In the past two years, the wave of new consumption has surged. Many new brands have sprung up, continue to open up new tracks, and continue to subvert traditional industries. Behind it is a group of entrepreneurs who dare to innovate, are not afraid of challenges, and work hard, who converge like water droplets into a rushing wave, continue to create a better life, and nurture the Chinese brands that belong to this era.
Who are these brave tide-bearers who ride the wind and waves? What are their characteristics?
We looked at the new consumer lists of multiple third-party institutions in 2021, and selected and took stock of the founders of 100 new high-growth consumer brands. The relevant information mainly comes from public information such as Tianyancha, IT Orange, the company's official website, and the news media.
In the future, we will continue to pay attention to the group of new consumer entrepreneurs and try to paint a clearer picture of China's new consumer entrepreneurs.
#90后创始人强势来袭
Figure 1 Age distribution of founders
New consumer brands are getting younger, and so are the founders. Among the founders of new consumer brands in statistics, the young people represented by the post-80s and post-90s account for more than 80%, and the young founders are gradually becoming the leaders of the new consumption wave.
Among them, as the post-90s gradually entered the year of establishment, they gradually became the backbone of the consumer market, and a group of young founders after the 90s gradually became a surging trend, and even the post-95s gradually began to appear on the entrepreneurial stage. They were born calves who are not afraid of tigers, and dare to be the first in the world. Because of the better understanding of young people and their more acute insight into current consumer needs and trends, they have created many categories that have not appeared before, and have become well-deserved pioneers.
For example, Liu Kuan Yew, founder of genderless clothing brand Bossie, was born in 1995. As a Gen Z entrepreneur, he is keenly aware of the increasingly blurred gender differences among young people, so he turned his attention to the trend of "genderless" and created the category of "genderless clothing" by founding Bossie. At present, behind this cutting-edge brand, there are already many well-known institutions such as Wuyuan Capital, Tsingshan Capital, Zhong Ding Capital, etc., and have been invested by Bilibili.
Heroes don't ask for provenance
Figure 2 Founder's academic qualifications
Among the founders of new consumer brands in statistics, most of the founders of new consumption have bachelor's degrees, of which bachelor's degree accounts for 53%, and master's degree accounts for 38%. In addition, nearly 30% of the founders have overseas study backgrounds, and their footprints have spread to the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries and regions.
Most of the familiar entrepreneurial stories in the past are related to xueba, such as Robin Li and Lei Jun. The new consumption field is also staging a storm of academic hegemony, and students from Qingbei Fujiao and Ivy League famous schools abound. For example, Liu Qianfei, the founder of a personal beauty brand, graduated from the School of Management of Fudan University and worked in an investment bank, focusing on the beauty track.
In various segments of consumption, the technical attributes of smart homes determine that their concentration of academic hegemony is higher. Zhang Junbin, the founder of Yun Whale, won the gold medal of the International Youth Olympiad Robot Competition in middle school, and later enrolled in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, becoming a disciple of Li Zexiang, the "godfather of DJI". Yu Hao, the founder of Chaomi Technology, graduated from Tsinghua University, and the predecessor of Chaomi technology is the "Sky Factory" created by Yu Hao in Tsinghua University.
However, the new consumer sector is not the only success of the school bully. The founders of college and high school education can also become the pilots who stir up the tide. Nie Yunchen, the 29-year-old founder of Xicha, who has a net worth of 4.5 billion, graduated from the Humanities College of Guangdong Vocational College of Science and Technology, and began to start a business during his school period, expanding his commercial territory from a small shop on the street side of Guangdong to more than 800 stores in more than 60 cities at home and abroad. In addition, the founders of brands such as Zi Hi Pot and Three Squirrels are also college degrees, and Beaster founder Beiye dropped out of middle school at the age of 16 and boldly founded his own national fashion clothing brand, and the academic qualifications do not affect them to achieve the head position in their respective tracks. In the new consumer space, heroes do not ask for provenance.
The people take food as heaven
Figure 3 Distribution of tracks and locations of the founding brand
The new era of consumption is a comprehensive upgrade of eating, drinking and having fun. From the perspective of the track, the most favored track of the founders of new consumer brands is food and beverage, accounting for nearly 40%. People take food as the sky, eating and drinking is the basic consumption demand, especially with the upgrading of consumption, the traditional food track is also opening up new scenes, new ways of playing, and constantly meet the new consumer groups who are picky about taste buds.
At the same time, with the advent of the beauty economy, beauty personal care has entered the fast lane of development, covering functional skin care brands, beauty pupils, oral care, and expanding from "her economy" to "he economy", skin care brand Liran founder Huang Weiqiang and others have seen the blue ocean of male skin care. In addition, the arrival of the pet economy and experience economy has also attracted founders to enter multiple tracks such as pets and tide play. The founders of new consumption are constantly discovering new commercial populations in the original categories.
