曾年销3亿 又一“顶流”网红品牌 倒在这个夏天

This article recounts the full story of Hankow No.2 Factory, a once-popular Chinese retro-soda internet-famous brand, that rose to stardom and eventually collapsed into operational crisis, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. Key event recap: Leveraging nostalgia for the classic old soda brand and capitalizing on the boom in China's national trend and "look-based economy", Hankow No.2 Factory hit 300 million yuan in annual sales by 2019, secured over 100 million yuan in funding from top-tier investors including Qingliu Capital and Hillhouse Capital, and covered more than 100,000 retail outlets at its peak. Today, it faces 4 million yuan in unpaid wages, with its controlling owner missing, no recoverable assets left in its accounts, and bankruptcy liquidation still stalled indefinitely.

2. Core takeaways: As consumers grow increasingly rational, the premium attached to nostalgia and aesthetic appeal has a limited shelf life. Only consistent product quality, competitive pricing, and reliable supply can win long-term customer loyalty. Internet-famous brands built purely on marketing hype rarely last. For general consumers, this is a reminder to prioritize a brand's core hard strengths over viral internet fame when choosing consumer goods.

This article draws lessons for beverage brands by comparing the failure of Hankow No.2 Factory with successful cases such as Yuanqi Forest, summarized as follows:

1. Key lessons: After achieving rapid short-term growth through national trend nostalgia and social media marketing, Hankow No.2 Factory failed to build core competitive moats. First, its pricing of 8-10 yuan per bottle outpriced itself from mass daily consumption, locking it out of high-volume street retail channels and leading to persistent weak sales. Second, its asset-light outsourcing model, with no in-house supply chain, left it unable to adapt flexibly to market shifts, and a costly trademark dispute drained resources needed for product iteration.

2. Industry trends: Emotional premium is fading as consumers increasingly prioritize quality and value for money. Healthification has become a clear, sustained growth driver in the beverage industry. In today's saturated market, sustained growth is only possible for brands that build solid supply chain capabilities and stay focused on their core business.

3. Proven success model: Top brands like Yuanqi Forest have built quality control and flexible production capacity through self-owned factories, capitalized on growth trends including sugar-free and electrolyte beverages to scale rapidly, and earned a spot among the top 10 players in China's beverage market. This path has been proven viable.

This article analyzes the current landscape of China's domestic soda market, outlining market opportunities, risk warnings and actionable insights for beverage sellers as follows:

1. Current industry landscape: The beverage industry has entered a saturated,存量-era growth phase. The traditional carbonated soft drink market is in steady decline, while ready-to-drink tea has overtaken carbonated drinks to become the second-largest beverage category in China. Healthy segments such as sugar-free soda and electrolyte drinks are the main sources of industry growth today, and retro domestic sodas represent one of the few remaining incremental opportunities in the saturated market.

2. Core risk warnings: The asset-light outsourcing model has inherent ceilings. Without supply chain support, brands easily stall once hype fades. Incomplete trademark portfolio planning can lead to costly legal disputes that drain development resources. Pricing that mismatches mass daily consumption scenarios directly leads to weak sales and makes sustained operations nearly impossible.

3. Market opportunity notes: Partnering with offline catering channels is a proven successful path for domestic sodas. The healthy beverage track still holds substantial room for growth. Only by focusing on core business and refining core capabilities can sellers claim market share in the saturated landscape.

This article compares the growth trajectories of Hankow No.2 Factory and Yuanqi Forest, outlining market demand, business opportunities and insights on digital transformation for beverage manufacturers as follows:

1. Shifting market demand: Consumer demand in the beverage sector has shifted from nostalgia-driven premium to quality, affordability and health. Demand for healthy beverages such as sugar-free and electrolyte options grows by more than 30% annually. Many established regional soda brands are pushing for national expansion, driving a sharp increase in demand for stable, flexible production capacity, which brings extensive cooperation opportunities for manufacturers.

