From the crossover of Confucius Temple IP, how Six Walnuts "transformed" for the second time

It's the college entrance examination season again, and students who have studied hard for many years are about to usher in a critical moment in their lives. At this time, caring for and encouraging candidates has already become an unspoken understanding among all sectors of society. Even major brands that are "outsiders" have done their best to contribute their own strength to the students.

As the "protector of students' brain health", Six Walnuts transformed itself into the "strongest support team" on February 27, when the countdown to the new year's college entrance examination season entered a hundred days. It invited parents to go to Qufu, Shandong to participate in the "Second Six Walnuts Qufu Confucius Temple Blessing Ceremony" to pray for college entrance examination students across the country, and to "cheer" for the students with practical actions.

Behind the colorful prayer activities, we see a Six Walnuts that is undergoing transformation on multiple levels.

Brand transformation

As a traditional folk cultural custom, praying for blessings before exams has deeply rooted the cultural image of Confucius' wisdom in people's hearts for thousands of years and has always been admired by many scholars in later generations. Its ideas of "teaching without distinction" and "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude" are still widely respected in the education community. The meaning behind Six Walnuts choosing the Confucius Temple to pray for college entrance examination students is self-evident.

First, by borrowing the traditional cultural background, we can build a warm and positive communication channel between the brand and consumers, and narrow the distance between consumers and brands. As the crystallization of my country's traditional culture, praying in the Confucius Temple has a long cultural heritage and a broad mass base. Praying for blessings at the Six Walnuts Temple can not only promote traditional culture, but also allow candidates and parents to put down the tension and burden of preparing for the exam.

In addition, as a social activity, Six Walnuts conveyed good wishes to the majority of candidates through unique brand activities, built a good channel of empathy between the brand and consumers, and demonstrated the positive brand image of Six Walnuts to the outside world.

Secondly, actively adapt to the new characteristics of the beverage industry, which is becoming increasingly fragmented and scenario-based, focus on scenarios to creatively plan brand activities, and awaken user needs through "immersive participation." It is not difficult to find out from past situations that from the initial assistance to college entrance examination students in their efforts, to jointly facing the college entrance examination, and then to praying in the Confucius Temple, Six Walnuts has recreated a "college entrance examination scene" on top of the "learning scene" to attract users to actively participate in brand public welfare activities, and then let users feel the charm and value of the brand in "immersive participation", thereby establishing a high degree of trust and high stickiness in the brand.

Finally, in line with the transformation trend of business logic towards "user is king" in the era of consumer sovereignty, we will rely on brand activities to promote the transformation of Six Walnuts from a "product-driven" to a "user-centric" user brand. With the advent of the era of consumer sovereignty, the model that relied solely on "product-driven" in the past is gradually declining, while the "user-centric" business model is becoming an industry trend. In this context, Six Walnuts actively changed its strategy to move closer to user brands and put this concept into practice by planning brand events.

Product fission

While promoting the company's transformation into a "user-centric" brand, Six Walnuts also actively promotes product innovation, breaks the limitations of traditional single product categories, and takes multiple measures to promote product fission.

First, relying on a strong technical research and development system, we continuously improve the nutritional value, quality, packaging and design of our products to meet the personalized and diversified consumption needs of consumers. Financial report data shows that from 2018 to 2020, Six Walnuts invested in industry-leading technology research and development, built a complete industry-university-research system to accelerate the development of new products, and based on this, established patented technologies including the "5·3·28" process, "whole walnut CET cold extraction process" and "five-level fine grinding process", continuously improving the nutrition and taste of products, and continuously launching multi-flavor and multi-packaging products to meet the needs of consumers in different scenarios and continuously improve the sales potential of Six Walnuts.

Second, break the traditional dairy industry's monotony and homogeneity, form a heavyweight product matrix to build product potential, and promote sustainable product fission. From the perspective of the plant protein beverage industry, many leading companies in the industry occupy the market segments with "super single products" (almond milk, coconut beverages, walnut milk and other single products), and the revenue contribution of large single products mostly exceeds 80%, and the product structure is relatively simple. At the same time, with the entry of external giants such as Nongfu Spring, Yili, and Mengniu into the industry, product homogeneity in the plant protein industry has become increasingly serious. The result is that the industry is "crazy involution", but the benefits are much worse than before.

In order to break this situation, Six Walnuts has vigorously promoted product innovation and created a segmented product matrix with new products. For example, the high-end walnut milk beverage series represented by Six Walnuts 2430 has quickly won a good reputation for Six Walnuts with its nutritional and health advantages such as high protein, 0 sugar, and 0 cholesterol.

