36Kr learned that on February 4, Tang Binsen, the founder of Yuanqi Forest, issued an internal letter, saying that in 2023, it will be "stable and rising", the performance growth rate will be higher than that of the vertical industry**, and many new products such as alien electrolyte water, free water, and iced tea will achieve high growth.
However, more space in this internal letter is still about reflection, Tang Binsen mentioned the word "problem" 10 times, and said that the management of traditional industries was initially simple, until some organizational problems appeared, and even "in some years, the sales system was scrapped by 10 million, and the R&D system was wasted by 10 million." ”
The background of this letter is that in 2022, Yuanqi Forest's performance declined and internal management was turbulent. 36Kr once reported that at the beginning of 2023, Ye Licheng, the head of the original marketing center of Yuanqi Forest and the leader of the Yuanqi sales system, was removed on suspicion of corruption. Tang Binsen revealed in this internal letter, "The affairs of Ye Licheng, Xie Danyang and others... The judicial results were quick to come in. Xie is the former partner and deputy general manager of sales of Yuanqi Forest.
Tang Binsen said that he admitted to the dealer several times that "this is the problem of him seeing the wrong person and choosing the wrong person", and will be responsible for everyone to the end. He also cited Huawei's example in the internal letter, "Huawei does not be a 'black widow' that 'eats partners'", and said that the goal of their efforts is to upgrade the 6,000 internal partners of Yuanqi to the partners of 60,000 internal and external partners, "partners are win-win and win-win".
Corruption is just a microcosm of the problem of Yuanqi Forest Management, which he says is "innovation for the sake of innovation", and even disrespects the laws of the industry, accompanied by a lot of waste and false prosperity. Learning from the traditional Big Brother over the years, it is now turning to "more pragmatic innovation, innovating within limited boundaries." ”
Tang Binsen said that after a year of organizational restructuring, waste has been greatly reduced. At the same time, the budget management has been further implemented, the relationship between the headquarters and the local government has been clarified, the channel refinement and regional management adjustment in the sales field have been made, the subtraction and convergence of product incubation and brand innovation have also been recognized by the market, the inventory backlog and indirect waste in research and development have been greatly reduced, and positive feedback has become one of the key words of this year.
According to Tang Binsen, the new return of milk tea, packaging, taste to pricing, has been adjusted in an all-round way, from the trough back to growth, 900ml of 5 yuan "big ice tea" is selling well in the peak season, free water has also been incubated from the internal to a large area of the market, as well as the alien electrolyte water team, survived five years.
Seven years of entrepreneurship, the growth and labor pains of Yuanqi Forest are also a profound lesson for Tang Binsen, and "the prodigal son looks back" has become a word that he often hangs on his lips. Tang Binsen reflected that "people are easy to make mistakes when they float", that is, "if the instrument is full, it will be tilted, and if the ambition is full, it will be repeated", he said that 7 years is a cycle, and one of the wealth accumulated in these 7 years is "good partners, good products, and good management".
Tang Binsen said that well-known companies and large companies in some industries may not live for 20 years in the historical wave, but he has seriously thought about the track of beverages, eating and drinking well is the general trend of market and user demand, and firmly believes that the opportunities in the traditional consumer industry, especially in the beverage field, exist objectively in the long term.
The following is Tang Binsen's 2024 Yuanqi Forest internal letter, due to the length of the original text, which is convenient to read and consider, 36 Krypton only makes a core excerpt:Believe in Partners, Believe in Products, Believe in Management".
Dear Vitality Partners:
Hello everyone! The external situation in 2023 is still severe, and many companies in many industries are even at the crossroads of whether to leave the market, and the same is true for the beverage industry. It is gratifying that in the past year, with the hard work of all members of the team, Yuanqi Forest has spent 365 days of steady improvement: it has further consolidated the partnership between the dealer system and the first-class business system; The product matrix is hierarchical, and the growth potential is obvious and each has its own strengths; After more than a year of management framework combing, the goal of improving organizational efficiency has been basically achieved. This year, the performance showed a growth trend higher than that of the vertical industry, and breakthroughs were also made in several new product innovations, which basically resolved the hidden dangers accumulated in the channel in the past few years.
Since the birth of Genki Forest 7 years ago, we have found that the younger generation of consumers pay more attention to product quality, health and emotional value. The beverage industry is a cyclical industry that has continued to grow even during the "lost two decades" of the economic downturn in other Asian countries.
We firmly believe that in the next 20 years, with the segmentation and upgrading of consumption concepts, there will be new stratification and fission in the daily consumption of Chinese users. In recent years, we have seen the gap and space between China's annual per capita beverage consumption and the United States, Japan and other countries, and we can also see the current situation of beverage products in the Chinese market and consumers' demand for products with higher quality, healthier, more functional and more scene value.
