---
title: "Tianqi Toothpaste Auctioned: The Decline of Chinese Toothpaste Brands"
description: "Once a household name in China, Tianqi toothpaste is now facing auction. The brand and its parent company's assets will be auctioned on June 11, with a starting price of 163 million yuan. This article explores the rise and fall of Tianqi and other classic Chinese toothpaste brands, highlighting the challenges they faced in a competitive market."
author: "编辑部上线营业"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2019-06-05"
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# Tianqi Toothpaste Auctioned: The Decline of Chinese Toothpaste Brands

> Once a household name in China, Tianqi toothpaste is now facing auction. The brand and its parent company's assets will be auctioned on June 11, with a starting price of 163 million yuan. This article explores the rise and fall of Tianqi and other classic Chinese toothpaste brands, highlighting the challenges they faced in a competitive market.

Click to read the original article for details.
Author: Zheng Luan
Source: Sharp Company (ID: shangjiezz)
**Sharp Comment: From household name to obscurity, what happened to Tianqi toothpaste?**
Tianqi toothpaste, once a household name, is now facing auction.
According to media reports, the "Tianqi" trademark and the real estate, production equipment, etc. of its parent company, Guangxi Aokili Co., Ltd., will be auctioned on the judicial platform of Alibaba Auction at 10:00 AM on June 11, with a starting price of 163 million yuan.
As of now, 177 people have set reminders for the auction, but no one has registered. From household name to obscurity, what happened to Tianqi toothpaste?
**Old Brand, Diversification, Advertising Genius**
On May 30, media discovered that the domestic toothpaste brand Tianqi was being auctioned.
According to the auction information, the disposal unit is the Intermediate People's Court of Wuzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The auction announcement states that the court will conduct an online public auction on the Taobao judicial auction platform from 10:00 AM on June 11 to 10:00 AM on June 12, for the land use rights of No. 1, Yuanqu 1st Road, Wuzhou City, the land use rights of A7 and A8 in Wangpu Export-oriented Industrial Park, Wuzhou City, and the houses and buildings on the land, production equipment (toothpaste, wet wipes), and the entire "Tianqi" 57 trademarks owned by the executed person, Guangxi Aokili Co., Ltd.
The "Tianqi" brand was founded by the state-owned enterprise Aokili in 1945 and won the title of Guangxi Famous Product in 1984. In 2002, Aokili was acquired by Harbin Xiaosheng Group. At that time, Tianqi toothpaste had annual sales of 60 million yuan and a market share of less than 1%.
The new owner of Aokili, Yu Xiaosheng, is a legend in the Chinese advertising industry - the famous medical advertisements for Haci Wuxing Needle, Zinc Gluconate, Yandi, Gaizhonggai, and Weibizhi were all his work, to the extent that the state introduced regulations to limit advertising expenses for pharmaceutical brands. With his original business restricted, Yu Xiaosheng set his sights on the daily chemical market, leading to the acquisition of Aokili.
Yu Xiaosheng recruited several veterans from the daily chemical industry, positioned Tianqi toothpaste as "clearing heat, reducing fire, and stopping toothache; choose Tianqi for traditional Chinese medicine toothpaste," and invested over 200 million yuan in advertising, making the slogan "Say 'Tianqi' when taking photos" known to every household, and Tianqi toothpaste became famous overnight. One year after the acquisition, Tianqi toothpaste achieved annual sales of 260 million tubes, with sales revenue of nearly 700 million yuan.
After 2004, Guangxi Aokili successively achieved sales revenue of 1 billion yuan, selling over 400 million tubes of toothpaste annually, and entered the top four in the domestic toothpaste market.
While becoming a dark horse in the toothpaste market, Aokili quickly began producing other daily chemical products. Due to the brand influence of Tianqi and the increased demand for hand sanitizers during the SARS period, the first products launched, Tianqi hand sanitizer and Tianqi hand wash, received a good response in the market.
Instead of consolidating its position, Aokili rushed to launch Tianqi shampoo and Tianqi laundry detergent.
The competition in categories like shampoo and laundry detergent was even fiercer than toothpaste. Tianqi shampoo and laundry detergent failed to succeed in these markets, instead consuming a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources in product development. The TV advertising that was once the key to success also became ineffective due to too many product categories and the inability to focus.
The storm came suddenly, and the building collapsed. In the years when Aokili hesitated, "herbal" and "traditional Chinese medicine care" became the mainstream marketing concepts in the toothpaste market. Aokili, distracted by diversification, lost its market share under the impact of competitors.
To make matters worse, Tianqi toothpaste stuck to its mid-to-low-end positioning and failed to keep up with market trends, quickly being abandoned by consumers. In 2014, due to high financial costs and capital shortages, Tianqi toothpaste was forced to stop production.
