Editor | Shi Can
The tea business performance of Naixue 202 1 in the first half of the year was bright enough. The 20021interim results report released on August 25th showed that the revenue in the first half of the year reached 265,438+26 million yuan, and the net profit was 48.2 million yuan, of which the operating profit of stores reached 385 million yuan.
So, what is Naixue's tea PRO shop like? Why does Naixue's tea value the layout of PRO shop so much?
In addition to the "Taigai" sub-brand, according to the official definition of Naixue's tea, the main brand of Naixue's tea currently has two types of stores: the first type is Naixue's standard tea store, including diversified Naixue's tea concept stores, such as Naixue's gift, Naixue pub Bla Bla Bar, Naixue DreamWorks, etc. The second is Naixue Pro Tea Shop.
Naixue's tea has expanded rapidly, especially since 20 18, with the speed of opening more than 0/00 new stores every year, covering all parts of the country. However, if we go back along the time axis, we will find that there is a hidden line of diversified development under this expansion history.
2015165438+10, the first milk tea shop in Naixue opened in Shenzhen. With the innovative form of "tea+soft European bag", Naixue's tea has found differentiation in the market. From the very beginning, Naixue's tea adopted the big store model, emphasizing social orientation, trying to create a "third space" for consumers outside the company and family.
On October 2018165438+10, Naixue Tea opened its first "Naixue Gift" store in Siming Vientiane City, Xiamen. In the "Naixue Gift" store, Naixue's tea upgrades the consumption experience, emphasizing the sense of technology and interaction. Naixue integrates AI intelligent object recognition and face recognition technology into the store. In addition, the "Naixue Gift" store has specially set up a "Gift Store" game area, where consumers can grab limited fashion play, hand-made and co-branded products through consumption points to enhance the emotional connection between consumers and the store.
In October, 2065438+200965438+/kloc-0, Naixue's tea took a big step in category expansion and opened the first Bla Bla bar specializing in cocktails.
On 20 19, 1 1, Naixue DreamWorks was officially unveiled in Coastal City, a landmark business district in Shenzhen. As a big store with a retail area of over 700 square meters, Naixue DreamWorks divides its stores into 15 sections, such as baking, steak, retail, bar, tea, coffee and doll machine, which integrates various consumption concepts. Consumers in DreamWorks can get a unique dining experience through LED screens with constantly changing patterns, colorful and gorgeous bars, and tasting various breads and drinks.
If the above three diversified stores are just "small fights" of Naixue, and even the brand value is greater than the actual commercial value, then Naixue PRO may carry greater commercial ambitions.
According to Naixue's tea prospectus: "We launched Naixue PRO Tea Shop in June, 2020165438+1October, in order to reach a wider customer base, improve operating efficiency, meet more diversified consumption scenarios and customer preferences, with the goal of integrating Naixue's tea into all aspects of customers' lives. "It can be seen that the launch of Naixue PRO tea shop stems from strategic considerations.
PRO stores and standard stores have obvious differences in products and site selection.
In terms of products, Nai Xueqin Tea Shop removed the on-site bakery and sold the pre-made bread made by the central kitchen instead. In addition, PRO store has expanded coffee categories and retail products, such as snacks, and reduced the price range of the whole beverage to 15-25 yuan.
In terms of location, PRO stores are divided into two categories: the first category is located in a high-end chain shopping center, with relatively high traffic and rent; The second category is located in office buildings, community supermarkets and other locations, with relatively low traffic and rent, covering consumption scenes and crowds that were difficult to cover before.
Naixue regards PRO store as an important part of the strategic layout of the Group. Naixue Tea Industry said at the interim results report that in the next two years, the newly opened stores will mainly be the first-class specialty stores located in chain shopping centers. In the future growth logic, Naixue expects to increase the average operating profit level of stores and improve the overall consumption habits by increasing the proportion of PRO stores and "encrypting" stores.
As a specific strategy to achieve growth, the extension of store types is nothing new in the tea industry.
