By 丨Tan Zhuojiu
In May 2021, the market value of Changchun High-Tech exceeded 210 billion yuan, up to the peak. It's a good idea to have a good time," he said, "but it's a good idea to have a good time," he said. China's growth hormone market size is less than 10 billion, but Changchun High-Tech has bred a myth of 100 billion market value.
In the view of capital operators, it has a flawless story, chose a small track, there is a constant rotation of funds. Jin Lei, the second largest shareholder of Changchun High-Tech, plays technology and capital to the extreme.
Four months later, the myth was shattered. Guangzhou Union Group included growth hormone in the collection and procurement, officially announced the end of the growth hormone profiteering era. Within a few days, Changchun Hi-Tech, which is known as the "Northeast Drugs," the high-priced high-performance stocks for three consecutive stops. Within four trading days, it took away 33 billion yuan of market value.
Compared to the growth hormone in recent years only known to the people of the country, the Northeast was born in the cover, Sanjing these familiar brands, and Harbin Six, Northeast Pharmaceuticals and other veteran pharmaceutical companies once became the people of the country because of the advertisements of the well-known manufacturers, leading the way.
In the 1990s, starting from Shenyang Jiulong, Northeast Pharmaceuticals used advertising as a knockout to open an era, Harbin Six, Harbin Sanjing, Sunflower Pharmaceuticals replicated this trick to the heyday.
In the Northeast drug companies smashed 10 million ads, income of 100 million; Sun Puiyang in the near bankruptcy, to produce APIs, mainly in Jiangsu Lianyungang Pharmaceutical Factory, the board decided to spend 1.2 million yuan "huge sums of money" from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the hands of the purchase of a patent for an anticancer drug.
After the 2011 Anti-Antibiotic Order, the 2015 new Advertising Law, and the new healthcare reform that strictly limits the use of complementary medicines, these veteran companies are used to comfortable days before realizing that times have changed.
The 2019 band purchasing is a heavier blow to these veteran pharmaceutical companies with less competitive products and few pipelines. Even Changchun Hi-Tech and Shenyang Sansheng, two enterprises with unique product advantages in the northeast pharmaceutical enterprises, are in the quagmire because of the single variety.
In the era of advertising of health drugs, "R & D can not see performance in the short term, while marketing can immediately see the performance", this is the logic of thinking of the leaders of state-owned enterprises.
So, in a northeast ranking of the top three pharmaceutical state-owned enterprises, marketing staff amounted to thousands of people when the R & D staff of only 300 people. In such an environment, even if "the company vigorously strengthens R&D" is written on the external brochures of every Northeastern enterprise, it is just an empty talk.
Innovation does not belong here. In the context of the entire Northeast GDP decline, the population continues to net out of the background, the real adventurous, innovative spirit of talent is rarely willing to take root in the Northeast. A pharmaceutical headhunter said, even if the talent even because of the high salary to the northeast, but also because no one under the hand and quickly left.
This used to be an attractive black land, but because of the curing, conservative, pharmaceutical companies have entered a period of intense struggle, interspersed with the decline of the Northeast's economy and show great pain.
In the most prosperous period missed the transformation of the pharmaceutical companies, also tried to self-help in the performance downturn period, through the mix of transformation, try the road of research and development, but stepped on the wrong point, step by step, the timing is no longer, the more change the more chaotic, and ultimately missed an era.
As the northeast pharmaceutical enterprises in a unique, Changchun High-tech cash flow, days are not bad. Even competing companies recognize that Changchun High-Tech's products are technically sound and quality resistant. But only rely on a single product, stock price flash crash down as if a "smallpox" warning, toxicity is bound to have a seizure. This may be an opportunity for survival, but also may be the last "giant" of the fall of the Northeast.
0 1
Advertising bombarded by the era of achievement of the pharmaceutical industry's brilliant history
August 2010, in the green train from Jiamusi to Harbin, Li Jiang longing for the arrival of the golden age of his career. A whole new world loomed on the horizon as the train sped past. In a few hours, he will join the Harbin Pharmaceutical Group.
