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Wen 丨 finance is unscrupulous, the author 丨 no rust bowl
With the normalization of the concept of "sinking", the story chain of "suddenly jumping red - falling into the Red Sea - sinking to open a store - regaining vitality or completely closing down" is becoming the main line of fate of more and more new brands.
As a tea brand that is both a "new consumption boom" and a "commodity of daily life", it has undoubtedly become the most common fate carrier of this story chain.
Although the "sinking" has long ceased to be a fresh story, after listening to the busyness and vitality of this market, on the old and tidy county center avenue, a crowd of milk tea shops full of Internet celebrities will still make you feel a sense of spatial dislocation in the blink of an eye.
During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, CaiJing came to Funing, Jiangsu Province, a five-tier town, to explore the ecology of milk tea shops here.
County chronicle
Before systematically describing the development of the tea industry in this small county, we must first introduce the customs and customs of this land.
In terms of geography and population, Funing County belongs to Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, located in the middle of Jianghuai, east of the Yellow Sea, back to the plain, south of the Suzhong water network, belongs to the subtropical to warm temperate transition climate, under the jurisdiction of 13 organized towns, 4 streets, a total area of 1439km, the permanent population of 825,400 people, of which, 18-34 years old, 35-59 years old population accounted for 21.45% and 39.04% respectively.
In terms of economy, the total GDP of the county in 2020 is 57.422 billion yuan, ranking at the bottom of the top 100 counties, the main industries are food, clothing, chemical and construction, the ratio of the first, second and third industrial structures is 1:3.57:3.88, and the ratio of employed population is 1:1.27:1.37. In 2019, the total retail sales of consumer goods in the county were 14.534 billion yuan, the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 32,480 yuan, and the Engel coefficient was 32.9%.
In terms of infrastructure, at present, the county has a total of 2 high-speed rail stations, 1 railway station, and 1 large commercial street in the urban area, with smooth traffic most of the time and perfect takeaway delivery services.
On the whole, the county belongs to the fifth-tier cities, the population is relatively dense, and the mobility is larger, the income level of residents is medium, the quality of life is focused, leisure and entertainment are relatively rich, the functions of various plates in the urban area are obvious, the central commercial street shops are concentrated, and the flow of people is huge.
So, in such a standard sense of the "sinking market", what does it mean to open a milk tea shop?
Say goodbye to all the rules
First of all, the most direct point is that most of the experience accumulated in first- and second-tier cities is not applicable.
As of February 2022, there are more than 20 kinds of milk tea brands settled in Funing County, which are mainly divided into three categories: well-known brands in first- and second-tier cities represented by 7 points sweet, 100 tea lanes and 1 point, sinking market chain brands represented by Honey Snow Ice City, a yogurt cow, and Yihetang, and local milk tea brands.
Although there are many brands, whether it is a "strong dragon" or a "ground snake", it follows the rules unique to the county milk tea.
Before visiting the above-mentioned milk tea shops, the author has always had a misunderstanding: the difference between the sinking market and the second-tier city is mainly in consumers - the former is more interested in cost performance, lack of brand awareness, and dislike online marketing.
However, in fact, what casts this whole set of county milk tea rules is not the difference in consumer consumption habits, but the difference in "field".
In recent years, the rise and sinking of social media such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu has gradually eliminated the cognitive differences between consumers in various markets.
When I returned to my hometown to investigate, the author was surprised to find that hot marketing cases such as "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" and "taro mud milk tea do not taro mud" are also widely spread in Funing County, and consumers are also familiar with brands such as Xicha, Starbucks, and Naixue that have not yet sunk to this point.
On the other hand, although consumers in Funing County have increased in price sensitivity compared with first- and second-tier cities, the focus on eating, drinking and having fun has made many milk tea brands with an average price of 15 yuan to 18 yuan also have a huge source of customers.
From this point of view, what really distinguishes first- and second-tier cities from the sinking market is not consumers, but the market environment represented by infrastructure and commercial carriers.
