In the following articles, you will learn about: the development history of bodybuilding supplements in China, the inside story of the bodybuilding supplement market, the authenticity of bodybuilding supplements, and how to Identify real and fake bodybuilding supplements. The article is compiled and provided by MuscleNet, and the author is Green Muscle. http://www.jirou.com/pinpai.html Bodybuilding supplement ranking.
Because every month, many fitness friends post questions, whose protein powder is real? Whose protein powder is good? What’s wrong with whose protein powder? When I see this kind of question, I think again I laugh but feel helpless at the same time. Now, I will share with you my seven years of experience in using bodybuilding supplements, so that everyone can understand our domestic bodybuilding supplement market.
The development history of bodybuilding supplements in China
At the very beginning, I would like to talk about the development history of bodybuilding supplements in my country. If there are any bodybuilding enthusiasts who have practiced bodybuilding for more than 12 years, they will know that nutritional supplements have begun to develop in our country since 1998. At that time, advertisements for nutritional supplements had appeared in the "Health and Beauty" magazine, and their representatives were Beijing Bolijia and Samshi. At that time, nutritional products companies operated very few products, which were nothing more than protein powder, creatine, fat burning bombs and amino acids. Moreover, protein powders were mostly in small packages of less than 2 pounds. Of course, they were also very expensive. At this time, many conservative old-school bodybuilders will say that these products have various side effects and refuse to use them. Of course, there are also many "liberal-minded" new-school athletes who are beginning to try these things and hope to rely on these nutritional supplements to achieve rapid progress. If you have any fitness friends from this period, please share with us. At that time, what I most remember was what the nutrition company told me: protein powder, creatine, or whatever, must be taken on an empty stomach, how to eat it, and even protein powder must be recycled. At that time, I really thought these things were magical. Now that I think about it, it’s really ridiculous. Don’t even fruits and vegetables contain protein?
In these four years from 1999 to 2003, my country's bodybuilding supplement market set off a climax. Why do you say that? Because many nutritional supplement companies have emerged in China, the most representative of which is China superelement( Operating Baola), Hubei Taili (operating Optimum), Shanghai Ruishang (operating Champion), Beijing Kangtimei (operating Wade), Beijing Yingao (operating APR, Optimum), at the same time, domestic brands are also appeared, the most representative one is KangBit and Yoon. At that time, there were many small companies, such as Hefei Antong (now not small), Beijing Xunao, Tianjin Taichuan, Shanghai Chengbo, Beijing Dedi, etc., too numerous to count.
When I bought bodybuilding magazines, my favorite thing was to read these supplement advertisements to see which supplements were the most amazing and most effective. Among these companies, there are two companies that I have to mention. The first one is Beijing Super Element (this company no longer exists). The company’s boss Guo is very good in English, and his marketing skills and advertising are also very good. At that time, the most famous supplement in China was American Bora. Friends who have old bodybuilding magazines can read it. Even a bottle of creatine, which was an ordinary bottle at that time, was praised by him as amazing. HMB, ZMA and other supplements were even more popular. They were named Super Growth Hormone and Super Growth Power, and the prices were more than 800 and 500 respectively. But now? They are not more than 200 yuan. (The banknotes in 1999 were much more valuable than they are now.) At that time, 300 grams of muscle was sold for 400 yuan. Acid now only costs 65 yuan. Therefore, when bodybuilding enthusiasts saw these advertisements and saw Li Prest who endorsed the product, they became even more crazy and felt that as long as they had supplements, they could build a big body.
Especially before 2000, the level of bodybuilding in China was very low, and at that time few people in China were using drugs or supplements. Although everyone knew that bodybuilding stars used hormones, Boss Guo did not At this time, the fallacy of supplements replacing drugs was blown. The representative work was an article written in "Fitness and Beauty" magazine in 1999 or 2000. The content of the article was an interview with an Asian bodybuilding champion in the United States. Yang Li, one of the sentences I remember most is that Guo asked Yang Li what supplements he used. Yang Li said that he used protein powder, creatine, glutamine and branched chain amino acids, and said that these four supplements were mixed together. The effect of steroids can be achieved by taking them. At the same time, he also said that the supplements he took were from the brand of Bora. (Haha, I really believed it when I saw it. Now think about it, did Yang Li really say that?)
