A | 凤凰网财经《公司研究院》
#“双十一黑板报”系列#
刷直播间时，你是否也曾被一款名为“参半专研清新美白牙膏”的产品吸引？
主播语气激昂如喊口号，反复抛出“3天美白去渍提升271%”、“24小时清新口气”的诱人承诺，再搭配“限时降价”、“免费试用小样”、“7天不满意直接退”的多重福利，这样的组合拳，很难不让人心动下单。
过去一年，参半狂揽20亿销售额，硬是在牙膏这个“藏”在亿万家庭洗手间、被国际巨头垄断数十年的日用品红海里，撕开一道口子，成了实打实的网红黑马品牌。
With pressure mounting to avert a government shutdown, heightened by culture war demands from House conservatives burned by previous brawls, the House speaker faces a difficult decision – risk a shutdown or risk the gavel.
That was 2015. But 2023 is treading a similar course.
For former House Speaker John Boehner, it was the final chapter in a lengthy standoff with House conservatives that contributed to his resignation from Congress after 25 years and almost five in the top job. For current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, just seven months into his tenure, the outcome remains an open question.
With a looming deadline to fund the government and much left to be accomplished upon Congress’ return from recess, McCarthy and other congressional leaders expressed willingness earlier this month to pass a stop-gap measure to keep the government funded, buying lawmakers more time to work out the 12 appropriations bills they’ve been pursuing. But demands from the House Freedom Caucus have complicated the effort and put McCarthy in yet another bind from the right that analysts say could be the one to put his leadership position on the line.
“This is now the most important fight he faces as speaker and the choice between kind of the campaigning arm, the House Freedom Caucus arm, and the actual governing arm of keeping a government running,” says Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs Program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
McCarthy has walked a fine line with the conservatives since the speaker battle, when they took him 15 grueling rounds before granting him his win, and in turn gained the power to bring up a vote for his ouster, lowering the threshold to just a single lawmaker.
So when the House Freedom Caucus announced it would oppose a stop-gap measure to keep the government funded unless certain conservative provisions are includes – like addressing DOJ "weaponization" and ending "woke" Pentagon policies – it prompted a confrontation with McCarthy that’s been brewing and bubbling in fits and starts for months, ready to boil over.
Such legislation would lose support among House Democrats and face steep odds in the Democrat-controlled Senate, making a shutdown likely. But without the support of conservatives on a clean continuing resolution and only a few votes to spare in the GOP narrow majority, McCarthy will likely need to rely on Democrats to approve a stop-gap measure – a move sure to provoke the hard-liners in his caucus.
“This is where his choice comes in,” Burgat says. “If he takes Democratic support, which likely he'll need to do, then that opens himself up to at least a motion to vacate because it only takes one now.”
The contours of the standoff were previewed during the debate over the debt ceiling, as House conservatives demanded controversial spending cuts and policies that put McCarthy in a difficult negotiating position with Democrats and the White House. Ultimately, Democratic votes on the debt ceiling agreement outnumbered Republicans in the House in a turn of events that infuriated some members of the House Freedom Caucus.
That same small but vocal minority – numbering in the mid-30s out of 222 Republicans in the chamber, though the caucus doesn’t publicize the exact number – made their frustration known just days later, when they blocked a routine vote, sending the chamber into a week-long gridlock. At the chamber’s reunification, McCarthy told reporters they had agreed to “sit down and talk more” in future spending negotiations. And shortly after, Republican appropriators agreed to mark up the 12 spending bills well below the levels agreed to in the debt ceiling deal in what appeared to be a major concession made to the House Freedom Caucus that has colored the funding process so far.
But this time, emboldened by the shortcomings in the last fiscal battle, they may come out with a greater show of force, as McCarthy faces what political science professor Rob Mellen Jr. calls a “no win situation.”
“I think this might be the fight they're willing to go to the mat for,” says Mellen, of the University of South Florida. “That this time if he really doesn't feel like he's going to compromise with them and give them what they want, that they may be willing to just say, ‘Hey, we'll shut this down. We'll go that direction, and we'll remove you if you go to the Democrats.’”
Members of the Freedom Caucus have for months suggested that they would be willing to let the government shut down if they don’t agree with the funding package. Indeed, for the conservatives, who largely hail from safe districts, there isn’t much to lose, as analysts note that if the government shuts down and Republicans are blamed, the conservatives won’t be on the chopping block like their colleagues in swing districts.
But some have noted that for the Freedom Caucus, perhaps armed with the understanding that their demands have little chance of becoming reality, the ultimate goal may be McCarthy’s removal after all.
“It just puts McCarthy in this bind and sort of forces his hand almost to do what he did before, which is get the government funded with Democratic votes, and in so doing, they can respond by triggering a call for his removal,” says David C. Barker, professor of government and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “And I think that's what they're agitating toward. That's what they want. That's kind of what they wanted from the beginning. And they've been looking for a mechanism to do it. And I think maybe all along they've planned on this being the one.”
True to form, Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas didn’t mince words about McCarthy’s dilemma with the Freedom Caucus last week, calling a motion to oust McCarthy “inevitable” if he continues to rely on Democrats.