At that time, he did not know that this was the last glory of Harbin.
Before Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen became the mainstream economic zone, Harbin Pharmaceutical was also known as "**** and the country's eldest son". Harbin once enviable share of the house, hair mink welfare has become a thing of the past, but then a salesman's income of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, is still far more than the local income level, extremely considerable.
As the first listed company in the national pharmaceutical industry, once the best performance of the A-share pharmaceutical companies, Harbin Pharmaceuticals in the hearts of the people of Heilongjiang, such as today's Alibaba in Zhejiang.
It is also true that the aura of Harbin attracted graduates from Jiamusi Medical College every year, and they continue to pour into this state-owned enterprise, step by step, from the grassroots to management.
Harbin is a huge "pharmaceutical empire". In addition to the Harvard Pharmaceuticals General Factory, there are Harvard Pharmaceuticals Sixth Factory, Sanjing Pharmaceuticals, Shiyitang, and other branch factories, including pharmacies, commercial distribution.
The rise of this "business empire", on the one hand, can not be separated from the advertising and marketing; and on the other hand, can not be separated from the prescription drugs prescribed by hospital doctors - antibiotics.
In the Northeast took the lead in the "advertising bombardment" of a business, is as early as twenty years ago has faded from the market Shenyang Flying Dragon, when the founder of Jiang Wei borrowed the Sun God, Wahaha, etc. rely on advertising strategies to achieve success, follow the trend in health care products, medicines to do articles.
Since 1991, Flying Dragon has been experimenting with advertising in some of the central cities of the Northeast and the sub-centers of the Yangtze River Delta.
Flying Dragon's advertisements were full-page advertisements for several days. 1991, Flying Dragon invested 1.2 million yuan in advertisements and realized a profit of 4 million yuan; 1992, Flying Dragon invested 10 million yuan in advertisements and its profit soared to 60 million yuan; 1993 and 1994, Flying Dragon invested more than 100 million yuan in advertisements and its profit reached 200 million yuan for two consecutive years.
In the market atmosphere of fuzzy advertising and insufficient health awareness, Flying Dragon's yell startled the whole country. It also woke up the management of Harbin.
Even when Harbin was a state-owned enterprise, the essence of the Northeast Pharmaceuticals did not have strong local financial support, and needed to work hard to survive on their own.
Starting in 1997, Liu Cunzhou rushed to the post of chairman of the Harbin Pharmaceutical Group, the health care products on the model of smashing ads, references to over-the-counter medicines, from the original newspaper, billboards, into the CCTV, the local radio stations bombarded in turn.
In 1997, its Sanjing Pharmaceutical advertising investment of 10 million yuan, sales of 100 million yuan, in 1999 when advertising investment has reached 200 million yuan, sales also soared to 860 million yuan.
At that time, the six factories of the Harbin Pharmaceutical was not known, but through advertising investment, by 2000 when sales reached 2 billion yuan, becoming the first big enterprise of the Harbin Pharmaceutical Group. Through television advertising, and even spawned a tens of billions of calcium market, a moment, new cover of high calcium tablets, calcium gluconate instantly become a household name of the well-known brand.
And then back to look at the product line of the Northeast pharmaceutical companies. In addition to the Harbin Pharmaceutical General Factory, Northeast Pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics to start the old state-owned enterprises, as well as Changchun High-tech, Shenyang Sansheng, represented by the absolute advantage of a single species of enterprises, more Harbin Pharmaceutical Six Factory, Sunflower Pharmaceuticals, Jilin Aodong, good reputation of the Pharmaceuticals and other auxiliary medicines, proprietary Chinese medicines, OTC medicines, based on the enterprise. Especially with the advantage of the Changbaishan Mountain Pharmaceutical Bank, opened the fame in the market.
These drugs are not in the doctor's prescription rights, advertising bombardment is the fastest way to see results. Once the brand is known, it is actually much more convenient for the importation of prescription drugs under it.
