- Chief Business Intelligence
- Chief Business Intelligence
The tea world has been bustling lately!
Following Jay Chou's popular "McGee Milk Tea" was deeply involved in the store closure turmoil, recently, Xie Yao, the founder of Yuanzhenzhen, released a video on Douyin to tell about his experience of entrepreneurial failure, which caused heated discussions on social platforms.
- "Lost 10 million in two years"
- "42-year-old debt of 2 million"
- "From CEO to Stall......
These are all labels on Xie Yao's body.
This brand called Yuanzhenzhen, started in Chengdu, was once a smash hit because of "hand-made pearls", and was even once called "the light of Sichuan milk", at its peak there were nearly 300 stores in the country, and now there are only 32 franchise stores left.
In a video apologizing to the franchisee, she said, "Because of my own lack of ability, cognitive problems, and the mistakes I made in the past, I have to bear all (franchisees) with me." ”
From the highlight moment to the low light, what has Yuan Zhenzhen experienced?
The authentic Chengdu "natives" of the post-80s generation
Give up a high salary and quit your job to start a business
Xie Yao is a native of Chengdu, and after graduating with a master's degree, she entered the high-yield venture capital industry.
In this industry, she has developed a keen business insight and decision-making skills. In 2016, Douyin was established, and Xie Yao found that self-media was a good opportunity, so she abandoned her high-paying venture capital job and resigned to start self-media.
At first, her videos focused on Chengdu's local food, and this experience also laid the foundation for her future entrepreneurship.
When she chose to start a business to make tea, Xie Yao also opened a boutique café, for which she also deliberately took an international barista qualification certificate, which shows that she takes everything seriously.
It's just that coffee at that time was not as "rolly" as it is now, and the public had not yet developed the habit of drinking coffee, especially in Chengdu, a slow city, where teahouses can be seen everywhere.
At that time, it was the rise of new tea brands, and a number of new tea brands based on Hey Tea and Nai Xue's tea began to become popular in the country.
Xie Yao once again smelled a business opportunity, and she found that milk tea may be a good business, and it is also more suitable for her entrepreneurial conditions than coffee.
So, without the slightest hesitation, she ended the coffee business, took 500,000 yuan of start-up capital, and immediately turned to the entrepreneurship of the milk tea industry.
However, unlike the coffee industry, the milk tea industry was still growing savagely, and there were no formal learning institutions on the market that started from scratch.
So, she went to Taiwan, the originator of bubble tea, to learn from the experience, this trip to Taiwan, but also laid the brand tone of her entrepreneurship, the main "handmade" concept, the use of Taiwan's hand-made pearl tea traditional tea mode, to pass on to consumers "fresh, freshly cooked" concept.
At that time, the new tea brand had not yet evolved the milk base and formula, and it was still the dominant non-dairy creamer, and milk tea had been criticized as "junk" food.
So, Xie Yao took another path, she positioned her milk tea shop as "healthy and back to the basics", and the production of milk tea balls was made transparent by hand, and she also used big-name thick milk.
The light milk tea that is popular now can be said to be leftover from the real play of the year.
After the brand positioning was done, Xie Yao also spent 30,000 yuan to find a designer to design the brand's image.
Everything was ready, and on March 11, 2019, the first bubble tea shop in Yuanzhen opened in a community in Wuhou District, without any marketing promotion and promotional activities.
The overall image of the store is completely different from the spacious and bright style of other new tea brands, using a rare dark green color in the milk tea circle, and the highly recognizable color makes it easy to stand out among many tea brands.
As a result, the next day, something happened. Xie Yao found that the image that she had spent a lot of money to design was actually plagiarized from the creativity of a Japanese designer, claiming to be "original" just by modifying some details of others.
This made Xie Yao stunned, but then calmed down, she and the staff took all the products printed with the LOGO in the store off the shelves, and then urgently contacted the supplier to make a new version.
After the inventory, the first batch of 180,000 cups produced by Yuan Zhenzhen were all scrapped.
Xie Yao, who came from the media, knows that if the brand wants to develop in a sustainable way, the corporate image is very important, so this time she did not allow any more mistakes, and after redesigning the image of the cup, she applied for an appearance patent for the cup she designed.
After that, Xie Yao gave full play to the advantages of her self-media, and used short videos to detonate the first store at low cost with the hand-made concept of "freshly made and cooked" on Douyin, and one of the videos about hand-made bubble tea reached 200,000 likes in one day.
That video really made Xie Yao eat "traffic", and the daily sales of the store soared from more than 2,000 yuan to more than 8,000 yuan.
