Rapid growth online, long lines offline, and look at the rising stars of the Chinese beverage market——
There are "material" drinks that consumers love to drink (decoding new consumer brand ③)
In 2020, Tmall’s “Double 11” topped the coffee category and won the first place in the category of water and beverages. The Wuhan branch of milk tea opened on the first day with a long line of 100 meters... These achievements did not come from the traditional giants who have been in the beverage market for many years. It is a young brand that has not been established for a long time.
In recent years, a batch of new domestic beverage stars, such as Sandton, Vitality Forest, and Cha Yan Yue Se, have successfully broken the circle.
For the impression of cutting-edge beverages, many people still remain in the "high-value" packaging design and "net celebrity" marketing strategy.
However, in today's fierce market competition in various fields, choosing the correct subdivision of the track and accurately grasping the needs is the only way for these brands to stand out.
After that, how to retain consumers and maintain the "long red" is the key to their sustainable development.
Accurately solve market pain points
Take out colorful, serially numbered cans of coffee, pour milk, and in the blink of an eye, a cup of coffee is ready.
Coffee lover Xiao Wang started his daily enjoyment time.
"Why is it called three and a half meals?"
"Perhaps I hope you can have half a day for coffee after three meals!" Xiao Wang responded with a smile.
To provide coffee lovers with a new experience of drinking anytime, anywhere, this is the positioning of three and a half coffee.
The number of mini cans is also a way of experience, with different numbers representing different baking levels.
In the eyes of the founder, Wu Jun, it is this digital approach that has transformed the professional language of coffee.
In the field of coffee, premium freshly ground coffee is delicious, but not cheap and convenient. Traditional instant coffee is cheap and convenient, but the taste cannot be guaranteed. It is often subject to external conditions such as hot water and stirring.
How to solve the long-standing problems?
Three and a half relies on low-temperature slow extraction and intelligent freeze-drying technology to solve this problem. Not only does it require no stirring, it melts in 3 seconds, and it can also restore the natural flavor of coffee to the greatest extent.
"The most interesting thing is that coffee can be paired with various drinks such as milk, ice water, soda, tea, etc. There are many recipes shared on the Internet, and I sometimes try to try different ways of drinking." Xiao Wang said.
With the consumption upgrade, people's health needs become more urgent, and "sugar control" has gradually become a new life trend.
In the beverage market, the contradiction between goodness and health often plagues consumers.
Good drinks generally have high sugar content, while low-sugar drinks are not good.
When making choices, consumers are often caught up in the entanglement between the satisfaction of a good drink and the guilt of sugar intake.
At this moment, Yuanqi Forest seized the opportunity.
"We found that in the beverage market dominated by traditional giants, the needs of young consumers have not been well met. Their thinking is,'I want to be healthy and beautiful, but it's not good to drink!' In order to meet their needs, We must work hard on research and development.” Zong Hao, vice president of Yuanqi Forest, said that the first establishment of Yuanqi Forest was not a company, but an R&D center.
Erythritol, a sucrose substitute, is the answer found by Yuanqi Forest.
With this natural sweet substance, it not only ensures the sweet taste, but also avoids heat generation.
Based on this, they launched a variety of flavors of burning tea and sparkling water, featuring "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 card", which are deeply loved by consumers at home and abroad.
Last month, the news that a milk tea shop opened in Wuhan hit hot searches.
Until now, Sun Cuiying, the owner of Cha Yan Yue Se, still has fresh memories of the queue at that time.
The decorative style of Chinese style, the trademark symbol of Tuanfanjia, and the poetic product names such as Orchid Latte, Shengsheng Oolong, Zhengzheng Paper Kite and so on, make this milk tea brand from Changsha fit people's pursuit of traditional culture.
Chinese traditional culture, including tea culture, is extensive and profound. Why not make a cup of milk tea with a combination of Chinese and Western culture?
Under the guidance of this idea, Cha Yanyue Se adopts the espresso process, replacing the espresso in the coffee latte with Chinese tea.
In this way, the velvety milk foam blends into the fresh tea fragrance, adding a bit of fresh Chinese tea.
Grow by trying to reflect
Repeated explorations have created today's popularity, and continuous attempts to reflect and record the growth of the brand.
"In 2018, we launched super-instant products, but we did explore for a long time before that." said Duan Chu, head of Sandunban brand.
Hanger coffee was launched in 2015 and cold brew coffee in 2017, but the emergence of these two generations of products has not attracted widespread consumer attention.
"In the beginning, the market did not have a wide awareness of the brand, but because of this, we have more room to explore new flavors."
In the process of repeated product research and testing, the three-and-a-half-half team began to look for consumers for testing, fully listen to the experience opinions of gourmet experts, professional organizations, regular customers, and tripartite organizations, and reflect on problems from a large number of market feedbacks to seek breakthroughs.
In the iterative polishing of new products, they focused on technological innovation to create "explosive models."
A similar experience also happened in the vitality forest.
At the beginning of its establishment, the company launched two flavored beverages, "Obviously Not Fat" and "Shifen Meili", focusing on weight loss and beauty.
But once it went on the market, the response was mediocre. Although the series was renamed later, the sales situation was still not optimistic, and the production was finally announced in March 2020.
