The founder of the tea: I opened a lot of failed stores, no one can rely only on marketing success

In the future, we hope to make the brand potential of the tea higher. I think what is most lacking in national brands is potential energy, many brands do not die in the speed of expansion, but die in the last potential energy is not enough.

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This southern teenager is floating and sinking in the tide of public opinion.

Before I met him, I had heard at least three friends recommend his product. In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, his stores have become a local phenomenon, a kind of pop culture, and many people often queue up for more than an hour to drink a cup of tea from his store. On the day we met him, we met a catering self-publisher and investor who waited at the appointed place two hours in advance and said he wanted to talk to ? Xiao Nie? to learn from him. And? Xiao Nie? He also realized that some of the big names he followed and admired on Weibo suddenly started commenting on the brand he founded.

On the other hand, every day on his phone screen, some accusations and criticisms pop up. They said that the taste of Xicha is not good, Xicha hires people to line up, Xicha will soon encounter problems, Xicha can not fire for long?

Standing in the center of the storm, this young man kept his pride and composure, but also let people sense his pressure and tension. After taking a picture with us, he realized that his expression was too serious just now. We took the picture again and he made an effort and restrained smile. As he walked us out the door, he returned to his slightly more serious expression.

He didn't want to respond to some of the voices on the web, but he talked to us about his ideas, his blueprints, and his past. In the mind of this young man who believes in Steve Jobs, responding to questions is not at all ? Not fun, not cool? He believes that time is on his side, and like Steve Jobs, his products, aesthetics and ideas will gradually shut up those who doubt him.

Initially started his business, he sold cell phones. One day, he found that this line can not go on, and many street tea drink store drinks without a little tea, just use some milk cover powder and then add some ? Ghost stuff? Mixed a little, on the customer door. He felt that he could make a different, better, more user-friendly tea drinks, and perhaps change the industry.

Unconvinced and unwilling, he set off. Xicha is now on fire, he feels that this is the natural reward for his efforts, and it is not surprising. And how far can he go? No one knows.

In any case, he has plenty of time,? The world is still an orchard waiting tenderly for me to ripen. (Simu Rong's words)?

His name is Nie Yunchen,? Xicha? founder, 26 years old.

Some time ago, a public article said that the R&D power of tea drinks is mainly in Taiwan, and that Xi Cha is a formula that Taiwanese masters helped adjust. This statement reflects a sense of cultural inferiority. Taiwan's tea drink industry does have a lot to learn, and we also work with some Taiwanese manufacturers that have R&D assistants from Taiwan who are very good, but that doesn't mean that our products are necessarily dependent on those.

Hi-Tea is our own research, including the blending of tea leaves, including going to the side of the tea workers, and communicate with the tea farmers to modify their production process, these are our own efforts to explore the research and development, there is no Taiwan's masters behind.

This is like the law of 10,000 hours, you start with no direction, a layman. It is decided to do this tea, and then only to research. Anything as long as you spend time and effort to study, there will always be a direction. Otherwise, human society will not progress, can only rely on inheritance, there will be no innovation.

The core of Hi-Tea is the product. Consumers are actually not so complex, young consumers mainly like our products.

It has always been, especially in unfamiliar places, outside that we find people queuing is completely absent, this is a fact, not the kind of issue that can be explored. We've never had to find someone to line up since we started five years ago, and I don't think that's actionable. If you just need to find a company and find some people to line up to achieve a brand, that's too easy, everyone can do it, and every store can do great business. This argument actually turns business into a standardized thing.

And the so-called engage? Hunger marketing? Even less true. Our company until now does not even have a marketing department, marketing department, only the planning department, the planning department is responsible for the public number of articles. Our public number is not marketing, I have my own judgment on this. If you pay attention to our public number, you can find that the whole article style, including the size of the text inside, the layout of the article, are the kind of not easy to detonate, not easy to be spread, no incitement. We never use exclamation points, never use big headlines, and never add special offers in the articles, it is deliberately de-marketed. Including the decoration, our decoration is a very cold style.

Because our products are explosive, it is easy to make people line up, so we hope that in all aspects other than the product, whether it is the image of the online image, or the image of the offline store, is a kind of cold system, will not intentionally engage in some of the so-called selfie points. We hope our overall style is balanced, do some combination with our products, and use our products themselves as marketing to earn money.

Our product is the first of its kind, something the industry has not seen before. Before us, there was only the milk cover factory, milk cover, not to mention the taste is good, first of all, it does not add cheese. And the taste is not good is one thing, it is all with the powder to beat, is the milk cover powder. And we have this cheese (tea series), is the first on the market can not add powder to do out, this is also the starting point of our research and development.