For example, to open a tea shop in a first- and second-tier city, the first problem that cannot be avoided is "site selection", whether the shop is a commercial area or a residential area, the population structure, consumption level, how the flow of people is, and whether the cost of site selection is controllable.
However, the above problems are basically ineffective in this county.
The reason is very simple, there is no commercial complex in Funing County, only a core pedestrian street, all the milk tea shops in the whole county are basically gathered here, and the remaining sporadic stores are also concentrated in the area near the school.
In the space of 50 meters, 6 milk tea shops are across the street
If you have to find another way and then choose a location to open a store, the end of waiting for the store is often reduced to a "takeaway pick-up point".
The root cause, first of all, Funing County's urban area is large and the old and new are clearly separated, although most of the resident residents have bicycles and electric vehicles, but overall, the transportation environment is not good, away from the mainstream of commercial facilities, which means that the same line of customers are completely separated.
Secondly, as the most densely populated commercial center in the urban area, the area is also the largest offline traffic entrance in Funing County, just as the CBD with office buildings is of the same significance to large groups, if any tea brand wants to further expand its influence in the county, it must leave a store on this "land-in-gold" street.
Finally, the gathering of beverage stores has also invisibly absorbed the few takeaway rider resources in the county, further exacerbating the "extreme layout" of this site selection.
The above three points are undoubtedly a major embodiment of the "failure" of the rules of the head city, not only that, in addition to the rule level, the sinking market is also relying on its unique business environment to make adjustments to the "template" of new tea brand stores.
To experience, not to be efficient
If you use one word to summarize the business environment of the sinking market, the most accurate evaluation is undoubtedly "a thousand cities and a thousand faces".
"Online creates commonality, and offline creates difference." This is the core logic that cannot be avoided in interpreting the sinking market.
The third- and fourth-tier cities are essentially a market where personality is greater than commonality, and what shapes the personality of each city is the social circle layer and social relationship between the county and the county.
As Shan Xinghua, a brand marketing expert in the sinking market, explained in the book "Sinking Market: Localized Operation":
"Every county has a social circle and social relationship of each county, and they create the unique cultural attributes and urban atmosphere of each county."
For any brand that aspires to this, offline social circles and social relationships are "the most critical elements in localization operations".
People who are familiar with business logic may be familiar with concepts such as "ping effect" and "turnover rate".
As a commonly used measure of operating efficiency in first-tier urban areas, the above data guides practitioners how to create the most lucrative profits in commercial centers with high rents and water and electricity, with the smallest area of stores.
Interestingly, this small but fine beverage shop style has also been challenged in Funing County, which sinks the market.
In the observation of tea brands in Funing County, the author found that the number of simple pick-up stores is quite rare, and many brands' stores have undergone expansion, even brands such as Luckin and Michelle Ice City, which have the ultimate control over costs, have to leave a store with a scale of tens of square meters here.
Corresponding to the spacious and open stores and the bustling dynamic traffic are consumers who have almost never moved their seats in the store.
In the milk tea shop in Funing County, a cup of tea, a pack of cigarettes, a chair to sit for a day, is a very common scene, which is more or less inseparable from the offline social system of the sinking market - small talk between middle-aged and elderly people, card games for adults and mobile games for young people.
At the root of this, residents in third- and fourth-tier cities may be inferior to the head cities in terms of average income, but in terms of disposable income and time, they are not spared.
The data report previously released by Aurora Survey shows that because there is no debt burden such as housing loans, the disposable income and consumption capacity of small-town residents will actually be more than that of first- and second-tier youth.
Coincidentally, the "China Workplace Balance Index Survey Report" jointly launched by the Social Survey Research Center of Peking University and Zhaopin Recruitment also shows that the average working hours of residents in cities below the third tier are much lower than those of head cities.
This means that outside of work, small-town residents actually have more time for entertainment, to mobilize friends and family to group, shop, and shop. From this point of view, milk tea is not only a gorgeous "drink", but also a "key" and "password" to unlock the leisure and entertainment of the sinking market.