When dropping one heavy advertising bomb after another and wearing one laurel after another, they did not expect that the gift of fate had been marked with a price; they even more did not expect that, after the opening of the new health care reform in 2009, one health care combinations continue to be made, and after the establishment of the National Health Insurance Bureau in 2018, the national drug pooling and negotiation of drugs for the health care directory have almost reconstructed the entire Chinese pattern of the pharmaceutical industry.
In the few remaining revelries, over-reliance on advertising, single product structure, and lack of attention to research and development, which should be imminent and continue to be addressed, have been repeatedly ignored.
0 2
The "gift" that was taken away: antibiotics, complementary medicines
In 2012, a piece of paper restricting antibiotics stirred up the situation in the northeast.
"People outside the circle only know that Harbin Six, Sanjing sell well. But it was the Harbin General Factory that really supported the performance." Li Jiang recalled that in his first year on the job, for antibiotics alone, the Harbin General Factory had nearly 5 billion in sales a year - nearly a third of total revenue.
And Harbin the same nature of the state-owned enterprise Northeast Pharmaceuticals, in the 1980s, because of the successful development of three generations of cephalosporin products, to fill the gaps in the country. Since then, built and put into operation at that time the world's largest 10,000 tons of VC production line, vitamin C, chloramphenicol, vitamin A, propargyl alcohol, amantadine hydrochloride and other APIs have come out.
In the era of shortage of medicine, relying on policy support, these antibiotics started the old enterprise has a significant position in the country. Once you say goodbye to that era, when the people's medication habits are no longer limited to saline, anti-infective drugs, these pharmaceutical companies immediately lost the basis of the life.
In this year, Harvard Pharmaceuticals went to an uncontrollable downhill, giving up the top of the list of China's top 100 pharmaceutical industry, fell to the fourth. And now the new medicine brother Hengrui, in that year's list of units in the twenty-second, its first innovative drug "Erythroxib" was approved for listing. From now on, Harmaceuticals and Hengrui become two parabolic lines traveling in opposite directions.
Once the tragedy begins, it is often followed by a series of tragedies.
Northeastern pharmaceutical companies rely on the production of APIs triggered by environmental problems. In six months, Northeast Pharmaceuticals received eight environmental tickets. Harbin Pharmaceutical General Factory was also criticized by CCTV for pollution. And later the state of the API environmental control is increasingly tight.
With OTC being banned from advertising in the mass media, the new Advertising Law has been gradually improved, as well as the people's health awareness, the advertising model is no longer effective. Coupled with the introduction of policies such as medical insurance control, auxiliary drugs, most of the Northeast pharmaceutical companies are almost all underperforming.
In 2013, Sanjing's performance plummeted 98%, and the annual report disclosed that "400 million advertising costs in exchange for a profit of 6 million" has become a laughing stock, relying on advertising to fight the era of the mountain is gone. A year later, Sanjing Pharmaceuticals then chairman Liu Zhanbin jumped to his death during the investigation.
Take the Heilongjiang Goodwill Pharmaceuticals, an orthopedic auxiliary medicine called "Songmeile" deer melon polypeptide injection for it to open the market. By the time it went public in 2009, this product generated profits of up to 157 million yuan, contributing almost half of the revenue.
In the auxiliary drugs in the major hospitals flooded, perennial occupation of the health insurance fund, Goodwill took the opportunity to make a lot of money, its founder Zhu Jiman once became the richest man in Heilongjiang. Because of the sweetness, Goodwill continues to replicate the "acquisition of auxiliary drugs, large varieties of traditional Chinese medicine injections + strong sales" model.
But in July 2019, the National Health Commission issued the first batch of key monitoring catalogs, proprietary Chinese medicines, auxiliary drugs, etc. are strictly limited, and become the "hardest hit" by the clearance.
A year later, Goodwill went to the road of bankruptcy and reorganization.
0 3
The bitter fruit of focusing on marketing and light research and development
The 2018 collection is the last straw that overwhelms these enterprises, and even Changchun High-tech has not escaped this fate.
Although at one time, Changchun High-tech was known as the "drug Mao", but only on the growth hormone product, not like Maotai wine that has an unshakeable moat.