Therefore, the brand Bora became a famous brand of domestic supplements at that time. Later, Ruishang and Yingao also began to sell Bora. Now the popular Optimum is compared with the Bora at that time. It is simply a BMW and The difference between three tanas. Later, due to various problems, Super Element even changed its company name, but eventually withdrew from the Chinese supplement market.
Another most representative company is Yingao. This company has experienced agency rights lawsuits and counterfeiting incidents, but in the end it survived and has become one of the largest and most powerful companies in China. Yingao's success lies in the variety of advertising and products that are in place without being exaggerated. This is unmatched by any company at present. As for the issue of fake products, I will explain it in a future post to let everyone understand why fake products appear. Yingao’s success also marks the future development path of domestic nutritional products companies——You can’t just make one brand. Therefore, you can take a look at the current supplement agency companies. No one is making a brand alone. To exaggerate, as long as it is a relatively well-known domestic brand, you can get it from any company.
After 2004, the domestic supplement market has entered a fiercely competitive environment. The most obvious manifestation is that prices are getting lower and lower. First, the retail price of supplements has dropped significantly, and secondly, the policies of various agency companies have become more and more aggressive. The market is getting wider and wider, and the third is the entry of fake goods and the rise of online shopping.
First of all, let’s talk about the price reduction. Do you still remember that in the past, many companies’ advertisements in bodybuilding magazines would state the names and phone numbers of agents in various places? Later, they only stated where there were agents and omitted the names. and phone calls, and then I wrote nothing. The reason is this. Due to the increase in agency companies, in order to compete with each other, various agencies will often call dealers based on advertisements in bodybuilding magazines to provide them with cheaper purchase prices, and dealers have cheaper prices. prices, and will be provided to gyms or coaches at more favorable prices to expand their sales market. In this way, in order to compete and keep their own brands, everyone has entered a price war, and some are unwilling to lower prices. Merchants will also use package combinations to sell products at low prices in disguise, thereby increasing their market competitiveness.
At this time, everyone can generally buy protein powder priced around 500 yuan from coaches. At this time, the domestic supplement market is still in order. Next, let’s talk about the policies of agency companies. In the early days, each company usually had only one agent in each place, and this agent also had sales task requirements in order to monopolize the market and protect the interests of the agent. It is not infringed, but it backfires. Market competition is not something that small private companies can monopolize. Different agency companies enter, and the same products are sold at lower prices, resulting in many people in the same area engaged in the sale of bodybuilding supplements. This At that time, if an agency company still insisted on having only one person as the local agent and stipulating sales tasks, then the company was destined to withdraw from the supplement market sooner or later.
Therefore, many agency companies no longer have regional agents. As long as you have money, you can buy my things at low prices. The more money, the cheaper the things. This approach has further intensified competition in the market, leading to continued price declines. Muscle net finishing
Finally, let’s talk about online shopping. Current online shopping in China is roughly divided into shopping from foreign supplement websites and shopping from domestic supplement websites and online stores. With the rise of online shopping, everyone has a wider range of choices, and at the same time, prices have become more transparent. In order to compete in the market, many merchants can even sell nutritional products at the purchase price and only earn about 10 yuan in shipping costs during the delivery process. In this way, it can be said to be a kind of vicious competition. In the past, many people who made a living by selling supplements had to find another way out, either selling steroids or selling some rare products online.Products, or engaged in other industries, there are not many people who rely entirely on selling nutritional products for a living now, because the profits of supplements are already very low. Of course, there are some who sell them at high prices, but the business will definitely not be good. At this time, in order to seek more profits, some businesses will naturally produce some fake goods. There are indeed fake goods online. This is a problem that no one can avoid. As for how to distinguish fake goods and prevent counterfeiting, I will discuss it in the future. There will be special instructions in the article.
