Is it an IQ tax to sell Tik Tok Aauto Quicker, a ＂liver-protecting medicine＂ in milk thistle？

Wen | Brocade’s Medical Obsidian　　 Liu Bo BIO

When irregular work and rest meet with frequent entertainment, the pressure on the human liver is increasing day by day, and nourishing and protecting the liver has become a trend. Under this healthy trend, a "liver-protecting medicine" named milk thistle has gradually become popular on major live broadcast platforms.

With a huge audience base and repeated marketing hype, milk thistle has embarked on a road of explosion. Even many optimistic investors smell the opportunity and think that milk thistle is very likely to become the next GLP-1 explosion. Of course, some people hold objections, thinking that milk thistle is just an IQ tax, which is the product of excessive marketing.

What kind of secrets are hidden behind the mysterious veil?

01, plain milk thistle

Milk thistle is not mysterious.

Milk thistle, also known as Silybum marianum. This is a kind of compositae herb, and the silymarin isolated from its body is the focus of the promotion of health care products merchants at present: it can protect the liver and accurately target the demands of people who often use tobacco and alcohol, stay up late and be obese.

Plant ingredients always give people more sense of security. In an article entitled "Research Progress of Medicinal Plant Silybum marianum" published in 2022, the health care function of Silybum marianum was explained: the main active component of Silybum marianum is the flavonoid silymarin, which can inhibit injury, resist tumor and treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, especially liver injury.

Little milk thistle can treat so many diseases, which seems to be full of magic, but in fact, it is common for plants to treat many diseases with one thing. For example, onions, which are common in daily life, also have the functions of preventing cancer, lowering blood sugar, preventing colds and helping digestion.

Milk thistle can protect the liver, but it is not only milk thistle that protects the liver, such as green tea, garlic, turmeric, walnuts, etc. Take Pien Tze Huang, the king of protecting the liver, as an example. Its main components are natural musk, natural bezoar, snake gall, notoginseng and other medicinal materials. A variety of ingredients that human beings eat play an important role in maintaining human survival.

There are many products with similar functions, but few can really be paid by the market and sell at high prices. Pien Tze Huang keeps high prices with scarce Chinese herbal medicines, but it is difficult to sell common ingredients such as green tea and garlic at high prices. Looking at these products, only milk thistle, whose name is evasive, has realized the packaging premium potential. The reason is not complicated: milk thistle is strange enough, with sufficient information gap, low cost and enough premium space, and the price band just fits the anxious middle-class consumer class. This is an important reason why health care products can sell well.

Tracing back to the source, milk thistle is still imported. In 1952, milk thistle was introduced to Beijing Botanical Garden as an ornamental plant from England, and since then, this plant has taken root and grown in China. Before China introduced milk thistle, silymarin had actually been used as a health care product material in many places in Europe for thousands of years, and it could be regarded as an overseas basic medicine.

Milk thistle has a peculiar name, and it is also an exotic product from overseas, and it has a history of thousands of years. These Buff naturally add a lot of highlights to milk thistle’s marketing.

02, export to domestic sales.

On a domestic large-scale e-commerce platform, the top search products for liver protection are mostly foreign brands, such as Jian ‘anxi, Swisse and so on. When they publicize the efficacy of liver protection, milk thistle is the focus of their products.

Compared with domestic liver protection products, foreign brands are branded as "imported" and their prices are much higher than domestic products. For example, the price of 120 Swisse milk thistle liver protection tablets is 139 yuan; However, the price of 200 prescription liver protection tablets of Sunflower Pharmaceutical is only 39.9 yuan.

In fact, milk thistle is not scarce, and even China plays a vital role in the global supply. Milk thistle’s seeds have strong germination ability, can germinate spontaneously, and are cold-resistant, drought-resistant and high-temperature-resistant. After being introduced into China, they have developed rapidly and become industrialized. According to Xinhua News Agency, the annual export volume of Silybum marianum extract in Panjin, Liaoning Province has accounted for more than 80% of the global consumption. Although China can fully realize industrialized production in milk thistle, it is difficult to form large-scale sales. In the final analysis, milk thistle’s acceptance in China is not high. Based on this, the trust attribute attached to "imported products" has become the key to milk thistle’s marketing.