Take Starbucks, the leading coffee maker, as an example. Starbucks stores can be roughly divided into seven categories, namely: ordinary stores, pourover stores with hand-flushed bars, Zhen Xuan stores with full sensory experience, high-end Zhen Xuan stores with Zhen Xuan coffee beans, Zhen Xuan coffee roasting factory with the highest specifications, coffee express and special star delivery services, and special stores with sign language or pet themes.
Take hi tea as an example. Similar to Naixue's tea, Xicha's shops are mainly standard shops and Xicha GO shops, among which the standard shops have various theme shops, such as black gold shops, pink gold shops and laboratory shops. The area of Xicha GO store is only about half that of a regular store. There is no cashier in the store, only the most basic tea-making area is reserved, which greatly enhances the flexibility of store expansion and creates a development model of "flagship store branding, flexible GO store improving coverage".
No matter how innovative the store is, the logic behind it is always the same, two words: expansion.
The word "expansion" covers everything: the expansion of consumption scenes, the expansion of product mix, the expansion of consumer groups, the expansion of sales channels, and the expansion of geographical coverage ... Some stores can make a breakthrough in the dimension of 1 to 2, such as the pourover store in Starbucks, which attracts coffee lovers by making coffee by hand and expands geographical coverage and consumption scenes through more flexible site selection.
However, Naixue PRO milk tea shop has achieved breakthroughs in all dimensions.
Naixue PRO store is usually located in the business circle and community, which integrates the user's work and life scenes. The area of the specialty store is small. In addition to tea, users can also buy coffee and packaged food in stores. Not too high price is mainly aimed at low-middle consumer groups to open up more customers; In order to improve the efficiency of in-store service, the store has set up a self-pick-up channel, which is mainly used by takeout staff and packaged users. Storefronts that meet the above conditions are relatively easy to find, and the pressure brought by rental costs can be reduced through internal optimization.
From the strategic positioning and business model of PRO store, it seems that we can understand Naixue's great confidence in PRO store.
Judging from the performance in the first half of the year, the operating profit rate of Naixue first-class PRO store reached 265,438+0.7%, which was higher than that of standard store 65,438+09.9%. The profit rate of the second type of PRO store is only 15.3%. At the performance conference, Naixue's tea explained that "the sample size is small, resulting in loud data noise".
Considering that there are only 20 first-class PRO stores and 12 second-class PRO stores, it is really too early to draw conclusions about the model of Naixue PRO stores.
"Boundary sense" is very important in the process of store extension: first, the boundary between different store types, that is, the clear division of functions between store types; The second is the boundary between new stores and new brands.
The functions of tea shop types can be roughly divided into expansion function, brand function and innovation function.
Expansion function usually points to the most direct visible income growth and profit improvement. For example, Naixue PRO milk tea shop and Xicha GO have a relatively pure expansion direction, and their main function is to improve market penetration.
Brand function is more recessive, and its core is to enhance brand image and enhance consumer cognition. A typical example is the theme shop of tea, which shows the trend and youth of the brand through highly differentiated design.
The innovative function is forward-looking and an exploration of the future direction, and Naixue DreamWorks is very representative. Peng Xin, the founder of Naixue's tea, once said: "DreamWorks is the store of Naixue's baking master Dream Team's existing products and the new product laboratory of Naixue." In DreamWorks, consumers vote with wallets, and the products with the highest sales volume will be sold in ordinary stores.
The complexity and integration of store functions bring challenges to tea brands: how to clearly locate the functions of various store types? How to achieve the best economic benefits through the combination of store type and quantity?
The expansion of stores bears the growth ambition of enterprises, and it is necessary to judge the location, quantity and expansion speed through careful consideration in order to avoid the internal consumption of resources caused by competition among stores as much as possible.
Brand stores need enterprises to think about the main task of store types-increasing popularity or enhancing brand image? After opening its first store in Xiamen, Naixue's gift shop opened city stores in Xi, Changsha, Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan and other cities. Not wanting more but seeking perfection, Naixue's gift shop is like Naixue's "propaganda ambassador", traveling all over major cities to increase brand awareness.