Now, in 2010, supplement prices are basically stable. You can buy many brands of protein powder for less than 300 yuan. Many companies no longer exist, and the companies that can survive are already very strong. In the past, The so-called competition for the exclusive agency of XX brand is not as intense as before. This is the inevitable result of market development. Take a look at the current supplement agency companies. They all have their own advantages, or have strong publicity, or have First-class service, or low prices. In short, there are not as many agency companies as there were in 2004. Although some domestic brands and companies pretending to be foreign brands are appearing one after another, they will soon disappear. After all, , after more than 10 years of ups and downs in the Chinese bodybuilding supplement market, it is time to enter an orderly era.
The inside story of bodybuilding supplements
When it comes to the authenticity of bodybuilding supplements, I believe many bodybuilding enthusiasts and natural bodybuilding experts will be very concerned about this topic. This topic started as early as 2002 and has been bothering many bodybuilding, fitness, and supplement enthusiasts. Of course , this topic is also very sensitive and may touch some people, but I try to avoid it. Some companies mentioned below will use XX or XX instead. Muscle netizens please understand.
When bodybuilding supplements first arrived in China, each company only produced one or two brands of supplements, and all of them were named general agents. In fact, these companies were not all general agents in the true sense. , some companies also source from some major companies in the United StatesThe goods are purchased from the dealer, but in order to sell their products easily, they say that they are the general agent. The first agency dispute over nutritional products was probably between Hubei Taili Health Company and a company in Beijing. In the end, although the Hubei company won the case, Taili Health also slowly disappeared from the domestic supplement market.
A Beijing company lost the lawsuit, but is the Optimon sold by a Beijing company fake? Please read on slowly. Not long after the Optimon incident, there was another dispute between a company in Shanghai and a company in Hefei about genuine and fake goods. In the end, the Shanghai company won the case. However, didn’t the Hefei company survive to this day? And the Shanghai company has the agency rights of a certain brand. It was also taken away by a company in Beijing. What does this mean? Finally, with the needs of market competition, the struggle between large companies slowly transformed from the previous advertising, bickering, and trying to undermine each other, to more and more Rich product sales and increasingly lower prices, and terms like general agent are becoming increasingly rare.
At this time, online shopping was also slowly emerging in our country. The advantage of online shopping was price transparency, but the price war also began to heat up. Some sellers said that as long as there are 100,000 sales per month, a 5% profit is enough. Some people say that with 20 items a day, they can live on the difference in shipping costs. Therefore, online shopping is getting cheaper. However, people’s desires are endless. 100,05% Profits may be quite large in provinces such as Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Gansu, which are slightly less economically developed, but when you go to Shanghai, Guangdong, Beijing, and other places, you can't even buy a half-square-meter house. Therefore, copycats appeared, real fakes, and a large number of fakes appeared.
Let me tell you a small episode first. (This story is the first time I have seen fake protein powder in my life.) I started working as a supplement agent in 2003. At that time, I was an agent for ISS of Beijing Xunao Company. At that time, this The brand is endorsed by Carter, and its glutamine-enhanced matrix protein powder is also a very good product, so its local sales are still very good. The market retail price of this protein powder at that time was 800 yuan, and My purchase price at that time was 400 yuan, and the price of selling it to the gym was about 480 yuan. Suddenly one day, the owner of the gym asked me, can the price of your protein powder be lower? I said, it is already very low and cannot be lower. From then on, the owner stopped taking my goods, and I discovered that, At that time, there was an advertisement in "Mr. Bodybuilder" magazine. It was an advertisement for a company in Shenzhen selling ISS, Bora and other protein powders. The retail price was only 560 per barrel. Oh my God, I hurriedly called to inquire about the wholesale price. The person who answered the phone The person is very direct, 250 per barrel, and 4 barrels will be sent, and shipping is free. Moreover, the person selling protein powder in this advertisement is an excellent bodybuilder in our country. (At this point, many veterans should have guessed who it is). Let me talk about it here. Anyone who has eaten ISS protein powder should know that the solubility of this protein powder is very poor. It cannot be dissolved without shaking the cup. One day, when I was training in the gym, I saw the gym owner taking outHe scooped a spoonful of the ISS protein powder he wholesaled from Shenzhen into a cup, added some water, and stirred it up with a chopstick. I was dizzy. No wonder it only cost 250 yuan. It was really 250. I I asked my boss why your ISS has such good solubility, and he said that it is a newly improved instant formula. I'm speechless. This is the story of my first encounter with fakes.
