In 1959, when American engineer Emmal Clinian Fritz invented the can, he did not expect it to completely change the world beverage industry. Although aluminum used in this technology is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, China’s cans still relied on imports until the 1980s.
However, after 2000, the domestic production of cans has exceeded ten billion yuan. It can be said that metal cans have to some extent carried the takeoff of China’s beverage industry, and the rise of domestic beverage companies has also given birth to the giant ORG in the metal canning industry. Even if you haven’t heard of this name, you are definitely familiar with its customers - China Red Bull, Qingdao Beer, Feihe Milk Powder, Budweiser Beer…
Being a “giant behind another giant” is not the end game that ORG wants. In the past decade, as a packaging giant, ORG has frequently appeared in the news of the sports industry, dabbling in North American ice hockey and European football, and feeding back China. ORG has proposed the strategy of transforming into a “comprehensive service provider for fast moving consumer goods packaging” with sports playing an important role.
In 2022, a sports drink with eye-catching red metal packaging appeared in some sports venues and events. ORG founder Zhou Yunjie referred to this drink called Xiwang as “My Child” - after deeply participating in and comparing the current sports situation in Europe, America, and China at the age of 60, he hopes to create a professional sports nutrition drink that is more suitable for the Chinese sports lifestyle.
This beverage, which he fully participated in, not only embodies ORG’s ambition to advance downstream in the industry, but also represents the crystallization of Zhou Yunjie’s personality and philosophy to some extent.
The power of “courage”
The story of Xi Wang starts with Zhou Yunjie.
At the end of 1972, an 11 year old Beijing child named Zhou Yunjie joined the ice hockey class of Beijing Shichahai Sports School, which had just been established for two years. Zhou Yunjie was a goalkeeper who worked hard and even cruelly in training. He was beaten 700 to 800 times a day. Faced with players sliding towards him at high speeds, he had to overcome his fear instinct. It was important to know that the conditions at the sports school were rudimentary, and the players’ protective equipment was very rudimentary.
However, none of this is a problem for Zhou Yunjie, who enjoys sports. Going to a sports school for training in the afternoon after school is still his happiest time. In 1976, Zhou Yunjie’s Beijing youth ice hockey team faced multiple strong teams from Northeast China in the National Youth Ice Hockey League and still achieved sixth place. But after the glory, the team members who returned to Beijing soon received a notice of the dissolution of the ice hockey class.
Zhou Yunjie can only bid farewell to ice hockey, but the determination and courage forged by his seven year ice hockey career have become Zhou Yunjie’s greatest wealth. Having the courage has also become the most highly regarded evaluation of Zhou Yunjie by people.
When it comes to Zhou Yunjie’s “courage”, there is also a part that comes from his mother Guan Yuxiang. In 1994, retired Guan Yuxiang came to Hainan for tourism and found that there were many beverage categories with abundant fruit resources in Hainan, but there were actually few decent canning factories. She realized that this was a huge opportunity.
In 1994, the mother and son led 16 workers to establish ORG Packaging in Hainan. At first, due to the small scale of the production line, the company had no reputation and development was difficult.
But in the mid-1990s, the birth of Chinese Red Bull brought opportunities to ORG. Red Bull has a huge size, and no one is optimistic that the newly established ORG will win the bid. The courage of the mother and son has once again changed their fate. Faced with the strict technical requirements of Red Bull, although the mother and son were not favored, they still invested everything and imported advanced equipment from overseas at high prices. The internationally advanced powder coating process was first introduced to China at this time. They repeatedly designed and modified the plan, visited Red Bull 41 times, and ultimately won this major customer. Later on, ORG adopted a “follow strategy”, and wherever Red Bull built its factory, ORG followed suit.
The cooperation with Red Bull became the driving force behind ORG’s rise, and the subsequent story has become well-known: expanding its scale through group operations, factories blooming throughout the country, landing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to become the first listed company in the metal packaging A-share market, acquiring Bordeaux and Australian packaging company James Strong, participating in international competition, based on an integrated solution of “packaging + filling”, ORG has formed an integrated beverage outsourcing capability and supply chain system. Now Red Bull, Qingdao Beer, Feihe, Budweiser Beer, and others are all clients of ORG, and ORG has become a giant in metal packaging in China.
