Cutting corners, being arrogant, and skirting the line? Uncovering the secrets of the sanitary napkin giant

Cutting corners, being arrogant and skirting the line? Uncovering the "man" behind sanitary napkin giant ABC

ABC, a brand that has participated in drafting several sanitary napkin group standards, has not been "peaceful" recently. Recently, many sanitary napkins were questioned by consumers for "cutting corners" because the actual length did not match the marked length, and ABC was on the list.

Amid the various doubts of consumers, the "ABC Washing and Care Flagship Store"'s "arrogant" reply of "If you feel you can't accept it, you don't have to buy it" directly put the ABC brand on the fire of public opinion. Later, the official response released by ABC was accused of lack of sincerity due to the wrong serial number. In addition, the copywriting of "Sanitary napkins that suck better than boyfriends" previously released by "ABC Beauty Flagship Store" was also accused of "skirting the edge".

Radar Finance learned that the ABC brand is a high-end female personal care brand under Guangdong Jingxing Health Care Industrial Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Jingxing Health Care"), and its products include sanitary napkins, sanitary pads, women's menstrual pants, sanitary wipes, care solutions, etc.

Surprisingly, the founders of ABC, a female care brand, were actually two men who had seen the business opportunities in this track as early as around the millennium. One of them is Deng Jingheng, who serves as chairman and general manager of Jingxing Healthcare, and the other is Deng Jinming, who serves as vice chairman of the company. At present, Deng Jinming's son Deng Xiaorong has also begun to expand in the field of big health.

However, ABC, which is facing multiple public opinion crises this time, actually has many severe challenges to deal with. On the one hand, ABC needs to find ways to increase or maintain its market share as much as possible. On the other hand, Jingxing Healthcare, which had already launched a sprint to the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2018, has not yet officially landed in the A-share capital market.

In this context, how the ABC brand can resolve the current public opinion crisis, regain the trust of consumers, and how to achieve longer-term development with the help of capital are issues that need to be solved urgently.

"Cut corners"? "Arrogant" reply? ABC angers the public

On November 17, the topic of "ABC sanitary napkins" topped the Weibo hot search list, but the reason why ABC sanitary napkins caused heated discussions was not because of any good news, but because of negative public opinion that the product was accused of "cutting corners" and poor customer service attitude.

Recently, many netizens and bloggers have found through actual tests that many sanitary napkins on the market have "cut corners". The actual length of these sanitary napkins is less than the length indicated on the outer packaging, and ABC brand products are among them.

According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, on November 7, it purchased daily sanitary napkins from seven common brands on the market. The length of these seven products indicated on the outer packaging is about 240 mm, but the actual length of five brands of sanitary napkins is less than the indicated length.

Among them, the actual length of ABC brand sanitary napkins is not only the largest difference from the indicated length, reaching 6 mm, but also the difference between its inner absorbent layer and the length indicated on the outer packaging is also the largest, reaching 66 mm.

Although ABC is not the only brand accused of "cutting corners", the response given by the customer service of "ABC Laundry Flagship Store" when facing the questions raised by consumers made consumers quite angry and dissatisfied. The other party responded that there are indeed deviations in sanitary napkins produced by machines. A slight deviation is normal and does not constitute cutting corners. 1 to 2 cm is a normal error. The size of the ruler may also have errors sometimes.

Looking at the above response alone, in fact, the response of the ABC brand to the error is roughly the same as that of many other sanitary napkin brands, but the wording of "If you can't accept it, you don't have to buy it" in the reply of the customer service of "ABC Laundry Flagship Store" was considered by many netizens to have a poor attitude and lack of due service awareness. For a time, the "arrogant" customer service of "ABC Laundry Flagship Store" pushed the brand to the forefront of public opinion.

After causing controversy, ABC's official Weibo published a response signed by Guangdong Jingxing Health Care Industry Co., Ltd. on November 13. ABC officials said that after verification, the improper remarks of the customer service on the Internet were made by the customer service of the company's authorized dealers, which caused extremely bad effects.

ABC officials emphasized that the inappropriate remarks do not represent the position of ABC Jingxing Health Care brand and Jingxing Health Care, and are completely contrary to its brand values and service purpose. As a brand, it is well aware that the behavior of authorized partners is also related to the brand image, so it will take due responsibility for this incident and will never tolerate any behavior and remarks that disrespect consumers.