Next, let’s talk about fakes. After the emergence of online shopping, I believe that all experienced sellers and store owners have encountered similar things. That is, if you hang up Wangwang, someone will come directly to say hello to you and sell the champion, MET-RX. Wait, and then give you a quotation. The prices are very low. When you ask where the goods are, they will usually say that they are original in the United States, smuggled in the United States, have their own channels, etc. If you ask them where they send them from, it is usually Shenzhen. and Tianjin. To be honest, the most exaggerated advertisement I have ever received is for a 5-pound barrel of 180 Champion, with shipping starting from 4 barrels and logistics included. To be honest, if he could really win the 180-per-barrel championship, why didn't he register a company himself and then advertise in various bodybuilding magazines?
Let’s look at the price of a certain online shopping champion. Some sellers said they were agents of a company in Beijing or Hefei, and they sold a 5-pound protein powder with the old formula of Champion for only 235-245 per barrel, and even included free shipping. Some prices are only 255-260 after free shipping. I can tell you clearly that the old formula of Champion 5 pounds can be found at the cheapest price among several domestic agencies. It was about 250 3 months ago. But it is absolutely impossible to be lower than 245. Now with the rising tariffs and the shortage of diesel, it is considered good to get less than 260. Then calculate the gas money when you pick up the goods and the shipping fee after selling, 260? Are you fooling? A layman? This is not abominable. The most abominable thing is that some people take knockoff goods and sell them at very high prices. They say that theirs are genuine goods, so they are expensive. Haha, it is even worse, right? There are other shops. You can do it yourself. Pay attention and observe that Champion Powder is sold very cheaply, but supplements such as creatine, glutamine, and branched-chain amino acids, which are not very popular, are not necessarily sold cheaply. What's going on? This is because, I am exposed to Several fake manufacturers never said that they made fake creatine, branched chain, etc., because the profits are not big, haha.
How to identify genuine and fake bodybuilding supplements?
However, don’t be afraid of fakes, and don’t think that all sellers are unscrupulous merchants. There are still many who sell genuine goods. Below, I will talk about real and fake products based on my experience.
American Champion, the first brand to be ruined, the initial retail price of Champion was more than 700. It has high protein content and good taste. It has been deeply loved by domestic bodybuilding and fitness enthusiasts, and has also become a A relatively well-known brand in China, however, as the sales of Champion increased, counterfeiters focused on it, and Champion wasAs a target of counterfeiting, in addition to its good sales volume, it is also because its packaging is very simple, just a bottle, an inner seal, and an outer wrapping paper. This process is easily copied. Protein powder is not a high-end product in the United States, it is just a very ordinary food, so we don’t pay that much attention to the packaging. Genuine champions often have uneven outer wrapping paper and weak inner seals. If you ever get a champion with a strong inner seal and a very beautiful outer package, please note that you may have gotten a fake. I have seen fakes of Champion. One of them is 220 per barrel. This kind of product is very realistic. From the outer packaging and taste, you can't tell the difference at all. A few months ago, a friend of mine was planning to make a brand of his own, so he bought a large amount of WPC80 powder for processing experiments. A few months later, he said that it was really easy to make branded powder. Within a few months, he He has imitated the taste, solubility, etc. of several domestic and foreign brands of powder. However, he does not fake it. He wants to make a domestic brand. At the same time, he told me that a barrel of whey protein processed from 80% powder includes Including packaging, the price of a barrel can be controlled within 200, so protein powder is not high-tech and can be easily imitated and counterfeited.
