New consumer brands are cooling.
In the three years of the epidemic, new consumer beverage brands have sprung up, and online traffic dividends have made a number of new brands eat a lot.
But when the smog dissipates, consumption cools down, and capital returns to calm, those Internet celebrity beverage brands that rely on the rise of traffic dividends may disappear in 2023.
Internet celebrity drinks "lost" freezers
The rapid rise of Genki Forest has made countless people see the opportunity to "redo the industry".
A large number of cutting-edge beverage brands have been sought after by capital with various concepts popular with young people such as light health, sugar-free, and national tide, and have become the darlings of the track.
However, after visiting a number of convenience stores, Pinjiuhui found that most of the Internet celebrity brands that originally occupied the mainstream of freezers last year were squeezed into corner positions by traditional brands led by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wahaha and Nongfu Spring.
◎Beverage products in the freezer / tasting exchange
In the eyes of the industry, the lack of cost performance and lack of offline investment are the main reasons.
At present, the mainstream drink price band is between 2 yuan ~ 6 yuan, especially before the rise of Yuan Qi Forest, the price of Red Bull 6 yuan has made ordinary consumers feel quite high. But I didn't expect that after the 6 yuan sparkling water of Genki Forest, the drinks launched by the new brand were more expensive than the other.
For example, oat milk, which is said to be more environmentally friendly and healthy than cow's milk, has an average price of about 8 pieces; A national chao soda with real juice retails for 12 yuan; The price of some plant drinks with the same origin of medicine and food also ranges from 6 yuan ~ 19.9 yuan; The price of new products launched by other brands is also concentrated in 6~15 yuan...
For consumers who return to reason, drinks are more responsible for the function of "quenching thirst", and a bottle of up to 10 pieces of drink will naturally not become the first choice. This also prompted terminal stores to put more and more cost-effective products in the C position.
At the same time, summer is the key time point for beverage brands to sprint performance, such as Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, Wahaha and other traditional brands will invest a lot of money on the freezer every year, in the past two years, Yuanqi Forest has also joined the summer freezer war, which is difficult for most new beverage brands to bear, and their own freezer brand is naturally not willing to take a ride with other brands.
◎Products in the Genki Forest Freezer / Tasting Drink
"Freezing is the best display", this strategy has been prevalent in the beverage industry for many years. According to industry insiders, freezing is an important basic resource to promote the sales of ready-to-drink products, beverage companies are extremely fierce competition for shelf share, shelf display, bottle marketing are competitive means, but the most direct "collision" between brands comes from the launch of freezer terminal facilities.
Swire Coca-Cola also said that in terms of freezers, Swire Coca-Cola has continued to invest this year, and currently has more than 1 million units in Chinese mainland. Dongpeng Beverage also found that many consumers decide what drinks to buy the moment they open the refrigerator door, so the most basic work to do beverages is to put products on the shelf, and through strengthening the freezer placement and product freezing display at the channel end, etc., to increase product exposure, increase consumers' purchase frequency and single point output, thereby driving revenue growth.
Returning to the channel is the ultimate antidote to beverage development
In fact, the gradual disappearance of influencer brands is not surprising.
Looking back at the history of China's beverage development in the past 30 years, we can clearly see that the head brands are still strong in the national market, and regional brands are also alive and delicious in the local market, but small and medium-sized brands have changed one stubble after another in the past 30 years.
And it's not how inferior they are packaged and tasted. On the contrary, many beverage brands that rise at the speed of light but fall at the speed of light are comparable to big brands in packaging, taste, and appearance, and the only disadvantage may be in the layout and deep cultivation of channels.
After all, according to the latest data released by the State Council in early 2023, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China will reach 43.97 trillion yuan in 2022, of which physical retail accounts for more than 70% of China's total retail sales of consumer goods. As a product with high daily consumption frequency and strong immediate demand, beverage purchases are mainly offline, so the layout of terminal channels will largely determine the sales volume of beverages.
Looking at the giants of the beverage industry, Wahaha, Master Kong, Unity, and Coca-Cola cover more than 5 million terminals, Dongpeng Beverage terminal stores are also 3 million, and Nongfu Spring covers more than 2.43 million retail terminal outlets... Their millions of terminal stores support the vast majority of sales.
No matter how much criticism of Wahaha's products is not innovative and has not been able to keep up with the pace of the times, relying on Wahaha's strong terminal support, its annual revenue can still reach 50 billion, crushing 99% of Chinese enterprises.
In recent years, the newly emerging beverage brands have more enjoyed online traffic dividends, and the emergence of new channels, new scenarios and new formats has also helped the rise of new beverage brands to a certain extent, completing the accumulation of brands from 0~1 and the development from 1~10.
However, from the perspective of channel type, small retail channels such as grocery stores still occupy half of the market. According to public information, in 2022, the beverage retail market share of the sinking market of county-level cities-county towns-rural areas accounted for 61% of the beverage market. This sinking market, once ignored by most Internet celebrity beverage brands, is the real base camp of China's soft drink industry.
For example, Tang Binsen, who once claimed to be a "dimensionality reduction blow" to the beverage industry, also began to honestly do offline this year. He once said publicly: "In the long run, relying on dealers to develop our sales network is the right way." The so-called decentralization, this Internet thinking is poison, not enough understanding of sales. ”
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In short, in the second half of new beverage consumption, the business law of "channel is king" still applies, and returning to offline has become the only way.
In the final analysis, if the FMCG industry wants to go far, it must establish a more complete channel system. But offline stories are never achieved overnight, it requires patience to manage relationships with distributors and channels, and build a systematic sales network, which often takes years.
PinHuihui believes that offline channels can help brands break through the original consumer circle and reach a wider range of consumers. How to make users like a product online is often familiar to new consumer brands. But how to win the hearts of consumers in offline channels and operate the channel well requires starting from scratch.