In terms of offline sales, facing old brands that have been cultivating the market for many years, new brands have obvious advantages in appearing in large supermarkets and stores.
Therefore, Yuanqi Forest chose convenience stores such as Bianlifeng, 711 and Lawson.
The advantage of convenience stores is that they are located in first- and second-tier cities, and the consumer groups are mainly white-collar workers and young people. “This fits the consumption habits of our target users. They can drink as soon as they want.” Zong Hao said.
If the above are just small fragments of the growth of the vitality forest, what is the biggest challenge it encounters?
"The biggest difficulty we encounter is not so much from technology and channels as from ideas and values." Zong Hao said that in the Internet age, how brands think and do will become more and more clear to consumers .
He said that in the traditional beverage market, companies often first use product revenue for channels, marketing and profits, and the rest do research and development.
On the other hand, Yuanqi Forest changed its value concept, first considering what users need, and then researching and producing products regardless of cost.
Regardless of the success of the initial product, the "sugar-free" direction has been firmly locked.
Compared with the three and a half meals and the vitality forest, the tea Yanyue color maintains the "slow pace" as always.
When many outsiders analyzed that deepening a city is a very effective strategy, Sun Cuiying expressed a kind of helplessness, "most of our managers are ordinary employees who accompany the growth of the brand. They have extremely high loyalty, but lack management. Skills. Not going to open stores all over the country is because there are not enough manpower, including professional managers."
Although management has shortcomings, the attitude is very sincere.
This sincerity is more reflected in the communication with customers.
Insiders describe Cha Yan Yue Se as "an affinity for the little girl next door."
"Their family likes to nag, buy a cup of milk tea, the staff can keep telling you about all kinds of tea drinking matters, and the receipt can have three or four hundred words of paragraph-style suggestions, which is quite interesting." Xiao Chen said.
"The affinity of tea beauty comes from grounding!" Sun Cuiying said, the official account also has a food safety self-check and self-correction section, and will actively show the store’s poor performance and everyone’s comments. "We will not cover up imperfections. , This will urge us to improve."
From "Booming Red" to "Changing Red"
The "popularity" in front of us is short-lived after all, and we should focus on how to move towards the "changing red".
After all, in the beverage market, technical barriers are low, and tastes are quickly refurbished. New brands are catching up, and old brands are also introducing new ones.
In Sanban, if you want to retain consumers, you must grow up with them.
Specifically, it is to play with them.
"We have launched a'return to flight plan', that is, recycling empty coffee shells. Users make appointments through an exclusive mini program, and on designated open days, go to designated locations to exchange the empty shells for themed materials." Wu Jun said, this greatly enriches users' Product experience, from buying to drinking, even to losing the empty shell, can have a different feeling.
The "Return to Navigation Plan" has been held for three seasons and has been launched in 110 living spaces in 43 cities across the country. The number of participants exceeded 40,000, and more than 2 million coffee shells were recovered.
In addition to recycling, the remaining empty shells can also be used to grow potted plants and make ornaments, attracting many young consumers to take pictures and share on social platforms.
Research shows that young consumers are more willing to try different brands instead of repurchasing a single brand multiple times.
In this context, co-branding has become a common operation for brands to increase their popularity.
In Changsha, Sandunban and Cha Yanyue Se jointly opened a store.
What's interesting is that the two parties have retained their own concepts and design styles, each has its own store name and space, and the raw materials are shared.
"He uses coffee to make tea, and I use tea to make coffee. It took a long time to adjust the flavor. This is not a single-level joint name, but an integrated one." Wu Jun said.
In addition to the joint name, Chayan Yuese opened an offline retail store in October last year, named "Chayan Garden Party."
Tea, cups, notebooks, canvas bags, blind boxes, etc. are neatly placed on the shelves, expanding the brand consumption experience scene and providing consumers with more choices.
"In most cases, we are doing it while watching. In the past two years, we have no idea of entering other cities. First, we will do well in Changsha, Changde, and Wuhan markets." Sun Cuiying said that the increase in traffic sometimes has a backlash, but the tea looks happy We will insist on making every cup of milk tea with warmth, so that customers can happily drink cost-effective milk tea.
"All'Changhong' brands may have a process of'popularity', but in the beverage industry, we clearly realize that marketing is only a skill. If the quality of the product itself is not good enough, it may be the first choice for consumers. Mouth, but can’t make consumers want to continue drinking.” Zong Hao said.
After nearly 4 years of cooperation with domestic first-class foundries, Yuanqi Forest decided to build its own factory.
In 2020, the first factory will be put into operation in Chuzhou, Anhui, with an annual production capacity of 450 million bottles.
This year, the Chuzhou Phase II plant, Guangzhou Zhaoqing plant and Tianjin plant will be put into production one after another.
Industry insiders believe that self-built factories can improve the control of core products and have a faster response speed than the foundry model, which is conducive to improving the research and production capabilities and market competitiveness of subsequent new products.
Beverage is an instant consumer product.
If consumers can buy the whole box and cultivate their enthusiasm for consumption and consumption habits, there will be more room for product repurchase and brand sinking.
"We found that the number of users buying FCL online is increasing." Zong Hao said that this is a great encouragement to the company. Yuanqi Forest will continue to improve quality and innovation, and provide more delicious and healthy drinks for everyone.
Reporter: Shi Zhipeng