Simply put, Wei Long Food is an old-fashioned snack food brand in China, which has been established for 22 years. Mainly engaged in spicy strips, dried beans, seafood vegetarian dishes, braised pork, puffed fast food and other series of snack foods. Its signature gluten spicy strip can be called a national "leisure snack" item.
According to Jost Sullivan's data, according to the retail sales in 2020, Wei Long is the largest spicy snack food enterprise in China, with a market share of 5.7%, which is 3.8 times that of the second place, exceeding the sum of 2-5. At the same time, it ranks first in the market share of seasoning noodle products and spicy leisure vegetable products.
In the late 1970s, Liu Weiping, the founder of Wei Long, was born in a poor family in Pingjiang County, Yueyang. This small county, located on the bank of Miluo River in Hunan Province, has a long history of making dried bean curd products. 1998 was flooded locally, and the price of soybean as raw material soared from 70 cents a catty to 1.5 yuan, which hindered the production of dry sauce. Old masters can only "find another way" and try to use wheat flour instead of soybeans to make gluten snacks with similar tastes and low prices, which is the embryonic form of spicy strips.
Most of the dry sauce workshops turned to the production of spicy strips, and Liu Weiping, who came back from Guangdong, joined in. But Pingjiang is not the main wheat producing area, and the local wheat flour is not enough. In order to find more development opportunities, he and his younger brother Liu Fuping opened a small workshop in Luohe, Henan Province, which is rich in wheat, to produce raw materials and production technology of artificial bean skin, seasoning and other spicy strips.
Due to the extremely low production threshold, a large number of latecomers flocked. In the Millennium, there were more than 4,000 spicy strip enterprises in Henan, and the industry was in a state of barbaric growth. Unlike most manufacturers of spicy strips, Liu Weiping had a "brand awareness" at that time. In 2003, the trademark of "Wei Long Wei Long" was registered, and Wei Long spicy strips were officially born. Subsequently, it invested millions of yuan to buy production lines from abroad.
In order to improve brand awareness, Liu Weiping changed the packaging of spicy strips from transparent plastic packaging to aluminum foil and aluminum film packaging. In order to cater to the consumer group of students, the packaging has also been adjusted from large package to small package, which is convenient to carry. In addition, Wei Long began to push the plate and put up posters offline, and quickly opened the Luohe market.
However, when the business was booming, many spicy strips workshops were exposed because of health problems, and spicy strips became the representative of "junk food" for a time. The whole industry entered the reshuffle period, and Wei Long was also affected. Therefore, on the one hand, Liu Weiping introduced standard aseptic production lines, established a quality control system and set up a special quality management organization to solve the product safety problem from the source.
On the other hand, create a brand image of health and safety through marketing means. A video of the company's assembly line and production workshop spread on social media, which greatly improved consumers' impression of Wei Long and opened the curtain of brand online marketing.
First, they invited Michael Jack, an online celebrity, to broadcast live in the production workshop. In just 18 hours, the reading volume exceeded one million. Then "touch porcelain" iPhone 7, the store style is designed as apple style, imitating Xiaomi slogan (born for spicy snack lovers). The spicy strip enterprise, which used to be "rich in soil", became an online celebrity for a time, and spread overseas to compete with Laoganma.
Last year, Wei Long achieved an operating income of 41.200 million yuan. In contrast, the revenues of Three Squirrels, qiaqia Food and Liangpin Store were 9.79 billion yuan, 5.29 billion yuan and 7.89 billion yuan respectively. The net profit is 8 19 million yuan, which is more than three squirrels (30 10 million yuan)+good shop (344 million yuan). The net interest rate is 19. 19%, which is much higher than the industry average net interest rate by about 10%.
Wei Long is not without worries. Overreliance on a single product is the number one problem. Although we actively expanded the categories of egg products, vegetable products (kelp) and beans, we failed to create new explosions. On the other hand, enterprises such as Herb Flavor, Three Squirrels, Good Shop, Performing Gold Shop and Golden Monkey have laid out one after another, and the competitive pressure has increased sharply. Some research reports predict that the market size of spicy strips will reach 94.9 billion yuan in 2026. Wei Long's share is only 5%, and it is not known whether there will be a new leader in this industry.