In this era when everything can become an online celebrity, it seems that an ice cream is not a big news.
However, this online celebrity 20 18 was only launched on the Tmall platform on May 20, and jumped to the second place in the ice category in two weeks; 4000 notes on Xiaohongshu platform, and sit firmly at the top of the food category; Last year's "Double Eleven", it beat the foreign brand Haagen-Dazs and jumped to the title of Tmall Ice Product Sales Champion. Zhong sent 34 million ice creams throughout the year, which is really "phenomenal".
Recently, China Gao Xue, which was established only three years ago, was exposed to have completed the A round of 200 million yuan financing. In fact, as early as July and August of 20 18, China obtained angel round financing from Zhenge Fund and Fengrui Capital respectively. It also obtained the Pre-A round of financing involving Tiantu Capital and Lingtong.
With the capital blessing, China's sales in the past four months increased by 300% year-on-year. Last month, China also won Tmall Super Brand Day and Super Brand Day respectively, becoming the champion of ice products in the S-level activities of the two platforms, which is the only domestic ice cream brand that has won two super products so far.
"Being an Internet celebrity" seems to have become the survival way of many products and brands. For Zhong, who is full of vigor and vitality, how to find a correct position and achieve "long red" after becoming popular has become a serious and serious topic.
After all, many online celebrity enterprises have the same starting point, but the final outcome is quite different.
For a long time, China's ice cream market has been in the stage of "three points of the world".
According to the market data released by relevant institutions, foreign brands such as He Lvxue and Haagen-Dazs occupy most high-end markets and some mid-end markets in China. Mengniu and Yili are mainly mid-range products, accounting for about 45%; Regional established ice cream enterprises such as Zhongjie and Wuyang and a large number of small and medium-sized local private enterprises are positioned at the low end, accounting for about 30%.
From 65438 to 0993, Heluxue, a brand owned by Unilever, entered China to invest and build a factory to develop ice cream production and sales business.
Heluxue, a newcomer to China, quickly entered the eyes of consumers in China by using the "freezer strategy", and put 6,000 freezers into the China market every year. At that time, convenience stores and small supermarkets in the streets of China were occupied overnight by freezers with "Snow on the Road" signs. The iconic red heart-shaped logo is deeply rooted in people's hearts. The three Chinese characters "Heluxue" under the heart-shaped pattern make many consumers mistake it for a local brand.
Only half a year after entering China, the sales volume of Heluxue ice cream exceeded 3.5 million liters, setting the highest sales record for Unilever Global Ice Cream Company in its first year of operation. At present, Heluxue China mainly promotes three series of products, namely, the lovely flower taking the route of youth and pure love, the magnum taking the route of high-end fashion, and the McCool lion focusing on the children's market. Coupled with foreign brands such as Haagen-Dazs, which later entered China, * * * occupied the domestic high-end product market.
After the Millennium, due to the high Mao Lijiao of ice cream products, China dairy enterprises have sprung up everywhere, relying on their own advantages in raw materials such as milk source and sugar, and using their own sales channels and brand advantages to cut into the low-end ice cream market competition and quickly become national ice cream brands.
Yili and Mengniu, two dairy giants, have also become the "sworn enemies" of the ice cream industry. As long as Yili has ice cream, Mengniu will definitely have the same model: Yili will launch ranch pudding, and Mengniu will launch pudding ice cream; Yili launched the ice factory, Mengniu launched the ice+; Mengniu launches green mood, Yili launches Yili mood. ...
Mengniu and Yili ice cream from Inner Mongolia have seized most of the markets in the central region. Mengniu's 2020 annual report shows that its annual revenue of ice cream products reached 2,633.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.6%; Yili's 2020 financial report shows that the income of cold drink products is 4.979 billion yuan.
Restricted by the cold chain logistics factors before upgrading, domestic old ice cream enterprises mainly rely on offline distributors to promote, and the price is close to the people, so the regional characteristics are more obvious.
In the gap between Mengniu and Yili, Zhongjie Freezing Point, Hongbaolai and Laodingfeng in the northeast also seized a place with their "milky taste". Northeast China is a big producing area of raw milk in China, and the output of raw milk in Heilongjiang once ranked first in all provinces in China. The characteristic of "making ice cream requires enough milk" is deeply rooted-the star products of northeast ice cream, such as glutinous rice paste, tsar jujube, Zhongjie cauldron and Harbin sorbet, have left a good impression on most consumers.
In the hot southeast, Shanghai and Guangdong also have their own choices: Guangming, the first cold drink brand in New China, was very important in the Yangtze River Delta at that time. Shanghai people used Guangming brand "Little Milk Brick" to pour Sprite, and developed a kind of salty salt water popsicle, which was once all the rage. In Guangdong, there is a saying that in summer, the lives of Cantonese people are given by Wuyang ice cream. Guangzhou Frozen Food Co., Ltd., the parent company of Wuyang, became a Nestle Holding Company on 1999, and the Wuyang brand was preserved and was the only one in the Pearl River Delta region for a long time.