I mentioned the old song "meet again in 20 years" at the 2023 ** Merchants and Distributors Conference, because we sincerely believe in the value of long-term companionship with each other and the significance of product power-driven energy and management optimization and upgrading.
Today, I would like to mention the power behind the word "believe": believe in good partners, believe in good products, and believe in good management.
Believe in good partners.
In 2010, Ren Zhengfei wrote a speech mentioning Huawei's partnership, specifically asking Huawei not to be a "black widow" (one of the most poisonous spiders in the world, with a habit of eating its own kind) in the market. I was very touched when I read it. The article specifically mentions that Huawei does not be a "black widow" that "eats partners". In the process of rapid market development, there have been problems in communication between Huawei and its partners, resulting in some partners not daring to "have heart-to-heart" with Huawei, and even partners who have been working with them for a year or two, Huawei has slowly eaten or dumped these companies. Over time, Huawei's reputation in the industry is not very good. After seeing the problem, Ren Zhengfei made a request at the cadre meeting: "Huawei must be open to others to achieve a win-win situation. We should keep more difficulties to ourselves and more benefits to others. "We need to learn from Huawei seriously, be more humble in our hearts, and be more honest and open to the outside world.
Our goal is to upgrade the 6,000 internal partners of Yuanqi to 60,000 internal and external partners, or even more, which is a protracted work content, and to achieve a win-win situation for partners is our goal.
In the past few years, we have reversed our self-spur in the process of learning from the traditional big brother, and gained industry awareness through continuous trial and error. One of my big reflections is that at the beginning of our business, we made a small achievement because of luck, and the whole team floated away, including myself. People are prone to make mistakes as soon as they float, the so-called "full of instruments will be tilted, and full of ambition will be over", so I mentioned the determination of the "prodigal son" at several meetings last year, and I also mentioned many times our insignificance in front of the big market.
Many colleagues and external partners of Ye Licheng, Xie Danyang and others knew about it, and the judicial results came out soon. Here I would like to thank the dealer partners for the first time and we fed back the relevant events and details, I can't believe that there is such a serious contempt for partners, trampling on friendship, arrogance and profit-seeking in Ye Licheng and Xie Danyang. In several chats with my dealer partners, I confessed that this was a problem of me seeing the wrong person and choosing the wrong person, and I would take responsibility for everyone to the end.
Here is a self-analysis: The rapid development and variable factors in the past 7 years have made the company and some management have been unable to control the situation and even excessively amplify the personal ability of the side, the crux of the surface is the double disrespect for the outside and the inside, it has been proved that the manager in this situation is easy to derail and make mistakes, and eventually become the object of legal supervision, become the object of disdain or even contempt and spurning by partners. Although the process of scraping bones and healing is painful, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of "punishing Zang or not, and treating everyone equally".
Believe in good products.
"Believing in good products" has always been the foundation of Yuanqi Forest since its establishment, and in the summer of 2023, I said in my internal sharing that "good products are the cornerstone and core of a good strategy". Six principles are highlighted: 1) make drinking water more meaningful; 2) Make drinking drinks less burdensome; 3) Be responsible and budget-conscious like a family member; 4) Good products should be honest, simple, and not pretentious, and should be a long-term companion of users; 5) Use modern technology to pursue the naturalness and health closer to hand-made; 6) Leave some symbols of beauty in this world.
"Milk tea" used to be one of the cutting-edge products after Genki Forest sparkling water. Unfortunately, after a setback 3 years ago, milk tea sales were sluggish, and the product manager and sales team were even hesitant to give up the product. After 3 years of silence, on the premise of sticking to good product quality, the new milk tea, which is more in line with market expectations, has returned, and adjustments have been made in all aspects from packaging, taste to pricing. From the peak of the debut to the trough after the setback to the growth in the new process, milk tea has gone from "opening high and going low" to "returning to the market", and has verified with facts and data that "good product logic will eventually win the market and users".
When "Iced Tea" initially returned to the domestic market, due to the timing and market environment factors, it was not recognized by channel providers and users, and there was a backlog of inventory, and the market and brand teams went to the grassroots level to do detailed interviews in line with the principle of seeking truth and pragmatism to understand the real feedback of front-line users. In the face of problems, the first time to adjust the details of the product, especially in the principle of sugar reduction and the insistence of "Yuanqi Forest Production", half a year later, the iced tea products out of the trough, to achieve internal overtaking, become a new growth curve of the product system. After the front-line business feedback that the large packaging is more cost-effective, the iced tea team boldly proposed to make a new specification of 900ml iced tea priced at 5 yuan in the competition between the big brothers. A few months later, Big Iced Tea became one of the most favorable bullets for sales in the 2023 peak season.