2. Core industry insights: Beverage brands now broadly recognize supply chain as their core competitiveness. Owning self-operated factories helps brands control quality, shorten delivery lead times, and flexibly adjust formulas and production capacity to quickly capture new consumer trends. This points a clear direction for factories pursuing digital and e-commerce transformation: prioritize building flexible production lines to improve capability of responding quickly to brand demand.

3. Long-term opportunities: More and more new consumer brands are abandoning the pure asset-light model, which will further highlight the value of manufacturing capacity. Factories that focus on refining production capabilities will gain access to more long-term, stable cooperation opportunities.

This article analyzes the current state and pain points of China's new consumer beverage sector, outlining industry trends, client pain points and business directions for service providers serving the beverage industry as follows:

1. Industry trends: The beverage industry has entered a phase of saturated competition. The growth logic for new consumer brands has shifted from pursuing short-term viral growth to refining core supply chain capabilities. Industry demand for flexible production matching, trademark compliance planning, and sales operations in lower-tier markets has increased significantly, opening up new business opportunities for service providers.

2. Core client pain points: Most emerging internet-famous brands prioritize marketing over operational fundamentals. Under a pure asset-light model, they struggle to accommodate production fluctuations and meet quality control requirements. Many brands neglect trademark planning in early stages, making them vulnerable to costly ownership disputes that drain development resources. Meanwhile, brands that position themselves as premium internet-famous products generally struggle to expand into high-volume mass distribution channels and suffer from weak sales performance.

3. Recommended business directions: Service providers can develop targeted offerings to address these pain points for new brands, including flexible production matching services, trademark layout compliance consulting, and sales operation services for lower-tier distribution, helping new brands build core capabilities and adapt to industry shifts.

This article summarizes the current state and pain points of new consumer beverage brands, outlining actionable insights for recruitment, operations and risk mitigation for retail platforms as follows:

1. Core issues with emerging brands: Emerging internet-famous brands often excel at marketing and customer acquisition, bringing fast traffic growth to platforms, but most lack core supply chain capabilities and have low risk resilience. They are prone to operational failure and unstable supply, and a brand collapse directly harms the platform's user experience and reputation.

2. Adjustment to sourcing strategy: Healthy beverage brands and established regional domestic soda brands with mature supply chains currently show strong growth momentum. Most of these brands have established partnerships with catering channels, deliver stable sales performance and strong risk resilience. Platforms can increase sourcing efforts for these brands to capture industry growth dividends.

3. Operations and risk mitigation: When onboarding new brands, platforms should not evaluate based solely on traffic and marketing performance. They need to verify core strengths including supply chain stability and trademark qualification to reduce the negative impact of brand failures on the platform. Platforms can also offer supporting services for new brands such as supply chain matching and distribution expansion support to help brands operate stably.

This paper uses the collapse of Hankow No.2 Factory as a case study to analyze the development path of national trend-focused new consumer brands, providing new observation samples and research directions for industry researchers as follows:

1. New current industry trends: China's domestic beverage industry has entered a phase of saturated competition, with market share being redistributed. Healthification has replaced nostalgia marketing as the core growth driver of the industry. Traditional regional soda brands are accelerating national expansion, while leading new brands build competitive moats through self-owned supply chains. Market share is increasingly concentrating on brands with solid core capabilities.

2. Newly emerged industry problems: Many asset-light internet-famous brands that captured the early national trend boom have broadly followed the cycle of "go viral, fade, collapse". The pure asset-light marketing-driven model has an inherent ceiling in the consumer goods sector, and cannot withstand competition in a saturated market. As consumers grow more rational, emotional premium cannot be sustained long-term, and marketing-reliant internet-famous brands generally lack core fundamental capabilities.

3. Insights for business model research: Comparing the asset-light marketing-driven model and the asset-heavy supply chain-driven model, the latter is better suited for the long-cycle consumer goods sector. "Avoid speculative moves, build core fundamentals, pursue practical results" has become the core development logic for today's consumer goods industry, offering new empirical conclusions for research on new consumer business models.