Chapter 41 Marketing Archives 1 "Robust" changed its owner three times

The name of the Robust brand is not He Boquan, but another Guangzhou native named Fang Shi.Back then, Fang Shi and Huai Hanxin founded the Sun God, and they were the chief generals who fought back and forth on the front line.Fang Shi took a group of old subordinates away from the Sun God, and jointly established an industrial company with Guangzhou Boiler Factory and Shengang Town, Conghua County, to produce health care products, oral liquid and bottled drinking water. It is said that in order to create a brand-new brand, Fang Shi rummaged through a Xinhua Dictionary in three days behind closed doors, and in a flash of inspiration, the word "Robust" appeared.

At this time, Fang Shi met He Boquan, a young man from Xiaolan Town, Zhongshan, who was on the starting line of starting a business.He Boquan fell in love with the brand Robust at first sight, and decided to name his newly-launched milk yoghurt. Fang Shiyu's "son" took care of him through hard work, and a brand new "Zhongshan Robust Health Products Co., Ltd." came into being. Fang Shi invested in the brand, market experience and 200,000 yuan in cash, owning 1/3 of the company's shares.Since then, there have been two Robusts in the world: Guangzhou Robust and Zhongshan Robust.

Just over a year later, Fang Shi's own Guangzhou Robust had little improvement, while He Boquan's Zhongshan Robust became popular overnight with a bottle of milk yogurt. In 1991, Fang Shi agreed to transfer 1/3 of Zhongshan Robust’s shares to He Boquan for 3.8 million yuan, but he refused to give up the brand ownership, and only agreed to let He Boquan rent 10 of Robust’s dairy products. year use rights. He Boquan, who originally hoped to "borrow a brand to go overseas", found after his initial victory that the loss of brand rights has become a huge shortcoming and hidden danger for him to expand his business.It was against this background that he rushed to Peking University to solicit the name of the company, and was moved by the name "Today" given by the female college student Yuan Ying, so he resolutely changed the name of the company to "Today Group".He hopes to reduce the brand dependence on Robust as soon as possible. In 1994, He Boquan spent 10 million yuan to buy Ma Junren's mysterious formula and vigorously launched "Life Nuclear Energy". In the process, He Boquan tried his best to highlight the "today" corporate and brand image.In the future, "Life Nuclear Energy" died halfway due to various reasons. He Boquan still believed when summing up the gains and losses, "The product promotion may not be successful, but today the group is well-known in the world, and it is worth it."

However, the difference between the company name and the product brand still made He Boquan in a dilemma. He still couldn't make up his mind to change the name of Robust Milk to "Today's Milk".He once launched the "Anti-Douxing" brand, but it was not understood and accepted by consumers in other parts of the mainland because of its strong Guangdong-Hong Kong cultural flavor. In the end, it only retreated to sell in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. In this process, Guangzhou Robust is doing its best to promote its Robust mineral water. Fang Shi's marketing strategy is very simple: never advertise, where does Zhongshan Robust's milk yogurt go, Guangzhou Robust The mineral water of Robust's mineral water follows wherever it goes, and the tide rises. Except for a few distributors, almost no consumers know that the Robust milk yoghurt and mineral water they bought back come from two almost unrelated companies.Another thing that made He Boquan unbearable was that Guangzhou Robust was also secretly producing Robust milk yoghurt.All kinds of things gave He Boquan a headache.

In 1996, the situation suddenly developed to the point where it was difficult to reconcile.On the one hand, He Boquan decided to enter the pure water market out of the need to compete with Wahaha, resulting in direct conflicts with Fangshi in terms of product form; dispute.The deadliest incident was that a catastrophic flood broke out in the Yangtze River Basin this summer, and a large amount of mineral water under the name of Robust raged in the flooded area. Some PLA soldiers who were fighting the flood had a stomachache after drinking the water.For a time, public opinion was in an uproar, and Robust's reputation plummeted, but the weak Zhongshan Robust was simply unable to cope with this sudden situation.The scandal of mineral water has naturally greatly affected the image of yoghurt. He Boquan went to various places to "fight the fire" as "the fault of his biological father and adoptive father". Yang Jieqiang, the general manager of marketing, even lost 5 kilograms of meat in a month.

This vicious incident made He Boquan determined to showdown with Guangzhou Robust: offer 15 million yuan to acquire the Robust brand.At this moment, Fang Shi, who was in a state of desperation, had no way to retreat when he encountered the enemy back and forth. In March 1997, at a hotel beside the Pearl River in Guangzhou, the two parties formally signed the document.According to the on-site reporter's observation, Fang Shi, a generation of marketing tycoon, burst into tears after signing, walked out alone without a word, and threw the pen he had just signed into the surging Pearl River.Since then, Today Group has changed its name to Robust Group, and He Boquan got his wish.

Ten years of plotting and hunting once made He Boquan's "Roberts" complex very deep. Since 1998, he has secretly negotiated joint ventures with multinational companies, and his preferred partner is Nestlé in Switzerland.Nestle and Danone are both European food giants. If its investment in Robust had been realized at that time, the status quo of China's beverage and food industry today may be a different world.However, there was a fierce conflict between the two parties on the ownership of the brand. Nestlé demanded to buy out 100% of the Robust brand, and everything else was easy to negotiate.But He Boquan's position is that everything is easy to talk about except the Robust brand.Looking at it now, Nestle's persistence in brand ownership is quite questionable.A very interesting topic is that until today, multinational companies still lack a set of methodologies to objectively evaluate the market value of Chinese companies, and they still do not know how to have an equal and objective dialogue with local Chinese entrepreneurs. This will be a very useful issue in the future meaning research direction.

This kind of stalemate gave Danone, which was originally impossible to enter the game, an opportunity. Danone bypassed sensitive areas such as brand and finance, and won the controlling stake in Robust Group in one fell swoop.He Boquan explained when answering reporters' questions at the joint venture press conference, "Nestlé is not flexible, so we chose Danone." Boquan He, who likes flexibility, chose Danone, which is flexible. However, the subsequent evolution of the situation was beyond everyone's expectations. At the end of 2001, He Boquan and other "four dragons and one phoenix" collectively withdrew from Robust. It is said that He Boquan took hundreds of millions of yuan in cash at one time. Since then, this entrepreneur who regards "Robust" as his life It has nothing to do with these 3 words.From Fang Shi to He Boquan to Danone, from 200,000 yuan to 15 million yuan to hundreds of millions of yuan, a "Robust" that came out of nowhere interpreted the splendor and helplessness of the changing business world, and the legend about it is still alive today. It's far from over.

Around October 2001, domestic websites suddenly widely reposted an article signed by He Boquan, from Chen Robust's four major mistakes in the competition with Wahaha.This move by He Boquan was quite unexpected. It seems that he had already made up his mind to leave Robust when he published this short article.