Subsequently, Yuan Zhenzhen quickly became popular, and Xie Yao, who is well versed in network traffic passwords, turned Yuan Zhenzhen into a proper Internet celebrity brand, attracting many Chengdu girls to compete for "punching in".
Half a year later, Chengdu Yuanzhen Catering Management Co., Ltd. was established. Two months after the establishment of the company, Yuan Zhenzhen already has 10 stores.
At the beginning of 2020, Yuanzhen Zhen opened to join, and 70% of the stores are in Sichuan Province.
This momentum has continued into 2021, and even in the mask period, the revenue of most of Yuanzhenzhen's stores is still very good.
It's just that the gears of fate also began to turn this year.
"Shameless, brainless, floating"
In the second half of 2021, due to the opening of the franchise, this means that the brand should implement "standardization", especially in product production, efficiency is the key, but the "handmade" concept of Allah is obviously in conflict with its chain and standardization.
Therefore, in order to better implement standardization, Xie Yao changed the concept of "handmade" to "chewy tea", and invested a huge amount of advertising money to promote it. According to his account, 300,000 yuan was spent on the bus stop advertisement alone.
However, it is a pity that the new concept of "chewy tea" has not been recognized by consumers, and the marketing expenses invested have been wasted. Xie Yao told that since June 2021, the performance of Yuanzhenzhen's directly operated stores has been declining.
In an interview with the media, Xie Yao also bluntly said that he regretted his previous practice, "The upgraded 'chewy tea' has no consumption perception and has lost the advantage of hand-made." ”
In addition, Xie Yao stopped joining outside Sichuan Province, which led to the brand not expanding its scale when its development potential was at its best, and also increased the proportion of direct sales, which seriously dragged down cash flow.
In the interview with Kamen, Xie Yao advised those who can't read the account books not to be bosses.
"At that time, all my energy was on product and marketing, especially before 2022, and I never cared about the company's cash flow, and I had no sense of risk prevention, which eventually led to a cash flow breakdown. ”
She bluntly said that she failed because she was "shameless, brainless, and floating".
Gradually, Yuan Zhenzhen opened up a gap with other new tea brands, coupled with the explosion of tea and overlord tea, "light milk tea" rose on the market, and Yuan Zhenzhen lost its competitiveness, and since then it has been unable to afford to fall into a situation of closure.
In 2023, Xie Yao will close the last directly-operated store, and the company will have a cumulative loss of 10 million yuan.
On the other hand, a milk tea brand that is also emerging in Chengdu, a tea Baidao is preparing to be listed in Hong Kong, and as of February 18, 2024, it has 7,927 stores in 31 provinces and cities across the country. Another book is also burned fairy grass, and it has 6,690 stores across the country.
Now, Xie Yao, who has a debt of 2 million, no longer engages in milk tea, turns to the catering track, opens a community hot pot restaurant with his former teammates, and creates a new brand, focusing on the large single product of "bean curd beef", and the current revenue is stable.
Xie Yao is exploring and trying in new fields, even if the business ends in failure, but adjust the direction and start again, do not give up on yourself, there is always a chance to turn over.
At present, among the only 32 franchised stores left in Yuanzhenzhen, Xie Yao is still checking the new and visual design of milk tea, and has not completely given up the franchisees who trusted her before.
A hot and piping hot new tea track
The road to entrepreneurship is always full of challenges, especially in the tea industry in the red sea, not only the tea brand impact on the market, but also with the development of the tea industry in the past two years, the tea supply chain has also set off a tide of listing.
The opportunity for small players to enter the game can be said to be dead, and the current tea drink track is the world of big players, and it is the supply chain capability behind it.
If a small brand does not form a scale advantage, the final result will either be swept up by the head brand or eliminated by itself.
For example, the tea brand "Fu Xiao Tao" from Nanjing, which was once a smash hit, has now closed fewer than 30 stores across the country.
According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, in February 2021, the number of stores exceeded 4,000, and on November 2, 2023, it has dropped to 3,018, with a total of nearly 1,000 stores closed in more than two years.
According to data from the retail data monitoring platform "Jihai Brand Monitoring", the number of Happy Lemon stores in mainland China has decreased from about 690 in 2022 to 246 currently.
It can be seen that the rise of new tea drinks has impacted many uncompetitive brands.
And in today's milk tea track, financing is also more difficult, if small brands do not form their own differentiated advantages, and maximize the consumer experience, improve the speed of product iteration and update, do not advance or retreat, and eventually will be forgotten by consumers and abandoned by the market.
Therefore, if you want to enter the milk tea industry, think more about whether you are suitable.
Have you ever drunk the milk tea of "Yuan Zhenzhen"? From 300 stores across the country to the end of the stall, what do you think? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss, express your opinions or opinions, thank you.
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