In May 2016, Aokili successfully restructured its assets and established Shanghai Tianqi Daily Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., and Tianqi toothpaste resumed production. But by then, Tianqi toothpaste had completely lost its momentum and could no longer make waves in the toothpaste market.
In 2017, Zhuanghou Group, which mainly does micro-commerce, acquired 50% of the shares of Tianqi Group, and Leng Yijun, known as the "Queen of Micro-commerce," became the chairman of Tianqi Group.
It is worth noting that Tianqi Group and Shanghai Tianqi Daily Chemical are not the same company. The so-called "Tianqi Group" is not registered in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. A relevant person in charge of Shanghai Tianqi Daily Chemical said that it was precisely because they could not register the trademark that this company chose to establish the so-called Tianqi Group in Hong Kong. Currently, products like Tianqi horse oil soap and seaweed mud appearing in micro-commerce channels are also from Tianqi Group.
The assets being auctioned this time belong to Guangxi Tianqi Daily Chemical Co., Ltd., a shareholder of Shanghai Tianqi Daily Chemical, which is insolvent.
The real owner is insolvent and having assets auctioned by the court, while the suspected "fake" embraces micro-commerce, and even its registration information cannot be found. The 74-year-old brand Tianqi toothpaste is in a bleak situation.
**The Death Trap of Classic Toothpaste Brands**
The rapid decline of Tianqi toothpaste is not an isolated case. Looking at China's national toothpaste brands from 10, 20, or 30 years ago, almost all have disappeared from consumers' sight.
Liangmianzhen, another well-known Guangxi brand like Tianqi, was the first Chinese toothpaste stock and held the top position in the Chinese toothpaste market for 15 consecutive years. According to its latest annual report, its non-GAAP net profit has been loss-making for 13 consecutive years, and the 2C market has shrunk severely, relying only on tourism toothpaste used in hotels and guesthouses to barely support revenue scale.
Sharing the same plight as Tianqi and Liangmianzhen are domestic toothpaste brands such as Heimei, Zhonghua, Tianqi, Lantian Liubizhi, and Yaboshi.
According to statistics from AC Nielsen and the China Oral Care Industry Association in 2016, the top five brands in toothpaste market share were Darlie (20.6%), Yunnan Baiyao (17.8%), Crest (11.1%), Colgate (9.8%), and Sensodyne (5.8%). Among them, Yunnan Baiyao and Sensodyne are domestic brands, while Darlie is a Sino-foreign joint venture.
The toothpaste market is characterized by small size and fierce competition, with a total scale of nearly 30 billion yuan. In an interview, Deng Rong, chairman of Dengkang Company (the parent company of Sensodyne), once pointed to the under-construction Chongqing Chaotianmen Raffles City building and told me, "The entire national toothpaste market combined is about the same cost as building these few buildings."
This veteran, who started as a salesperson and has been in the toothpaste market for over 20 years, showed a hint of helplessness in his words. The toothpaste market is not only small in size but also has a growth rate consistently below 10%. The marketing tactics in the industry have been played for over 30 years, making innovation difficult.
Looking at the toothpaste brands that were once brilliant but now have disappeared, such as Tianqi, Liangmianzhen, and Heimei, it is not difficult to find their commonalities:
These brands were mostly founded by local toothpaste factories and became famous by seizing the dividend of TV advertising during the period of marketing channel transformation. After the dividend period, these toothpaste brands themselves lacked sufficient funds, marketing experience, and talent. They had to face competition from foreign brands like Colgate and Crest, as well as the impact of cross-industry entrants like Yunnan Baiyao, Pien Tze Huang, and Nice. In such a situation, domestic toothpaste brands either fought to the death or chose diversification. In the fiercely competitive toothpaste market, any slight misstep could lead to crisis.
The success of Yunnan Baiyao is not replicable. As a state-owned enterprise listed in 1993, Yunnan Baiyao's strength could support its trial and error in the toothpaste market and accumulate experience; Darlie successfully seized the dividend period of high-end toothpaste market. The diversification strategies of Tianqi and Liangmianzhen are not blameworthy, but Liangmianzhen chose unfamiliar sectors such as paper, fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and real estate, while Tianqi failed to grasp the pace of its own diversification.
Even if a brand like Sensodyne can keep up with market changes and withstand competitor impact, it still faces the problem of brand aging. On the other hand, emerging toothpaste brands like Oral-B, Sensodyne, and Shu Ke have innovations in business models and marketing models that make it difficult for these classic brands to respond.
Foreign acquisitions, state-owned enterprise restructuring, market competition, channel changes, brand aging, market upgrades... The growth path of domestic toothpaste brands is fraught with dangers. We lament the failures, but we are helpless.
When the post-2000 generation officially occupies the main battlefield of consumption, they obviously will not care about the former glory of Tianqi and Liangmianzhen.


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