The Wars Between Yakult and Vitagen in a Decade Long Battle For Market Leader
If you always loves cultured drink then you will know that there are two familiar brand co-exist in the market which is the Vitagen and Yakult. On June 22, 1977, Singaporeans will find The Straits TImes (ST) with the greatest breakthrough in cultured milk drink where the official opening of a plan in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia which is the Vitagen product, while during that time not much of people will be claiming to be the land of probiotic culture or Lactobacillus-driven industries.
Which is then Minoru Shirota, the President of LB Co or Yakult has discovered the presence of bacterial floral that will survive through the gut after ingestion which eventually lead to the first fermented bacteria containing drink which is commercialise as Yakult in 1935. LB.Co which started with their healthier green tea drink then slowly becomes a producer and distrbuter of probiotic drinks as in 2005, Asahi acquired a majority stake in LB (Nagoya) Ltd and LB (Tokyo) Ltd which later Yakult will team up with a Singapore entity to starts increasing their footsteps here in Singapore. Later on, Cerebos Singapore a joint venture company between Temasek Holdings and RHS, a British Food MNC has teamed up with Yakult in a 50-50 joint venture which involved an investment of $6 million, half a million advertising campaign and equipment installation worth $1.9 million at Cerebos factory at Hillview Avenue.
Then Yakult officially started to sell in Singapore at August 1979, which will then started their war against Vitagen with some series of advertisement. But during that time, Vitagen has managed to win the first battle with their creative child scribble advertisement. However, Yakult later started to run ads during that decade where it started to get little by little into the heart of Singaporean.
On May 15, 1986, Yakult manage to claims lead in the cultured milk market with their amassed 75 percent of the cultured milk in Singapore. However, the whole percentage thing seem to be different in the perspective of Vitagen and Vitagen would start to question the 75 percent figure. While Yakult claim back that the number had been taken out of context and they had double their sales in the three years time. And Vitagen is having their higher market gain with their latest Vitagen low sugar or less sugar which dominated it’s own less sugar cultured drink market, but not in the overall cultured drink. But instead, Yakult with their 75% is the overall facts that they have a larger coverage on cultured milk drinks.
But this position war has not ended where later when the original glass Yakult Bottle were being replaced with a different material and plastic bottle today. And after a long battle in a period of time, MDI and Yakult agreed to resolve their intellectual rights dispute on a Global basis by a Settlement Agreement in March 1993 where the settlement of not able to share details of the resolution, we are able to share that following the settlement, both companies have separately agreed to mutually co-exist in various other jurisdictions.
Then later, both the company started to have different flavour which both also started to offer their product in a sort of huge variety way or flavour in the cultured market. But this battle is yet to be over as Yakult might be the everyone choice today but Vitagen has clearly won’t the previous earlier advertisement where Vitagen is a drink for kids when it comes to cultured milk drink, but Yakult has manage to secure the own adult market of cultured drink. So which drink support are you?
