内部撕裂、外界挤压 汇源“压力山大”

This article focuses on the current predicament of iconic Chinese juice brand Huiyuan, which is grappling with internal division and external competitive pressure. Below is core information and a purchasing guide for general consumers:

1. Huiyuan is now split into two camps. Beijing Huiyuan, which holds the legal trademark rights, is backed by investors to carry out self-rescue: it cracks down on trademark infringement while launching new products. The original Huiyuan Group, which lost the trademark rights, controls the brand’s nationwide factories, orchards, supply chains and original dealer network, and has launched a new brand "Zanjia Guoyuan" to compete in the market. Currently, "authentic and counterfeit Huiyuan products" coexist across the market.

2. Current market status: Most offline terminals still stock the original classic Huiyuan products. New products from both camps have not completed large-scale offline distribution, and online sales of new offerings also remain low. Most general consumers cannot distinguish the legitimate brand, leading to widespread purchase hesitation.

3. Purchasing guide: Consumers who want officially compliant Huiyuan products can purchase from official authorized online flagship stores and authentic products at major chain supermarkets. Consumers who prefer products that follow the original Huiyuan Group’s quality control system can look for its new brand "Zanjia Guoyuan".

Huiyuan’s division and the current competitive landscape of China’s juice category offer key takeaways for other brand owners, summarized as follows:

1. Brand risk warning: During equity restructuring, established brands must clearly define the ownership of trademark rights and core assets to avoid internal division and confrontation. Huiyuan’s 30 years of accumulated national brand equity has already been eroded by prolonged infighting, leading to dealer wait-and-see attitudes, consumer skepticism, and declining sales — a warning sign for all legacy brands.

2. Product development and consumer trend insights: Consumers today increasingly prefer healthy beverages, with sharply rising demand for products with clean labels and minimal additives. Beijing Huiyuan’s new fruit tea launch, which contains 99% juice and no added flavors or pigments, perfectly aligns with this consumer trend.

3. Competitive landscape context: China’s beverage industry has entered a period of shrinking volume and stock competition. In addition to peer competition, established brands also face pressure from private labels owned by channels such as Sam’s Club and Freshippo. The fruit tea category has formed a multi-layered competitive landscape, and brands must build clear differentiated advantages to break through.

Huiyuan’s current internal conflict brings clear risk warnings and cooperation opportunities for beverage sellers. Key takeaways are summarized below:

1. Risk warning: With unclear ownership of the Huiyuan brand and widespread market confusion over authenticity, consumers generally hold purchase concerns, overall terminal sales velocity is slow, and operational risks are hard to predict. Sellers are not advised to rashly increase inventory purchases or resource input, and should wait for the situation to clarify before making layout decisions.

2. Current cooperation opportunities: Beijing Huiyuan has explicitly stated that it will unite and support dealers, increase market support, strictly control the pricing system, and guarantee dealer profits. Sellers interested in offering legitimate Huiyuan products can contact Beijing Huiyuan to discuss cooperation, and prioritize layout through core chain channels first.

3. Future growth opportunities: The healthy fruit tea track still maintains growth momentum, with strong consumer demand for clean-label products. Both Beijing Huiyuan’s tea-fruit series and the original Huiyuan Group’s new brand "Zanjia Guoyuan" are still in the market introduction stage. Sellers with high-quality core channels can connect with both parties early to secure a position and capture early market dividends.

Huiyuan’s division and current market changes bring many insights and business opportunities for beverage production factories. Key takeaways are summarized as follows:

1. Shifts in product production demand: Consumers now have increasingly high requirements for the health attributes of beverages, preferring products with high juice content and no added flavors, pigments or sweeteners. Clean labels have become a core selling point. Production factories need to adjust their R&D and production directions to adapt to this new demand, while strengthening their own quality control systems.

2. Business cooperation opportunities: Beijing Huiyuan is currently rebuilding a full new OEM system and publishing a list of compliant contract manufacturers to reshape the brand’s production order. Factories with stable production capacity and strict quality control capabilities can connect with Beijing Huiyuan to compete for cooperation spots. The original Huiyuan Group also has corresponding production cooperation needs for its incubated new brand "Zanjia Guoyuan".

