A company recently unveiled its new fruit product, but it also engages in financial technology development. Is it normal to have a FinTech-fruit juice hybrid as a business model?
According to a Wednesday announcement, Future FinTech Group Inc. has released a line of fruit-based enzyme drinks under its Chinese Hedetang food brand. Called Xian Mei Duo, the product purportedly retains fruit nutrients and contains no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. Sounds like a yummy drink, right?
But with great juice power comes great responsibility … in FinTech development, apparently. Connected to the business’ fruit juice operations are research and development surrounding blockchain-based digital asset systems. Anybody would certainly say that is a strange pairing.
It is possible, of course, for companies to diversify and offer different services, but the items within the pair are generally related to one another. For example, it is not uncommon to see a Taco Bell-KFC combo restaurant while walking down the streets of San Francisco. The restaurants may represent two different cuisines, but the concept is the same – food.
Fruit juice and FinTech, on the other hand, do not seem to jive, unless the company plans to develop IoT-enabled fruit blenders (I doubt it). From a layperson’s perspective, it appears the company may be undertaking an elaborate marketing ploy to gain traction among investors by tacking on words such as “FinTech” and “blockchain” (see: Long Blockchain and the iced tea company’s foray into the space). Or the corporation could have actually jumped onto the crypto bandwagon, largely ditching (but still retaining some of) its fruit juice past. I mean, the company recently changed its name from SkyPeople Fruit Juice Inc. to Future FinTech Group Inc. Odd.
The latter possibility makes the most sense considering that the company’s stock has significantly dropped over the past year. Perhaps this is the corporation’s call out to the void to stay relevant in a quickly evolving entrepreneurial landscape – blockchain technology, virtual reality, and other tech developments are all the rage these days.
Considering that logic, though, why didn’t the SkyPeople team start fresh and create a new company? The whole setup smells weird to me – or maybe that’s just the durians.
Daniel Putney is a full-time writer for ETHNews. He received his bachelor’s degree in English writing from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also studied journalism and queer theory. In his free time, he writes poetry, plays the piano, and fangirls over fictional characters. He lives with his partner, three dogs, and two cats in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.
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