Have you noticed that the Golden Monkey milk candy, which once shared a candy counter with the White Rabbit, is becoming increasingly rare in supermarkets nowadays?

In 2008, with the excellent slogan "Three Golden Monkeys, a cup of good milk," the Golden Monkey milk candy quickly gained popularity and swept across major supermarkets across the country, becoming very popular among children.

At its peak, the annual revenue of Golden Monkey milk candy once reached 2 billion, showing a strong presence in competition with the industry's veteran, the White Rabbit.

However, no one expected that when this golden goose had just started to lay golden eggs steadily, the founder, Zhao Qisan, made an inexplicable decision to sell the brand to the American Hershey Group for 2.6 billion in 2014.

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Since then, the Golden Monkey milk candy, transformed into a foreign brand, has rarely made a sound in the domestic market.

It wasn't until 2018, when the news of "Hershey Group selling Golden Monkey for 270 million at a low price" suddenly broke out, that Chinese consumers realized that the once-great candy giant was no longer shining.

In just three years, a "buy high, sell low" acquisition storm shattered the halo of Golden Monkey milk candy. What exactly were the reasons that led Zhao Qisan to push Golden Monkey into this whirlpool back then?

For Zhao Qisan, what does the Golden Monkey milk candy mean?

It's not an exaggeration to say that thirty years ago, it was this small candy that saved Zhao Qisan's disastrous career and even fate.Before creating the national brand of Jin Si Huang milk candy, Zhao Qisan's first venture was in the electrical appliance industry.

In 1973, Zhao Qisan, who was a worker at a rural electrical appliance factory, was appointed as the factory director in a moment of crisis, taking on the role with little preparation. His first task was to lead the entire factory to "fill the financial hole."

How big was this hole?

At that time, the electrical appliance factory, on the brink of bankruptcy, had debts of up to 1.22 million yuan on its books. The more than thirty employees had not received their salaries for a long time, and many households were out of food, with everyone hoping that the new factory director could come up with a solution to lead them out of the predicament.

In the 1970s, 1.22 million was by no means a small sum. At 31 years old, Zhao Qisan was under immense pressure.

In order to revive the electrical appliance factory, Zhao Qisan began to travel day and night across the country to conduct business, trying to bring back some orders for his fellow workers.

But soon he realized that although the industry had great prospects in the future, both domestic and international giants were already eyeing it with interest, and a small rural enterprise like theirs had no chance of getting a share.

In short, if the electrical appliance factory wanted to survive, there was only one path left, and that was transformation.

How to transform? And where to?

Zhao Qisan found the answer in Shanghai, where the light industry was thriving: he needed to start with low-priced small food items.After returning to his hometown, Zhao Qisan made up his mind to depreciate and sell all the old equipment in the factory. He introduced several skilled workers from Shanghai and began to try to transform the appliance factory into a food factory.

Initially, unable to predict which products would be advantageous, Zhao Qisan's food factory set up multiple production lines, making snacks such as beef jerky, canned food, and seasoned yuba, but the sales were not optimistic.

At the end of the year, when Zhao Qisan did the accounts, he realized that after deducting costs, the food factory's profit for the first year was only 30,000 yuan, and he still needed to find a growth point.

It wasn't until 1991 that a delicious candy inspired Zhao Qisan.

Yes, this candy was the famous White Rabbit from Shanghai, which used the then trendy "pillow-shaped milk candy technology," making it aesthetically pleasing and portable, and it was very popular nationwide at the time.

As its future strongest competitor in the market, Zhao Qisan's Golden Monkey milk candy was also about to make its historical debut.

As we all know, as a gift for the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Shanghai White Rabbit milk candy has been in production since 1959, and it is a time-honored brand with a long history, deeply recognized by the public.

As a rising star in the industry, the reason why Golden Monkey could overtake and catch up with the development pace of White Rabbit is closely related to the excellent market timing chosen by Zhao Qisan.

The year 1992 happened to be the Year of the Monkey, and the Chinese people have always liked to "seek auspiciousness." As soon as Zhao Qisan's Golden Monkey milk candy was launched, it won the favor of many consumers.

During the Spring Festival of that year, the sales of Golden Monkey milk candy were booming, becoming a must-have candy for many families to entertain guests, and the production could not keep up with the demand.In the first year of distribution, the annual revenue of Jin Si Huang milk candy soared to 20 million yuan, marking a crucial first battle in which Zhao Qisan could be said to have started with a bang.

Most commendably, Zhao Qisan was not intoxicated by the initial success; he remained clear-headed in decision-making.

He was well aware that for a new brand to establish a solid foothold in the food industry, maintaining a good reputation was the key.

To ensure the quality and taste of the milk candy, Zhao Qisan even led the team to select milk sources personally, ultimately choosing the milk source bases in several high-quality milk-producing areas of Inner Mongolia and Henan, to ensure the competitiveness of the raw material quality.

It must be admitted that it was thanks to Zhao Qisan's foresight that Jin Si Huang was spared from the devastating melamine scandal in the dairy industry in 2008, becoming a "conscientious brand" in the hearts of the people and once again gaining a large number of loyal fans.

