But paradoxically, at the same time as the decline in revenue, the number of new stores in 2021 exceeded the plan, only in the third quarter Naixue opened 90 tea drinking stores, 2021 full year is expected to open about 350 new tea drinking stores, and since the start of the business in 2015, Naixue total **** only more than 500 stores, which has just floated the performance of the loss again. According to the highest point of the market value of 18.98 Hong Kong dollars / per share, now Naixue in the capital market nearly cut.
But this has not affected the new tea drinks, continue to the capital market sprint determination, honey snow ice city listing location has changed several times, and ultimately intended to be in the A-share market initial public offering of shares and listing, earlier tea Baedao, tea YanYueShi also rumored listing news. Following the Naixue "run", tea drinks industry listing competition has opened.
In the new product, category, store, transformation of the multi-layer latitude, milk tea are still continue to scroll enthusiasm.
01 There will always be "new species" yet to be discovered
Small red book was once again engulfed by Neshe's tea new products, "duck poop fragrance", three words, three big, become part of the rate of pictures. In the microblogging # duck shit fragrance milk tea in the end how good to drink # topic has 150 million readers, more than 35,000 people to participate in the discussion. "Duck shit fragrant" happy to mention this wave of hot searches, from the new tea drink brands to push the new.
In late October, Nexue's Tea launched a new milk tea product, Duck Poop Scented Treasure Tea, using "Duck Poop Scented Tea" as the raw material. Soon after the launch, Honey Snow Ice City followed suit, and began pre-selling Duck Poop Scented Tea Bags at its official flagship store on Tmall.
Collision is not the first time in the milk tea world.
From the most intense summer last year, tea brands have embarked on the "you love me, I love you" path in their products, the first to choose is the peach, which is a fruit that is more acceptable to most consumers, and since then, the "Zhi Zhi Tao Tao" and "Bao Bao Tao" are the first to be chosen. After that, "Zhi Zhi Peach" and "Bossy Peach" became the most popular products of Xi-Tea and Naishue, respectively; then the seasonal fruits "Succulent Prune" and "Bossy Prune" and "Melon Mung" were selected. Then, seasonal fruits such as "Meilongmengmeng", "Bossy Cheese Emerald Melon", "Succulent Chelsea" and "Bossy Chelsea" were the most popular items of Xi-tea and Naixue respectively. After the popularity of "coconut head", Xicha first launched "Raw Coconut Coconut", and Nexue immediately launched "Bossy Good Coconut".
After that, the story is even more bizarre, the new tea drinkers will look to more niche fruits, "mandarin orange" "yellow skin", these kinds of niche fruits only in the Chaoshan region quickly became popular, and even drove the price of the original mandarin orange up 8 times.
After a new flavor becomes a hit, each family will step up to follow up, once the founders of Naixue and Xicha in the circle of friends for the original or plagiarism battle situation has long gone, the new tea drinks seem to have reached some kind of tacit understanding, the fruit, tea, the combination of re-arrangement of the ingredients, will be able to once again stimulate a conversation in the minds of consumers.
Honey Snow Ice City reached farther, the traditional Henan famous chow mein and local specialties steamed buns, through drinks and ice cream re-presentation - coconut milk chow mein, steamed buns ice cream, as well as deep-fried skewers, trying to "oddball" more possible new products.
But they are all very close in terms of ingredients, practices, time to market and price.
Jittery review blogger "Bang Bang Chicken" after testing dozens of new milk tea store, exclaimed, "Milk tea, please return to the original heart, I just want a cup of pure milk tea."
An employee at Hi-Tea also told Tech Planet that new products do attract more traffic, and sometimes nearly half of the store's orders are spent trying new products.
According to statistics, in 2020, Xi tea will launch a new product every 1.2 weeks on average, Naixue new 30 + fresh drinks throughout the year, Guming new 79 new products throughout the year, the rapid frequency of new products, not only to let the consumer on the taste of the freshness of the rapid depletion of the future, and in the future, with the escalation of competition, the horse effect highlights, the industry into the supply chain driven, the product will be more homogeneous, and consumers are The threshold of freshness is further increased, the industry marketing "involution" intensified.
How to find the next explosive "new species" as soon as possible, will still be the theme of the new tea drinks continue to progress.
02 big store, small store, bookstore, the new tea drinks are
out of Beijing Wudaokou subway, walk up a few hundred meters of the road, you can see, "Naixue's tea" new store Naixue bookstore stands in the street.
The bookstore, which has been open for a week, is obviously not mature enough, and the general manager of North China is here to inspect it. "You put this book [parenting books] so high, think about it, most of the people who are willing to read this book are female readers, and how inconvenient it is to pick it up."
Planet Tech observed that, unlike bookstores that actually take on the reading experience, tea and drinks are still the store's main function, with reading more of a backdrop and embellishment. The current function of the bookstore is also not yet able to meet the needs of consumers to read, the noisy background sound, is still a lot of people as a space for social conversations, and not many people really take the book to read and work, and there are only 2 places in the store with power supply, which also adds to the inconvenience.
Naixue's tea insiders told Tech Planet, the bookstore will not be the main direction of Naixue's tea in the space to try, there is no idea of opening a second, the bookstore to try because it happens to be in the vicinity of Tsinghua University, near the school to create a reading space will be more appropriate.
In the first half of the year, according to Naixue's tea mid-year report data, Naixue opened 93 new stores, this number, is the total amount of the past 1 year. The third quarter went even further, with 90 stores opened in the third quarter alone.