Although this powder is legal, I don't want to use it. Why do people want to eat the powder in their stomach? Many businesses in the milk tea industry like to use powder to add creamer, milk cover has milk cover powder, fruit with fruit powder, what a mess of powder. This stuff is bad, I myself as a consumer, do not want to eat it into the stomach.

No need for powder, this is our real starting point, as for its good taste, Qingyi, with the tea, that is the icing on the cake. So the cheese itself is the first of its kind, and it just originated in our part of the world, it's not something that's imported. It's also really strong in its marketing nature, not to say that everyone likes it, but at least some of the younger consumers are really into this product of ours, chasing it to the point of being very crazy.

That's the same kind of word-of-mouth that we rely on when we go into an unfamiliar place, and we capitalize on that.

As an analogy, I'm in Jiangmen, and when we first jumped straight to downtown Zhongshan to set up store, there was no business at first, no business at all. Later, we re-planning, selected a Xiaolan town in Zhongshan, one is Xiaolan town people spending power is very strong, in Zhongshan is considered to be very rich; two is Xiaolan town right next to Jiangmen, there has been a small part of Xiaolan people have drunk our tea. Here there is a migration, as I just said, that small number of people who have drunk our tea, is a loyal fan, he will be very crazy with friends to publicize, like the water army, self-funded water army, so the whole Xiaolan detonated. Xiaolan detonated after it, these Xiaolan people have Zhongshan downtown relatives, friends, classmates and so on, so we Zhongshan downtown that has been open for two years, business has been very poor store, business suddenly became good.

Word of mouth spreads and migrates this way. From Xiaolan, we expanded to Shunde, because Shunde is next to Xiaolan, just drive ten minutes, and then from Shunde to Foshan, from Foshan to Guangzhou, is so step by step development and expansion. After we arrive in Shenzhen, we plan to go to Shanghai, because many people from Shanghai will come to Shenzhen and drink our tea in Shenzhen. If we cross Shenzhen and go directly to Shanghai, it definitely won't work. A lot of people find it strange why this newly opened store can have a queue at the beginning, thinking that it must be a fake, a hired hand. This is because he is not the people there, not the part of the people who have been in contact with us, he does not know this logic behind.

Our customer targeting is white-collar workers in their 20s and 30s, especially young white-collar workers in their 20s and 25s. Those who post reviews online, many of them do not belong to this group, and have to go to line up to try, line up for hours, there will certainly be dissatisfaction, he can not understand the kind of hobby and mentality of young consumers.

I basically did not respond to those smearing or abusing us. Maybe it's a matter of age, not so strong psychological quality, every day to see those black our articles, will be so angry that can not sleep at night. But it's not cool to respond when you're angry. As a young entrepreneur, I'm not as complicated as they think.

I have my own standards for being a human being, I think people should be cooler, like Steve Jobs, I think he lived a cool life. Some people like him because he was successful, I like him because he was really cool. This thing that we're doing, it's actually pretty small, and it's not that meaningful compared to Apple. But I hope, even if we do such an industry, we can make Apple that kind of feeling, at least in our hearts, we have been to this as an example.

I want to be the first of the Xicha, not the second of the Starbucks

I did all the ads in the Xicha store myself. Can not find a designer, entrepreneurship is forced out, we are in Jiangmen, where there are designers. Site selection is also, until now, although we have a whole development department, from McDonald's poached people, but still according to my initial summary of the law of site selection to do the development of extension. Design until now is still my own control, such as the store's menu, is my own computer to do.

We've come up with a whole set of concepts that are cool, inspiring, and sincere in a domestic environment, and it's kind of mature. We wanted it to be a completely different style than Starbucks. I don't think a lot of people are qualified to judge us. Our business is definitely not a copycat in this regard, and we want to go our own way. In terms of modesty, we have never publicly mentioned Starbucks to take on Starbucks.

Starbucks is a mature enterprise, there is a lot to learn, we can not be arrogant to say that we are now ? China Starbucks? But, in terms of hubris, why should we be Starbucks? Maybe we can do better than Starbucks.

A lot of people like to say that China's economy is growing, and that China will have its own brands. But why should China's brands be lower than American brands? Why must be what the United States has, what China has next? We do not want to do Starbucks second, internal will be so to say.

There is humility and arrogance here. Why follow the style of Starbucks? Starbucks is industrial style, it is the kind of culture of coffee, we may be able to figure out a style of tea drink rejuvenation. It should have a kind of Zen in it, a feeling of inspiration in it, it's modernism, its expression doesn't need to be made into Chinese style. This is like Japanese design, Japanese design is generally very modernist, it is not like China, must have some so-called Chinese elements. It's very Japanese, but it doesn't use so-called Japanese elements to express.