Therefore, Guangming and Wuyang, two representative enterprises that take the localization route, cater to local tastes while providing inexpensive products, and become the hegemons in the corresponding regions.
Throughout the growth process of ice cream giants, we will find that their brands have served at least two generations. In other words, these ice cream giants have accumulated business experience and knowledge based on consumer insight-and these are the results of long-term market tests.
In the past few decades, ice cream giants have basically not changed their path of becoming bigger, that is, finding a good product to cut into the market and then operating it well. With the development of brand, the industrial chain of enterprises has changed from light to heavy. It is precisely because of the construction of heavy assets that it has become the moat of the giants.
Traditional ice cream consumption scenes appear in offline retail stores or supermarkets. The development of cold chain logistics has promoted the new retail road of ice cream. The data shows that the market scale of cold chain logistics industry in China increased year by year from 20 12 to 20 17. In 20 12, the market scale of cold chain logistics in China has exceeded 1000 billion yuan. In 20 17, the scale of cold chain logistics market in China reached 255 billion yuan, up by 13.33% year-on-year. Major e-commerce platforms and logistics companies are competing to increase the cold chain logistics track. In 20 17, tmall helped the brand basically solve the ice cream distribution problem through cooperation with cold chain transportation suppliers.
The gradual improvement of cold chain logistics has promoted the online consumption of ice cream, and a number of online celebrity ice creams have been born.
Zhongjie 1946, a brand owned by Zhongjie Freezing Point, has become an online celebrity ice cream in the past two years. Last June18, Zhongjie 1946 was second only to Zhong in the ranking of hot-selling brands in the whole fresh food category, and Tmall Supermarket ranked second with sales reaching 5.8 million.
Zoje 1946 is produced and branded by Zoje Freezing Point, and the brand operator is Shanghai Shengzhi Advertising Co., Ltd. Shengzhi once imitated Mattel's model and planned to open a store under Zoje's line, but the effect was not satisfactory. In 20 16, Zoje 1946, a brand-new brand, was launched, which focused on the mid-to-high-end market and became a hit with the east wind of consumption upgrading. With "zero fresh addition" as the positioning, the prices of Zoje 1946 products range from 5 yuan to 28 yuan, among which 13- 18 yuan products are the main sales force, slightly higher than the average price of ice cream on the market.
At present, the online Tmall flagship store in Zhongjie 1946 has1060,000 fans. By establishing a "pre-warehouse", Tmall's delivery service in Shanghai will be realized within 2 hours after placing an order. The offline layout is mainly the CBD of first-tier cities, featuring theme design, and more than 50 stores have different theme styles.
It is worth mentioning that the trader before ZOJE 1946 was the founder of ZOJE. Gao Xue is also a brand founded by Lin Sheng team at the beginning of 20 1946 after the consulting agreement with zoje1946 expired.
While major online celebrity brands seize the ice cream market, traditional brands choose to hold high and fight high. And DeUEX's "network celebrity" Zhong cleverly avoided the marketing barriers of traditional brand giants:
First, cross-border joint brands: China and three squirrels, LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD, Roewe Automobile, Xiaoxiandun, Naixue and other brands jointly launched cross-border products to promote the creation of memories for consumers on social networks.
Secondly, it emphasizes the "sense of scarcity": Zhong immediately launched a limited edition of 20,000 pieces of "Ecuador pink diamond" after grabbing a very small amount of Ecuador powder cocoa, and the wave of selling and snapping up that day became the focus of discussion on the social platform KOL.
The third is to use the superposition effect of "healthy brand+star": Zhong's three brand spokespersons are Ao Ziyi, actor and Zhou Yiwei of TF family. The images of the three artists are all positive and healthy, which accords with Zhong's main health line. In particular, AoZiyi, who is 17 years old, speaks as an endorsement, which is a development for the post-00 market.
Finally, KOL's grass planting strategy was used: in the early days of its establishment, China directly drove the ice cream truck to the headquarters of Xiaohongshu, and invited the platform KOL to conduct a trial evaluation. According to public data, 83% of young consumers' purchase decisions are mainly influenced by the sharing of grass among people around them and online celebrities.
In this process, the online celebrity KOL, with its own network influence, has driven the discussion of online celebrity products to rise continuously, and finally turned into consumer purchase actions in the overwhelming "planting grass" and evaluation.
The founder once defined 20 19 as "the first year of ice cream in China" in an interview. This year, big brands are constantly moving, new brands are emerging one after another, and consumers are enthusiastic, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for the ice cream industry in China.
According to statistics, 20 19 has more than 60 online ice cream brands. By 2020, it will increase to more than 140.