Return to the Sports Industry
After the dissolution of the ice hockey team for more than thirty years, Zhou Yunjie never touched ice hockey again. But his passion for sports became a part of Zhou Yunjie’s life, just like being hit hard by ice hockey. After successful entrepreneurship, he always hopes to make up for the regrets of the past and do something for Chinese sports.
Zhou Yunjie, who loves ice hockey, first introduced NHL to China
On the other hand, the company’s strategic layout also requires the support of sports. Zhou Yunjie noticed that some packaging companies abroad have rich sports resources and can customize sports marketing plans for downstream customers, providing additional value to customers and increasing their competitiveness. Subjective desires and market needs have led ORG to delve deeper into the sports industry.
As early as 2001, ORG and Chinese Red Bull jointly funded the establishment of the Olympic bid support team; In 2003, Red Bull became the first NBA partner in China, and at that time, the Red Bull caravan traveled across the country, with the participation of ORG. Zhou Yunjie also regarded this as his most proud case: “After more than a decade of cooperation with the NBA, the Chinese Red Bull reached its peak, one reason being that children influenced by the NBA at that time grew up and had consumption power.” This collaboration also made him deeply feel the power of sports.
In 2013, Zhou Yunjie, who was on a business trip to Boston, happened to watch a game of the North American Hockey League NHL. The atmosphere at the scene reminded him of his unfinished ice hockey dream. In 2015, ORG first partnered with the Boston Brown Bears in the NHL league to become its exclusive marketing partner in China. Two years later, the NHL China Tournament officially landed, and Zhou Yunjie also received a nickname in North America, “Mr. China Tournament”.
Afterwards, with the arrival of the Winter Olympics in China, ORG hopes to promote Chinese ice hockey by establishing a subsidiary that operates sports business, establishing the first NHL standard ice sports training base in Beijing, and establishing the ORG Kunlun Hongxing professional ice hockey team with Kunlun Hongxing in 2018 to participate in the Russian Super Ice Hockey League; Later, ORG also operated the National College Hockey League, a competition aimed at laying a solid foundation for Chinese ice hockey, which has been held for three consecutive sessions.
In addition to ice hockey, in 2016, ORG also joined the football club Auxerre, which has a deep football tradition. As a former League 1 champion team, Auxerre had already been relegated to League 2 for many years when ORG took over. But after five years of patient adjustment, Origen finally led Auxerre back to League 1 after ten years.
The most important point is that ORG has used professional sports to cross the two most mature sports fields of North America and Europe, providing Zhou Yunjie with ample opportunities for cross-cultural comparison and learning.
At the end of 2019, the world began to experience the pandemic, which had a huge impact on the entire society. As a result, Zhou Yunjie remained in Europe, leaving him with a lot of time to think.
Strategically speaking, in recent years, ORG has also been seeking a second entrepreneurship, with the core of embracing new historical opportunities in China’s great health and consumer industries, and building a “second growth curve” with technology and green as the core. This plan includes a product that Zhou Yunjie has been looking forward to for a long time.
In sports, Zhou Yunjie is a hands-on boss. Compared to sitting in a private box, he prefers to enter and exit training venues and player changing rooms. During the process of interacting with players, he also observes and compares the sports characteristics of Chinese and foreign athletes. Combined with his own experience, Zhou Yunjie found that endurance is a weakness of the Chinese sports population, from professional athletes to the general public.
Zhou Yunjie appeared to watch the match between Auxerre and Marseille in the 22/23 season of League 1
In 2020, the Chinese Football Association issued a notice on soliciting opinions on the “Chinese Football Association Youth Training Outline (Draft for Comments)”. Among them, the current situation of Chinese players’ abilities was analyzed, and it was pointed out that Chinese players lack specialized endurance. Players can reach the world average running distance data in games, but there are relatively few high-intensity and high-power activity distances and times in a game. Not only in football, but also in many sports, the lack of endurance has been reflected. In recent years, the General Administration of Sport of China has emphasized the weakness of the evil complement and emphasized physical fitness testing, which includes considerations and concerns about the relatively weak endurance of Chinese athletes.
At the public level, due to various historical reasons, the vast majority of Chinese people lack exercise conditions from a young age, and also lack exercise habits as adults. They lack awareness and investment in sports in their lifestyles, including drinking, eating, and living. The most direct consequence is that when there is a sudden enthusiasm to participate in sports, the lack of exercise endurance becomes more apparent, which brings great resistance to continuous participation and injury prevention and treatment.