Third, follow the new consumption trend of consumers pursuing health, seize the emerging blue ocean markets such as plant milk, and promote products to "break the circle" of the population to enhance brand momentum. As the concepts of green economy and healthy eating become more and more popular, the global "plant-based" concept has suddenly emerged, and vegetarian products such as "artificial meat" and "plant milk" have become increasingly popular, and giants are also participating in the hunt.

As the largest plant milk producer in China, Six Walnuts successfully introduced the first (and currently the only) world-class whole bean production equipment in mainland China and put it into use last year. It uses internationally leading process production standards to ensure product quality. It is expected that the plant milk category will become the company's next business growth pole. After all, as the largest plant milk producer in China, the plant milk category is highly correlated with its original walnut milk category, and at the same time is highly differentiated from its original products. It is expected that the introduction of plant milk will greatly help Six Walnuts to "break the circle" among the population.

Channel Transformation

In addition, in the face of the vigorous development of new channels and new business formats, Six Walnuts is also actively adapting to the external environment, breaking the limitations of traditional channels, and moving towards an omni-channel direction that integrates online and offline.

On the one hand, for the traditional offline distribution channels on which the company has built its business, we should take the attitude of deepening, optimizing, thoroughly developing and refining them to stabilize the foundation and consolidate the traditional stock market. The financial report shows that as of June 30, 2021, the offline channels of Six Walnuts have covered 50,000 national chain convenience stores including 7-11, FamilyMart, Full Time, Lawson, etc., and have more than 2,000 dealers, a significant increase from the previous 1,900. On the basis of continuously expanding the traditional dealer network, Six Walnuts further expanded the channel depth and flattened operations, pushed the channel downward and used in-depth expansion to enhance the product penetration rate in the market.

In addition, Six Walnuts also optimized the channel product structure according to different city levels and market consumption characteristics, and assisted dealers in changing their business methods, thereby driving explosive growth in the dealer channel. According to the third quarter report of 2021, the revenue of Six Walnuts distributor channels increased by 69.66% year-on-year.

On the other hand, with the widespread rise of new channels and new business formats such as live streaming and short videos, Six Walnuts is also promoting a new digital "full-area dynamic sales" model including organizational mechanisms and direct sales systems, building a three-dimensional channel sales closed loop and enhancing its ability to reach users through all channels.

In order to adapt to the new retail market development environment more quickly, Six Walnuts has deeply interacted with emerging channels such as online e-commerce, KOL celebrity live broadcasts, and community group buying, and has successively established product strategy departments, channel strategy departments, and brand strategy departments to reshape organizational functions. It also asked the operating company to collaborate in the construction of the online product system to achieve a digital three-dimensional channel marketing system with multi-directional linkage between online, offline, and community channels. After several years of hard work, the online channels of Six Walnuts have now begun to take shape, and the integration of online and offline is also accelerating.

Start the second growth curve

It took Six Walnuts 25 years to grow from a humble walnut milk product to a leading star company in today's plant protein beverage market, and its development has by no means been smooth sailing. Its success today is inseparable from its consistent adherence to the strategy of "keeping to the right path and being surprising".

Firstly, as the pioneer of the walnut milk category, Six Walnuts has always adhered to its core business, leading the market with a long-term attitude and eventually becoming the industry leader. Starting from the initial walnut milk product, Six Walnuts has been sticking to the plant protein beverage market for 25 years. It has continued to work hard in the walnut milk market, continuously iterating itself towards high-end and functional health products, and gradually becoming the absolute leader in the walnut milk segment. Its brand image as a leader in walnut milk has also become increasingly popular.

Secondly, when the company encountered a period of bottleneck in its development, Six Walnuts dared to break through itself and reshape itself from the product, channel, brand and even organizational level, thus breaking through the real bottleneck step by step and moving towards a broader market. In 2020, which was hit by the epidemic, the revenue of Six Walnuts was once severely "shrunk", and the company faced the situation of "bottoming out" in performance. There was no shortage of "pessimistic" arguments in the industry.

However, faced with difficulties, Six Walnuts, with the courage to "cut off one's own arm", adjusted its organizational framework, comprehensively upgraded its channels, products, and brands, and successfully achieved its own comprehensive transformation with the help of the "crisis". Its organizational resilience and operating results have been continuously improved, and it finally amazed the outside world again after the latest financial report in 2021 was issued.

The financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2021, Yangyuan Beverage (Six Walnuts) achieved operating income of nearly 5.012 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 66%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was approximately 1.631 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 40%. The impressive results show that Six Walnuts has finally rebounded after a "brief bottoming out" in 2020. At the same time, with Six Walnuts taking the lead in the field of plant milk, a clearly visible plant milk track with prospects no less than walnut milk is accumulating strength for the company to start its second growth curve.

Author: Liu Kuang

Source: liukuang110