In 2020, Tmall 6 18 sold10.4 million popsicles in the first hour, and two of the TOP3 fresh sales were ice cream brands; In the same year, ice cream sales increased by123% year-on-year; The total ice cream market in China reached 654.38+023.937 billion yuan, with a production and sales volume of 5,064,200 tons.
From children's market to national snacks, from "summer companion" to "suitable for all seasons", from 20 yuan 20 years ago to 20 yuan today, the ice cream industry has developed to a scale of 100 billion in 2020, and China has surpassed the United States to become the country with the largest total ice cream consumption in the world.
A few years ago, the domestic tea shop snatched a large piece of cake from the coffee shop, and now the ice cream shop is also a sword. The social scene of the ice cream shop gives consumers more choices. Ice cream brands that have become popular on the Internet have also begun to extend their tentacles to offline stores. Enter offline in the form of stores and pop-up shop, and enter the third-party sales channels such as supermarkets and convenience stores in more than 0/00 cities across the country.
The enlarged clock began to try to break this strange circle ambitiously. Lin Sheng once said that Lieutenant General will achieve a relatively balanced development between online and offline in 2020. "When Zhong began to be recognized by the majority of users, we thought we could do our refrigerator expansion work, so we took a step outward and introduced China, which may include frozen steamed buns and jiaozi noodles. Not just jiaozi. "
However, Lin Sheng's decision was questioned by the market.
The price of a bag of jiaozi is marked in 40 yuan -90 yuan, which is higher than the regular price. Obviously, it is the luxury route of Zhong. However, this time, Zhong's new product did not attract much attention on social platforms-the total sales volume of Tmall's official stores was only 100 after being put on the shelves for more than a week.
In addition, at the end of March, 2002/kloc-0, China also launched two new products, "Apricot" and "Zhimei Longli", which were named "Cake in China".
Financial mowgli believes that Zhong Xue rushed into the field with an ice cream template in a hurry, indicating that he was eager to race around, find a new track, harvest the same wave of young people and replicate the next success story.
However, online celebrity brands are most afraid of being forgotten, as a Chinese channel dealer said: "Although young people like to be unconventional, they have no loyalty to the brand. If you don't polish the topic all the time, they will turn around immediately. "
Today's elephant country is only expensive, not new.
Whether Zhong builds a high-end jiaozi country or enters the dessert industry, his essence is to find new traffic and incremental markets. Zhong's marketing is still visible, which is both an advantage and a challenge. After all, not all products rely on marketing. Reducing marketing, doing a good job in products and understanding the real needs of consumers are the more severe challenges facing Zhong.
There is a famous "ice cream effect" theory in the marketing circle, which means that selling ice cream must start in winter-because winter is the off-season of ice cream, and fewer customers will force businesses to reduce costs and improve services. If you can survive the extreme situation in winter, you won't be afraid of the competition in summer.
So, how to "sell ice cream well in winter" for Zhong, who has the attribute of "network celebrity"?
Finance and economics mowgli believes that making a fuss about the concept of "health" may be a direction worthy of attention. According to the reports of relevant institutions, 85%, 76% and 65% of consumers surveyed are willing to pay for the health, quality and product experience upgrade of ice cream. This means that consumers' requirements for products in terms of health and quality occupy a dominant position.
In recent years, consumers have become more and more aware of food health, and even the ingredient list of ice cream has attracted much attention-not only requires 100% health, but also requires low calorie and low fat.
In the United States, Van Leeuwen, whose core is vegan ice cream, recently announced a series B financing of 654.38+08.7 million US dollars. Aim at this healthy market. The "Pure Low-calorie" ice cream series of network celebrity brand pree also uses "natural 0-calorie sweetener erythritol" instead of sucrose to reduce calories and reduce consumers' guilt. With the fire in the healthy low-fat ice cream market, traditional ice cream brands such as Baxi also quickly followed suit and launched "0 sucrose coconut flavor" ice cream.
Today's domestic ice cream market has been in a melee mode. The intervention of capital accelerates the development of ice cream industry, and the favor of capital also reflects the development potential of ice cream industry.
Looking back at the rise of various brands, it is not difficult to find that online celebrity ice cream often has more insights and fewer standards at the product level: on the one hand, the products are insufficiently precipitated in technology and scientific research; On the other hand, the production scale of products is small, and the quality standards are still in the exploration period.
As for the online celebrity brands that have been at the head of the ice cream category, they are still in the stage of continuous cultivation of internal strength at the product level. In other words, if you want to be long red, you must gain the "infinite trust" of consumers.
Fan Jiang, president of Taobao, once said: "Trust is the basis of business behavior on the Internet."
But trust is not formed in an instant, and the most important thing to build trust is "time".
Online celebrity brands are often embarrassed after the craze recedes, that is, consumers who are too "trusting" will realize "all-round trust" in the brand. If the brand can focus a little, it may have the opportunity to "turn online celebrities into long reds."