For ORG, which is growing alongside the Chinese beverage industry, there is nothing more suitable than making a professional sports beverage, in order to reach the public’s consumption while also helping the Chinese sports population improve endurance. Zhou Yunjie and his team’s profound understanding of sports is ORG’s biggest bargaining chip in making sports drinks.
Xiwang is coming!
In fact, Zhou Yunjie’s interest in sports drinks has been ongoing for many years. Zhou Yunjie learned early on that sports drinks have become a considerable market abroad. In fact, as early as 1965, the first generation of Gatorade was already introduced in the United States. But for a long time, the market environment in China has not been mature, and the public’s sports habits and cognition are not enough to support the survival of a professional sports drink.
But opportunities have emerged with the pandemic. The three-year pandemic has rapidly raised the health awareness of Chinese people, as evidenced by the growth in sales of many sports consumer goods during this period. Similarly, both niche sports and outdoor activities have experienced unprecedented outbreaks. The wave of movement that began to rise in the middle class nearly 10 years ago has begun to sweep across a larger number of people.
In the sports beverage market, there is also a need for more segmented and professional products. At present, the mainstream energy drinks in China only emerged in the 1990s. In fact, there is a significant difference between sports drinks and energy drinks. In terms of composition, the main components of energy drinks are caffeine, taurine, etc. The main components of sports drinks are vitamins, electrolytes, amino acids, etc. Therefore, the two have different functions and usage scenarios. Energy drinks are mainly used to alleviate fatigue, refresh and refresh the mind, while sports drinks place more emphasis on improving and restoring the human body’s sports performance. Faced with the budding market segmentation, ORG, who has been struggling in the beverage industry for many years, has a keen sense of smell.
Facing the C-end directly is a new adventure for ORG. As a goalkeeper in ice hockey, Zhou Yunjie knew when he was young that in the face of an incoming ball, regardless of whether he ultimately pounced or not, he had to dare to attack and take action. Compared to making mistakes in judgment, hesitation and inaction were even greater mistakes. This decisiveness has been an important decision throughout his life, and Zhou Yunjie believes that since the time is ripe, action must be taken immediately.
A clear goal has emerged - to launch a professional sports nutrition supplement beverage that is suitable for the Chinese sports lifestyle. After repeated argumentation and research, in 2022, ORG and China Sports Industry Group completed a strategic cooperation and launched the sports beverage brand - Xiwang.
The positioning of Xiwang encompasses Origen's years of understanding of the professional sports and beverage industry: firstly, this beverage needs to return to the category of sports drinks. Secondly, Xiwang should be suitable for the physical constitution of Chinese people, more specifically, to help improve the endurance of the sports population. In fact, many common phenomena such as cramps, ligament injuries, and winter injuries on the sports field can be attributed to physical endurance. Therefore, in the category of sports nutrition food, ORG ultimately locked in the endurance sports nutrition beverage segment and made innovations and differentiation in the formula.
As a leading enterprise in metal can packaging, ORG has also injected differentiation into Xiwang’s packaging. At present, the energy drinks and sports drinks on the market are either plastic bottles or metal cans that are easy to open and cannot be stored. They can only be consumed in one go, which does not comply with the principle of replenishing water frequently and in small amounts during exercise. Xiwang solved this difficulty with packaging, and ORG uses metal aluminum bottle shaped cans for the can shape. The bottle shape is easy to carry and store, making it more suitable for sports scenes. The widened bottle mouth also takes into account the drinking experience of sports enthusiasts who need to take large sips to replenish energy.
“The NHL level is so high, why is Chinese ice hockey not good?” At the beginning, Zhou Yunjie's dissatisfaction led him to form a professional ice hockey team and assist the college ice hockey league. The deeper reason behind ORG’s entry into the European league is the hope that he will become a foothold for Chinese players to land in the European league. The core goal behind the birth of Xiwang is also similar - to give Chinese brands a foothold in the high-end sports beverage segment. The selling price of Austrian Red Bull in Europe exceeds 20 yuan, and what Xiwang wants to do is to break out of the domestic market price war and position itself in the high-end price band, becoming a representative of high-end sports drinks in China.
The packaging of “Xiwang” is a running rhinoceros, moving forward without hesitation, which also reflects Zhou Yunjie’s “daring” personality. The birth of Xiwang officially marked the transition of ORG from behind the scenes to the front stage of the brand, and it is also an extension of ORG’s years of service to Chinese sports. The story of ORG and Chinese sports continues.