U.S. Optimum, this brand has much fewer fakes than the champion, so if you look at the prices on the Internet, there are no ridiculously cheap prices. The reason why this brand has not been targeted by copycats is that its packaging is better than the champion. It is much more difficult to make. The packaging of this brand of American Muscle Technology is more complicated, so there are no fakes of this brand. If you look at shopping online, some people claim that they have channels. The champion sells it for 235, which is a few lower than the price in the same industry. It costs ten yuan, but Muscle Technology sells it for more than 400 yuan, which is about the same price as similar products. There are also BSNs, etc. As long as the sales volume is not large and the packaging is complicated, there are very few fakes.
At present, the brand with the most fakes is Champion, followed by a copycat brand - American X-man. This brand also said that a famous Hong Kong athlete was the spokesperson for its company. As a result, the athlete himself came out and said that he had not endorsed any supplements, and the company also changed the front photo of the athlete to the back, haha, this The brand is produced by a domestic copycat factory, which also has copycat Champion, copycat Bora, copycat MET-RX, etc. So, how can you buy the real thing? To be fair, as long as it is a regular company, he will not Why do you say this about selling fakes (I have sold them before and will never sell them now)? Because whoever makes fakes now dares to advertise (those who make fakes don’t advertise in the media) are fools , there are so many competitors, I don’t believe any company can tolerate competitors selling fakes. If your company A sells fakes and is discovered by my company B, I will just get enough evidence and file a complaint to sue you. Now, if you take the court judgment and the industrial and commercial certificate and publish it online and expose it in the media, can you still have business? Here, some people will say that the previous Hubei company won the lawsuit against BeijingWhy did the company go bankrupt? In fact, the previous lawsuits were all lawsuits over agency rights. No court or industrial and commercial court judged which company's products were fake, it just said which company was the general agent. Besides, there are so many fake protein powders out there nowadays. Who do you think would make creatine? A bottle of Optimum creatine only costs 60 yuan, so your cost of making fake products is estimated to be as little as 60 yuan. 30, right? Haha, it doesn’t make any money. What about protein powder? If you use 80 powder, you can make a profit of 50-80 per barrel. If you use 30 powder, you can make hundreds of profits. Speaking of 80 powder, I have to admire some sellers. A seller in Dalian only sells 80 powder in individual packages, not in whole bags (the whole bag is 20 kilograms). He sells 1 kilogram for 65. How much does it cost? How many, but if you want to buy a whole bag of 20 kilograms, they don’t have a bag. They say they are packed separately. Do you believe it? The purchase price of a bag of the same brand of 80 powder is more than 1,300, that is to say , 1 kilogram costs more than 65 yuan, but this seller only costs 65 yuan after packing it himself? Are the packed bags free?
Of course, everyone should not be so afraid of buying fake goods. Just remember to buy goods from a regular agency. But I want to emphasize one point here. Do not think that the goods are from the agency when you see the anti-counterfeiting and Chinese labels. This There are some inside stories inside, I won’t go into them. Remember, don’t look at anti-counterfeiting. What you should do is call the agency and ask if so-and-so is your company’s agent? Then ask them again. The batch number of the goods, then, you'd better choose intra-city transactions and choose those sellers with conscience. Although the domestic nutritional supplement market is a bit chaotic, it is not out of control, and don't think everything is fake when you see it. Let me teach you a little common sense here. Every time we purchase goods, the agency will send them to you with the boxes of the goods. The logistics label on the box is a good indication that the goods are coming from the United States. When you choose intra-city transactions, , you can go to your door to have a look, look at the inventory boxes, and look at the logistics labels, so that you can feel more at ease. But some people will also ask, will there be a situation where real and fake products are mixed together? I can only say that this situation does not exist. Therefore, selling supplements is a conscientious business, and those who sell fake products should not Go die early.
Final words
http://www.jirou.com/pinpai.html Official ranking of bodybuilding supplement manufacturers. And here, I especially want to remind a colleague that today, domestic fitness enthusiasts are scared of fake products and dare not buy anything. You have an unshirkable responsibility, because, in your eyes, other people’s products are fake except for your own. Even if everyone buys goods from the same company, as long as they sell them cheaper than you, you can call other people’s goods fake. Not every businessman will sell them so violently, and not every businessman has a black heart. Comments on the evils of bodybuilding supplementsThe world has been around for a long time, and it’s time to stop causing trouble now.