Before 2020, Naixue's store type was mainly standard stores, during which a small number of gift stores were launched, equipped with a crane machine in the store, placing limited edition hand puppets and dolls to meet the preferences of female consumers; Naixue Dream Factory stores, which carried out a large number of new product experiments; as well as a number of BlaBlaBar Naixue Wine Rooms, which tested out nighttime consumption scenarios and extended store opening hours; and in 2020, Naixue PRO store, eliminating the space for baking, is now the main store type of Naishue.
Hi tea is also trying different formats, hi tea first hand-made store opened in Shenzhen Nantou ancient city, hi tea, said the industry is currently the largest hand-made store, the first floor to do hand-frying ice, the second floor is a hand-made tea, the third floor is a hand-brewed tea, the 50 SKUs in the store are limited to the store, the single product up to 80 yuan a cup.
Hi tea insiders told Tech Planet, hand-made store is the flagship of hi tea internal, heavyweight store type, hi tea development store type, there is no so-called later focus on the business model of the big store, hi tea judgment is, only when a brand itself potential is strong enough to attract consumers, stores can continue to open up.
Previously, Xi Cha has launched different styles of stores such as black gold stores, PINK stores, DP stores, old-fashioned theme stores, pet-friendly theme stores and environmentally friendly theme stores, etc. Xi Cha is also frantically expanding its stores. Xi tea is also crazy to expand stores, there are 848 existing stores, has opened 153 new, by the end of this year in accordance with the rhythm of such new stores, it is very likely to break through 900, while the end of 2020, Xi tea still only 695 stores.
Almost at the same time, Honey Snow Ice City also joined the game to expand store type. Originally in the streets and alleys of the main small store model of the honey snow ice city, this year also opened a new store in Shanghai Huaihai Road, became Hermes, Cartier, Vacheron Constantin and other international brands "neighbors", "rural surrounded by the city" route to achieve a stage victory.
Opening a store has become the unspoken homework of the new tea drinkers.
In mid-2020, Honey Ice City officially announced that it had surpassed 10,000 stores globally, and also set a new expansion goal of 20,000 stores by the end of 2021 at this time. That goal, which was achieved at the end of October, has been met by Honey Ice City ahead of schedule.
Honey Snow Ice City also filed for listing counseling on the same day, opened a 268 square meters of large collection of stores in Zhengzhou, positioned as the "Snow King Castle experience store. Not only launched a new drink, but also involved in catering, including fried skewers, chow mein and other new categories, but also exploring peripheral, cultural and creative products.
Earlier in September, another tea drink brand that is also using the franchise model to expand wildly, the number of offline stores also exceeded 5,000. At the end of last year, the number of Tea Budao stores was about 3,000, and over the past about nine months, Tea Budao has rapidly added about 2,000, which is equivalent to opening seven stores a day.
You chase me to catch up, whether it is the main high-end Naixue's tea and tea, or the main attack on the sinking market of the honey ice city and tea, who do not want to miss the "big leap" of the industry surging period, but the reality is, drink milk tea consumers will not be synchronized with the growth.
03 Milk tea "matters of the heart"
Infinite expansion of categories, endless exploration of stores, as well as the next investment in the former rivals, which is hidden behind the milk tea collective profitability anxiety.
To expand categories and build new stores can no longer satisfy the ambitions of Xi tea, in order to build a higher moat, the highest valuation in the market, reaching 60 billion yuan of milk tea small giants began to go down to make investments.
Xi tea investment WAT cocktail, coffee brand Seesaw, plant-based brand wild plant YePlant and tea brand and 気桃桃, from wine to plant milk have layout, honey snow ice city investment time skillfully, rushed to the eve of the listing, but also invested in a Hui tea.
Zhu Zonghua, founding partner of Meituan Longzhu who invested in Xicha, has reached a tacit understanding with Xicha, which he believes is preparing for the disappearance of the dividend in the milk tea industry, and reinforcing the moat on products, channels and branding while expanding the main business.
On the one hand, milk tea people can only use the continuous opening of stores to touch the broader traffic junction offline.
According to Tech Planet, Honey Snow Ice City has canceled regional protection this year in order to expand rapidly, that is, more stores are allowed to open in a region, the reason for this strategic change is that, "within the scope of regional protection, especially the high performance stores within the scope of regional protection, the brand will no longer open stores, which will result in competitors to pile up, and ultimately lead to store Performance decline or even closed stores, so the brand gradually canceled the regional protection." In order not to let others get a head start, inward roll themselves can.
On the other hand, the original profit model, has touched a certain ceiling, upward exploration more and more difficult. According to Naixue's tea financial report, the first three quarters of 2018, 2019 and 2020, the average daily sales per store were 30,700 yuan, 27,700 yuan and 20,100 yuan respectively.
More tea brands are more inclined to make themselves stand out. Naixue's Tea has labeled itself as a "lifestyle brand", "Naixue is not selling tea, but a lifestyle", Naixue's Tea founder Peng Xin has said. Naixue's tea brand responsible person told Tech Planet, "Naixue's future focus on the core, is how to bring consumers more sense of beauty, happiness and fulfillment, will create added value for consumers around the lifestyle."
In Naixue's official flagship store, it can be found that Naixue not only cold brew tea and other tea drinks home page, but also launched a moon cake gift box, mugs, scarves and other peripheral products, constantly increasing the new retail field, and strive to become a part of the young people's life, the financial report data show that in the first half of 2021, Naixue's new retail revenue of 69,729,000 yuan, equivalent to 15,496,000 yuan for the same period last year nearly five times.
As Peng Xin judged, "The next stage is no longer an era of winning by a single point."
On the surface, it seems that the new brands are broadening their product lines and breaking through the ceiling of their original products in order to attract more consumers; however, the deeper reason is actually to create a unique lifestyle based on culture and centered around the target consumer group.
Milk tea to go hand in hand in many aspects, it is possible in the second half of the argument.