Reporter | Lu Yibei
Edit | Zan Huifang
1
Near the end of the year, Lele Tea began to "rush performance".
A few days ago, Lele Tea announced through the official public account that it will open more than 20 new stores in December this year and January next year, and plans to expand the total number of stores nationwide to more than 300 in 2022.
According to the location of more than 20 new stores that have been announced so far, in addition to 6 stores distributed in Beijing, Wuhan and Chengdu, the rest are in Shanghai and its surrounding cities, which still continues the brand's previous focus on the overall store opening strategy of the East China market.
The focus on East China is a strategic adjustment after Lele Tea reflected on its previous rush to expand stores nationwide.
In the early days of brand development, Lele Tea had unlimited scenery, almost a sudden rise. In 2016, LeleCha opened its first store in Wanda Plaza, Wujiaochang, Shanghai, and soon there was a long queue in front of the door, sometimes even for two hours. Its dirty bags, dirty tea and other internet celebrity products have also quickly become popular. At that time, Xi Tea and Nai Xue's tea, which were also positioned as high-end new teas, had also begun to become popular, and relied on the internet red milk tea queue to attract a lot of attention, but they were still entrenched in South China to polish the business model, and did not enter Shanghai.
And the ambitious Lele Tea has taken a step of external expansion early. In 2017, Lele Tea began to expand its stores in the south and north, and successively entered Guangzhou, Xi'an, Wuhan and other cities. Taking the Guangzhou store as an example, in Guangzhou, where milk tea, lemon tea and coffee are the mainstays, Lele Tea from Shanghai still triggered a wave of queuing at first. It's just that the good times are not long, and after the dirty bags, Lele Tea has never been able to launch innovative big items that can attract people's big names. Its development momentum was quickly left behind by the new products and faster opening of stores, Xicha and Naixue's tea.
Image source: Weibo @ Lelecha LELECHA
It is unfavorable to enter the new regional market, and more importantly, Shanghai, the base camp of Lele Tea, has also been infiltrated by the tea of Xi Tea and Nai Xue. At present, in Shanghai, the number of stores of Heytea and Nesher Tea is 110 and 59 respectively, which exceeds the 43 stores of Lele Tea.
Outside the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions, Lele tea cannot be compared with the tea of Xicha and Naixue in terms of volume and momentum. Interface News statistics public comment information found that at present, in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, the number of stores of Lele Tea is 7, 43, 1 and 0 respectively. In many areas where Lele Tea has not yet been stationed, XiCha and Nai Xue's tea have entered, and where there are Le Le Tea stores, there are more Tea stores in Xi Tea and Nai Xue.
Overall, the number of stores of Heytea and Naixue tea has increased to nearly 900 and 474 respectively, which has far exceeded Lele Tea in terms of store scale.
Capital also sees these in its eyes.
From 2018 to the present, Lele Tea has completed a total of 4 rounds of financing, and after completing the pre-A round of financing of 200 million yuan in 2019, the remaining three are strategic financings, the most recent of which was in July last year, and the valuation of this round of financing reached 1.71 billion yuan. In contrast, Naixue's tea was listed in June this year, becoming the first stock of new tea drinks, and Xicha has grown into a unicorn with a valuation of nearly 60 billion.
The last time Lele Tea was widely watched was in July
。 At that time, it was reported that Yuanqi Forest and Xicha both wanted to acquire Lele Tea, and both sides attached great importance to the channel value of Lele Tea, giving a valuation of 4 billion yuan. After the news came out, Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xicha, released a circle of friends late at night in response: "The news is untrue, and there has been some contact after being introduced by the middleman, but after in-depth understanding of the internal situation, business data and conditions, it has been completely, completely and resolutely abandoned." ”
Subsequently, Lele Tea also responded, saying that the company insisted on independent development and had no plans to be acquired. In addition, the company plans to add 140 Stores to 140 stores before the Spring Festival in 2022, and then double the growth every year. In July, the total number of stores under Lele Tea was only 72, and they were mainly distributed in East China.
But even earlier than the new store came the news of the closure of lele tea all over the place.
In recent months, Lele Tea has been shrinking its stores in non-Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai areas. Its Guangzhou Lefeng Plaza store closed on April 6, Guangzhou Huacheng Hui store closed on August 11, and only one store is currently operating in Guangzhou. In Beijing, Lele Tea once had more than 11 stores, and now there are only 7 new stores left; in Chongqing and Xi'an, Lele Tea has directly withdrawn from the local market.
Guo Sihan, executive vice president of Lele Tea, previously admitted in an interview with China Beverage Express that Lele Tea had expanded nationwide prematurely before its capabilities had yet been reached. The temporary closure of stores in some regions is to focus on the East China market.
Lele Tea's new store is unified with the silver system and takes the minimalist style. (Image source: Weibo @ Lelecha)
At present, Lele Tea is constantly encrypting stores in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. Since September, lele tea has opened more than 30 stores in the region, most of which are located in the base camps of Shanghai and Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shaoxing and other surrounding first- and second-tier cities. In terms of store design, Lele Tea has also changed the previous planning of one store and one design, and began to do standardized store types, which is conducive to the improvement of store opening speed.
The idea of Lele Tea is to first become a dominant brand in the Shanghai or East China market, and then choose the opportunity to counterattack other regional markets. It is only in the current increasingly competitive new tea market, both Xi Tea, Naixue Tea, Mi xue ice city and other strong brands that have already launched national expansion, tea Brands and other local brands are also expanding from the regional market, Lele Tea if you want to do so is not easy.