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interface news reporter | li ye

interface news editor | ya hanxiang

on september 25, beijing business daily reported that:industry insiders said that last week, uni-president senior management and provincial general managers held a telephone conference. according to a leaked notice, according to the requirements of this telephone conference, uni-president dealers are strictly prohibited from selling ripe fruits, or if they sell ripe fruits, they cannot sell uni-president products at the same time, and must "choose one of the two." at the same time, the notice also stated, "there are currently no such customers. the next step is to conduct an on-site inspection. if found, the dealer's operating rights will be revoked/the director will be punished."

a uni-president distributor in guangdong told jiemian news that in the market he is in contact with, distributors who currently sell uni-president iced black tea and green plum green tea can still sell them. as for the terminal supermarkets, a supermarket store in beijing also told jiemian news that it had not received any notification of "choose one of two".

guozishule told jiemian news that it was unaware of the above situation. uni-president group did not make a positive response.

from an industry perspective, the outbreak of this incident may be due to the competition from sugar-free tea in recent years.

if we rank chinese sugar-free tea brands, we can clearly divide them into nongfu spring (oriental leaves), suntory and others. statistics from mashangying, an offline retail monitoring agency for fast-moving consumer goods, show that in the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea category from april to may 2024, the combined market share of nongfu spring and suntory group exceeded 75%.

this speed makes uni-president "anxious".

in fact, uni-president launched its sugar-free tea product “cha li wang” as early as 2004, but for a long time, sugar-free tea was a category that was neglected by the market and consumers rarely patronized it. the most typical example is that the now popular oriental leaves was once listed as one of the “hardest drinks” in the past. under such circumstances, cha li wang also failed to make a big splash.

in 2019, uni-president returned to cha li wang, but the market structure had already begun to emerge at this time. emerging brands such as guozishuile also began to enter the market in this year, and uni-president seemed to be slightly "lagging behind" in this category.

"the ripe fruit has indeed had a huge impact on uni-president," the beijing supermarket owner told jiemian news. "uni-president chaliwang didn't sell well before because it didn't hit the right rhythm."

according to taiwanese media reports, uni-president chairman luo zhixian set a goal of achieving 50 billion yuan in revenue in the next five years at an internal meeting in march. he specifically mentioned the business opportunities of sugar-free tea, saying that last year, "there was a downpour of sugar-free tea in mainland china, but uni-president was dry. now looking at the heavy rain, we also hope to get a little wet, because it is never too late to get wet in the rain."

"we are not pigs, but if pigs can fly, there is no reason not to fly too," said luo zhixian.

uni-president has accelerated its layout in sugar-free tea. in april this year, uni-president launched a new sugar-free tea product "chunfu green tea", emphasizing "real tea extraction, fresh leaf fermentation, 0 sugar and 0 fat". currently, the product includes two specifications of 500ml and 900ml. the channel layout includes convenience stores, traditional stores, and douyin official flagship store online. the price of a single bottle is usually 4-7 yuan. it also increased the promotion of this product - now in some subway stations in shanghai, consumers can also see large-screen advertisements for "chunfu green tea".

on may 6 this year, guozishule officially announced that yang zi became the spokesperson for its sugar-free tea series, increasing its marketing efforts.

however, competition in the sugar-free tea industry has become fierce in the past. the latest data provided by nielsen iq to interface news shows that as of may 2024, offline channel sales of sugar-free tea increased by 113% from june 2023 to may 2024, the total number of distribution points nationwide increased by 105% year-on-year, and the average number of single products per store increased by 1.3 year-on-year.

"chunfu green tea" has boosted uni-president's market share to a certain extent. according to mashangying data, in 2024, uni-president's market share in sugar-free tea increased by 139.63% year-on-year, ranking sixth. from june to july, uni-president's ranking rose by one place.

the fierce competition in the sugar-free tea market has put the competition “on the table”.

interface news has seen that various brands of sugar-free tea are currently engaged in a price war in some channels. in the unified live broadcast room on douyin, the price of 500ml chunfu green tea is marked as 17.5 yuan/5 bottles, a discount of 3.5 yuan per bottle, and the price of 900ml is reduced to 47.9 yuan/8 bottles, a discount of less than 6 yuan per bottle.

in the guozishuile live broadcast room, the price of the "zhizhi oolong" series 500ml specification products is 74.9 yuan/15 bottles, which is less than 5 yuan per bottle, which is lower than the common convenience store price of 6 yuan. the anchor strongly recommends a set meal priced at 119.5 yuan, which includes 15 bottles of 500ml products and 6 bottles of 970ml products. according to the price of guozishuile in convenience stores, the unit price of 970ml products is 9 yuan, which means that consumers have to spend 144 yuan to buy the same amount of this set meal.