3. Development insights: Core production capacity and a complete upstream supply chain are the core competitiveness of physical factories. Even if a factory loses the right to use a brand trademark, it can still rely on years of accumulated production capacity and supply chain advantages to incubate a new brand and break through. Therefore, factories need to attach importance to the long-term construction of their own production capacity and supply chain systems, while also paying attention to the compliance of brand trademark ownership to avoid ownership disputes disrupting normal production.

New changes in China’s domestic juice beverage industry have brought new customer demands and development directions for FMCG-related service providers. Key takeaways are summarized as follows:

1. Industry development trends: China’s beverage industry has entered a phase of shrinking volume and stock competition, with healthification as a clear long-term development trend. Among segments, the fruit tea category maintains high vitality and continues to expand in market size. Legacy juice brands are in a phase of iterative transformation and ownership restructuring, creating a large amount of unmet service demand.

2. Core customer pain points: Legacy brands in transformation generally face multiple core pain points: blurred consumer awareness caused by unclear brand ownership, difficulty breaking existing consumer perceptions for new products, long brand positioning cultivation cycles, high difficulty in restructuring channel order, and the need to rebuild low dealer confidence. They urgently need professional service providers to provide targeted solutions.

3. Business opportunities: Service providers can develop targeted related services. For transforming legacy brands, they can offer services including brand awareness sorting, new product seeding marketing, and channel restructuring, to help brands quickly build authentic brand perception and address dealer wait-and-see attitudes. For new brand incubation, they can provide full-link services from brand positioning to channel promotion to capture new business growth.

Huiyuan’s internal conflict and new product layout provide multiple references for platform operators including offline supermarkets and online e-commerce platforms. Key takeaways are summarized as follows:

1. Core brand demands to platforms: Beijing Huiyuan’s current core goal is to restructure channel order. It needs platforms to cooperate with authentic product access and infringement product removal, prioritize access to core chain supermarkets and leading e-commerce platforms, and help build consumers’ perception of authentic products. This requires headquarter-level cooperation support from platforms.

2. Sourcing and merchant opportunities: Healthy beverages are currently a hot consumer demand. Beijing Huiyuan’s tea-fruit series, which features 99% juice content and no additives, aligns with the healthy consumption trend; "Zanjia Guoyuan" leverages the original Huiyuan Group’s full industrial chain advantages and has guaranteed quality. Platforms can introduce these new products to enrich their product lines and meet diversified consumer demand.

3. Risk avoidance: Huiyuan’s ownership dispute has not yet been resolved, and product sales are unstable. When introducing related products, platforms must first clarify the cooperation entity, confirm the compliance of brand authorization, and avoid getting involved in the brand dispute. Second, they should arrange shelf or traffic resources reasonably, and adjust dynamically based on sales performance, to avoid occupying high-quality resources and hurting the platform’s overall revenue.

Huiyuan’s current split and confrontation is a new case that emerged after the bankruptcy and restructuring of a legacy Chinese consumer enterprise, and offers multiple values for industrial research. Key content is summarized as follows:

1. New industrial problems: This event has produced a rare new landscape: after enterprise bankruptcy and restructuring, trademark ownership was separated from core industrial assets and original channel resources, forming a standoff between the capital camp holding the trademark and the original founder camp controlling production capacity and channels. This puts forward a new proposition for research on enterprise bankruptcy restructuring and enriches relevant research cases.

2. New industrial trends: China’s beverage industry has officially entered a phase of shrinking volume and stock competition. Demand on the consumer side has clearly shifted toward healthier products with clean labels. The fruit tea track maintains growth momentum, attracting traditional beverage giants, emerging brands, and offline tea chains to enter the market. On the channel side, supermarkets and membership stores are aggressively expanding private labels, further squeezing the living space of existing brands.

3. Research insights: This event shows that during the bankruptcy and restructuring of legacy consumer enterprises, it is necessary to balance the core interests of capital and the original team, and clarify the ownership of trademarks and assets in advance, to avoid internal division eroding the brand equity accumulated over decades. It provides important empirical reference for subsequent restructuring of similar consumer enterprises.