One day, the director and his friend were shopping at the Ole supermarket. The friend was about to buy blueberries from "Yi Ke Mei" (a berry brand from Yunnan). The director glanced at the price, 38 yuan for a box, and hurriedly pulled his friend away, saying it was too expensive. The same brand of blueberries at the Yonghui supermarket next door was only 20 yuan, half the price here.

So, the director and his friend turned around and went to the Yonghui supermarket next door. Unfortunately, the Yi Ke Mei blueberries at Yonghui were sold out, and there were only a few unknown brands of blueberries left. With the mentality of "might as well give it a try since we're here," they finally picked a box that looked larger, priced at 10 yuan.

Well, they ended up being disappointed. The blueberries were particularly sour, and although they looked big, they were not that much bigger.

So the friend started complaining to the director, saying that the quality of the fruit at Ole is guaranteed, and there is a reason for the higher price.

This is a very common occurrence in life. If it had happened before, it might have just been mentioned and forgotten. But this time, it sparked the director's thinking.

It's quite "unusual" that fruits have brands. The director has been eating fruits for so many years, but he has never eaten branded products. Yi Ke Mei is the first fruit brand that the director has officially come into contact with (although he had heard of Chu Cheng, the orange brand of Chu Shijian, he had never bought or eaten it). The Tmall flagship store also has nearly 100,000 fans and has invited a spokesperson, making it a small internet celebrity.

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Let's think about this carefully. Why is it difficult for fruits to have brands? And why have brands like Yi Ke Mei emerged recently? Don't underestimate this question. When we really understand this issue, we can naturally understand other consumer companies like Moutai, and correspondingly, the investment success rate will be higher.

The director's friend said, "The quality of the fruit at Ole is guaranteed, and there is a reason for the higher price." This sentence actually explains why it is difficult for fruits to have brands, and even all agricultural and sideline products are difficult to have brands.Because of their unstable quality, even fruits picked from the same tree on the same day can vary greatly in size, shape, ripeness, and sweetness, making it difficult for consumers to form a stable expectation for the corresponding products.

Consider the so-called brand-name products we usually talk about. Isn't one of their characteristics a high degree of product quality stability that allows consumers to form reliable expectations? For example, when you go to buy Moutai, can you be assured that as long as it is Feitian produced by the Moutai distillery, every bottle is the same? Even if it's not 100% the same, it can achieve more than 99% similarity, and the subtle differences are at least imperceptible to consumers. Therefore, whether it's for gift-giving or banquets, if consumers buy Moutai, they can basically rest assured and not worry about suddenly buying a bottle of Moutai with a wrong taste and stepping on a mine.

Take another example, the director bought ice cream in the convenience store yesterday. In fact, the purpose was very clear, that is, to go straight to the Menglong, which is nothing more than choosing which flavor. Why did the director go straight to Menglong? Because the director knows that Menglong's ingredients are very good, the chocolate crisp is very delicious, and the filling is also very rich, which is not comparable to the inferior ice cream of one or two yuan. As long as it is Menglong, it will not be bad at least, and there will be a "good lower limit" there.

Speaking of this, we should actually understand the essence of the brand. The core of the brand is that the merchant continuously releases signals to consumers through stable product output, and ultimately allows consumers to form a stable expectation, so that consumers can reduce decision-making costs by choosing brand-name products.

In other words, the brand is a kind of credit contract that the merchant accumulates through long-term interaction with consumers and accumulates over time.

In this process, channel-wide distribution, large-scale advertising bombardment, and choosing brand spokespersons are actually just signal amplifiers, which are means to strengthen product signals.

If the brand can really reach a high level, such as Moutai, then even without a spokesperson, advertising, and widespread distribution, consumers will automatically come to the door.

Understanding these, the answer to why fruits or agricultural and sideline products are not easy to brand is also very clear, because the product quality output is unstable and cannot form a contract with consumers.

Speaking of fruits, consumers will generally only have the impression of the delicious mangoes, loquats, and cherries in Panzhihua, and the delicious blueberries in Yunnan, and will not leave the impression of a brand of delicious fruits.

However, this situation has begun to improve in recent years.The core reason behind this lies in the advancement of technology.

Chu Shijian's Chu Orange is considered the first fruit brand in China, and the quality of the oranges has always been stable. It is precisely because of the stable quality, large size, and sweetness of his oranges that they are mostly packaged in gift boxes, which are sold at a sky-high price compared to the loose oranges outside.

So the question arises, why can the quality of Chu Orange be stable?

The answer lies in Chu Shijian's use of modern methods to grow oranges. He has determined all the key points of planting technology in a digital way, ultimately implementing it to the depth of digging the orange tree land to a certain number of centimeters, the specific spacing between rows and plants, the amount of pesticide spraying, the time period for pruning, the amount of pruning, and how many leaves are scientifically matched with an average fruit, and so on.

Matching the digitalization of orange planting is the reward and punishment system for planting farmers.

It is these intricate and detailed numbers that have made Chu Orange break through the predicament of relying on the weather for agriculture, with the output increasing year by year and the quality remaining stable.

Since Chu Orange can do it, other agricultural and sideline products can theoretically do it as well. Therefore, we are now seeing "Yi Ke Mei" in the berry field and "Bei Wei 47°" in the corn field... Without any surprises, there should be more and more agricultural and sideline products taking the brand route in the future, setting off a wave of "consumer upgrades."

Why is it called "consumer upgrade" here?

Because brand products have better overall quality than non-brand products, and there is a certain premium. For example, the average price of Bei Wei 47° corn is 10 yuan per piece, while the ordinary corn bought by the director on the street is only two or three yuan, with a premium of several times; Yi Ke Mei's blueberries have an average price of 30 yuan per box, while ordinary blueberries are only 10 yuan; Chu Orange is even more so, compared with ordinary oranges, it can be said to be a sky-high price...

If we compare the profits of the entire industry chain, it is not difficult to find that most of the money in the world is actually earned by the brand merchants, and the manufacturers and channel merchants behind the brand earn the real hard-earned money. Therefore, if you want to make money, if you want to make a lot of money, the core is still to do the brand.When a brand reaches a certain level of success, its pricing can completely detach from the cost. For example, the same pair of pants from Armani, CK, and Uniqlo have distinctly different prices, even if the raw materials are the same, and the manufacturing plants might even be the same.

Speaking of this, we might as well ponder, when we see a product, what do we base its valuation on? It's actually the brand. For instance, a popsicle, if it has the Häagen-Dazs label, I automatically think it should be priced between 20-40 yuan; whereas another popsicle with the Menglong label, I think it should be around 10 yuan. To be honest, I can't really tell the difference between Häagen-Dazs and Menglong, at least not enough to justify the several times higher price of Häagen-Dazs over Menglong. If you were to eat the ice cream without the labels, you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish between them, but their price difference can be so significant.

Therefore, the potential space of a business model actually lies in how high the brand can be elevated, so that consumers are willing to pay for it.

Speaking of this, let's reflect on the role that Ole played in the quality assurance of the fruits mentioned earlier.

Ole, Sam's Club, Yonghui, and Hema are all channel brands. They do not produce fruits, meats, or other goods, but they screen many products on the market, and the selected products generally have quality assurance. Once their channel brand starts to enter the hearts of consumers, they will further upgrade and establish their own channel brands to extend upstream, thereby obtaining greater benefits.