company has expanded into multiple areas such as pulp sales, OEM/ODM contract manufacturing services, and orange peel sales. The comprehensive development of multiple businesses can maximize the use of the company's existing production advantages and improve efficiency, but it also poses the challenge of diverting attention. To prevent distraction, Mr. Chen strategically divided the company's business into two major segments: TOC and TOB. Mr. Chen continues to focus on the GanNing brand in the TOC field, while TOB businesses such as pulp sales, OEM/ODM services, and orange peel sales are managed by co-founder Yu Hao. The company has also implemented a partnership system, attracting 7-8 professionals from retail and capital fields to date, each with their own responsibilities. Regarding the company's development over the next 5-10 years, Mr. Chen has clarified a major direction: The rise of domestic consumers' health awareness will continue to expand the demand for healthy products, and zero-additive NFC juice has unlimited growth potential in the future. Based on the diversified development of TOB business, the company's TOC business will continue to focus on the orange juice field, striving to occupy a place in the NFC market. Recommended Reading