"Harbor Business Observer", Liao Ziwen
Founded more than 100 years ago and the world's most well-known infant milk powder brand, Mead Johnson China has recently ushered in a senior management change.
A few days ago, Mead Johnson China issued an internal letter announcing that Zhu Dingping would resign as president for personal reasons, but still serve as a senior advisor to the company. Mead Johnson China's Board of Directors appointed Jingjing Xiao as the Company's CEO and decided to establish an Executive Committee.
The president changed hands, and Primavera Capital took over
According to public information, Zhu Dingping once served as the executive president of H&H Group BNC China. He left the company in February 2021. From September 9, 2021 to December 2023, Zhu Dingping served as the President of Mead Johnson China.
This means that Zhu Dingping has only been in Mead Johnson for two years and three months. Xiao Jingjing, the new president, is the Managing Director and Co-Head of the Consumer Industry Group of Primavera Capital, graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree, and led or participated in Primavera Capital's acquisition of Mead Johnson China, as well as its investments in Zhaopin, Junle Dairy, and ByteDance.
On June 6, 2021, Primavera Capital, a well-known PE, and Reckitt Benckiser, a British consumer goods giant, announced that they had reached an agreement for the former to successfully acquire Mead Johnson's business in Greater China for US$2.2 billion (about 14 billion yuan)**, and will have the permanent exclusive right to use the Mead Johnson brand in the Greater China market.
Since the acquisition, Primavera Capital has first hired Zhu Dingping, who has rich experience in the industry, and this time chose to invest in mergers and acquisitions. This is a concern as to whether the new candidate is suitable
Zhu Dingping, 48, has been responsible for H&H's sales, development strategy and overall operation management for 14 years, leading the China team to achieve a compound growth rate of 40% in the past 10 years.
When he first joined Mead Johnson China, Zhu Dingping said that it is necessary to pay close attention to the "three chains": first, strengthen the "value chain" and make the value ecology more positive;The second is to enhance the "digital chain" and strengthen consumer services through the use of digital technologyThe third is to shorten the "decision-making chain", so that the team can continuously improve the ability of efficient decision-making and respond agilely to changes in the market.
Zhu Dingping also said: "We will continue to use global scientific research and first-class chain resources, and at the same time be more deeply rooted in China, adhering to the century-old scientific research strength, clinical evidence-oriented, consumer-centric innovation concept, to better meet the nutritional needs of thousands of Chinese families, and is committed to becoming the preferred international brand of infant formula milk powder for Chinese consumers." ”
After less than three years of employment, he chose to leave at the end of 2023, and the outside world may speculate whether it is related to his performance pressure. However, Mead Johnson China made it clear to the interface that it denied.
2024 is crucial, and there have been a lot of complaints about points
Mead Johnson China admits that the current industry is generally under pressure, due to the implementation of the new national standard, the large inventory and the continuous decline in the birth rate of newborns, the overall market capacity of the infant formula milk powder industry is low, and the slowdown in industry growth is a common phenomenon in 2023. "2024 will be a crucial year, which will test the forward-looking and efficient decision-making of enterprises. ”
It is widely expected that the number of newborns in 2023 may fall below 8 million, as well as the extremely cruel competition in the market, the inventory is generally high, and there is chaos in the war. At the same time, many manufacturers have also made adjustments to their product structure in recent years, but this will take a long time to appear. In the short term, it's crucial to stay alive and live better than your peers. A well-known distributor of milk powder brands told Harbor Business Observer.
On August 8, 2023, Qiao Jie, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of Peking University Health Science Center, said at the Pharmaceutical Innovation and Technology Frontier Forum that the total number of births in China in 2022 will be 9.56 million, and the number of births in 2023 is expected to be about 7 million to more than 8 million. The news sparked heated discussions in the outside world for a while.
In terms of industry, on February 22, 2023, three nutritional and special dietary standards (hereinafter referred to as the "new national standard") including "Infant Formula" (GB10765-2021) were officially implemented.
According to public information, at the beginning of 2023, Mead Johnson China pioneered the establishment of the world's first Mead Johnson Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute, which carries out scientific research strategic planning from the whole life cycle, and creates three research platforms: the key functional ingredient platform for breast milk, the whole life cycle microecological health innovation platform, and the formula food innovation research platform for special medical purposes, focusing on promoting high-level scientific and clinical medical research in the field of nutrition and health in China.
In addition, it is worth noting that on the Black Cat complaint platform, as of January 1, 2024, Mead Johnson has 381 complaints, and 271 have been completed.
In the near future, many consumers have complained that Mead Johnson points are not redeemed and expire, which is suspected of deceiving consumers. A consumer complained on January 1, 2024 that he had not redeemed gifts on the points, and often bullied consumers with the state of redemption, and then directly forced the points to zero.
Another consumer also said at the same time: I know that I want to clear zero, I go to the page every day to see if there is anything that has not been exchanged, and there is nothing to exchange, and I have played a lot of ** to Mead Johnson and it is not enough, saying that there is no thing to exchange**, otherwise it will be cleared, I don't want to change, I really don't want to change, there is really no.
The Mead Johnson points that I have worked so hard to save have always shown that they are out of stock and are not exchanged, and today the points have been cleared, showing that all are in stock, which is really ironic. Some consumers complained. (Produced by Harbour Finance).