Reporter | Lu Yibei
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
1
The number of investments and financings in the new consumer sector will gradually decrease in 2021, and many investors have turned to the technology sector. Among them, the first generation of new consumer brands that have been listed, such as Nai xue's tea and Perfect Diary, have plummeted in comparison with the time the bell rang. As a result, many people think that the wave of new consumption has begun to recede.
In fact, from the perspective of the entire consumer industry, there are still a large number of sub-sectors in the initial stage, and there are still many categories that have not changed with the emergence of trends such as consumption upgrading, such as many "market-free, non-brand" fields, or categories that have been monopolized by large companies for many years but have few innovations.
At the moment when capital has come out of the "hot love period" for new consumption, a comprehensive reshuffle does not mean that these categories with the possibility of outbreak have disappeared. In fact, there are still many areas where phenomenal new consumer brands may emerge.
For example, barbecue may become the next hot category to be "new consumption" in 2022.
In the past year, many investment institutions have set their sights on the opportunity of offline commercial upgrading, which has made Lanzhou ramen a focus of capital grabs. Its natural advantage is that it is a national cuisine, brands do not need to do too much market education, and it has been in the "category, no brand" situation in the Chinese market for many years.
Community shops, mom-and-pop shops and street stalls used to be the backdrop of Chinese dining. By 2020, the chain rate of China's catering industry will be only 17%. For comparison, the figures of the United States and Japan are 61% and 53%, respectively. The market is large enough, and the scattered characteristics can also breed enough opportunities, which also gives capital more imagination space for the chaining and branding of restaurants.
Barbecue is typical of this. The barbecue restaurants that are scattered throughout the streets and alleys of the country are so diverse that they need to be carried by documentaries such as "A String of Life". Barbecue has its own place in China's catering industry, and to this day there is still no barbecue brand with national popularity.
Like Lanzhou ramen, there are many types of barbecues, and the production process of dishes has the possibility of standardization, which belongs to the high-efficiency catering category, which makes it fully reproducible and easy to achieve scale effects. In the cold chain, central factories and other infrastructure gradually mature, mobile payment technology popularization, Internet playing methods prevailing now, barbecue can become standardized, data-based, branded new consumer catering categories. After the capital enters, it can be like the Chen Xianggui brand in the Lanzhou ramen market, and the barbecue can also find a mature operating model to expand rapidly.
Image source: CFP
Looking for market segments where large companies have not had innovative breakthroughs is also an opportunity for new consumer brands to emerge.
Pan Rongrong, the founding partner of Spades Capital, once said that his criterion for judging startups is how large companies think about this matter, which startups can do, and large companies cannot do it or temporarily disdain to do it, which is a point worth trying for startups.
Frozen foods may have this possibility. Although the high demand that broke out during the epidemic has caused large companies in the frozen field such as Yasui and Sanquan to experience different degrees of profit decline in 2021, this does not mean that there is no potential for new consumer brands to emerge in this field.
Because the frozen food industry has not changed much for many years, it has long been occupied by large companies. Whether it is taste, packaging and brand premium capabilities, they are stuck in the stage of at least the past decade. Young consumers still have a demand for kitchen space, but at present only semi-finished dishes can meet their needs. For the more "hands-free" frozen food, if the new consumption can make a taste and innovation that exceeds the regular actions of large companies, it may be expected to usher in the next outbreak node.
Frozen dumplings, as a major category of national fast food, have not appeared for many years without a new brand that can be remembered. The quick-frozen products are far from being common dumplings, tangyuan, hot pot dishes, those with regional characteristics such as Wuhan soup buns, Tianjin dog buns and other products, or still undiscovered, products with high value are still niche. An example that can be referred to is the snail powder in the field of instant noodles, a subdivision that has broken the long silence of the field of instant noodles in terms of taste and freshness, network volume and sales.
If you refer to the strong rise of self-heating fast food in the two years of the epidemic, in addition to the convenient and fast consumption scenes, its more diversified new products, the grasp of consumption upgrades, and the timely follow-up of marketing such as elevator advertising, variety shows, star effects, live streaming with goods, etc., are the focus of new consumption upgrades in this category. For example, the quick-frozen food brand "Lixiangguo", which has begun to act in this field, has launched categories such as small crispy meat in addition to the higher-grade frozen dumplings in category innovation. In addition, "Li Xiangguo" also found Jiang Wen's endorsement, laid a large number of advertisements in the subway, buildings and other channels focusing on family consumers, and followed the model of its parent company Zhong Xuegao to open large-scale brand promotion.
Quick-frozen crispy meat and dumplings launched by Li Xiangguo
There are also more industries or categories that have been frozen for a long time, and there is also the possibility of new consumption.
Taking detergents as an example, since Blue Moon became the "first stock of laundry detergent", the detergent market seems to have not made a fundamental breakthrough for a long time, from the perspective of product form, people are used today, or laundry liquid or laundry gel beads under the consumption upgrade in the past 10 years.
But there are a number of distinctive brands that are showing their prominence. For example, The Laundress, an American brand with its own high-end perfume effect, is quite popular in Xiaohongshu, while there are only a few new brands that can achieve the same effect and momentum of domestic brands. In the mature supply chain system, big brands like Blue Moon are difficult to tell new stories, the detergent market may be like domestic beauty, with design, fragrance, brand story and traffic to promote the rapid emergence of new consumer brands.
Fundamentally, the subdivision track that looks for sparkling water like Yuanqi Forest breaks through explosive products, and it is also the opportunity point for most new consumer brands to win.
For example, a large number of new consumer brands have emerged in the fields of face and mouth, and when the explosive models are frequent, the hair segment is likely to explode.
Young people have begun to suffer from hair loss and are beginning to face severe scalp health problems, and the concept of scalp care is gradually becoming widely accepted. For a long time, compared to the entire washing track, scalp care is still a soil that few people have stepped on, and on this track, even the head brand has shown a high turnover rate.
Finding a subdivision track to break through through explosive products is the opportunity point for most new consumer brands to win. The local hair care brand "Spes Shi Peisi" has emerged through the innovation of product forms or usage scenarios such as sea salt cleansing balm and leave-in fluffy spray; the brand "Effortless" provides users with professional hair care solutions through questionnaire diagnosis + intelligent recommendation algorithm; even mature brands such as L'Oréal are constantly launching more subdivided hair care products such as the main niacin.
This points to a future when there is a need for scalp care that is more subdivided, more precise, and fresher and more interesting than cleansing and dandruff removal. According to the "2021 National Scalp Health White Paper" released by CBNData, the sales of scalp nutrition serums, scalp pre-washing, conditioners, ampoules and hair masks have increased to varying degrees in recent years. Moreover, scalp pre-wash products and essential oil products have the fastest year-on-year growth rate, but the overall scalp care market is still not saturated.
Admittedly, new consumption is indeed not a definition of a burst bubble, and this track has not been abandoned by investors. A foreseeable trend is that resources will be further concentrated on the head brand, and 2022 may be a good time for the further development of high-quality consumer enterprises. But at the same time, after the market will return to rationality, there are still a large number of tracks with reasonable business models and great potential for explosions that will also be tapped.