Image source @ Visual China
Text | Consumer world
New tea has become a young people's self-pleasing consumption, as the tea competition into the second half, the pace of new models of major brands is getting faster and faster, although many brands can maintain a new frequency, but the attention caused by new products is weakening.
The speed of tea brand promotion also reflects the anxiety under homogenization competition, compared with last year's oil oranges and raw coconuts, this summer's new tea market seems to lack explosive products.
01 Unwind at the end of the raw material
Compared with traditional tea drinks, the new tea drink uses the concentrate extracted from different extraction methods as raw materials, and adds raw and auxiliary ingredients such as fresh milk, fresh fruits, and imported cream to carry out diversified collocation, and the rich and diverse ingredients make people sigh that "everything can be tea".
After last year's citrus became the "top stream", this year's new tea brand continued to make a fuss around niche fruits, choosing fruits such as bale, mulberry, prickly pear, etc., hoping to become a "treasure tea" in the hands of consumers.
Some time ago, the logo of Honey Snow Ice City became black, and related entries also rushed to the hot search, in order to promote the new products, and The Tea Hundred Road also named the new mulberry products "Black Lacquer". At the same time, this year's large-capacity drinks began to become popular again. The launch of large barrels includes Naixue's tea, CoCo, Shanghai Auntie, Tea Baidao, 7 points sweet and other brands, but it is clear that the new products launched this year lack the real sense of the explosion.
For new tea companies, more niche fruits mean challenges. A stable fruit supply chain requires a lot of money, and only a small number of head brands have built a stable fresh fruit supply chain. The reason for this phenomenon is that on the one hand, the fruit is perishable, the procurement radius is limited, and the seasonal impact is large, on the other hand, the market concentration is low, and it is difficult to purchase a variety of fruit categories.
While new teas are still struggling with fruit supplies, suppliers are secretly making money. For example, Tianye shares mainly supply raw juices, and its customers include new tea brands such as Naixue's tea, Shanghai Auntie, and Chabaidao, which have recently been handed over to the Beijing Stock Exchange.
In order to ensure the supply of fruit throughout the year, to obtain market-approved raw materials and thus gain a competitive advantage, some brands have chosen to cooperate with the orchards of the producing areas or build their own orchards. Xicha has its own tea garden in guizhou Fanjing Mountain Range, and Naixue's tea creates an exclusive strawberry garden for digital soilless cultivation; Cha Yan Yue Se established a biotechnology company, the business scope covers agricultural product research and development and primary agricultural product acquisition business; As early as 2016, Gu Ming chose Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, to plant perfume lemons, participate in the traceability activities of lemons, mangoes, strawberries, dairy products, etc., and also built its own warehousing system and logistics distribution system to ensure stable supply quality and price; Michelle Ice City has also set up an agricultural company...
In addition to niche fruits, the head brand also rolls up the quality of milk source. "Heytea Quality Real Milk Standard" covers the important nodes of real milk raw materials from the milk source farm to the use of stores, including the source of real milk, real milk processing, real milk storage and transportation, and real milk store use. That is, it is calling on the entire industry to use fresh milk, which has also been interpreted by the outside world as a cannon on tea brands that use creamer at the middle and low end.
Although the new tea brand has increased investment in the industrial chain, it seems that it is still difficult to establish a moat, the industry imitation, homogenization phenomenon is serious, in the fierce tea competition, the head brand has taken a very fast speed of innovation, catering to young people who love to taste new. According to the "2021 Big Data Report" released by Naixue's tea, Naixue's tea will launch 105 new products in 2021, with an average of 3.5 days. The new speed of new tea drinking is even ridiculed by netizens, according to this new speed, the world's fruits are not enough.
02 Adopt a multi-brand strategy
In 2022, the growth rate of the new tea drinking track has slowed down significantly. According to the "China Catering Category and Brand Development Report", in the next 2-3 years, the growth rate of new tea drinks will slow down in stages and adjust to 10%-15%. This year, a number of brands, including Xi Tea, NaiXue's Tea, and Lele Tea, have chosen to reduce prices, and the first wave of price cuts has just passed, and the second wave of price cuts has recently been launched. New tea drinks through the way of price reduction, expand the consumer population, stimulate the repurchase rate to increase, will focus on the middle waist market, look forward to opening the second and third line of the low-end market, improve profitability.
In terms of financing amount, last year's financing of more than 100 million yuan of tea drinks occurred 13 times, and the only financing of more than 100 million yuan disclosed in the first half of this year was the three brands of Shuyi Burning Immortal Grass, Lemon Season and T COMMA. Many new tea brands have completed the conversion from being invested to actively investing in this identity, and choosing investment can achieve faster expansion of market share, broaden business territory, enhance category synergy, tap greater market potential, achieve new economic growth points, and also construct a multilateral matrix of brands to achieve multilateral operations and enhance brand moats.