ABC brand stated that it has always focused on women's health care needs, insisting on putting product quality and safety first, and all products are strictly tested from raw material screening to finished product delivery to ensure compliance with national standards.

In order to prevent similar incidents from happening again, ABC brand also listed several rectification measures in its response, including rectification and training of relevant distributors, strengthening the management of internal and external partners, product optimization and upgrading, and accepting public supervision.

Radar Finance noticed that the above-mentioned response Weibo released by ABC officials has been edited many times. In the multiple versions of the response released earlier, ABC officials mislabeled the serial number in the rectification measures column (the serial numbers of points 3 and 4 were mistakenly written as points 4 and 5).

Some netizens also noticed this and expressed dissatisfaction with ABC's official response in the comment section: "ABC's statement draft does not have 3, and it is directly 4 after 1-2, which means that the company's senior management did not check it carefully before publishing it, which is enough to show that the brand tone is not rigorous."

On November 14, ABC's official Weibo explained again in the comment section, "I'm sorry to disturb you all late at night. We have received all the replies. With an apologetic mood, I would like to give you feedback again: the reason why it was published late is that it takes a certain amount of time to verify the feasibility of various measures internally. After confirmation, we want to send out the announcement and communicate with everyone as soon as possible. We made a mistake in the serial number typesetting in a hurry. This is indeed a mistake that should not be made."

Under the controversy, ABC's stores once cleared out their products. According to the Beijing News, on November 17, ABC's Tmall flagship store removed all products, leaving only a link to the official shopping gold of the ABC official flagship store. However, on the afternoon of November 18, Radar Finance found that ABC's Tmall flagship store had re-listed many products.

ABC is accused of "marginal" marketing

The ABC brand involved in the controversy belongs to Jingxing Healthcare, a high-end female personal care brand in China. So far, Jingxing's marketing network has spread to more than 30 provinces and municipalities across the country, and its products are distributed to more than 5,000 large and medium-sized stores. The company's products are even exported to Southeast Asia.

Although it has a name composed of English letters, ABC is actually a homegrown domestic brand. The reason why the brand is named ABC is because the name comes from the English word "Always Being Clean", which means always pursuing cleanliness, hygiene and health.

According to the "Business Information" column of Tianyancha, Jingxing Healthcare has participated in the drafting of many standard documents, such as the "Sanitary Napkin (Pad) Raw Materials Hygiene and Safety Technical Requirements" group standard, "Antibacterial Sanitary Napkin (Pad) Antibacterial and Hygiene Safety Technical Requirements" group standard, etc. In August this year, the company also issued the "Sanitary Napkin (Pad)" group standard.

The brand history of ABC can be traced back to 1998. In May of that year, Jingxing Company was officially established, and then the ABC brand launched sanitary napkins and panty liners with a unique KMS health formula. In the millennium, ABC sanitary napkins pioneered the use of "easy-to-pull" aluminum film packaging for the first time.

Two years later, ABC's new product Qingli wet wipes was officially launched. In 2003, ABC created the central rapid penetration leakage core technology "Blue Core" and "Night Leakage Protection Dike". In 2005, the ABC care solution series was launched. In 2010, ABC launched the soft stand-up series of sanitary napkins. In the years that followed, the ABC brand continued to innovate and launched more and more new products, gradually improving its product matrix.

Radar Finance learned from the ABC brand official website that after more than 20 years of development, the ABC brand has now formed a product matrix including ABC sanitary napkins, ABC panty liners, ABC wet wipes, and ABC care solutions.

According to Jingxing Health Care's official website, in addition to the ABC brand, the company also owns another brand, Free·飞. It is reported that the brand was born in 2004 and is a brand of Jingxing Health Care specifically for girls. Free·飞 brand is a private personal care brand created by the company. At present, the Free·飞 brand covers personal care products such as sanitary napkins, sanitary pads, sanitary care liquids and wet wipes.

It is worth noting that the recent public opinion storm faced by the ABC brand is not limited to the content mentioned above. A netizen posted a screenshot of a promotional video released by the ID "ABC Beauty Flagship Store". The copy mentioned, "Sanitary napkins that absorb better than boyfriends", "This is too absorbent, my boyfriend is willing to admit defeat", and many netizens questioned whether ABC was suspected of "borderline" marketing.

On November 18, 2024, Radar Finance searched for relevant keywords on the homepage of the Douyin account of "ABC Beauty Flagship Store", and it seemed that the controversial video could no longer be seen. As of now, ABC officials have not made an official response to this.