As a light luxury brand in the tea industry, Nesher's tea also has a time to put down its posture.
Recently, Naixue's tea official announced a price reduction, launched a new tea product line of less than 20 yuan, and promised to put on at least one new "1-word" product every month. The latest pricing information shows that the price of many products of Naixue's tea has been reduced, with a maximum drop of 10 yuan, and there are no products of more than 30 yuan. After the adjustment, the overall price band of Nesher was moved down to 9 yuan.
The gradual popularization of the price also gives Naixue's tea the opportunity to squeeze into the "affordable" tea drinking area, in the face of a new round of affordable tea drinking track, Naixue's tea as a high-end tea brand can set off how much waves?
From light luxury to close to the people
In fact, the price reduction of Naixue's tea is not a new thing in the industry, and Xi tea and Lele tea have already announced the price reduction news.
On February 24, Xicha officially announced that it will no longer launch products of 29 yuan and above this year;
On March 3, Lele Tea announced through the official public account that the price of some drinks has been controlled below 20 yuan, of which the lowest price of pure tea fresh extract jasmine green is priced at 8 yuan.
Price adjustment may be a collective behavior of the current tea drinking industry, but in fact, there is already a clue.
The most obvious is that after the epidemic, high-end tea has undergone digital reform, and Xicha, Lele Tea, CoCo Naixue's tea, etc., have set up their own digital teams, optimized from three aspects: order promotion, store expansion space, and cost reduction, so as to make price reduction possible.
In 2021, the epidemic has entered normalization, the economy is down, and the willingness of residents to consume has declined, and from this macro perspective, the impact on consumer brands is also beyond doubt.
In this context, Nesher's Tea began to seek to gradually deepen the digital reform of stores and optimize online services such as takeaway to increase customer traffic.
What is visible to the naked eye is that the sales volume of online order mini programs has increased significantly. According to Naixue's tea data, in March 2021, the proportion of Naixue's orders for mini programs reached 50.36%, and the proportion of Naixue member orders reached 53.15%, an increase of 63.8% and 72.3% respectively over before the epidemic. Nesher's total online tea orders accounted for 83%.
Digitalization not only responds to the offline order crisis for high-end tea drinks, but also solves the problem of high-end tea prices and store expansion.
At present, the ceiling of high-end fresh tea drinks is much lower than that of other tracks.
First, the expansion space is too narrow. High-end tea drinks often rely on shopping malls, but the data shows that the total number of shopping malls in the country is less than 5,000, and even if it is burned to seize stores, Neixue only has 817 stores. In contrast, other tea brands at other prices, taking Mi Xue Bingcheng as an example, according to the Northeast Securities Research Report, the number of low-end tea drink Mi Xue BingCheng stores has reached 13846.
Second, the operating costs are high. The unit price of high-end ready-made tea is expensive, but on profitability, high-end ready-made tea is not necessarily how high-end, the fresh milk and fresh fruit of Naixue tea are extremely demanding on the transportation and preservation conditions, of which the fruit also has obvious seasonality, and the seasonal taste and flavor difference are great, which will affect the final tea flavor. Therefore, the raw material cost of high-end ready-made tea will be much higher than that of those low-end teas that use tea powder, creamer and fruit mushrooms to process raw materials.
Taking Xicha as an example, Xicha has created its own derivative sinking small shop brand - Xixiao tea, under the refined operation of digital technology, it has reduced the problem of excessive costs, and continued to penetrate the sinking market with the small shop model through the main "parity wind".
In 2021, Xixiaocha gradually took root in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, Huizhou and other cities, opening 22 stores. Among them, there are 15 stores in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, accounting for more than 68%, and in the case of most stores opening for less than half a year, the annual sales volume exceeded 2.8 million cups.
It can be seen that although high-end tea drinks have the profit space brought by the brand premium, in the long run, with the cost growth brought by brand positioning, it also makes more high-end tea operations stretched, and the cost reduction brought by digitalization has given high-end tea drinks more room to play, perhaps this price reduction is not a "tacit" price war, but more like a positive signal after a digital upgrade help, after the high-end market gradually accelerates the staking.
On the whole, the price reduction may be the spring breeze of digitalization blowing to the high-end tea industry, this time the big change of cost reduction and efficiency increase, more like a brand "downward upgrade", in the case of retaining the same quality, constantly sinking to the low-end market. What kind of signal will this be for the low-end market? Can Nesher's tea really sink again?
Market "variables" after sinking
I have to say that Nai Xue's tea price reduction operation is bound to attract a new wave of fans.
After all, as a high-end new tea brand, Naixue's tea no longer needs to think about more marketing means for his brand, and has already formed a high-end brand image in the minds of consumers. Of course, there will also be a large part of consumers who are discouraged by their high prices. The launch of low- and medium-priced products can just make up for the market gap in this area, covering consumers in different circles, and then expanding the existing traffic pool.
Based on this thinking logic, Songguo Finance believes that the price reduction series products launched by Nesher's tea can bring new growth in traffic and performance. However, in the ranks of affordable milk tea brands, brands such as Michelle Ice City and Tea Hundred Ways have established their own brand effects in the corresponding markets. If Nesher's tea is to achieve real sinking, it is not only necessary to sink the price, but also need to consider some considerations such as site selection.
The logic is very simple, at present, many of The tea store addresses of Nesher are located in relatively high-end areas such as supermarkets, that is to say, the location has divided its own passenger flow into regions, and there are user limitations. After all, in the ranks of affordable milk tea brands, brands such as Honey Snow Ice City and Tea Baidao have already harvested a wave of users.
However, the launch of Naixue's tea, a large price reduction product, may still have a reshuffling effect on the existing tea market. This means that for some tea brands that are themselves positioned in the middle and low end, it is a "dimensionality reduction blow". NBS new products slightly believe that the head brand began to take the lead in price reduction, there will be a strong market transmission effect, low-end new tea brands will also follow the move, it is expected that the new tea market will usher in a longer period of price fluctuations.
On the whole, perhaps high-end products sink to mid-range products, which has brand advantages, but because the expansion of low-end brands is more than that of high-end brands, the competition will be more intense, which is an opportunity and a challenge for high-end brand stores with more refined operations. However, the price reduction of Naixue's tea, the author believes that the market also has more expectations.