Rush out of the "inner volume" of the Red Sea
In an alley that extends along the pedestrian street, the author met the object of this visit, a post-90s milk tea shop entrepreneur, in 2020, deeply involved in inner anxiety, she quit her job in a first-tier city and returned to her hometown to open this milk tea shop.
Up to now, there are four employees in the store, including herself, and in the simple and bright store environment, the main signs are milk tea and fruit tea.
She told me that the tea list in front of me was already a version that had undergone several adjustments.
When the start of the business, the main product of the store is a very popular type of "0 sugar 0 calorie light milk tea" in today's first-tier cities, but the actual effect is not ideal, the anxiety of sugar reduction and lipid reduction is not obvious in the sinking market, compared to the self-deception of 0 calorie milk tea, consumers are more concerned about the cost performance and taste of tea.
After that, she also tried to follow the trend of social media, mainly promoting a series of Internet celebrity tea drinks, but behind each launch of a new product, it means from the production process training, drink list replacement, and then to the "big change" of street marketing, for a long time, she had to run for her life.
"After a tea on Douyin and Weibo, the drinking method is hot, a few days later, someone will hold up a mobile phone and ask if there is the same model in the store."
In her perspective, the influence of social media can reach the sinking market, but this traffic comes and goes quickly, even if it lasts, it will also face competition from other beverage stores for "internet celebrities with the same style".
In the annual wave of homecoming, this competition will become more intense. In 2020, funing county's registered population reached 1.1 million, minus 825,400 permanent population, which means that every year, the small county town accepts a torrent of up to 200,000 people.
The sales volume of milk tea shops on the commercial street also rises and falls with the flow of this crowd, the cold and summer holidays, May Day National Day is the busiest time in the store, the hot July and August, counting takeaways, the daily sales can reach nearly three hundred cups, this figure is 6-7 times the sales volume of the spring and autumn stores.
"I went back to my hometown to start a business, because I was tired of 'rolling' in the big city, the 'roll' didn't move, I wanted to come back to relax a little, I didn't expect that the milk tea shop at home also had to be 'rolled'." After saying this, she added easily: "Fortunately, the volume is only three months a year, and the rest of the time, arranging the process in the store, can basically lie flat." ”
Behind the joke of only three months a year, it also means that for any milk tea shop that wants to make a name for itself here, losing summer and Spring Festival, it loses everything.
The same situation is happening in other milk tea shops.
Funing County, with a huge population, and the "migratory birds" who return from first- and second-tier cities with abundant cash flow, supply nearly half of the annual turnover for milk tea shops in small counties in every cold and summer.
In order to cope with the cost crisis in the off-season and the busyness of the peak season, "temporary workers" have become a unique scenery of the milk tea market in this small county, and in the milk tea shop in the center of this commercial street, the whiteboard of "recruiting winter vacation workers" is still clearly visible in the crowd of queues.
"After this Spring Festival, I am ready to give myself a month's leave, and I will go to the milk tea shops in the surrounding counties to take a look and learn from the scriptures."
Beyond the transparent glass doors and windows of this milk tea shop, around Funing County, across the borders of provincial highways, mountains, and rivers, countless such ordinary counties form a vast sinking market, and the countless milk tea shops in these counties and towns form a competitive atmosphere that collectively forms this "inner volume" and "lying flat".
In a sinking market, "sinking" is the greatest privilege. Putting aside the premium of the brand, the segmentation of the traffic, and the class of the contempt chain, all the tea brands share a few commercial bases in a small town, and every day accompanied by the roar of the water bar machine, hundreds of thousands of people flow out of the sweet happiness.
And this may be the unique cultural core of small town milk tea - away from the complex assessment of the flow of people, the turnover rate, and the ping efficiency ratio, a group of people with money and leisure, and another group of dust servants, in the coldest and hottest season of the year, on time to gather this lively, experience and crowd.