"Free Water" was originally a product idea of the "Genki Universe Conference", from internal incubation to large-scale market launch, and implemented into a widely acclaimed real product today, allowing everyone to see once again the underlying logic of "every one can cook" emphasized in the movie "Elf Mouse Brother". Yuanqi Forest also firmly believed in this at first, and entered the new industry from a small white state, and was once not favored and believed by others. But today, I can confidently say that it is with this belief and love that Yuanqi Forest can persevere and get to where it is today. Many things in this world are not so difficult, as long as you are willing to put your heart into it, you must have a chance to do it well. In particular, the new product "Free Water" adheres to the principle and purpose of "continuous simplicity of the ingredient list". The case of Freedom Water also verifies our other core corporate culture, "Believe in Young People": several young people with little or no product experience or even no experience in the beverage industry have the courage to try new products and take risks and responsibilities after many rounds of brainstorming and market research.
Finally, congratulations to the "Alien Electrolyte Water" team: when I shared "Six Principles of Good Products with Love" internally, I specifically mentioned one point: "Make drinking water more meaningful", and "Alien" is such a good product that gives new meaning to drinking water. In the past few years, "Alien" has become the science popularizer of "electrolyte water" in the minds of the younger generation of consumers. But I want to emphasize that most products do not have the luck of being a blockbuster, and it depends more on patience and hard work and patience to have the opportunity to break through the encirclement. "Alien" survived for 5 years to have today's results, which is a typical good product within the company that dares to sharpen a sword for several years.
Believe in good management.
Finally, I would like to talk about the efficiency of believing in management. Frankly speaking, Yuanqi Forest is still in the entrepreneurial stage, and it is inevitable that there will be a reckless and immature side, and the team has been learning to improve management capabilities in entrepreneurial exploration, and also dynamically adjusting the organizational structure in the process of making mistakes and correcting mistakes. Although many people have expressed discomfort during this period, we are still happy to see the results: the responsibilities are clear, the process is determined, the waste is reduced, the inventory is reduced, the store owner is satisfied, and the users can drink our products efficiently. We have moved from the young prodigal son to a new stage of growth: along the way, we have precipitated a group of good partners, a series of good products that bring confidence, and a set of management experience that returns to tradition.
Recalling the stumbles and ups and downs of this journey, today I know better what it means to "cherish": when we first entered the industry, we recklessly broke into the market of the big brothers, and tore a hole in front of users, but we initially thought that the management of the traditional industry was simple, and even once superstitious about the management system of some other industries, and copied the homework. Lack of budget, lack of tracking, lack of performance ......It wasn't until I saw that there were some serious problems in the organization, and even some financial figures were disclosed in front of my eyes: in some years, the sales system was scrapped by 10 million, and the R&D system was wasted by 10 million, and I was very distressed and entangled. Several problems add up and become a piece of my heart for a long time.
At the beginning, innovation was for the sake of innovation, and even some did not respect the laws of the industry, accompanied by a lot of waste and false prosperity; Now turn to more pragmatic innovation, innovation within limited boundaries, more standardized and more scientific. After a year of organizational restructuring, most of the problems have been solved, and many wastes have been greatly reduced. At the same time, the budget management has been further implemented, the relationship between the headquarters and the local government has been clarified, the channel refinement and regional management in the sales field have presented a new look, the subtraction and convergence in the field of product incubation and brand innovation have also been recognized by the market, the inventory backlog and indirect waste in research and development have been greatly reduced, and the management efficiency has gradually improved in various fields, and positive feedback has become one of the key words of this year.
The organizational restructuring in the past year has been basically completed, and the general direction has been smoothly transitioned under the premise of ensuring the healthy development of the business, and there has been a steady increase.
In the past 7 years, I have experienced from scratch, from one to many. I often say that 7 years is a cycle of reincarnation, the experience of the experience, the pain of the pain, after countless tossing and turning, sleepless nights, I see today one of the valuable assets accumulated in the past 7 years, that is, "good partners, good products, good management".
The company has a culture: "slow is fast", and the fine work should be done slowly. Conscientiously cooking and cooking well is an achievement in itself. In 2023, I talked about the goal of "meeting in 20 years" at the ** business and dealer conference, which is also from the self-confidence of "good partners, good products, and good management", which is a long-term belief.
Well-known companies and large companies in some industries may not live for 20 years in the historical wave, but I have seriously thought about the track of beverages, eating and drinking well is the general trend of market and user demand, and the outside industry has disturbed, ups and downs, and many new concepts and new labels continue to emerge. While respecting the tradition, we must cherish the next 20 years, make good friends, do a good job in products, and do a good job in management.
Tang Binsen. February 4, 2024.