2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Byhealth Co.,Ltd.'s founding. In the "2025 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders," Chairman Liang Yunchao expressed his determination with the motto "Thirty Years of Perseverance, Attack as Defense," setting ambitious goals. However, after experiencing a "hard landing" in 2024, and with 2025 now past its midpoint, Byhealth has neither succeeded in its offensive nor maintained its defensive position, with both revenue and net profit declining. Particularly as young people become the main consumer force in the health supplement market, unlike emerging brands that resonate with young consumers, Byhealth's channels and product types remain more favored by elderly consumers. This year, declining performance, loss of flagship products, and sharp reduction in distributors indicate that Byhealth has yet to emerge from its downturn.
**Advertising No Longer Drives Sales**
As a devoted follower of "punk wellness," 30-year-old Xiao Rui frankly told reporters that Byhealth, which is the same age as her, already appears somewhat "outdated" in her eyes. Her last impression of the brand was seeing her grandmother consuming their protein powder. In comparison, she prefers Swisse endorsed by Dilraba Dilmurat, considering it "a more natural and healthier new choice." This reflects the health supplement preferences of today's young generation.
Compared to Swisse endorsed by Dilraba Dilmurat and Nutrend endorsed by Lu Yi, Byhealth seems to have made little splash in marketing. When reporters visited a chain pharmacy in Xicheng district as consumers, pharmacy staff's introduction of Byhealth's brand ambassadors still referenced Yao Ming's endorsement in 2010 and Olympic champion Liu Xuan's endorsement period, which was at least 10 years ago.
However, Byhealth has consistently invested heavily in marketing, with high sales expenses being an unavoidable part of the company's cost structure and long occupying the core portion of operating expenses. Taking 2023 as an example, when Byhealth's historical revenue was closest to the 10 billion yuan milestone, sales expenses reached 3.859 billion yuan, a year-over-year increase of 21.77%, while operating revenue grew only 19.66% during the same period. This "scissors gap" between the two growth rates partially reflects the weakening return on marketing investment per unit.
Entering 2024, this trend continued more directly, with sales expenses decreasing 21.45% year-over-year, but operating revenue declining by 27.30%, significantly exceeding the expense reduction rate. This not only further confirms the weakening effectiveness of marketing-driven growth but also indicates the company faces more severe balance challenges between cost control and stable growth.
In the first half of 2025, Byhealth's sales expenses remained high at 1.233 billion yuan, down 32.33% from 1.822 billion yuan in the same period last year, while operating revenue fell 23.43% year-over-year. Although the expense decline exceeded the revenue decline, showing some efficiency improvement, continued negative revenue growth still indicates the company has not fundamentally reversed the challenge of insufficient sales momentum.
**Cost Reduction Without Efficiency Gains**
Where did all these sales expenses go? From the sales composition before 2024, advertising expenses have always occupied the absolute majority of this expenditure, followed by market promotion expenses. As mentioned, since 2021, sales expense growth has far exceeded revenue growth, with equivalent proportions of sales expenses failing to generate corresponding income.
Therefore, Byhealth's cost reduction tool was clearly aimed at sales expenses, but the "efficiency enhancement" goal could not be achieved simultaneously. Despite significantly cutting marketing spending, the company failed to effectively curb the declining performance trend, falling into a "cost reduction is easy, efficiency enhancement is difficult" dilemma.
From 2024 to the first half of 2025, Byhealth significantly compressed sales expenses, with market promotion fees and advertising expenses showing particularly notable declines. In 2024, both decreased by 37.47% and 31.85% year-over-year respectively; in the first half of 2025, they continued to contract significantly, with advertising expenses falling over 50% year-over-year.
However, expense reductions did not bring expected benefit improvements. Instead, the company's revenue continued under pressure, with 2024 operating revenue falling 27.3% and net profit attributable to shareholders plummeting 62.62%, making this year the most severe performance decline in Byhealth's recent history. In the first half of 2025, revenue of 3.532 billion yuan still fell 23.43% year-over-year, marking nine consecutive quarters of decline; net profit attributable to shareholders of 737 million yuan decreased 17.34% year-over-year; adjusted net profit was 693 million yuan, a decline of 16.59%.
Particularly noteworthy is that although Q2 2025 saw 71.44% year-over-year growth in net profit attributable to shareholders, Lu Kelin, International Registered Innovation Management Expert and Founder & CEO of Lukejima Technology, told reporters this was typical "profit squeezing" - achieving short-term profit recovery through aggressive cost compression rather than fundamental business improvement. While this adjustment temporarily boosted profits, it's difficult to sustain.
Further analysis of the matching between expenses and performance reveals an even sharper contradiction of "cost reduction without efficiency gains." In 2024, despite sales expenses decreasing 21.45% year-over-year to 3.031 billion yuan, the sales expense ratio climbed to a historical high of 44.33%. In the first half of 2025, sales expenses decreased 32.33% year-over-year to 1.233 billion yuan, but the expense ratio remained high at 34.90%. This means that even with significant cost control, each yuan of sales expenses could leverage less revenue, with marketing efficiency actually declining. Massive marketing expenditures failed to convert into equivalent performance growth, instead continuously eroding profits, contrary to the original intention of "cost reduction and efficiency enhancement."
Additionally, the company comprehensively compressed management and R&D expenses. In the first half of 2025, R&D expenses were only 30.3934 million yuan, plummeting 56.45% year-over-year, less than a fraction of sales expenses. This "across-the-board" cost reduction strategy, while temporarily relieving profit pressure, may weaken the brand's long-term innovation capability and market competitiveness.