As the potential source of the brand in the future, the core goal of innovative stores is not the number of stores, but how to break through the imagination and explore the potential direction of continuous differentiation. Zhao Lin, the founder of Milk Snow Tea, once said that Milk Snow DreamWorks has no expansion plan and will focus on new products.
When the brand goes further and further on the extended road, it will inevitably touch a boundary-should this store form be defined as a new store type or a new brand?
On March 3rd, 2020, Kloc-0, Xicha launched the "Xiao Xi Tea" sub-brand on the official account of WeChat. Xicha officially introduced the difference between the two: "In Xicha, we hope to make the best tea with the highest standards; However, in Xiao Xi Tea, we are committed to providing suitable and fair tea products, and making consumers as affordable as possible in terms of eligibility standards. " Unlike Xicha, which emphasizes quality, the price of Xicha products falls in the range of 8- 16 yuan, anchoring the offline urban market and emphasizing cost performance.
Xiao Xi tea caused a heated discussion at the beginning of its launch: in terms of visual image and brand name, Xiao Xi tea is similar to Chata in Xixian county, which is simply a "low-quality version" of Xixian tea, which will inevitably obscure the high-end position of Xixian tea in consumers' minds.
Different from Xicha, in terms of consumer-oriented brand recognition, Naixue Tea has almost cut off all the links between the sub-brand Taigai and the main brand Naixue Tea-no matter the logo or the store design, consumers can't realize that Taigai is actually a sub-brand of Naixue Tea. In terms of products, the table cover mainly provides a series of classic milk tea and lemon tea drinks. Average price 16 yuan Binet.Alfred low 1 1 yuan. Alfred Snow Tea is mainly for price-sensitive students and young office workers.
Xicha's 2020 annual report shows that by the end of 2020, Xicha had opened 18 stores, all in Guangdong Province. Compared with 202 head stores and 102 GO stores opened in the same year, Xixiaocha is only the younger brother of the Xicha family. However, it is not difficult to foresee that if Xixiaocha continues to expand, it will inevitably have a certain impact on the main brand image.
The reason for this embarrassing situation is that Xixiancha is just stuck on the dividing line between the extension of new stores and the expansion of new brands. From the perspective of brand recognition, Xixiang tea is like the store type of Xixiang tea, because it is difficult for consumers not to associate Xixiang tea with Xixiang tea. From the business logic point of view, Xixian Tea is indeed a new brand, because it has a completely different brand positioning.
Although the core keywords of store expansion and brand expansion are inseparable from "expansion", they have completely different expansion logic. The core intention of store extension is to help the original brand achieve sustainable development and find a new growth point for this brand. It is a dance with shackles, and this "shackles" is the image and positioning of the original brand.
In contrast, the core logic of brand expansion is to occupy a brand-new market space with the help of the resources of the original brand, realize the synergistic effect, and make great breakthroughs in consumer groups and product combinations. The resources borrowed here are usually business operation resources, not brand resources.
Taking Taigai as an example, from supply chain management to food safety, from staff training to quality control, Taigai basically follows the same policies and procedures as Naixue Tea, and achieves coordination in management and operation.
With the increasingly fierce competition in the tea track, it is increasingly difficult to attract and retain consumers.
They constantly introduce new flavors in order to stimulate people's desire for early adopters; They strive to be pervasive and try to reduce the resistance encountered by consumers when buying; They innovate store decoration design and expect consumers to actively share on social platforms; They introduced new categories to ease their insecurity. ...
Each new store type often reflects the brand's various attempts and efforts in consumption strategy-whether it is Naixue PRO tea Store for business districts and communities, or more flexible Hi-Tea GO Store and higher-end Starbucks Zhen Xuan Store.
What kind of shops can achieve sustainable development? What kind of shops help to build an indestructible brand wall? What kind of store can combine boxing with existing stores? What kind of shops can bring the most significant commercial benefits?
The innovation of store types has never stopped, and various store types have emerged one after another. However, we can clearly hear that every store type issued the same cry when it went online: love me, don't go.