“McCarthy’s going to have to listen to the people on the right or else he’s going to have to rely on the Democrats to pass this,” Jackson said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “But I’m telling you if that happens, I mean, it’s going to be detrimental to leadership in the House if they blow off the concerns of the people like myself and Freedom Caucus and some of the other people on the right that are making reasonable demands in this process – it’s going to be a problem.”
Whether McCarthy can rely on Democrats to back a CR is one thing. But whether they’ll protect his gavel is another matter altogether.
Some dynamics suggest at least some Democrats would come to his aid, like reports of a coalition of Democrats offering McCarthy a deal during the debt ceiling fight that they would help him keep his job should he responsibly raise the debt ceiling. Another calculation for Democrats is McCarthy’s possible replacement, who likely wouldn’t align more closely with their positions, making McCarthy’s retention arguably in Democrats' best interest.
But even if McCarthy survives a motion for his ouster with the help of Democrats or calls conservatives’ bluff and his speakership isn’t ultimately threatened, analysts say his hold on the conference will remain shaky and his ability to get things done stunted.
“He can only afford to lose four. And if there's 40 that are just mad at him all the time, then they're going to be reluctant to support him even if it's on things that they want to,” Burgat says. “They've proven willing to shut down the chamber even when it's run by their own party. And so, as much as he'll defang them on this one vote, he'll need them again for any Republican priorities to be passed out of the House heading into an election year.”
It’s a dynamic that haunted Boehner for years and ultimately contributed to his early departure. And the House Freedom Caucus has only grown bigger and more brash, releasing statements and listing demands publicly, while McCarthy’s margin is just a fraction of what the former speaker’s was in 2015.
“McCarthy is closer to being one of them than Boehner ever was,” Barker says. “Boehner really was more of a traditional Chamber of Commerce-type of Republican whereas McCarthy stylistically and policy-wise for some time now has been a MAGA-friendly flame thrower right in line with them. He certainly was during the Trump years. And so, you know, it just shows their willingness to eat their own.”
Unlike McCarthy, Boehner was already on his way out, planning to resign months later, when he made the decision to step down. Even then, he noted that had he not been planning to leave, he wouldn’t have done so when talk of a motion to vacate began swirling.
“It was never about the vote. There was never any doubt about whether I could survive a vote, but I don’t want my members to have to go through this, and I certainly don’t want the institution to go through this, especially when I knew I was thinking about walking out the door anyway,” he told reporters at the time.
When asked what advice he would give to McCarthy, then his presumed successor, he urged the California Republican to protect the institution. And when questioned by another reporter about whether the next speaker would ultimately face the same fate, he earnestly replied.
B |
其实，大家的争议点很明确，就是真的能否实现“3天美白提升217%”的宣传。
针对这个问题，参半官方抖音旗舰店的客服也给出了回应，说页面宣传的“3天美白”效果，是经过第三方权威机构检测得出的结论，但每个人的口腔环境、饮食习惯不一样，具体用起来的效果自然会有差异，而且牙齿变白不是一下子就能实现的，得慢慢积累，通常坚持用才能看到更明显的变化。
凤凰网财经《公司研究院》在产品的销售页面，确实有检测报告，但具体检测内容却很难看清。只是有大字写着“相较于对照组，使用一次后美白去渍提升170%，3天美白去渍提升271%具有美白去渍的功效。”
而在这款产品的网络销售页面上，“效果因人而异”的提示说明，只用浅色字体放在了最下方，很容易被用户忽略。
同时，凤凰网财经《公司研究院》在广东省药品监督管理局网站上，可查询到该款牙膏的备案信息，备案的外包装上，在“3天美白”等宣传旁边，也标注了“该效果是在实验室条件下，实际效果因人而异”。
C |
上海申宜禾律师事务所律师李海权表示，从消费者的角度来看，这种具体的功效宣称会对其购买决策产生重大影响，消费者往往是基于这些明确的功效承诺才选择购买产品。这类宣称属于对功效的具体量化表述，需要有相应的科学研究、检测数据等作为支撑。
“如果商家无法提供充分的证据来证明这些功效的真实性和准确性，那么即使在瓶身或宣传页面上备注“效果因人而异”，也不能免除其虚假宣传的责任。
D | ”他表示
02、“网红黑马”到“长红”并不容易
其实在引发这些争议前，参半已经在牙膏市场里闯出了不小的名气，甚至成为近几年“行业黑马”。
而背后的操盘者尹阔早年在流水线上当过工人，在西餐厅做过帮厨，也在酒店做过杂活。此后他跨界创业，涉足智能硬件与电动牙刷领域，直到2018年3月创立口腔护理品牌“参半”，才算真正找到了方向。
E |
2020年9月，参半的益生菌漱口水上线，没想到80天就卖了1个亿，一下子打开了市场。
2022年，参半杀入牙膏领域。
和传统牙膏总盯着“亮齿、防蛀”不一样，它一出场就换了个思路——想让大家像护理皮肤那样，好好滋养自己的口腔。
F | 这个特别的定位，成了它打开市场的第一把钥匙。
线下零售监测机构马上赢的数据显示，从2024年第四季度开始，参半就挤入了线下牙膏市场的TOP10；到了今年上半年，在国内线下牙膏TOP10品牌里，市场份额和销售额的同比增速双双拿到第一，分别达到184%和291%。
