CBO reporter Li Siyang
Shortly after completing a $200 million financing, the new beauty retail brand "HARMAY Talking Plum" has found another way to enter the lemon tea track, launching the hand-play lemon tea brand introlemons, and recently opened its first flagship store in Shanghai. What inspiration can this cross-border play bring to beauty retail stores?
Although it started out as beauty retail, HARMAY Has become more like a company innovating the new scene of offline retail.
At the beginning of the year, the news that HARMAY had completed nearly US$200 million (about 1.27 billion yuan) series C and D financings attracted industry attention. But then, instead of continuing to speed up the layout of beauty stores, Jiemei played an unexpected card - continuing to increase the number of lemon tea brand "introlemons".
Recently, introlemons opened its first flagship store at No. 308 Anfu Road, Shanghai, the former site of The first offline store in Jiemei.
It is reported that in addition to the recently opened Flagship Store of Anfu Road, "Introlemons" has actually opened stores in Beijing, Xi'an, Chongqing and other places before this, and will expand stores in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places in the future.
At the important turning point of the $200 million financing, Instead of taking advantage of the chase to accelerate the beauty layout, Jie Mei broke into the new catering track with a high degree of segmentation of "lemon tea". This makes people wonder whether Jie mei's move is to hunt for the drainage, or to see a new growth point.
01
Reinforcing a "sense of community"
Site selection is preferential around "Talking Plum"
The site of the introlemons flagship store, No. 308 Anfu Road, Shanghai, was originally the first offline store of HARMAY, who moved across the road in October 2021 to open a single-family community store "Jiemeifang", the two stores across the street. In addition to witnessing the intimate relationship between the two brands, it has also become a public space open to local and surrounding community residents, further strengthening the "sense of community" and the atmosphere of life.
It is reported that the store has a total of two floors of space, covering an area of more than 200 square meters, the space design is inspired by the sweet and sour taste of lemon, and the sweet and sour taste level makes the design of the upper and lower floors completely different and complementary. The façade is container-shaped and open to the street, reflecting an open attitude towards the community.
The birthplace of introlemons is Zhanjiang, with "forgiveness" as the emotional foundation and keyword of the brand, positioning "only selling iced tea all year round", and the main product is the green "forgive lemon tea", priced at 28 yuan a cup.
The Brand side of Jiemei has publicly stated that introlemons will give priority to the surrounding of the Jiemei City store in the location selection, whether it is a Beijing store, a Xi'an store, or a Chongqing store.
Not only lemon tea, in February last year, Shanghai Talk An Coffee Co., Ltd. was established, and Yue Mei held 60% of the shares. As the first testing ground for the first time to join the coffee format, The Shanghai Wukang Road store integrates beauty shop, café, retail and leisure, turning the first floor into an open space.
The Jiemei brand said that this is a service product similar to IKEA ice cream, with the thinking of traffic, so that there is a special connection between the two, whether it is lemon tea, or coffee, can create a better user experience in addition to commercialization.
02
Why "hand-hit lemon tea"?
What comes into the game is a new track that is growing at a high speed. In 2021, a number of new retail brands of lemon tea, including "Yanli", "Lemon Season" and "Uncle Qiu", have sprung up, opening the era of "specialty stores" for lemon tea, an inconspicuous single product.
Before "hand-playing lemon tea" became a popular drink on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, this street drink based on squeezing fresh lemon juice and supplementing it with herbal tea was already very common in Guangdong. According to Tianyan, there are more than 1,000 lemon tea-related enterprises in the country, of which more than 700 are distributed in Guangdong. After the Guangdong market was almost saturated, a number of lemon tea brands began to spill over the country, and in 2021 alone, there were more than 440 new lemon tea-related enterprises.
The track of entering the game may also help Mei, who is good at financing, to get more favored by capital.
Taking Hunan Sanfa Catering Management Co., Ltd., the parent company of "Lemon Season", as an example, it completed the A round of financing in July last year and January this year respectively, with investors including ByteDance, Tencent, Shunwei Capital, etc., with a total investment of hundreds of millions of yuan.
In the case of a number of milk tea brands led by Xicha, Naixue and Guming fully occupying the market and causing competition to be saturated, lemon tea, as an unattractive marginal product in milk tea shops, has become the new darling of capital in one fell swoop, and the new subdivision track opened up by lemon tea has great potential.
03
Make-up is not the point
The "lifestyle" of the core consumer group is the business opportunity
The beauty of the new retail of The beauty of the New Retail, It seems that The Company is not only satisfied with operating the beauty track, but has focused its attention on the audience of the Beauty Innovation, and tried to expand new areas according to the characteristics of consumers.
Yang Zhenghua, CEO of Shangsi Advertising China, said in an interview with the "Cosmetics Finance Online" reporter that The lemon tea entered the market is to operate the "consumer group", which also represents that the interests of the plum for their consumer groups and cores are not just "beauty", but a way of life.
"The operation of the consumer group is the most important part of the retail industry, and The Beauty may also be thinking about how the consumer groups they now have should meet their different entertainment and interest needs." Yang Zhenghua said.
Yang Zhenghua also said, "Because this group of people is relatively new, the lifestyle is also more lively and cool, if you want to innovate on the brand of Jiemei, to some extent, it is actually limited and very tired." For example, you have to open a different concept store at a time, and then you have to have different experiences and themes. Therefore, for Yumei, doing cross-category is also a very good choice. ”
Obviously, in addition to beauty collection stores, Jiemei is also trying to use carriers such as lemon tea to reach more needs and experiences of consumers, explore a new way of life, and explore more possibilities of offline experiential stores.