The Star Market Daily reported on November 21 (Reporter Gao Mengyang, Intern Reporter Li Jiayi) that recently, several sanitary pad brands have faced consumer doubts due to discrepancies between actual and labeled lengths. Many consumers have conducted tests and found that the vast majority of sanitary pad brands exhibit signs of cutting corners, including ABC, Sofy, Kotex, Whisper, Jieting, and Seven Degrees Space.

Among them, the ABC brand has drawn widespread attention due to inappropriate comments made by customer service when responding to consumer doubts. The ABC customer service bluntly stated during the response that a discrepancy of 1-2 centimeters is a normal error, "If you can't accept it, you can choose not to buy." Many netizens have criticized their poor attitude and shirking of responsibility.

After the reporter inquired about ABC's sales channels and visited offline malls, it was found that the ABC Tmall flagship store and Douyin flagship store have removed all commodities and posted an apology statement on their store homepage, while their self-operated official flagship store on jd.com and offline supermarkets can still purchase related products.

Multiple online stores have removed commodities while offline sales channels remain open.

Public information shows that the ABC brand was founded in 1998 and is affiliated with Jingxing Personal Care. According to official website information, brands under Jingxing Personal Care include ABC, which focuses on high-end women's personal care domestically, and the private care brand Free·Fly, designed for young girls, with products including sanitary pads, panty liners, menstrual pants, wet wipes, and care liquids.

Recently, the reporter visited several convenience stores and supermarkets in shanghai, including Lawson, RT-Mart, and Lianhua, and noticed that the ABC brand series sanitary pads involved in the incident are still being sold on the store shelves.

Employees at several supermarkets stated that they were unaware of the ABC incident online and had not received any notification to stop selling products from this brand. "If there’s any issue with this brand and the company decides to remove it from sale, a unified notification will be sent to all the stores," said an employee.

A staff member from a certain supermarket told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that there has been a long-term shortage of ABC sanitary pads at the store, but suddenly in the past two days, supplies have been restored. A reporter found that the abc series sanitary pads were mostly relaunched in the store after November 10.

In response, ABC officially replied that the inventory situation of offline sales channels is decided by dealers, and the specific circumstances are not very clear.

According to a report released by the Joint Research Industrial Institute titled '2025-2031 Deep Research and Market Panorama Assessment Report on Women's Care and Sanitary Products Market in China,' the online channel's market share of women's care sanitary products has increased from 1% to 30% in 2013, becoming the main sales channel.

On November 13, ABC released an apology on multiple platforms including weibo, Taobao store, and jd.com, stating that inappropriate comments from ABC customer service circulating online were made by the customer service of authorized dealer shops and do not represent ABC's brand stance. In the future, there will be rectifications and training for related dealers, strengthened management of internal and external partners, product upgrades, and acceptance of public supervision.

Starting from the 17th, ABC brand's Taobao store and Douyin store have taken all products off the shelves. Currently, on both platforms, the product links display tips such as 'product sold out' and 'delivery not supported in this area.'

A reporter called the phone number provided in ABC's apology announcement, and the after-sales staff informed the reporter: 'We have taken the products off the shelves on Taobao and Douyin because we received too many malicious orders recently, which filled up the stock. Therefore, we had no choice but to take them down. Currently, there is still stock on jd.com. If you want to purchase, you can order through the jd.com self-operated store or Meituan Preferred.'

Regarding the online claims of sanitary pads being 'cutting corners' and pH values not meeting women's physiological needs, ABC stated that they are currently upgrading the products in response to the questions raised by online consumers. The pH value of ABC sanitary pads has consistently remained slightly acidic, which better aligns with the sanitary environment needed for women's health.

The parent company is aiming for an IPO.

As early as June 25, 2018, the official website of the Securities Regulatory Commission released the pre-disclosure materials for Jingxing Personal Care's IPO. The information shows that Jingxing Personal Care intends to publicly issue no more than 41.5 million shares and plans to raise 0.43 billion yuan (excluding issuance costs), aiming to be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

However, in May 2019, due to the involvement of the tutoring institution gf sec and the auditing firm Zhengzhong Zhujiang in the financial fraud case of Kangmei Pharmaceutical, which was under investigation by the Securities Regulatory Commission, Jingxing Personal Care's path to listing was subsequently halted.

Not until September 2021 did Jingxing Personal Care make a comeback by signing a listing tutoring agreement with citic sec and filing with the Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau on September 16, intending to list on the A-share market.

According to the twelfth progress report on the first public offering and listing tutoring work of Guangdong Jingxing Health Care Industrial Co., Ltd. released by citic sec in October this year, from January to September 2024, the issuer will continue to improve the sales strategies of various sales channels while continuously promoting the implementation of various regulatory works. According to the tutoring work group’s understanding of the issuer, the issuer will continue to optimize the product structure and marketing policies in the future, concentrating resources on hot markets and product areas to maintain a healthy development trend in the company's stable and normalized operation.

However, the report also mentioned that the current domestic listing regulatory environment is becoming increasingly strict, continuously increasing the on-site inspection intensity during the declaration and review stages, proposing high requirements for the management capabilities, profitability, and research and development capabilities of the companies intending to go public.

Jingxing Personal Care is also well aware of this. Its prospectus published in 2018 states that brand reputation is crucial to the company's business scale and market competition, and complaints or lawsuits from consumers due to other reasons could damage the company's brand image and reputation, adversely affecting its operations and performance.