A person close to Changchun High-tech mentioned that the rapid development of growth hormone, "because the pediatric field doctors can choose the 'kickback drug' is not much", with the help of growth hormone paved the way for the development of the growth hormone. Pediatrics medication hospitals and doctors channels, Changchun High-tech in the past few years around the piece of pediatric insurance, the layout of the cardiovascular medical devices, antibody drugs, children's generic drugs. "But it's still slow and hasn't produced results."
Changchun High-tech in the R & D investment costs are not high. 2020 annual report shows that Changchun High-tech has become the Northeast mom wildly earned 100 times, the market value of 200 billion "drug thatched", R & D costs but only 680 million yuan, accounting for the proportion of total operating income also reached 7.95% (Hengrui's proportion is 17% up and down) - but this R & D investment in the Northeast pharmaceutical companies has been a ride.
Some local pharma people lamented: "Changchun Hi-Tech should have invested more in R&D, but it has taken on a lot of development tasks from the local government, and was more or less constrained."
The leading Chinese patent medicine company, Sunflower Pharmaceuticals, invested only 114 million yuan in research and development, accounting for only 3.14% of total operating income.
Harbin's investment in R&D is even less, with R&D expenses of 92 million in 2020, accounting for only 1.15% of revenue.
Harbin is not without a R&D system. Li Jiang emphasized that Hafen has a national enterprise technology center and five provincial sub-centers of the R & D system, but not the shadow of innovative drugs, always around the Chinese medicine powder injection, antibiotics. It is because of the subsequent lack of core product support, in the track of innovative drugs, more than one step behind.
In its heyday, Harbin Pharmaceutical Group more than 20,000 people, less than 300 people in the R & D team.
In the opinion of a source, in the best performance of those years, Harbin Pharmaceutical in the research and development of new products did not have much to build, but instead in the marketing and advertising investment but more and more obsessed. "Realizing the problem, the enterprise has been on the downhill, more money to invest in research and development. And Harbin's financial income is not high, it is not possible to always supplement the Harbin medicine."
A pharmaceutical representative who left the Northeast for many years believes that the aging of the personnel and product structure, disconnected from market changes, is the internal factors of the decline of these pharmaceutical companies in the Northeast. "And the northeast bone because too comfortable, unwilling to innovate."
As the No. 1 pharmaceutical company in Liaoning Province, the local government's financial subsidies to Northeast Pharmaceuticals, policy advantages that many private companies do not get. These advantages, from another level, is a lack of market competitiveness "chronic suicide".
Harvard Pharmaceuticals is the same. "It's not just APIs that are doing great, it also has commercial distribution companies, pharmacies, and policy support.
Precisely because of the more comfortable life, do not need to go to do too much transformation, can also do very well." And the official mindset is heavy in the Northeast, in order to avoid some political mistakes, the helmsman would rather transition downward steadily, but also do not want to make a single mistake.
And the new drug research and development, in politics is also a "big gamble", the decision makers are difficult to take their own political career for this pat and pay the bill.
At the best of Northeastern pharmaceutical companies, R&D is just a term written in the company's external brochure.
And marketing was enshrined, this is the most immediate business to see the results, the officials can also be transformed into a political trick. Li Jiang also sighs, "a point in time missed, and can no longer keep up."
The loss of talent has been the biggest constraint. A pharmaceutical headhunter revealed that Changchun High-tech has been higher than the industry two times the price, digging executives. "But the people below can't all be smashed with high salaries, and after those executives go over, they'll realize there's no one available under them, and he'll soon leave. It's constantly replenishing and losing talent, and that leads to its product development progress, which will be slow."
And more graduates from northeastern medical schools are choosing to go to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, where the pharmaceutical atmosphere is better.
0 4
Self-help of Northeast Pharmaceutical Enterprises
In 2015, Li Jiang left Harbin Pharmaceutical. To this day, he still retains the yellowed work notes, nearly two hundred purchase contracts.
His departure stemmed from an internal change at Harvard, which led to the departure of a large number of original marketing staff.
