Kampo herbal candy, "TipsYou" connects "Chinese herbal medicine" and "young people" with snacks

"Ryukoku San, dokkan, Yamamoto Hankata... When visiting supermarkets in the United States, at a glance, the products on the shelves about Kampo herbs are all brands from Japan, but the formulas are all Chinese herbal ingredients. Zhou Zhenyang, founder and CEO of TipsYou, told Chuangbang, "China is a big exporter of herbal raw materials, but in the world, China's daily health products are still very scarce." ”

Founded in 2020, TipsYou is a Kampo wellness snack brand.

For a Chinese, the concept of health and wellness may be like this: cold hands and feet to replenish qi and blood; often eat cold drinks, the moisture in the body may be heavier, to get rid of dampness and spleen; recently takeout to eat more, you need to do some detoxification and laxative work...

Such health thinking is obviously more intimate for Chinese, but the ingredients of health care products on the market are still mainly compounds, including the nutraceuticals in the form of gummies with better taste and more convenient consumption launched by domestic and foreign brands in recent years, while the conditioning food supplements with Chinese herbal medicines as ingredients are rare.

Health care in the eyes of the Chinese people is more of a kind of nourishment activities, to some extent, only through the Western compound is not possible to achieve, take the Eastern qi and blood for example, in the West can only be seen as a single need for iron supplementation elements.

Under China's traditional culture, for the physique of Chinese, the method in Traditional Chinese medicine may be more appropriate than compound health products, so China advocates the homology of medicine and food, inherits some classic formulas of Traditional Chinese medicine, and makes some innovations on this basis, including the innovation of carriers and the innovation of eating methods.

After the epidemic, there has been a clear growth trend in the medicinal and food homologous market.

According to the results of China's "medicinal food homology" research (2019 first series), since 2013, the output value of "medicinal and food homologous" products has reached more than 300 billion yuan, and it has grown at a rate of 14% per year. In the future, according to the conservative 10% compound annual growth rate, the product output value of "medicinal and food homology" will reach more than 500 billion yuan in 2025, and if the compound growth rate of 14% is maintained, the scale of the medicinal and food homologous market will exceed the scale of the proprietary Chinese medicine market, reaching trillion yuan.

In addition, on November 15 last year, the National Health Commission issued the "Regulations on the Administration of Substance Catalogues that Are Both Food and Chinese Medicinal Materials in Accordance with Tradition" (Guowei Food Fa [2021] No. 36), which clearly defines the scope of food and drug substances, and clearly adjusts the dynamic management of food and drug substances in a timely manner, further filling the gap in the system.

This means that the raw materials that were previously divided in OTC can also be used as "medicinal and food homology".

Different from most of the health care products on the market that are mainly based on Western compounds, TipsYou hopes to be a food supplement brand based on Chinese herbal ingredients, taking advantage of the unique advantages of China, a major raw material country, to launch China's own Chinese herbal food supplement brand.

At present, TipsYou mainly has two series of products, namely the Square series and tips series. Among them, two products, Peach Face and Goodnight Tips, have long dominated the Top3 of Tmall's gummy list.

Among them, goodnight tips this product added GABA, sour jujube kernels, lemon balm, passionflower and other Chinese herbs, can make people more calm and soothing, although the addition of γ - aminobutyric acid, but in the amount is still controlled at the food level, will not be like functional health care products will make people dependent, to meet the needs of the current high-pressure work group, that is, there is a regulatory effect, easy to eat, taste is good, the current good night tips This gummy in the TipsYou Tmall official flagship store Monthly sales remain at 10,000+.

TipsYou Goodnight Tips

In the middle of last year, the TipsYou Tmall flagship store launched 5 tips products and completed an angel round of financing. In November of the same year, three "square small sugar" series products were launched, only ten days after the launch, 2 products in the series were selected into the Tmall fudge hot list TOP10, and at the same time selected as "2021 China's most valuable new brand food TOP list", the current product repurchase rate of 12%.

The current Generation Z has carried the banner of health care, food supplements, health care products, fitness sports, aromatic massage... "fancy health" has a wide range of types. With the help of the time window of spontaneous health care for the whole people, TipsYou uses technology to narrow the distance between young people and Chinese herbal medicine, so that Chinese medicine food supplements no longer stay in the impression of multi-step and time-consuming.

