Do you remember the first time you ate Ajisen ramen?Are you attracted by the rich aroma of bone broth and the delicate texture of the noodles, and think that this is a bowl of Japanese ramen that is worth spending more than 30 yuan?Do you still believe the propaganda of Ajisen Ramen as a nutritious, healthy and delicious bowl of bone soup with 4 times the calcium content of milk and 10 times that of meat?Do you still think that Ajisen Ramen is an authentic Japanese brand with a history of 50 years and 800 stores?
If your answer is yes, then you may be disappointed. Because Ajisen Ramen, a Japanese fast food brand that was once all the rage in the Chinese market, has faced unprecedented difficulties in recent years. It is reported that since 2022, Ajisen has closed nearly 190 stores, and now only 569 remain.
According to the data, Ajisen's operating income in 2022 will be 14300 million, a new low in the past six years. The stock price is 1647 Hong Kong dollars, has shrunk by nearly 95%, and the market value has evaporated by 14.8 billion.
How did Ajisen, a brand that has been operating in the Chinese market for 27 years and once popular in major cities, fall all the way from the peak?What kind of secrets and stories are hidden behind it?
The founder of Ajisen Ramen is a Hakka born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Shigemitsu Takachi, who opened the first Ajisen ramen shop in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1968, mainly dealing in tonkotsu ramen, which is a soup base made from pork bones. Ajisen ramen is characterized by the addition of garlic flavor to make the soup base richer and spicy, and it has become one of the representatives of Kumamoto ramen.
Ajisen ramen is not a well-known brand in Japan, with only 65 branches as of 2002, most of which are concentrated in Kumamoto Prefecture and only one in Tokyo. The real rise of Ajisen Ramen came after it entered the Chinese market.
In 1994, Ajisen Ramen opened its first overseas branch in Taiwan, and in 1995, Pan Wei, a businessman doing business in Hong Kong, accidentally ate Ajisen Ramen in Japan, so he opened a new Ajisen Ramen shop in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Pan Wei obtained the first rights to Ajisen Ramen, and after bringing it to China, he successively obtained the permanent rights to operate the brand in Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland.
Pan Wei is a Hong Kong businessman who did not go to university, but she grew up in the mainland and has a keen insight and strong confidence in the Chinese market.
She accurately grasped the psychology of Chinese consumers, and while promoting the "Japanese chain", she launched the gimmick of "big bone soup" to attract consumers to buy. She also launched bagged Ajisen ramen in the mainland, delivering semi-finished products to major supermarkets and markets, so that thousands of households can come into contact with the "Ajisen" brand.
The development of Ajisen Ramen in the Chinese market can be said to be smooth sailing, it quickly occupied the Chinese fast food market with the fame of the Japanese brand, the characteristics of bone broth ramen, and Pan Wei's business strategy, and became a Japanese Internet celebrity in the minds of Chinese consumers.
From 1995 to 2019, the number of Ajisen Ramen stores in China has grown from 1 to 759, covering major cities across the country, with annual sales increasing from several million to nearly 2 billion yuan, and a market value of 16 billion Hong Kong dollars, making it the largest Japanese ramen chain brand in China.
The success of Ajisen Ramen has also made Pan Wei a strong woman, she not only controls the management rights of Ajisen Ramen, but also listed Ajisen Ramen in Hong Kong in 2012 and became the actual controller of Ajisen Ramen.
She also acquired the Ajisen Group, the parent company of Ajisen Ramen, in 2017 and became the boss of Takachi Shigemitsu, the founder of Ajisen Ramen. Her business empire includes not only Ajisen Ramen, but also other food and beverage brands such as Ajisen Gyoza, Ajisen Coffee, Ajisen Steak, and so on.
The brilliance of Ajisen Ramen makes people sigh at what kind of Japanese brand this is that it can be so popular, so profitable, and so successful in the Chinese market.
Just when the light of Ajisen Ramen was at its brightest, a sudden storm caused its image to plummet, its business plummeted, and its market value plummeted. This turmoil is what we are familiar with as the "Bone Broth Gate Incident".
In July 2019, a netizen named Li broke the news on Weibo, saying that when he was eating at Ajisen Ramen, he found a needle in the bone broth, and it was a rusty needle.
Li said that he felt throat discomfort at that time, so he complained to the clerk, but the clerk ignored it and just said, "This kind of thing happens often, don't care." Li felt very angry, so he posted his experience and the needle's ** on Weibo, which aroused widespread attention and discussion among netizens.
This incident quickly attracted the attention of **, and a reporter conducted an in-depth investigation of Ajisen Ramen and discovered the shocking truth. It turns out that the bone broth of Ajisen Ramen is not made from fresh pork bones, but with a powder called "bone broth essence", which is unified by the headquarters of Ajisen Ramen, and each bag weighs 15 kg, each bag can make 300 bowls of bone broth.
The ingredients of this bone broth essence are a mystery, and neither the clerk nor the manager of Ajisen Ramen know what it is made of, only that it is imported from Japan.
The reporter further investigated and found that the bone broth essence of Ajisen ramen was actually produced by a company called "Ajisen Foods", and the legal representative of this company was Pan Wei. The company's production base is in China's Jiangsu province, not Japan.
The reporter also found that the bone broth essence of Ajisen ramen not only did not undergo any food safety testing, but also contained a large number of additives and preservatives, which was extremely harmful to the human body. The needles are also due to the fact that a technique called "acupuncture" is used in the production of the bone broth essence of Ajisen ramen, which extracts the calcium from the pork bones and makes a powder, and these needles are left over from this process.
These astonishing discoveries made the image of Ajisen Ramen collapse all of a sudden, and it turned out that the "big bone soup", "nutritious", "healthy and delicious" it advertised, were all lies, and the bone broth it sold was nothing more than a bowl of toxic powder soup, and the raw materials it used were just some inferior additives, and the brands it owned were just empty shells.
Ajisen Ramen's "Bone Broth Gate Incident" triggered a strong response from the society, consumers expressed anger and disappointment, and Ajisen Ramen's stores were also boycotted and **, Ajisen Ramen's business plummeted, Ajisen Ramen's market value plummeted, and Ajisen Ramen's brilliance plummeted.
The "bone broth gate incident" of Ajisen Ramen has caused it to lose the trust and support of consumers, and it has also lost its market advantage and position. At this time, Ajisen Ramen's competitors took the opportunity to rise and launched a fierce attack on Ajisen Ramen, which put Ajisen Ramen in a deeper predicament.