Most of the tea brands that are difficult to sustain but hold a lot of cash have chosen to invest abroad, Xicha, Michelle Ice City, Shuyi Roasted Fairy Grass, Tea Yan Yue, etc. are expanding their investment territory, adopting a "multi-brand strategy", taking Xicha as an example, investing in drinks as the main line, including coffee brand Seesaw, minority coffee, oat milk brand wild plant YePlant, tea brand and peach peach, pre-mixed wine drink brand WAT cocktail, juice brand Wild Cuishan. In addition, it also acquired 70% of the equity of Wang Lemon Tea in the name of its brand XiXiao Tea, spanning brands such as coffee, plant protein, and pre-mixed wine.
Brands such as Shuyaken Xiancao, Lemon Season, and Naixue's Tea have also moved. Michelle Ice City invested in the Guangdong tea brand HuiCha, and also invested in the fried chicken category, Nai Xue's tea investment tea brand Tea Yiji, Shuyi Roast Xiancao invested in the coffee brand DOC, And Lemon Season wholly owned the coffee brand RUU...
In addition to investing in coffee is a major trend, investing in regional brands is another trend. Cha Yan Yue Se announced in a high profile that he made his first investment in Guo Ya, which is also a local brand in Changsha, although the popularity of Guo Ya Ya is far less than that of Cha Yan Yue, but there is a CP relationship between the two, which is not only regarded as the two new tea brands that must be drunk in Changsha, but also has a lot of interaction between the founders of the two sides.
Investment can also help enterprises cover a broader consumer market, achieve complementary effects, adopt a more diversified product portfolio, make enterprises constitute a more complete category ecology, and also enhance the anti-risk ability of enterprises. Empower brands through investment and add weight to the highly competitive new tea market.
03 Can multi-dimensional profitability open up the territory?
The threshold for tea drinking is not high, and innovation is limited. The innovative information of raw materials is more transparent, which lowers the wall of product competition, and the number of entrants has increased sharply, resulting in fierce competition. The head brand is working on the whole category at the same time, while some mid-waists are focused on certain sub-categories. For example, Brands such as Wang Lemon and Lemon Sen focus on making lemon tea, and the book also burns immortal grass and throbbing roasted immortal grass mainly makes roasted immortal grass.
The new tea that was once ridiculed as "Eight Treasure Porridge" in terms of ingredients also began to be combined with alcohol, coffee and other raw materials. In addition to the slightly drunk tea launched by Xicha, Chabaidao and Luzhou Laojiao also launched a joint milk tea "Drunken Walk on the Road", adding liquor to the milk tea, Fushimi Momoyama launched the Kyoto Tavern series, not to mention the sake brewed milk tea launched by many brands.
Caught in the context of deep inner volume and diversified and multi-dimensional competition, many tea brands have begun to look for new growth curves and more possibilities in the future, considering the use of brand extension strategies, in addition to tea products, launch new product projects, such as leisure snacks, tea bag gift boxes, sparkling water and other retail peripheral products. In The 2021 financial report of Neixue, the revenue of "other products", including sparkling water, tea gift boxes, and souvenirs, was 170 million yuan, accounting for 3.9% of the revenue.
In terms of bottled tea, Xicha launched light milk tea after the introduction of sparkling water and juice; Nai Xue's tea is also cut in at 0 fat and 0 calories, and a new bottle of sparkling water is added; Michelle Ice City also launched bottled drinks and registered the trademark of "Snow King Loves To Drink Water". Under the situation that the epidemic has affected the traffic of stores, tea brands that have lost offline organic traffic are increasingly looking at online new retail as a future brand increment.
In terms of tea bag gift boxes, XiCha Weekly Tea Gift Box, Nai Xue's tea gift box, including tea drinking, tea bags, pre-packaged desserts and other products, expand the product line, tea powder, square can tea, habit tea, etc., the price of a single package does not exceed 10 yuan.
Tea + European bags, tea + egg cubes, etc. are common combinations of tea shops, which not only enrich the functions of tea shops, but also highlight leisure. Brands that highlight tea + light food, such as gaga xianyu, may be regarded as light food stores by consumers.
Starbucks' successful precedent in the third space is obviously full of temptation for new tea brands, and some stores have broken through small stores of more than ten square meters and expanded to dozens of square meters, even hundreds of square meters, and also create a sense of freshness in the environment in the space design of the store. For example, hey tea, black gold store, PINK store, DP store, GO store, ancient style theme store, pet-friendly theme store and environmental protection theme store and other different theme store type; Cha Yan Yue Shi has jointly built an offline store with the specialty coffee brand San yone and a half, and launched the "Garden Party" concept store in 2020, providing cultural life products including tea, tea sets, snacks, daily necessities, stationery and so on; In addition to regular tea and ice cream, Michelle Ice City's flagship store also has a coffee roasting area, a fried skewer area, and a cultural and creative surrounding area.
The third space with diverse categories and infinite extension can provide more imagination space for it, but as far as the current market feedback is concerned, the exploration of new tea brands in space is not as optimistic as imagined.
04 Conclusion
When tea is integrated into coffee and alcohol, the boundaries of tea drinking are becoming more and more blurred, due to the low threshold of the industry and the low technical barriers, new tea products are likely to show a situation of continuous "inner volume". However, whether the brand can have the advantage of supply chain and create classic products, at present, it is still necessary to put a question mark?