In 2008, this food company, which started with a small milk candy, welcomed its own midsummer, with the annual revenue breaking through 2 billion for the first time, becoming unrivaled in the industry for a while.

However, as everyone knows, the seasons always change year after year, and midsummer is always fleeting.

There is an old Chinese saying, "It is easy to conquer a country, but difficult to govern it," which aptly describes Jin Si Huang at that time.

Once a pursuer, Jin Si Huang only needed to follow the path left by the predecessors and accelerate forward to easily avoid many unnecessary pitfalls and seize opportunities to surpass at any time.

However, at that time, Jin Si Huang had already become a leader in the industry, not only having to start accepting the challenges of up-and-coming competitors but also urgently needing to expand new growth points, otherwise, it would be difficult to maintain its leading position.Unfortunately, the golden snub-nosed monkey, which started by imitating others, lacks strong innovation capabilities the most. Apart from initially launching the hit product Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Milk Candy by imitating the White Rabbit Milk Candy, the most widely known imitation by the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey was the "real or fake Ferrero" incident that caused a stir in 2013.

In the picture above, there are two exquisitely packaged boxes of chocolate, both wrapped in gold foil and paired with a gold-brown tray, and even the outer packaging is heart-shaped. If you don't look closely, you might not notice the obvious difference between the two while shopping in the supermarket, and you might casually put the box on the left into your shopping cart as the genuine Ferrero.

The box on the left is the "Qiao Fei Luo" hazelnut chocolate launched by Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Food Company since November 2013. From its appearance to its product name, the intention to "bump into" Ferrero is blatantly obvious.

In fact, in the years before, products under the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey brand had already copied many well-known food brands, including Xizhilang and Xu Fu Ji, among others, which had all been "molds" for the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey. However, there were no explicit disputes between the parties.

But this time, by copying the Italian famous brand Ferrero, the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey has hit a brick wall. After being complained of infringement by Ferrero, more than 4 million yuan in revenue from the "Qiao Fei Luo" products under the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey brand were identified as illegal operations, and the company was fined 1.93 million yuan by the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce, setting a record for the highest trademark infringement fine in history at that time.

With weak copyright awareness and insufficient innovation capabilities, the three major strategies that Zhao Qisan led the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Food to prosperity 30 years ago are clearly no longer effective in the increasingly fierce competitive environment of today.

For the Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Food, the fine of 1.93 million yuan may not be a significant blow, but the negative impact on the brand's reputation is immeasurable.It was also in 2014 when Zhao Qisan, who felt he could no longer lead Jin Si Huang Food to further progress, decided to accept the olive branch extended by the American Hershey Group, selling all the shares of Jin Si Huang Food to them for 2.6 billion yuan.

Since then, this national food company, once highly recognized by the vast number of Chinese consumers, officially became a "pure-blooded" foreign enterprise.

The purpose of Hershey's acquisition of Jin Si Huang was apparent.

As a brand with extremely high national recognition, Jin Si Huang has a very large audience in the lower-tier markets of China. Acquiring Jin Si Huang Food might help Hershey tap into the potentially huge Chinese market.

However, what no one expected was that this mutually beneficial "union" between Jin Si Huang and Hershey would only last for three years.

In 2018, Hershey resold Jin Si Huang back to the Chinese for only 270 million yuan, about 1/10 of the acquisition price three years earlier, a typical loss-making deal.

Americans are not foolish, of course, and the reason they are willing to make a loss is that if they choose to continue holding, it will only increase more sunk costs.

It turned out that after the news of "Jin Si Huang becoming a foreign brand" spread, Chinese consumers' "national product filter" for Jin Si Huang had already shattered.

And when the national sentiment was gone, there were too many substitutes for the products under Jin Si Huang, and of course, they couldn't sell well.

When Americans found that their plan to use Jin Si Huang's shell to open the Chinese market had failed, this brand naturally lost its value and had to painfully cut its losses, just hoping to get rid of it as soon as possible.It is worth mentioning that the Chinese company that took over the Golden Monkey Food, although also located in Henan, has officially stated that they have no connection with Zhao Qisan.

Looking back at the ups and downs of Golden Monkey Food over the past 30 years, the author can't help but feel that the managers have really wasted a good hand.

In the era of wild growth, Golden Monkey milk candy carved out a path with its excellent quality.

However, due to the inability to play a winning game and lack of innovation, it took a wrong path during the bottleneck period when breakthroughs should have been sought, leading to a sharp decline in brand reputation, which is quite lamentable.

After returning to the Chinese market, Golden Monkey Food is in urgent need of a brand reshaping, and we might as well look forward to the planning direction of the new generation of leaders.

The post-80s and post-90s who once chewed Golden Monkey milk candy while doing homework and watching TV have now grown up, but the sweetness brought by Golden Monkey milk candy at that time is still accompanied by childhood memories in their minds, becoming a valuable asset.

No matter what, we hope that the "new Golden Monkey" can find a way to break the deadlock as soon as possible and let this time-honored brand shine again.