One of the problems we have in China is that we like to use elements instead of soul. For example, when we talk about Chinese style, we must have some red color, we must have a Tang suit, we must have a substitution, these are just elements, the essence is not here.

My earliest idea was to give tea a functional label. Coffee, as we all know, can be refreshing, in addition to good taste, it has a refreshing such a function. Where is the function of tea? I have been thinking about this question. If it is said to be refreshing, it is certainly not as good as coffee.

Then I felt that going back to the ancient times, those poets, they actually used tea and wine as an important tool to inspire the writing of poems, and in ancient Chinese poetry, tea and wine are two important images. So we want to refine the concept of inspiration, and this can also go back to the early superficiality of our early days, we have been to instill in consumers, that is, we are original, we are the first Cheese Tea, everyone else is copying. This kind of indoctrination, later on, I think it's very ineffective, consumers need to be ****ing impressed, especially young consumers. Now we are conveying the concept of inspiring and creating inspiration, and the Hi-Tea is a product of inspiration, a product of originality.

That's how we're figuring it out a little bit, and then there are more extensions. Inspiration itself is also a cool thing, it can be combined with other ideas. These are things that are mapped out over time, not just to make a couple of slogans. If I had simply made a tagline like ? The first creator of Cheese Hi-Tea? Better Tea, Better Tea, Better Tea from the Heart? I would have been very shallow. We hope to be able to refine the kind of thing that is more cultural, more ****ing, timeless, not just communicative.

Hi-tea now has 50 stores, plans to open another 50 this year. In terms of turnover, we don't plan specifically. In fact, our turnover is very high, we can do up to 3 million a month in a single store.

Our stores do drinks and process purchases very quickly, much faster than Starbucks. If it's not fast enough, it can't do such high turnover. In fact, queuing doesn't help turnover much. Even if this store doesn't have a queue, as long as there are people buying all the time, it ends up with exactly the same turnover as if it had been in the queue all the time.

Our highest single-store turnover is in a store in Guangzhou, which can do 100,000 dollars a day, equivalent to 5,000 cups of tea. A day to do 5000 cups, this number in the industry is absolutely first, no one can do, Starbucks can not do. In fact, we are now doing a million dollars a month store has been very few, most of them are two or three million.

We also started doing space upgrades a long time ago, not just starting as some articles say. We started doing big stores in 2013 and haven't opened a small store since 2014. All of our stores are 100 to 200 square feet, with standard stores being 100 square feet or more. The biggest store, the one in Guangzhou, has three floors and more than 2,000 square feet, and it's a flagship store. The third floor is an art space that does photography exhibitions, including new book launches by local writers. It has been integrated into local life and is a very meaningful thing.

Starting my entrepreneurial journey by selling cell phones

I was also influenced by Steve Jobs when I was selling smartphones. It was 2010, when I was 19 years old. At that time, smart phones just emerged, many people do not know how to use, android machine to brush, ordinary machine is jailbreak. Those who do smartphone 'rely on this to collect a lot of money, jailbreak to charge 200 dollars, this thing is actually no cost.

At that time, as a newbie, I was not very good at choosing a location, and when the new store was about to open, I was very worried that the location was very remote, and I felt that there must be no business after opening. I've decided that we're going to make it free of charge, whether it's for jailbreaks, brushes, or software installations, and not just for people who buy cell phones from us, but also for those who don't.

It's a good thing that I'm not a big fan of the new technology.

Why? The original idea, the customer has not yet recognized us, did not buy a phone in our place, it is not his fault, it is our fault, we did not let him know us. Now that he has come here to be served for free, he may have a chance to become our customer in the future.

I'm thinking big, all free. But this is something that requires psychological quality, even if it was all thought out at the time, you will still have psychological pressure when you see people crowding over every day who don't pay. And there will be a situation inside, there will always be this kind of people, he knows you are free service, he went to Hong Kong to buy a few cell phones, directly put the new phone in your place, let you help him get, the attitude is not good. There will also be peers, he can not repair the phone, pretending to be a customer, brought over to let you help him get.

We know these people, this kind of situation, or to help them deal with the same.

We knew these people were in this situation, and we still helped them as if they were in a different situation.

Later on, I thought that if I hadn't done the free service, maybe the store would have closed down because it was in a really bad location. After doing the free service, we didn't rely on selling cell phones to make the business work, as we expected, but unexpectedly turned into selling accessories. The store used to have no accessories at all, just selling cell phones, and then with the free service every day, most people still feel a little guilty or a little embarrassed. Some people say, do you have a cell phone case, or external charger, car charger and so on. After many customers asked this, I went to pick up the goods, and after picking up the goods these people will buy.

