At the first investor meeting after the new structure took effect, Unilever focused on the “young” businesses that want to bet on the Chinese market. Xiaoshidai noticed that recently, this FMCG giant held an investor meeting devoted to health and wellbeing, and proposed to achieve a scale of 3billion euros (now about 20.684 billion yuan) for this business with multiple dietary supplement brands.
It is noteworthy that the business has classified China as a key market and put forward the local operation strategy of “China for China”. This also means that it is on the same track with many Chinese and foreign “players” such as Swisse, Nestle and even Beijian. Next, let’s take a look at Unilever’s ideas.
“买买买”
Xiaoshidai noticed that after Unilever launched the new architecture last month, the health business was divided into “beauty &wellbeing”, which belongs to the same business group as hair care and skin care. Jostein Solheim, who is in charge of the health business, has worked at Unilever for 30 years and served as the CEO of ice cream Ben & Jerry’s for 8 years.
In Unilever, whose history can be traced back to the 19th century, the health business is still a relatively young “member”, and its brand matrix is built from the “buy buy” of the past few years.
“Since the acquisition of Equilibra in Italy (with dietary supplement products) in 2018, our annual turnover has exceeded 1billion euros (about 6.925 billion yuan).” Jostein Solheim, CEO of Unilever health, said at the meeting.
According to the conference materials reviewed by snack generation, after equilibrary, Unilever has successively acquired a number of VMS (vitamins, minerals and dietary supplements) enterprises headquartered in the United States, including oly nutrition, liquid i.v., smartypants vitamins and onnit. Its latest transaction was the acquisition of the majority stake in nutrafol in July this year. At present, Unilever’s health business is mainly composed of VMS products that meet different needs, such as liquid i.v.’s main hydrating powder and nutrofol’s aim at hair health. In addition, the business also includes the funny bandage brand well, which has the same founder Eric Ryan as oly nutrition.
Well products
。 Unilever has set up a special internal team to take charge of the acquisition. In the past 18 months, it has studied more than 60 targets, and finally only three transactions have been reached.
When talking about the acquisition criteria, he said that first of all, the ideal target must be complementary to the existing business, such as professional skills and teams. The second is to be in a big place
Xiaoshidai saw on a platform today that the overseas flagship stores of oly and smartypants mainly promote soft sugar products. Among them, olly puts more emphasis on meeting segmentation needs, such as sleep, immunity, emotion, skin and so on. Among them, the highest sales volume is a melatonin sleep fudge, with a monthly sales volume of 4000+. Smartypants, on the other hand, mainly launched multivitamins and probiotic fudges for different age groups, including children aged 3-12, young people aged 13-19, and adults. The monthly sales volume of children’s vitamin fudge with the highest sales volume in the store is 3000+. Solheim also revealed that Unilever is establishing a Chinese localized operation team for the health business. “We have a business team in China and will unlock the market potential through cross-border e-commerce in advance.”. Since China’s health food needs to get the “blue hat” (that is, through the registration of health food) to enter offline channels and claim to have specific effects, and obtaining this certification is not easy, many overseas brands choose to enter the Chinese market through cross-border e-commerce, such as Swisse, which belongs to Jianhe group, garden of life, vital proteins, etc. However, considering the limitations of single channel, some enterprises starting from cross-border e-commerce are also promoting the registration of large single products as “blue hat”. Xiaoshidai introduced that in 2021, Swisse has launched nine “blue hat” products, including six items such as calcium tablets, which have sold more than 100 million in the Chinese market, and will continue to introduce more “blue hats” in the future. This year, guxinxin, President of Nestle Health Sciences Greater China, also told xiaoshidai that the company will localize its products with high growth and high competition in the future, and register or record more products that meet the needs of Chinese consumers.
Behind the enterprises’ emphasis on “blue hat”, there is a Chinese health care market with large capacity and ideal growth rate. Xiaoshidai received the China health products report released in 2021 from yingminte. It shows that the market is expected to continue to grow at an average annual compound growth rate of 11% in the next five years, reaching 345.1 billion yuan in 2026. For Unilever, if it wants to occupy a certain share and long-term development in the Chinese market, it must not only face the regulatory issues such as getting the “blue hat”, but also think about how to find its own way in the traditional health care giants such as Thomson Beijian, limitless and Amway, as well as many overseas brands focusing on cross-border e-commerce.
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Unilever’s “new business”, which focuses on health, is also betting on China to reach 20billion
“押宝”中国
跟随联合利华转型的脚步，其健康业务也给出了最新目标。
Solheim透露，上述业务目标是实现30亿欧元（现约合人民币206.84亿元）营业额。
“我们会继续进行缜密规范的并购，但大部分的增长将来自有机增长（注：即不包括收购等因素）。”他说，联合利华将从科研创新，投资品牌以提高知名度、渗透率和可及性，创造收入协同效应等方面推动增长。
值得注意的是，Solheim称在健康业务增长策略下，中国为重点市场之一。
“VMS市场很集中，有三分之二位于美国、中国和欧洲。”Solheim在会上说。据其展示的Euromonitor 2021年数据显示，VMS全球规模超过了1600亿欧元（现约合人民币1.11万亿元），而中国市场占据19%份额，也就是304亿欧元（现约合人民币2105.29亿元）左右。
“我们现阶段的重点包括在中国建立一个强劲的业务，并已通过跨境电商引进了OLLY和SmartyPants。”Solheim说。
小食代今日在某平台看到，OLLY和SmartyPants的海外旗舰店均主推软糖类产品。其中，OLLY更强调满足细分需求，如睡眠、免疫力、情绪、皮肤等方面。当中销量最高的是一款褪黑素睡眠软糖，月销量为4000+。
而SmartyPants则主要针对不同年龄段推出了复合维生素和益生菌软糖，包括3～12岁儿童、13～19岁青年、成年人等。店内销量最高的儿童维生素软糖月销量为3000+。
Solheim还透露，联合利华正为健康业务建立一个中国本土化运营团队。“我们在中国有业务团队，先期会通过跨境电商来解锁市场潜力”。
由于中国保健食品需要先拿到“蓝帽子”（即通过保健食品注册）才能进入线下渠道和声称具有特定功效，而取得该认证也并非易事，因此不少海外品牌选择通过跨境电商进入中国市场，如隶属于健合集团的Swisse、雀巢旗下的Garden of Life、Vital Proteins等等。
但考虑到单一渠道等限制，部分从跨境电商“起家”的企业也在推动大单品注册“蓝帽子”。
小食代介绍过，2021年，Swisse已推出9款“蓝帽子”产品，包括钙片等在中国市场销售过亿的六款单品，未来将继续引入更多“蓝帽子”。今年，雀巢健康科学大中华区总裁顾欣鑫也告诉过小食代，该公司未来会将大赛道、高增长的产品本土化，注册或备案更多符合中国消费者需求的产品。
在企业看重“蓝帽子”背后，是一个容量大、增速理想的中国保健品市场。小食代从英敏特处拿到2021年发布的中国保健品报告显示，该市场预计在未来5年内将持续以11%的年均复合增长率增长，2026年将达到3451亿元人民币。
对联合利华而言，如果想在中国市场占据一定份量和长远发展，不仅要面对拿到“蓝帽子”等法规监管问题，也需思考到底如何才能够在汤臣倍健、无限极、安利这些传统保健品巨头，以及众多主攻跨境电商的海外品牌中走出一条属于自己的路子。
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