Yingjia Tribute Liquor's "Firefighting" Leadership Change: A Long-Overdue Midlife Crisis Self-Rescue

Ask AI · How does Yang Zhaobing’s return address channel difficulties?

By | Hengxin

Source | Bowang Finance

Recently, a brief personnel change announcement in the liquor-by-volume industry has sent ripples through the sector.

The leading maker of Hui liquor, Yingjia Gongjiu, announced that its general manager, Qin Hai, will resign six months early due to “work adjustments.” His successor is Yang Zhaobing, a sales veteran who previously held the position from 2018 to 2023. This is the third time the two have “rotated” in the general manager role, and this handover comes only two and a half years after Yang Zhaobing last stepped down.

On the surface, this is simply a normal internal personnel rotation. But when you dig into the timing and the performance background, this leadership change looks more like an unwilling “firefighting” operation. Qin Hai’s term was originally set to run until September 8, 2026, but the reason he left six months early lies in the harsh reality that Yingjia Gongjiu’s revenue and net profit have both fallen for four consecutive quarters.

Even more worrying is that this personnel adjustment coincides with Yingjia Gongjiu’s core product, the “Ecological Cave Aging” series, being forced to change its name due to a trademark dispute, while its goal of 10 billion in revenue has quietly been put on hold amid multiple difficulties.

As an established regional liquor company, Yingjia Gongjiu is facing the most severe challenge since its IPO in 2015.

Whether this leadership change can become a turning point that reverses the slump—or merely delays the outbreak of the crisis—does not seem very optimistic.

01

Firefighting leadership rotation amid a “free fall” in performance

The most direct trigger for Yingjia Gongjiu’s personnel adjustment this time is the cliff-like drop in its performance.

According to financial reports, since the fourth quarter of 2024, Yingjia Gongjiu has seen both revenue and net profit decline year over year for four consecutive single quarters. This sustained deterioration in performance is especially striking given the broader backdrop of adjustments across the liquor-by-volume industry.

In the first three quarters of 2025, Yingjia Gongjiu achieved operating revenue of RMB 4.516 billion, down 18.09% year over year; attributable net profit of RMB 1.511 billion, down 24.67% year over year. In particular, in the third quarter alone, attributable net profit’s year-over-year decline reached 39%.

What deserves even more attention is the cash flow metric—net cash flow from operating activities was only RMB 789 million, down sharply 38.13% year over year. For liquor-by-volume enterprises, cash flow is a more authentic “acid test” of operations than profit. Its sharp decline directly confirms the core issue behind channel blockage: inventory is stuck at distributors, terminal sell-through is weak, and distributors’ willingness to make payments remains sluggish, creating a vicious cycle of “production—overstocking—difficulty in collections.”

Alongside the performance drop is the comprehensive failure to meet Yingjia Gongjiu’s annual operating targets. According to materials for the 2024 annual general meeting of shareholders, Yingjia Gongjiu’s key financial budget targets for 2025 were: operating revenue of RMB 7.6 billion (up 3.49% year over year) and net profit of RMB 2.62 billion (up 1% year over year). However, based on performance in the first three quarters, it is unlikely that this goal will be achieved.

To reach the full-year revenue target of RMB 7.6 billion, the fourth quarter would need to generate more than RMB 3 billion in revenue—roughly nearly 70% of total revenue in the first three quarters. Given the overall weakness in the liquor-by-volume industry and a lack of consumer momentum, this is almost wishful thinking.

Against this backdrop, Yang Zhaobing’s “return to the role for a second stint” has been assigned a clear firefighting mission.

According to a report by The Economic Observer, Chinese liquor industry independent analyst Xiao Zhuqing said that Yang Zhaobing’s return carries a clear mission to turn the slump around. Under the current industry conditions of sluggish sell-through and increasing pressure for channel inventory reduction, his years of experience rooted in the sales front line can help Yingjia Gongjiu quickly sort out channel problems and ease distributors’ payment and collection pressure.

However, this arrangement of “bringing in an old hand” also exposes shortcomings in Yingjia Gongjiu’s talent pipeline—when performance faces pressure, the company can only rely on internal veterans rotating in and out, with no injection of fresh blood.

Another subtle signal is that the “10 billion revenue” target Yingjia Gongjiu has repeatedly mentioned has quietly disappeared following this leadership rotation. In the face of real-world consecutive declines in performance, continuing to insist on the 10 billion goal would only increase channel burdens, consume company resources, and postponing the goal would allow the company to move more lightly—focusing on solving core problems.

02

The downfall of core products and a market dilemma

If the performance decline is the surface, then the trademark failure of the core “Ecological Cave Aging” series is the deeper crisis Yingjia Gongjiu faces.

This seven-year trademark dispute ultimately ended with a complete loss for Yingjia Gongjiu, directly shaking the foundation of its revenue.

The dispute began in 2017. Yingjia Gongjiu repeatedly applied for trademarks for “Yingjia Gongjiu · Ecological Cave Aging,” while Linshui Liquor Industry in Lu’an City, Anhui Province, filed an invalidation request with the National Intellectual Property Administration, citing a “conflict with prior rights related to ‘cave aging’.” In 2024, the intellectual property authority ruled that all trademarks in the “Ecological Cave Aging” series of Yingjia Gongjiu were invalid. Yingjia Gongjiu was dissatisfied and filed an administrative lawsuit, but it lost in both the first and second instances.

The cost of this ruling was severe.