Later I found that selling accessories is better than selling cell phones: the first is not so troublesome after-sales; the second is the high consumption frequency, even the same phone, he changed every time he came to a shell, as long as you have a new model, and the frequency of damage to the phone is in fact very low; the third is a lot of high gross margins, we used to sell cell phones, sell five thousand dollars, pressure so much goods, a only earn a couple of hundred dollars to sell accessories, although it may be just a 50, 40 yuan, the price of the phone is not very high. Although it may be a just 50 dollars, 40 dollars, but half the gross profit margin. So in the end, our store can be profitable, all rely on accessories, cell phone sales or very little. This is also an accident.

At that time, the cell phone store was very small, two years, opened a branch, made a little money, but it is a starting point, let me learn a lot of things. Now the cell phone store has long been closed, I do think, if there is no spirit to share the above, it should not be opened again.

I'm from Jiangxi, and when I was in middle school, my family moved to Jiangmen, and that culture shock was still huge. I like Guangdong very much, and Guangdong culture has changed me a lot. I can't be bothered, I've wanted to start my own business since high school. My family doesn't have the entrepreneurial gene, my parents are both engineers, supervising engineers, very serious and cautious. I think entrepreneurship for me is a natural character.

The pain of the trademark from Royal Tea to Hi-Tea

Every time I open a store, I think about more than just opening a store. Like opening a cell phone store, now although it may sound a bit ridiculous, but my original idea was certainly not just to open a cell phone store. Initially, of course, because of interest, but there has to be a big future, I hope it can be made like Gome, can control the channel, and then reverse to undercut the manufacturers. But I've since realized that's not going to happen. In the smartphone industry, will not repeat this thing.

Before entering the tea industry, I analyzed many industries. This is relatively good to do, it has a point of entry, there is a wide range of a consumer base, I think it is quite rigid, quite high-frequency. It can form a queue this phenomenon, but also with this is not related. Tea drinks this category, even if there is no Xicha, the market is also very large. Some actually very bad milk tea store, from time to time in front of the door will also line up. We're just using a better product to take their business over, so it's an exaggeration.

This market has always been there, it is not born out, which is why I was more optimistic about the industry in the first place. Of course, this is a combination of factors, including it is not a big investment, if it started to invest 1 million, I certainly can not afford to invest. Our store initially spent one hundred and twenty thousand, and then there is no external funds and borrowing, all by their own rolling, until last year financing. Before that, we relied entirely on our own funds to roll, opened 50 stores.

Before Xicha, our company was called Royal Tea, Royal Tea is what I do. Then we were forced to change the name because of the trademark. I came up with the name Imperial Tea, which is not a generic term or a thing, but for some reason the trademark just wouldn't register.

China's trademark application review time is very long, can not immediately determine whether it is possible, it has to be the first trial, to accept the notice, and then a few months before the acceptance of the notice, half a year before the first trial. At that time I have been waiting for a year and a half time, the first dismissal, we have opened a lot of stores, the results did not say clearly not. Anyway, delay, delay, review, review, and finally three years have passed, our stores have opened to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, only to determine that the trademark is not completely injected. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that, but I'm going to have to change my name.

Some articles say we don't value trademarks, and we definitely value them. I have studied trademarks very y. What is my experience now? Don't register it yourself, don't even submit it yourself, you just buy a trademark. Now the form is changing rapidly, the development of the enterprise is very fast, it will not be like the traditional enterprise, do ten years, twenty years and no one knows. Now is completely competitive, the Internet spreads also very quickly, you just good business open half a year, it is full of cottage. We entered Shenzhen to open the first Royal Tea store before the whole of Shenzhen Dianping not a Royal Tea. But more than a year, Shenzhen now has more than two thousand royal tea, a variety of royal tea, not to mention the country.

Now the Royal Tea is no longer our brand, although there are some twists and turns in the middle of the name change, and eventually we changed to Hei Tea. Hei Cha is trademarked, and we paid 700,000 yuan to buy it back. Therefore, although there are copycats of Xi Cha, but we can fight it, and the industry and commerce can deal with it, it has been protected by the trademark.

In the future, we hope to make the brand potential of Xi Cha even higher. I think what is most lacking in national brands is potential energy, many brands are not dead in the speed of expansion, but died in the end potential energy is not enough. I think that when opening stores, the brand potential is a process of consumption. When there are only a few stores, your brand potential is very strong, and so open the more, open the bigger, the more you are low-grade. We now want to take root in the first-tier cities, North, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, other places are not in a hurry, it does not matter if there are cottages in other places. When we have roots in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the brand potential to do enough high, one day, and then go to other places to open, you can easily eliminate those cottage.