After completing two rounds of financing in half a year, the compound juice brand "Source Research Institute" was quite popular with capital. On January 19, the relevant person in charge of the Source Research Institute told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the current financing amount of the Source Research Institute has reached tens of millions of yuan, and the valuation has exceeded 100 million yuan. In the eyes of industry insiders, the size of the juice beverage market is about 200 billion yuan, and now that Yuanfa research has entered the game, it is bound to face competition from established beverage giants such as Nongfu Spring and Huiyuan. How to shape their own brand influence and improve audience viscosity is an urgent problem to be solved by such start-up brands as Yuan research.
Received two consecutive rounds of financing
On January 19, the relevant person in charge of the Source Research Institute told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the Source Research Institute has completed two rounds of financing in a row, the Seed Round and the Angel Round. It is understood that the investors behind this round of financing include Taiyou Fund, Excellent Fund and other institutions and well-known investors in the industry.
According to public information, yuan research institute is a compound juice beverage brand launched by Guoyuanli (Beijing) Biotechnology Co., Ltd. The company was founded in May 2020 and launched its first product on platforms such as Tmall in December 2021. The firm mainly focuses on the research and development of soft drink products with high consumer awareness and guaranteed functional ingredients according to various sub-health problems.
At present, the products sold by Yuanjiao are blueberry anthocyanin juice, which focuses on eye protection functions. According to public media reports, regarding the expansion of the product line, the Institute will successively launch matcha barley green juice that mainly promotes intestinal peristalsis and black sesame drink with anti-hair loss function in the next two months.
For the operation of the financing amount, the source research institute said that it will be mainly used for channel expansion and marketing delivery. At present, at the channel level, the source research institute has launched the Tmall flagship store and the WeChat Mini Program store, which will expand offline in the future, and the overall sales strategy will focus on convenience stores and new retail channels.
Industry insiders believe that two rounds of financing have been completed in only half a year after its establishment, which shows that the brand is optimistic about the capital market. With the blessing of funds, Source Research has also had great support in product expansion and channel construction. However, as a start-up brand, especially in the juice beverage market dominated by giants, Yuanfa Institute is bound to face a lot of competitive pressure.
What are the opportunities for new brands?
According to the data, the size of China's juice beverage market in 2019 was 143.5 billion yuan, and in the future, the scale of the mainland juice industry is expected to be close to 200 billion yuan.
At such a scale, there are not a few companies that lay out fruit juice drinks, and competition is intensifying. For example, the NFC series of juices launched by Nongfu Spring, the juice drinks with full flavor, the moisturizing and drying of the water mang, and the tropical compound drinks that release the appearance value. In addition, Huiyuan also has a certain market share in this field. The data shows that in 2018, Huiyuan juice market share ranked first.
Although facing many brand competition, in the view of Song Liang, a senior dairy industry analyst, there are still some opportunities for new companies. Judging from the current juice and beverage track environment, the personalized needs of consumers are constantly prominent. Updates on some details can attract good feedback, such as constantly changing packaging and constantly updating and upgrading marketing strategies. In this case, any brand can find its own opportunities and audiences in the market. Leading companies often rely on one or two enduring fist products, and the new products they launch may not be recognized by the market. In the long run, small businesses are more likely to succeed.
However, The Source Research does not have an advantage in the price of its products. Beijing Business Daily reporter learned and found that the price of NFC juice under Nongfu Spring is about 7 yuan per bottle of 300ml, and the unit price of 300ml per bottle of NFC juice under Huiyuan is about 10 yuan. In contrast, the unit price of 200ml per bottle of the product is about 10 yuan. From the perspective of sales volume, the monthly sales volume of the highest product sales of Huiyuan flagship store is 200,000+, while the current monthly sales of Yuanyuan Research Institute are 3000+.
For the cost performance problem, Cheng Aobei, founder of the Institute, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that there is no shortage of cost-effective drinks in the market at present, and what is missing is a drink with high health added value. "In product development, we will consider whether the price can be accepted by consumers on a daily basis, but more importantly, we hope to make a good product." Cheng Aobei said.
In the view of Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, product pricing depends on the quality of the product itself, not on indicators such as capacity. At present, the diversification of domestic consumption structure is basically formed, and the price is not a consumption obstacle, the key lies in whether the product gives a matching quality and experience. If this gap is large, the market will not accept it and will soon be eliminated. For new enterprises, compared with the cost performance, how to highlight product characteristics and seek differentiation is more worth thinking. In the long run, high-value, high-end products can often obtain stronger bargaining power.
For this kind of product based on health added value, what is its market prospects, Xiao Xuehua, founder of Source Research Institute, believes that the consumption habits of Japanese consumers and Chinese consumers have a strong degree of overlap. Therefore, the development of japanese beverages has a strong reference significance. Referring to the development process of Soft Drink in Japan, it has experienced three stages: "delicious", "no burden" and "functional". China's soft drink market has transitioned from "good drink" to the pursuit of "no burden" stage, and the sales of imported functional drinks have risen rapidly, and have shown a trend towards "functional", which contains tens of billions of yuan of broad market space. Beijing Business Daily reporter Zhang Junhua Wang Zhuli