Since the “Ecological Cave Aging” series was launched in 2015, sales surged from the initial RMB 50 million to more than RMB 4 billion, with its share of Yingjia Gongjiu’s overall revenue approaching 60%. In 2022, when the cave-aging series was booming, Yingjia Gongjiu achieved RMB 1.642 billion in non-recurring profit, surpassing Kouzijiu’s RMB 1.533 billion. In a sense, the cave-aging series gave Yingjia Gongjiu a second life.

After losing the case, Yingjia Gongjiu was forced to rename the “cave aging” series to “Gongjiu.” The core products changed from “Cave 6” and “Cave 9” to “Gong 6” and “Gong 9.” Renaming is easy, but building consumer recognition is not. This change has triggered widespread confusion in the market.

According to a report by “Doujiu Di,” recently, a terminal merchant in Anhui posted on a social platform seeking help, stating that due to the renaming of the “Yingjia Gongjiu · Ecological Cave Aging” series, dozens of items of inventory in the store had nowhere to be sold through, and the manufacturer refused to accept returns or exchanges, leaving the business in difficulty. This recognition gap not only affects terminal sales but also shakes the product image that the brand has built over the years—“ecology, health, and aged fragrance.”

Accompanying the product crisis is the risk of an overly singular channel structure. Operating data for the first three quarters of 2025 show that the wholesale agency channel accounted for more than 90% of Yingjia Gongjiu’s sales revenue, while direct sales (including group purchases) contributed less than 10%. In the context of the liquor-by-volume industry shifting toward stock-based competition, this mode of excessive reliance on traditional distribution systems further amplifies risk.

As a typical regional liquor enterprise, Yingjia Gongjiu’s reliance on the Anhui local market has long remained at over 60%. In the first three quarters of 2025, the share of Yingjia Gongjiu’s revenue from within the province exceeded 70%. However, the market size for liquor-by-volume in Anhui is limited, and the competition pattern of “one super and two strong” (Gujing Gongjiu, Yingjia Gongjiu, and Kouzijiu) has been heating up.

03

Governance structure rigidity and the difficulty of breaking through

The deepest problem exposed by Yingjia Gongjiu’s leadership change this time is the ossification of the company’s governance structure.

A close look shows that over the years, the position of general manager at Yingjia Gongjiu has been rotated back and forth between Qin Hai and Yang Zhaobing, forming a recurring cycle of “internal old faces.”

According to publicly available information, before Yingjia Gongjiu’s IPO in 2015, Qin Hai already served as general manager, stepping down in 2018 due to changes in his work post. Yang Zhaobing took over as a successor for the first time. Then in September 2023, when the board was reshuffled, Qin Hai returned, while Yang Zhaobing was reassigned as vice general manager and general manager of the sales company. Now Qin Hai has stepped aside early by another six months, and Yang Zhaobing has once again been “appointed to the top position.” Although such internal rotations ensure policy continuity, they also reflect the failure to bring in external talent for Yingjia Gongjiu.

As a typical family-run enterprise, Yingjia Gongjiu faces inherent shortcomings in governance modernization.

Tianyancha data shows that since the company’s restructuring in 1997, chairman Ni Yongpei has remained at the helm, and many core executives were early veterans who followed the founders to start the business. This governance structure has advantages of efficient decision-making and strong execution in the early stages of enterprise development, but when the company’s scale expands and it faces complex market competition, it may become a constraint.

Amid the trend across the entire liquor-by-volume industry accelerating toward premiumization, younger audiences, and digital transformation, the slow update of Yingjia Gongjiu’s management team is very likely to become an invisible ceiling restricting the company’s development. Yingjia Gongjiu’s management team has experience across the full industry chain—from workshops to sales—but in the competitive process of building brands and immediate retail consumption scenarios in the internet era, it is clearly lagging behind.

Against this backdrop, Yingjia Gongjiu must not only deal with the pressure brought by first-tier liquor brands moving down-market—such as Moutai, Wuliangye, Shanxi Fenjiu, Yanghe Stock, and Luzhou Laojiao—but also compete on the same stage with other province-based listed liquor companies such as Gujing Gongjiu, Kouzijiu, and Jinzhongzi Liquor.

As reported by China Business Network (Huaxia Times Net), liquor industry researcher Ouyang Qianli analyzed that: “Currently, the pressure caused by policy changes, economic fluctuations, and industry adjustments has pushed most leading liquor companies to lower prices on their core single products to enhance competitiveness, thereby transmitting the pressure step by step to regional liquor enterprises like Yingjia Gongjiu.”

Conclusion

This leadership change at Yingjia Gongjiu, on the surface, appears to be an emergency response to declining performance; at a deeper level, it reflects the systemic crisis that regional liquor enterprises face during a period of deep industry adjustment.

When the growth dividend fades and competition intensifies, and traditional models fail, longstanding structural issues accumulated by companies will surface in concentrated bursts.

For Yingjia Gongjiu, a true breakthrough requires a profound self-revolution.

An industry adjustment period is both a challenge and an opportunity. For regional liquor enterprises that can proactively transform and adapt to a new environment, this may be a window period for realizing transformation and upgrading. However, transformation requires courage, and even more, requires wisdom. Whether Yingjia Gongjiu can seize this opportunity depends not only on the personal capabilities of the new leader, Yang Zhaobing, but also on whether the company’s governance leadership has the determination to break path dependency and drive deeper reforms.

For this long-established regional liquor enterprise, the midlife crisis has already arrived, and its path to break through is just beginning.

As for how Yingjia Gongjiu will develop in the future, Bowang Finance will continue to follow.