Smart home "escape" north to Guangzhou
In terms of statistics, most of the founders have chosen the first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and the new first-tier cities as the location for entrepreneurship, which have relatively perfect infrastructure and have more advantages in entrepreneurial policies, market scale, talent resources, information consulting, etc., and are more conducive to entrepreneurs to start a business. Among them, the founders of catering love Shanghai the most; the founders of beauty and personal care are distributed in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou; and the city of Hangzhou has attracted many founders of clothing and shoes with its perfect clothing industry and developed e-commerce genes.
It is worth noting that many smart home founders have "fled" from the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou, choosing to start businesses in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and other Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta cities, as well as new first-tier cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu and Fuzhou. These regional manufacturing industries are developed, technologically advanced, and the market scale is large, and smart home companies can give full play to the advantages of research and development and reduce transportation costs.
"Her power" rises
Figure 4 Founder gender
Among the entrepreneurs surveyed, 78% were men and 22% were women. Male entrepreneurs are still more common, but female founders are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the tide of new consumer brand entrepreneurship.
They usually have a good education experience, many female entrepreneurs from the management profession, or have the knowledge of journalism, law, medicine and other professional fields, while some female entrepreneurs with dance, music, art professional backgrounds have also plunged into the entrepreneurial wave, they have brought more diversified backgrounds to the entrepreneurial group. In contrast, male entrepreneurs are mainly from management, computer and other professions.
From the perspective of the track, female entrepreneurs mainly focus on food and catering, beauty and personal care, clothing and shoe matching and other tracks, of which women account for 50% of the clothing and shoe matching track. With the rise of women's consciousness, women know more about pleasing themselves and their needs are more diverse. The rise of female founders has injected more "her perspective" into the new consumption track, and can gain insight into various new needs in the process of the rise of "her power".
"Procter & Gamble" enters new consumption
Figure 5 Background of the founder before starting a business
From the perspective of the industry background before the start-up, most of the founders who were counted had industry experience in the fields of consumption, Internet, media, and finance before starting a business.
Among them, nearly half of the founders have been in the consumer field for many years. It is worth mentioning that many founders have a common label - "former Procter & Gamble". Huang Jinfeng, founder of Perfect Diary, Lu Bo, founder of skincare brand HFP, and Chen Jianqun, founder of oral care brand usmile, have all graduated from the company, which is known as the "Whampoa Military Academy" in the marketing industry. According to Panda Capital data, as of 2018, of the more than 3,000 people who graduated from P&G, 20% of P&G people chose to start a business or join an entrepreneurial company as a partner.
In addition, many founders have worked in Google, Tencent and other large factories, for example, Fan Ruoyu, the founder of Shicui Coffee, has worked in Uber, Didi and Ofo; many founders have media backgrounds, and Wang Dan, the founder of Momo Dim Sum Bureau, has served as the director of Hunan Radio and Television. These experiences have helped them stabilize their traffic dividends in the marketing field.
There are also many founders who are "investing and excellent and creating", and have turned from investors to entrepreneurs after accumulating sufficient resources and experience in the financial industry, such as Moody founder Ciran and Rock Zoo founder Sun Qimeng have related experience in investment banking.
Entrepreneurship is a lifelong undertaking
Figure 6 Whether the founder has started a business continuously or independently
About three-quarters of the founders of the brands surveyed are serial entrepreneurs. Some entrepreneurs enter the new consumption track from other fields, such as Tang Tianguang, the founder of FITURE, from the original "Truck Gang" founding team. However, most of the founders are mainly rooted in the consumer sector. It's an area where trial and error can be made, and many entrepreneurs have "died" many times before they succeed. This is also an industry that can replicate experience, and many entrepreneurs seem to open up the second pulse of Ren Dou after success, and constantly expand their business territory. But more often than not, entrepreneurship is a process of success and failure, because the market is always changing, just as people don't stand in the same river at the same time.
In addition, some founders choose to go it alone, and more than half of the founders choose to fight as a team. Among them, many brands are jointly started by husband and wife, such as tea drink brand Nexue's tea, underwear brand NEIWAI inside and outside; but the co-founders of more brands are based on technology, information, publicity and other forces of investment. The experience and personality of each person in the team can bring different chemistry and bring more possibilities for the brand.
I am sure that this year must be a year of profitability for global refined operations.
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This 150,000-word entrepreneur traffic manual has been made to help everyone figure out the traffic play of vibrato, private domain and various ends, and make money together next year.
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Author: Liu Siyi Founder of Qunxiang, talking about entrepreneurship, traffic, and e-commerce.