Sino Grandness

[Oldman9]

As I said, I'm sure Garden Fresh does exist in the other provinces but from my experience I've yet to find any despite numerous supermarket and convenience store visits in Sichuan, Fujian, Zhejiang and Shanghai. While I'm sure they do exist, the difficulty in finding them shows that they are few and far between. On the contrary, brands like Vitasoy, Tropicana and Nongfu Orchard are very easily found, more befitting of a top 10 Chinese fruit juice brand in China.

You know it's funny, I remember attending a company briefing where they responded to some of the Newman9 allegations. Newman9 had criticized Company for using Frost & Sullivan, and cited the recent example of Tianhe Chemicals using Frost & Sullivan, then later proving to be a fraud. Company responded by citing a couple of examples in which HK and US listed Chinese companies had used Euromonitor and then later turned out to have accounting issues as well. Their stance at that time was "why attack Frost & Sullivan when Euromonitor has faced similar issues as well?" So now all of a sudden now that they have gotten Euromonitor, Euromonitor is now infallible?

In fact I would like to quote something interesting from the Newman9 report. "A criticism of Euromonitor data is that it is somewhat subjective and relies heavily on conversations with industry participants as well as company furnished information. However, the work done by Euromonitor is further corroborated by Nielsen, which uses objective scanner data. Garden Fresh is not found in the top 13, which is as far as Nielsen breaks out the data. Nielsen shows the #13 company, Beiqi, had estimated retail sales value of RMB 135 million." If this is true, this means that Nielsen is the only one out of the 3 that uses objective scanner data from supermarkets and stores to measure sales, which needless to say, would be as close to the truth as you can get.

Ultimately, what this teaches you is to never outsource your research and due diligence to third parties. That is just laziness in my opinion. Whatever the brand name, however rich they may be, they all are humans too, and humans get things wrong from time to time. Furthermore, to them this is an almost negligible percentage of their overall portfolios. They can afford the risk. Can we? In the end, they are not responsible for your money and own investment - you are. My own research in China makes me very uncomfortable about the Company. My only advice to you, is to go to China if possible, and do your own objective research first, then make your own decision.

Hi Cracker

thank you for your input.

can i know where you check ? pop n mom shops?
and what price are these outlet selling the drinks?

thanks
oldman9