Source | Entrepreneurial Frontline Fu Yanchui

"XX coconut water is no good, unfriendly to distributors. One region should have one distributor, but they gave it to several." "Many brands' coconut water is watered down, but our Huanlejia product can achieve 100% coconut water." "The industry is too competitive and chaotic, but we still need to make quality products and not let bad money drive out good." ...... In April this year, Li Tao (pseudonym), a Huanlejia coconut water distributor, was chatting in a FMCG livestream. Although Huanlejia emphasizes the high quality of its products, sales do not match. Facing questions from other distributors about his sales volume, Li Tao paused for a few seconds before saying, "The reality is that it doesn't sell as well as other brands. Consumers don't seem to recognize Huanlejia. Other brands are cheaper, but Huanlejia's 330ml sells for 6 yuan." The Chinese coconut water market is surging, and Huanlejia's core product, fruit cans, is also facing challenges. The 2025 semi-annual report shows that Huanlejia's coconut juice beverage and fruit can revenues both declined, causing its total revenue to fall 20.90% year-on-year. It is understood that Huanlejia was founded in 2001, with early products mainly fruit cans. In 2014, it entered the plant protein beverage market and launched freshly squeezed coconut juice. Currently, its products are mainly divided into two categories: beverage products including coconut juice plant protein beverages, fruit juice beverages, and lactic acid bacteria beverages; and canned foods such as fruit cans and eight-treasure porridge cans.

Image / Huanlejia official website

From a market value exceeding 14 billion yuan on the first day of listing to nearly halving now, Huanlejia is likely facing more than just the embarrassment of stalled growth.

High-sugar cans marginalized For older people in the north, especially in the Northeast, fruit cans hold a special memory—in the past, parents would give the rarely eaten yellow peach cans to sick children, which would lift their spirits and help them recover. "Eating yellow peach cans when sick" was given a "healing ritual" significance. During the pandemic, its "mystical" function even spread across regions like a "person-to-person" phenomenon. Topics such as "Northeast mysterious power" and "Peach over the epidemic" spread virally on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, making yellow peach cans famous. At that time, fruit can brands even gave reasons for wanting yellow peach cans when catching a cold—when feeling unwell, one has no appetite for greasy food, and yellow peach cans with half a peach and half juice can just relieve this discomfort and improve mood. There is also a more scientific interpretation: fruit cans contain some vitamin C, which helps enhance resistance. However, the excitement was temporary. After the pandemic, consumers still have doubts about whether fruit cans are healthy and do not consume them frequently. Zhang Lijia, born in the 1990s, recalled that the last time she ate fruit cans was about a year ago. "I quite like Huanlejia's fruit cans. Their pineapple cans are excellent, using Hainan's golden pineapple. The flesh is golden and translucent, crisp, with a rich pineapple aroma. Orange cans are also popular, with complete and plump segments and a hint of orange fragrance in the syrup, very refreshing," Zhang Lijia told the author. However, although she sometimes craves this taste, Zhang Lijia rarely buys them recently. "I feel fruit cans are not as healthy as fresh fruit, and they have too much sugar." In fact, cans have been labeled unhealthy and high-sugar for over a decade. Most people think eating cans is not as healthy as eating fresh fruit or drinking juice. For example, the ingredient list of Huanlejia's yellow peach cans includes yellow peaches, drinking water, white sugar, citric acid, D-isoascorbic acid sodium, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and calcium lactate.

Image / Huanlejia yellow peach can ingredient list

As fresh fruit supply becomes more abundant and consumers pay more attention to dietary health, fruit can products, which contain certain amounts of sugar and additives, are increasingly being marginalized by consumers. As a leading fruit can brand, Huanlejia faces an unfavorable situation due to the unhealthy, high-sugar label. Huanlejia's brand manager once tried to change this situation and proposed "making cans a companion for young people's binge-watching and outings," hoping to shift market perception from "syrup cans" to "leisure snacks." To this end, Huanlejia has been increasing marketing efforts through various channels, such as collaborations with "Nai Long" (a popular Chinese cartoon character), to attract young consumers. But reality is not satisfactory. Despite continuous marketing, Huanlejia still faces declining revenue and profit. In the first half of 2025, Huanlejia achieved total operating revenue of 748 million yuan, down 20.90% year-on-year; net profit attributable to the parent company was 18.5525 million yuan, down 77.50%. Among them, the company's main beverage and can product revenues were 417 million yuan and 289 million yuan, respectively, down 22.06% and 23.95% year-on-year. In the current difficult situation, the contraction of its main business has indeed negatively impacted its overall performance. From a market trend perspective, consumers' demand for healthy, fresh food is increasing, and fruit cans, as processed products with long storage times, have long begun to lose market share.