After the decline in performance, the management of Harvard Pharmaceuticals change, the successor to open the Harvard Pharmaceuticals "second venture, transformation and upgrading" road, but the focus is still not on R & D. Rather, the same as Northeast Pharmaceuticals, the company carried out. But the focus is still not on research and development. Instead, the same as the Northeast Pharmaceuticals, a hybrid reform of the system.
The purpose is the same - Adjust the organizational structure, streamlining the hierarchy, in the APIs, chemical preparations and pharmaceutical business is inherent in the three major business basis, the development of biopharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical engineering .
After successive declines in revenue, many of the factories that were operating at full capacity are empty, the production line is half-stagnant, do not need so many people." Li Jiang said. It is because of Harbin Pharmaceutical, Northeast Pharmaceuticals, such as the old drug companies are too sick, redundancy, and has since experienced internal staff "retreat", marketing reform.
In the past, each branch has its own independent sales force, each branch does not interfere with each other. The marketing reform is intended to integrate internal resources, the marketing of each plant into a group team.
Previously, each province would have five or six branches, there are five or six branches of the provincial manager, after the change into one.
In the already complex factional struggle within the enterprise, this is undoubtedly artificially created more internal contradictions. Li Jiang mentioned that the provincial manager's income and non-manager's income difference of half, the wage performance, a group of people walked out, this reform has become a disguised layoffs.
In the past, Harvard Pharmaceuticals was overly dependent on agents and could not grasp the market terminal information. In order to regain the sales advantage, the marketing reform attempts to implant the Internet gene into the marketing model, through the scanning of the identification code of the Harvard products to realize the franchise, the channel terminal information interconnection. This requires salespeople to go to the terminals one by one to collect information by "sweeping the streets" and fill in the complicated content of the agent's information and competitor's information.
In Li Jiang's view, this marketing reform is the cart before the horse. The original marketing system is relatively flat, the provincial manager above the general manager of the division or vice president of marketing, the sensitivity of the response to market changes is very high. Moreover, the development of marketing policies and strategies are very flexible, market-oriented, in order to market development, coverage, volume.
This reform, not only did not fundamentally change the single product of Harbin Pharmaceuticals, the problem of inadequate research and development, but the loss of the original flexible marketing model, exacerbated the internal struggle - his department, 99% of the staff left. Airborne over the foreign employees, familiar with the sales strategy and Harvard's existing product mismatch, and later have to leave.
A year after his departure, Hengrui Medicine became China's first listed pharmaceutical company with a market capitalization of more than $100 billion.
Shiyao Group, which also started out as an antibiotic company, completed its transition from generics to innovative drugs under the leadership of Cai Dongchen.
The stormy Harvard Pharmaceuticals, but because of frequent changes in management, repeated changes in the reform policy, repeated missed opportunities.
Harvard General Manager Xu Haiying also said publicly, "Harvard Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is slow to respond to pharmaceutical policy, the market, etc., but also missed many opportunities, such as consistency evaluation policy was introduced, Harvard Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is the earliest to start, but there is currently only one product through. Did not pass the consistency evaluation means that even the admission ticket to the collection can not get."
The plight of Harvard Pharmaceuticals, reflecting the plight of the Northeast pharmaceutical enterprises. After the market for raw materials drugs, the performance of Northeast Pharmaceuticals is in ruins. Although the introduction of capital for "mixed reform". But so far, not out of the quagmire.
Sunflower Pharmaceuticals, Jilin Aodong, Tonghua Dongbao, some of the pCms as the main products of the pharmaceutical enterprises, in the medical insurance fee-control to promote the Chinese medicine injections under the limitations of the same predicament.
A source revealed that the current strategy of Harbin Pharmaceuticals is to ensure that the drugs into the collection, to ensure the operation of the marketing system.
After leaving Harvard, Li Jiang joined a southern pharmaceutical company. This is a new world. "In the southern enterprises, there will be more humanistic care. And in the northeast, having acquaintances and good relationships come first."
And in Li Jiang's memory, the Harbin Pharmaceutical around 2011, is also two worlds: the glory of the old era and the loss of the new era.