Technically, the health of the East has always relied on the power of the plants themselves, and how to turn them from plants into delicious and beautiful foods in the bag has become a major difficulty.

At present, there are two main technical paths in extraction technology, one is full-map extraction, and the other is component-active extraction.

The full-map extraction technology refers to the chromatogram or spectrogram that can indicate the chemical characteristics of some Chinese herbal medicines or traditional Chinese medicine preparations after appropriate treatment and using certain analytical means.

Take ginseng as an example, ginseng is composed of more than twenty kinds of substances, it is not like the Western compound, it can be clear which ingredient has a certain effect, ginseng does have the effect of tonifying qi and blood, but it is difficult to know which or which of the more than twenty kinds of substances of ginseng has the effect of tonifying qi and blood.

So TipsYou in this case chose the full map extraction technology, that is, all active ingredients are 1:1 reduction retention, ginseng has more than 20 substances, TipsYou will extract more than 20 kinds of substances and put them into the product.

For example, TipsYou "Peach Face Youfang", which is a fudge that mainly tonifies qi and blood, restores the square in the eight treasure soups in "Ruizhutang Experience Square", which is also known as the four gentlemen soup, which is used for double supplementation of qi and blood, suitable for people with cold hands and feet and need to adjust the body. TipsYou's "Peach Face Recipe" applies angelica, ginseng, yam, mulberry, turmeric, yellow essence, poria and licorice in the eight-flavored soup, rather than one of the ingredients in these eight herbs.

To achieve this level, the extraction technology needs to reach the molecular level, TipsYou R & D laboratory and Zhongke Molecular Research Institute and other institutions have carried out technical cooperation, so that the reduction of raw materials of the product is ensured, open up the supply chain of traditional Chinese medicine herbs, food, functional supplements, and establish a high level of research and development barriers.

If you want to completely combine candy and Kampo herbs, you can't do without the standardization of raw materials, the standardization of recipes and the standardization of production processes.

At present, TipsYou has opened up all three links, in the raw materials section, TipsYou has designated, long-term cooperation with raw material suppliers. Due to the objective factors of the raw materials themselves, the next step of technological development in raw materials is an inevitable trend, that is, extraction technology, in this regard, TipsYou Laboratory has been solved through exclusive cooperation; the laboratory has stockpiled 15+ medicinal and food homologous formulas, which can be put on the market at any time.

In terms of taste, TipsYou invites consumers to participate in co-creation. For each planned product to launch out 10-15 flavor samples, invite 3,000 Little Red Book bloggers to vote to decide which flavor is the most delicious, the birth of the top three votes will be quantified output into the market. At present, the three flavors that have been mass-produced and launched are honey brown sugar flavor, mung bean smoothie flavor, and orange oolong flavor.

TipsYou Taobao official flagship store

TipsYou founder and CEO Zhou Zhenyang graduated from the University of California, San Diego, and was a former deputy investment director of the listed company JinBaobao (01239HK.), focusing on investing in "new economy" projects. He once founded the Pu'er tea brand "Prince and Mountain", focusing on creating "Mansong Pu'er Tribute Tea", and successfully built it into a popular product in the circle of Pu'er tea collectors, with annual sales of more than 20 million yuan and rich experience in brand marketing.

Co-founder and CMO Ho Chun Chi graduated from the University of California, Irvine, is a veteran of brand omni-channel establishment and brand communication, with many years of brand management and operation experience. Good at the large-scale promotion and landing of the brand, before joining TipsYou, he once expanded the online channel for a brand from 0 to 1, and landed in hundreds of stores across the country, managing a team of 1,000 people.

At present, the scale of China's health care market has exceeded one trillion, and the market of medicinal and food homology has been slowly liberalized, and more and more Chinese herbal medicines can begin to enter the food market and enter the mass market. Coupled with the increase of 40% of the post-90s taking this product, the tide of the epidemic has become a trend in more and more industries, TipsYou was born under such a window, with the continuous development of technology and taste, the development can be expected.

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