Distributors fleeing However, Huanlejia is not only facing the embarrassment of stalled growth; being "abandoned" by distributors is even more fatal. It is understood that in terms of channels, Huanlejia stated that it will combine company strategy and product planning, formulate differentiated sales strategies according to different market conditions, and flexibly leverage channel sales through "one province, one policy; one city, one policy." The core advantage of implementing "one province, one policy; one city, one policy" in the FMCG industry is to deeply match market differences through precise regional strategies, achieving efficient resource allocation and enhanced competitiveness. For example, companies can design differentiated distribution strategies for different channels, such as promoting high-end new products in first-tier cities and strengthening cost-effective products in township markets. However, under the "one province, one policy; one city, one policy" policy, for distributors, it means high policy implementation complexity, potential uneven resource allocation, increased management costs, and conflicts of interest. Specifically, many distributors, especially small and medium-sized ones, lack professional teams and resources to implement refined strategies. Companies require distributors to adjust product portfolios, promotional intensity, and channel layouts for different cities, but due to limited manpower and funds, distributors find it difficult to meet multi-regional, multi-strategy requirements simultaneously, leading to execution deviations or strategy failure. "Listen to me, don't become an agent for Huanlejia." Multiple FMCG distributors told the author bluntly, "One city, one policy" is impossible to achieve and difficult to control. At the same time, to quickly open the market, companies may prioritize resources (such as marketing expenses, promotional support) to key regions or high-potential markets, ignoring other regions. Distributors may feel the company is "favoring" certain regions, leading to reduced cooperation enthusiasm. To adapt to "one province, one policy; one city, one policy," companies may frequently adjust policies (such as price, promotion, channels), causing distributors to constantly adapt to new rules and increasing operating costs. Distributor Wang Zi revealed to the author that their (Huanlejia's) regional managers change frequently, making it particularly difficult to reimburse channel expenses. "Expenses are the biggest support for distributors, but they ask us to continue ordering large quantities, otherwise they won't reimburse. But I still have inventory, and in the end, I was trapped. Later, when I couldn't sell the goods, I stopped doing Huanlejia. Now there are still 30,000 yuan in expenses not reimbursed," Wang Zi said. "It's not just me saying Huanlejia is bad; so many people are complaining. Huanlejia's manufacturer should think about it." Another FMCG distributor born in the 1960s said that 20 years ago, Huanlejia was a must-have, but now they don't sell a single bottle. Clearly, for Huanlejia, balancing distributors' short-term interests and long-term cooperative relationships is also a challenge. In fact, for FMCG, many beverages have regional barriers. Products that sell well in East China or South China face challenges in brand power, product power, and supply chain in other markets. Currently, Huanlejia's sales strategy still focuses on traditional offline channels, mainly relying on the distribution model. Its 2025 semi-annual report shows that distribution model sales revenue accounted for 79.53% of main business revenue, an absolute dominant position. But at the same time, it seems a large number of distributors are fleeing Huanlejia. The 2025 semi-annual report shows that the company's distribution model revenue decreased by 30% year-on-year to 561 million yuan. In half a year, 775 distributors abandoned Huanlejia, while 264 new distributors were added, a net decrease of 511 to 1,725 distributors. From initially making money together to now being frequently complained about, when a rift occurs between a brand and its distributors, it is ultimately the brand itself that gets hurt.

Roll, roll, roll The market space for fruit cans and coconut juice is limited. With the whole country starting to roll in coconut water, Huanlejia's pressure may be increasing. On the one hand, in recent years, driven by the promotion of new tea beverage brands, coconut beverages have rapidly entered the public eye, and various brands have placed high hopes on coconut water. Huanlejia's competitors are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. Before coconut water became popular, Huanlejia only needed to compete with old coconut-based brands like Nihao Ye, Yeshu, and Yegu. Now it has to engage in close combat with imported brands such as Vita Coco, IF, INNOCOCO, and UFC, and also face competition from emerging brands like Keke Manfen, Koukouye, and Yezi Zhidao. Even retail platforms like Hema, PUPU, and Watsons, and snack brands like Zhou Hei Ya have successively launched coconut water products. Tianyancha shows that as of now, there are over 34,000 enterprises nationwide whose names or business scope include "coconut, coconut milk, or coconut cream." Under fierce competition, Huanlejia's performance is under pressure. To this end, Huanlejia announced a price adjustment in June this year, adjusting the ex-factory prices of some specifications of its main coconut juice beverage products. The price increase range is approximately 1% to 8%. But other brands are cutting prices. FMCG distributor Linlin told the author that the coconut water track is booming. "In the past two years, coconut water manufacturers made a fortune, but now there are too many manufacturers. Many manufacturers started dumping goods frantically in May and June this year." "Our supermarket has more than a dozen brands including if, Huanlejia, and Yeshu, and competition is quite fierce," a supermarket beverage area promoter told the author. Worse, the coconut juice market is getting stormier, and Huanlejia's fruit can track is also not optimistic. In the traditional fruit can track, Huanlejia not only has to compete with brands like Linjia Puzi and Fengdao Food, but with the rise of Northeast internet celebrities, some influencers have started selling fruit can products, and even the postal service's livestream has started selling fruit cans. "In the Northeast, cans sell well when fruits are expensive. We don't have many doing Huanlejia here; I do the 'Zhenxin' brand," distributor Wang Fang told the author. A distributor from Jiangxi also told the author that Huanlejia is outdated in Pingxiang, Jiangxi, and last year Linjia Puzi also joined the "battlefield." In fact, the author observed at a Wumart supermarket in Hebei that the store had only 2 SKUs of Huanlejia's freshly squeezed coconut juice, displayed at the bottom of the shelf; Huanlejia cans had 4 SKUs on sale, competing at the bottom of the convenience food shelf with Wumart's own brand cans and Zhimaguan cans.

Image / Huanlejia fruit cans

On Tmall, searching the "fruit cans" bestseller list, the top three are Linjia Puzi yellow peach cans, Hongqiao Weiquan yellow peach cans, and Meixien yellow peach cans. Among the top 20 products, Huanlejia does not appear.

Image / Tmall bestseller list

On Tmall's "fruit cans" positive review list and repurchase list, the top three are Hongqiao Weiquan yellow peach cans, Linjia Puzi yellow peach cans, Taoyibai Dangshan yellow peach cans, and Hongqiao Weiquan yellow peach cans, Yixunyuan yellow peach cans, and Yingji Wuyu juice cans. Huanlejia only ranks 20th on Tmall's repurchase list.

Image / Tmall list

Consumers have doubts about fruit can products, and the brand has been abandoned by a large number of distributors. Facing an increasingly competitive market, Huanlejia can hardly be called happy anymore.