Looking back at Byhealth's development history, sales expenses once served as the "booster" for brand building. The company once rapidly improved brand recognition through marketing moves like signing Yao Ming as spokesperson, accelerated offline channel penetration, and ultimately entered the industry's first tier. However, in the current environment of intensified market competition and channel transformation impact, massive marketing spending has lost its "conversion magic." This large-scale cost reduction not only failed to activate performance growth but also weakened core long-term development momentum due to significant R&D investment cuts, falling into the dual dilemma of "cost reduction without efficiency gains, expense control still dragging profits."
In the 2024 annual report, the length of the "2025 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders" also quietly halved - from the usual four pages to just two pages. This barely noticeable shortening wrote a silent yet powerful footnote to Byhealth's cliff-like performance decline that year.
**Distributors "Retreating"**
The traffic dividends of live-streaming e-commerce and low-quality, low-price competition coexist, while Byhealth becomes increasingly unstable under the dual pressure of medical insurance reform and consumer differentiation.
In consumer interviews, reporters noticed that Byhealth shows obvious generational cognitive differences. In interviews with multiple health supplement consumers aged 20 to 40, reporters found that despite their varied purchasing preferences - some prioritizing cost-effectiveness, some becoming "ingredient parties" studying components, some enthusiastic about trying new products and knowing all about various new items, some valuing social attributes, and others steadfastly choosing imported brands - almost none of them considered Byhealth their first choice.
For example, young generation representative Xiao Rui frankly stated that its traditional channel advantages are weakening: "Byhealth was initially sold in supermarkets and pharmacies, some could use medical insurance. Now offline isn't working, and there are more competitors online." She bluntly said, "Byhealth needs to step up its game."
In stark contrast is the high recognition among middle-aged and elderly groups. Xiao Fang's mother is a typical representative: "My mom has always bought Byhealth's glucosamine on JD.com, probably because everyone around her takes it. The MoveFree I bought her was left unused." This reflects the trust and brand loyalty accumulated among middle-aged and older populations.
Behind this cognitive difference lies Byhealth's deep dependence on traditional channel paths and realistic impact. Byhealth rose successfully through offline channels early on, mainly supplying products to sales terminals like pharmacies and supermarkets through distributors or direct company sales. Especially in pharmacy channels, leveraging the trust endorsement of pharmaceuticals, Byhealth's products had higher prices with stable gross margins above 60%. This channel also became an important source of Byhealth's continued profitability.
But now, Byhealth is being backlashed by the channels it built. Since 2020, with tightening medical insurance policies clearly prohibiting the use of personal accounts for health supplement purchases, and fierce competition from online emerging brands (such as Nutrend, Swisse, etc.), its channel advantages are rapidly disappearing.
In 2024, the company lost ground in both online and offline channels, with revenues of 3.363 billion yuan and 3.418 billion yuan respectively, declining 25.35% and 29.79% year-over-year. This trend continued shrinking in the first half of 2025, with dual-channel revenues of 1.684 billion yuan and 1.798 billion yuan respectively, down 13.78% and 31.63% from the same period last year.
More alarming is the large-scale loss of distributors. From 2021 to 2024, Byhealth's distributor numbers were 1,070, 936, 938, and 738 respectively. In 2024 alone, Byhealth lost 200 distributors. In the first half of 2025, total distributors further plummeted to 640, with domestic distributors decreasing by 141 and overseas by 6.
The performance of flagship brands is equally concerning. In the first half of 2025, "Byhealth" main brand revenue fell 28.32%, "Jianliduo" dropped 30.35%, and "lifespace" domestic products declined 34.43%. "Jianliduo," once expected to be a major joint care product, saw revenue fall from over 1 billion yuan in 2022 to 411 million yuan in the first half of 2025.
The specialized joint health product "Jianliduo" is deeply trapped in a declining trajectory. From 2022 to the first half of 2025, this brand's revenue dropped from over 1 billion yuan to single digits, with declines of 14.09%, 2.52%, 31.51%, and 30.35% respectively.
Byhealth has actively responded, implementing distributor and terminal revival plans for offline channels, enriching main category product SKUs, launching mass-market priced products, and strengthening expense management to address difficulties, but reality remains harsh.
Field visits to multiple Beijing pharmacies revealed that despite "Jianliduo" still being promoted by staff, its pricing system is chaotic, with varying discount levels across different pharmacies and even within the same store. For example, the "Jianliduo Glucosamine Chondroitin Collagen Peptide Tablets" originally priced at 520 yuan/box can have promotional prices ranging from 390 yuan/box to 358 yuan/box, with larger purchases receiving bigger discounts. This reflects that terminal sales still rely on high discounts, with continuously weakening brand premium capability.
Even entering the live-streaming era, Byhealth's strongest products remain the "classic big three." Reporters observed in their live-streaming rooms that traditional health supplements like protein powder, calcium tablets, and multivitamins firmly occupy core positions on sales charts and recommendation spots.
Bai Wenxi, Deputy Director of China Enterprise Capital Alliance, told reporters: "Byhealth's channel moat is collapsing, while product differentiation and user operation capabilities haven't filled the gap. The next 1-2 years represent a life-or-death window for 'channel reform + product iteration.' If they can complete diversified offline layouts (community stores, supermarket experience areas) and launch high-repurchase functional new products, they still have a chance to maintain their leading position; otherwise, they will be continuously eroded by emerging brands and cross-border brands."
Under the multiple pressures of deepening medical insurance reform, consumer market differentiation, and online low-price competition, Byhealth is experiencing difficult transformation pains. Whether it can truly reach young groups and rebuild channel confidence while stabilizing its traditional base will be key to determining its future direction.
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