The speed of iteration of FMCG is obvious to all in the industry, in terms of SKUs, there are currently about 5,000 kinds of beverages in the Chinese market, however, less than 100 brands have survived for more than 5 years. The tea drink Oriental Leaves launched by Nongfu Spring have been on the market for ten years, but in recent years they have shown a long explosive force. At the end of the year, one grand prize after another came, bringing the Year of the Ox to the east the leaves to a perfect end.
In the latest release of the "Z100 Young People's Top 100 Word-of-Mouth Domestic Goods List" released by Station B, Oriental Leaf Sugar-free Tea Beverage landed first in the food and beverage category list. At the same time, in the list of "2021 Zhihu Gaozan Good Things 100" released by Zhihu, the new taste of oriental leaf green citrus Pu'er that has been listed for less than a year has become a good thing in the food and beverage list.
Behind these honors, how does the Chinese tea drink Oriental Leaves make young people frequently place orders and shout yyds?
"Five years ago, almost all the people who drank oriental leaves were people with a little experience, but this year, a lot of young people have joined, and I think this is because young people are more and more identified with traditional Chinese culture such as tea," Wu Ping, brand manager of Oriental Leaves, explained the reason why Oriental Leaves burst into flames this summer.
A cup of tea, behind the representative is not only eating habits, but also Chinese aesthetic culture. Oriental leaves use the world's advanced tea making technology to revive traditional Chinese tea, and also make Chinese tea truly "come from the East, out of the East", so that "Oriental" becomes synonymous with quality.
Tracing the history of the development of oriental leaves, this Chinese tea, which was born in 2011, did not highlight its charm when it first went on the market, but it led the development of sugar-free tea, and this decade is also a decade in which sugar-free tea has grown from niche to slowly popular.
At that time, the Chinese market did not recognize a "not sweet" drink, and even some unique drinks that were sweet were unacceptable to the public, which is why the special taste of KVAS and white flower snake grass water were selected as the "five poisonous waters" in the jianghu.
In the eyes of industry insiders, Nongfu Spring decided to launch such a beverage against the trend that year, which is probably the brand's enthusiasm and sense of mission for water and tea nature. Seeing that various sweet drinks in the West have conquered the beverage market in Chinese, while the world-famous traditional Chinese tea has always been too low-key among the younger generation, the team of Nongfu Spring is somewhat unwilling.
But behind the passion for innovation is unimaginable difficulty: the more pure and natural the product, the more difficult it is to make. Sugary tea can use sweetness to cover up many taste defects, and sugar-free and sweet tea drinks have extremely high requirements for raw materials and craftsmanship if they want to retain their original taste.
In order not to add preservatives and ensure the purity of the taste of sugar-free tea, Nongfu Spring has built a log6 sterile technology production line to produce 1 million bottles of products that will not be contaminated by microorganisms. Even today, ten years later, most of the domestic beverage production lines can only reach the log5 standard.
But this expensive production line was questioned by many people at the time, and in the first few years of the advent of Oriental Leaves, even in the high season, the production line only needed to open two days a week, and the entire sterile team had almost nothing to do. But it is precisely because of this production line, as early as ten years ago, Oriental Leaves took the lead in realizing the five 0 standards of "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories, 0 flavors, 0 preservatives".
Another problem in front of the team is how to keep the tea soup for a long time without discoloration. Oriental leaves and in the technology research and development efforts, greatly improve the stability of tea soup color, aroma, taste, and many brands use the outer packaging to cover the color of tea soup on the contrary, oriental leaves use transparent bottle small labels, so that the crystal clear tea color presented in front of consumers, even today is still difficult to imitate.
However, the market feedback of such a carefully built product is cold.
In the meantime, China's FMCG market is moving forward rapidly, and various merchants are rapidly producing, quickly creating concepts and listings, and then making money quickly. Standing on the outlet, the cycle of a product from research and development to listing is mostly controlled in about one year. Companies are impatient and the market is becoming more and more impetuous. Looking back at the past ten years, in the sugar-free tea market, countless brands have come and gone in a hurry, unified tea king has withdrawn after 9 years of listing, Coca-Cola original leaf tea has withdrawn after seven years of listing, and Master Kong's benwei tea house born in 2012 is now difficult to find. . . .
This decade is not only a decade of great waves in the beverage industry, but also a decade of rapid growth in China's beverage consumption concept. In China around 2010, not many people can accept a sugar-free drink, and by the time of 2020, the spring of sugar-free drinks has finally arrived.
Oriental leaves, Laoshan white flowers snake grass water and so on returned to the vision of young people. Laoshan White Flower Snake Grass Water, which is the first of the "five poisonous waters", has set a record in sales in the domestic market, accounting for more than 25% of the overall revenue of Laoshan mineral springs in 2018. In the same year, in the C-NPS China Customer Recommendation Index list, Oriental Leaves ranked first in the sugar-free tea category. Ac Nielsen data shows that Oriental Leaves occupy more than 50% of China's market share and have become the first brand of sugar-free tea for many years.
Behind the enviable data is the adherence to the belief in "health" and "Chinese tea". Although initially not recognized by consumers, the developers of Oriental Leaf firmly believe that consumers of sugar-free tea are not absent, but take time to grow.
Ten years have passed, China's beverage industry is rapidly entering the next decade, the concept of sugar-free has become the outlet of the whole industry, in the brand battle in the second half of new consumption, only by adhering to the long-termist, can it become the final winner. Only products that have really been polished can be remembered by time.
(Edited by Tian Dong)