Text/Chen Lin
Edit/Gale
Zhong Xuegao, who ate sweet in high-end ice cream, came to the industry of quick-frozen dumplings and wanted to create the "Hermès" in the dumpling industry. Judging from the pricing on its official website, the highest price of a single dumpling reached 6 yuan.
According to the information of Tianyancha, this "Lixiangguo" which specializes in high-end dumplings belongs to Special Food (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., which is 100% controlled by Zhong Xuegao Food (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. As a new brand under Zhong Xuegao's parent company, the company of "Lixiangguo" has applied for a number of Lixiangguo trademarks on August 25 this year.
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Zhong Xuegao, who started selling ice cream, has always taken the route of light luxury. Zhong Xuegao's definition of "a piece of worthwhile ice cream" has become a symbol of the ritual sense of life, and a "Ecuadorian pink diamond" worth 66 yuan has made him quickly popular.
The quick-frozen dumplings defined by LiXiangguo also continue its high-end positioning.
In the Lixiangguo Tmall flagship store, its dumpling products are mostly sold in combinations of 3 bags and 4 bags, each bag has about 16 dumplings, the price of the combination is 126 yuan -280 yuan, and the unit price is generally more than 40 yuan a bag. The price of quick-frozen dumplings for consumers may still stay in a bag of more than ten yuan. Through understanding, the cheapest pork filling in the flagship store of Lixiangguo is about 2.6 yuan, and the most expensive matsutake filling is as high as 6 yuan. As the big brother of quick-frozen dumplings - miss dumplings. "One dumpling and one shrimp" Miss Gold Medal Shrimp Dumpling is a high-end product of Miss, and the average price is 1.25 yuan a piece.
Originated from the Lixiangguo Tmall flagship store
In contrast, Lixiangguo quick-frozen dumplings are still slightly inferior in price. Compared with other brands, sanquan, miss, wan chai pier and other familiar old brands, Lixiangguo dumplings are three to four times that of ordinary dumplings.
The brand side said that Lixiangguo is positioned in the high-quality route and is still in the market testing stage, so the relevant marketing countermeasures have not been launched.
Judging from the market situation, the Frozen Dumplings of Lixiang National Do not seem to be optimistic.
Xiaohongshu and Douyin have appeared in some evaluations related to the frozen dumplings of lixiangguo, and "high value" and "complete ingredients" have become high-frequency words for planting grass. However, at present, the highest monthly sales volume of the Lixiang National Dumpling Flagship Store is 1619 pieces, and the minimum is only 33 pieces, which is somewhat eclipsed.
On the other hand, the old players such as Sanquan, Miss, and Wan Chai Dock have a market share of 70% in the frozen market, which has occupied a certain position in terms of sales volume and market popularity, and Li Xiangguo only wants to take root in the frozen industry with high-end dumplings, which is probably not a simple thing.
In the final analysis, dumplings as a daily table food, the brand side relies on high-frequency consumption, as well as the consumption mode of volume to ensure revenue. Even if it has gained a good reputation on the Little Red Book, the niche consumption model that relies on "planting grass" is certainly not a reasonable model for dumpling categories.
Judging from the pricing and marketing of Lixiangguo dumplings, it seems to be consistent with the Internet red ice cream method originally created by Zhong Xuegao. On the one hand, in the high-end field of quick-frozen dumplings, like the ice cream in the past, there is a gap in the industry's high-end brands to make up for it; on the other hand, Zhong Xuegao chooses the online model, there is no large number of traditional advertising, and it is "planting grass" word of mouth, using some well-known bloggers, Internet celebrity evaluation masters, plus the help of live broadcasts and short videos, to obtain a large number of product exposure.
Screenshot from Little Red Book
Whether it is ice cream or dumplings, Zhong Xuegao defined the brand image of the product with "expensive" from the beginning. Ice cream is no longer just a good product to cool off, but to a high-end food that is enjoyable. As long as the taste is not bad, the innovation of appearance and design is very suitable for marketing.
The China Commercial Industry Research Institute predicts that the market size of quick-frozen food in 2025 will be worth nearly 330 billion yuan. As of 2019, the scale of China's quick-frozen market reached 146.7 billion yuan. However, it is worth noting that ice cream and dumplings are affordable commodities for the vast majority of consumers, and they need to rely on high-frequency consumption to drive sales, and Zhong Xuegao's route can only be niche and difficult to scale.
The source of the figure is the Business Intelligence Network
All along, Zhong Xuegao's main product is ice cream. However, from the perspective of the ice cream category, its own seasonality is extremely strong, and the off-peak season is obvious. Moreover, in its own positioning, the high price also makes the consumption frequency of Zhong Xuegao's ice cream products unable to compare with mainstream ice cream brands.
Whether it is ice cream or dumplings, it is essentially profitable by volume, not by low frequency and expensive prices. Zhong Xuegao, who has always been accustomed to playing marketing and claiming to be a high-end product, still does not seem to understand this truth.
The consumer group of the ideal country's frozen dumplings is different from the traditional frozen dumplings, and it is more accurate to target the existing young users of Zhong Xuegao, aiming at the consumer groups with high consumption, fast pace of life and higher economic foundation. But it doesn't seem easy for young consumers to cook a bowl of dumplings worth thirty or forty yuan in their spare time.
Zhong Xuegao wanted to replicate the path of ice cream again in the dumpling class, but it was not so easy.