Domestic health care players have also seen this trend. For example, Tomson Bianjian comprehensively promoted the international brand "BY-HEALTH" in 2019, and milk thistle Hugan Tablet is one of the core products of BY-HEALTH. As an overseas brand, Tomson Bianjian’s milk thistle Liver Protection Tablets are easily kept in the same echelon as other foreign brands.

Although BY-HEALTH is defined as an overseas version of Tomson Bianjian, cross-border e-commerce for the domestic market has become the core channel of BY-HEALTH. With the promotion of Tomson Bianjian’s marketing investment in short video platforms in recent years, BY-HEALTH’s sales on these platforms have surpassed the main brands, accounting for more than 10% of the company’s total revenue.

With the help of overseas brands, it has become a profitable method for many health care products companies. On the one hand, the popularity and development of domestic health care products are not as mature as those of foreign countries, and under the background of mixed fish and dragons, imported products are more easily recognized by domestic people; On the other hand, the batch number of new domestic health care products is not easy to approve, and the cost is higher, which is not as convenient as the introduction.

03, the explosion logic of health care products

Milk thistle will become the next GLP-1, which is perhaps the biggest fantasy in the capital market.

In essence, GLP-1 is a veritable weight-loss drug, which has been clinically verified by thousands of people for many years. Milk thistle is just a kind of health care product, which is not supported by clinical data, and no one has carried out special academic research on it. There is a natural gap between milk thistle, a health care product, and GLP-1, a diet drug, which cannot be generalized.

Figure: Weight loss effect of smeagoutide, source: AVIC Securities

In this world, the substance with slimming effect is not GLP-1, and there are countless health products and foods that claim to be able to lose weight. But apart from GLP-1, is there any product whose weight loss effect has been recognized by the society? Obviously not, otherwise the popularity of GLP-1 would not have occurred.

From the promotion of "Life No.1" with a doctor’s hat to the melatonin that the old lady has been dancing hand in hand for many years, as the sustenance of human pursuit of health, health care products should naturally capture the hearts of more and more people.

Undeniably, this is a good business: products can easily achieve safety, and do not need to have the clinical therapeutic effect of drugs, but also carry the aura of health care. How easy it is for modern people to be anxious, the market for health care products will be broad.

However, in the developed era of the Internet, the information gap is getting smaller and smaller, and the difference between health care products and medicines should still be clearly distinguished. Vitamin C nutritional tablets with more than ten dollars, even if the marketing is done well, are still one head lower in front of the drug vitamin C with three dollars. At least the drug has been clinically tested.

The epidemic situation in recent years has intensified people’s concerns about health, and contemporary human beings have never paid so much attention to their own health. Even though the IPO in the capital market was obviously tightened, Minsheng Health, with 21 Jinweita as its main product, still landed in science and technology innovation board, and the highest share price rose by over 270% on the day of listing.

From the perspective of investment, health care products have been accepted by the market because they have grasped most people’s concerns about health and received the dividend of the times. But even so, health care products are still not drugs, and there is an essential difference between them. Why is health care industry prone to explosions? The reason is that this is an industry driven by marketing. Under the strong marketing package, there is always a part of comfort demand that is released. However, it is precisely because of the low threshold that the heat of health care products switches quickly, and even new explosions are born every few years.

Drugs, on the other hand, are completely opposite. The extremely high clinical threshold often leads to the production of a drug that takes ten years. It is precisely because of the endorsement of curative effect that the vitality of the drug is not only stronger, but also there is no need for large-scale marketing promotion.

It is also 1 billion sales, and the gross profit margin, marketing expense rate and net interest rate between health care products and drugs are completely different. For investors, health care products companies mainly look at the ability to capture users’ minds, and this ability is based on brand effect; The core competitiveness of pharmaceutical companies is research and development ability, and only good curative effect can conquer the market.

Innovative drugs may take 10 years to produce results, and health care products may only take one month of crazy marketing. Milk thistle may become a popular health care product, but its value can never be compared with GLP-1.