Produced by One View Commercial
Author/Li Yan
Edit/Wooden Fish
Bawang Chaji, a latecomer to the new tea drinking industry, is preparing to go public in the United States.
Since the beginning of this year, Mixue Bingcheng, Gu Ming, and Shanghai Aunt have successively submitted statements in Hong Kong stocks. Recently, Chabaidao passed the listing hearing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in accordance with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
The market process, through the listing hearing, you can start the listing work, if there is no accident, tea Baidao will become the "second share of freshly made tea".
Whether it is Mixue Bingcheng, Gu Ming, Tea Baidao, or Shanghai Auntie, according to its prospectus, the scale of these four new tea brand stores occupies the top four in the industry. It has been established for more than ten years.
Founded in 2017, Bawang Chaji, although her age is more immature, the scale of the store has expanded rapidly.
According to public data, Bawang Chaji has successfully opened 100 branches in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and other countries, and the total number of stores in the world has exceeded 4,000, and 2,316 stores will be opened within 2023 in one year.
Looking back on the history of Bawang Chaji, Yilan Business found that this fragrant and sweet company, which has rapidly scaled up and franchisees competing for in just a few years, still has three questions to explore when it starts to go public.
"Oriental Starbucks", the first thing to align is the packaging?
Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Chaji, has said in public many times: Bawang Chaji wants to be an "Oriental Starbucks" and globalize, and everything is based on commercialization, standardization and scale.
To be an "Oriental Starbucks", Bawang Chaji starts from benchmarking the Logo.
In September 2021, "Bawang Chaji" completed the brand upgrade. The brand's upgraded logo has been simplified into a monochrome image, integrating elements of oriental face shapes and opera silhouettes, and the color scheme has changed from multi-color to monochrome. Visually, it does look like an "Oriental Starbucks".
(Source: Internet)
Whether the packaging design is original or plagiarized is an unsolved problem that has accompanied the birth of Bawang Chaji.
Similar to the logo of Starbucks, similar business models and concepts to Chayan Yuese, and the packaging that can glimpse the shadows of various international luxury brands, the history of the rise of Bawang Chaji is full of plagiarism controversies.
For example, the Yamano Gardenia series products launched by Bawang Chaji last year were criticized by netizens for their "Yamano Little Blue Cup": it was obviously "plagiarism" of the LV ink jacket design.
The official description of the design of the packaging is "a tribute to the Tang Dynasty and born to the wild, taken from the Tang Dynasty pipa pattern, and taken from the southwest tie-dye elements." ”
In this regard, Yilan Business found out the LV ink jacket mentioned in the controversy among netizens, the Tang pipa pattern and the southwest tie-dye elements officially mentioned by Bawang Chaji for comparison. It can be seen that in terms of typography design, whether it is the Tang Pipa text, the Southwest tie-dye, or the LV ink jacket, you can see its shadow on the new packaging of Bawang Chaji.
(Source: Internet)
For this reason, netizens on social platforms also have their own opinions, and some netizens pointed out that the original packaging of Bawang Chaji is suspected of borrowing from the DIOR Tote series, and it is a "habitual offender" who plays side balls. Netizens who disagree believe that Bawang Chaji is a brand from Yunnan, using Yunnan tie-dye and ancient tea horse roads, which cannot constitute plagiarism at all.
A person in the design industry said that the smudge of tie-dye should be a gradient that penetrates into the fabric fiber texture, and the gradient is clearly followed by the wrinkles and fabric texture, while the design of Bawang Chaji is more inclined to the blurring of water marks, and Lv's design creativity is watercolor. As for the pattern, the pipa has four leaves and six leaves, Lv is all four leaves, and the overlord tea is all six leaves. Therefore, it makes sense to say that creativity comes from the lute.
If one can be explained by a tribute, then several visual edge balls can only be attributed to: touching the porcelain brand, which is the marketing means of the overlord tea girl.
(Source: Internet)
The high franchise fee, can it be recouped in the future?
Bawang Tea is the most popular choice for new tea franchisees, and the popularity of franchisees has also raised the threshold for joining.
Judging from the latest franchise policy, the franchise fee of Bawang Chaji is 69,800 yuan, the brand usage fee is 15,000 yuan per year, the deposit is 20,000 yuan, the equipment fee is 160,000 yuan, the decoration fee is 150,000 yuan, and the first batch of material costs is 100,000 yuan.
Compared with peers, similar to brands of the same price such as Hey Tea and Gu Ming, the price of a complete store starts at about 600,000-800,000 yuan.
One View Business learned from the franchisee that the current store of Bawang Chaji has been upgraded to version 3.0, and in first-tier cities, the decoration fee of version 3.0 is as high as 7,500 yuan per square meter.
The blogger "Franchise Research Institute" once squatted on the shopping mall store, railway station store and county store of Bawang Chaji to conduct research. Among them, the single-day turnover of Bawang Chaji's shopping mall store on a weekend can reach 16,000 yuan, excluding the single-day cost, the net income is about 5,000 yuan, that is to say, if you are lucky, the payback cycle of Bawang Chaji is only within one year.
It can be said that in the eyes of new tea franchisees, Bawang Tea Ji is a brand that is in the limelight and can make money.
So the question is, under the fast pace of rapid iteration of the catering industry, how long can the high sales of Bawang Tea Ji be maintained?
First of all, the limelight and short flowering period are the fate of most new tea brands. From 2014 to 2016, Auntie Milk Tea with Blood Glutinous Rice became popular;In 2016-2017, Brown Sugar Pearl Antler Alley was all the rage;In 2017-2018, it opened all over the streets and alleys little by little;In the same period, Hey Tea Naxue's tea often started in two hours.... The sweet orchid latte, the seven-point sweet poplar branch nectar, and the fruit tea of major brands in recent years have all been called "top streams".
Secondly, the franchisee management ability of Bawang Chaji may not be able to keep up with the speed of its expansion. Recently, One View Commercial learned from an employee who had just left a Bawang Chaji store in Shanghai that its reimbursement had not arrived for a long time. According to the employee, the internal management of the store is chaotic, and it is common to deduct employees' wages. Under the post of a certain Bawang Chaji in Xiaohongshu, several employees who had worked in Bawang Chaji expressed their dissatisfaction with its management.
Finally, behind the millions of franchise fees of Bawang Chaji, peers have begun to lower the threshold for joining.
On February 28, Nai Xue's tea announced a new franchise policy for 2024. According to the new terms, Naixue's investment in a single tea franchise will drop from 980,000 yuan in 2023 to 580,000 yuan. The area requirement for franchised stores has also been reduced from 90~170 square meters to 40 square meters.
Tea Baidao and Gu Ming have also begun to implement contract reductions and exemptions. From February to May, according to the signing situation, the new franchise partners of Chabaidao can be exempted from a total of 4~270,000 yuan, and the old franchise partners can be reduced by a total of 9~180,000 yuan, and the fee will be reduced according to the different locations; It is reported that in the installment payment of 98,800 yuan of franchise fee, Gu Ming will collect 25,000 franchise fees in the 13th month (including the first month) after the franchisee signs the contract, 48,800 franchise fees in the 19th month after signing the contract, and the remaining 25,000 franchise fees in the 25th month after signing the contract.
As we all know, it is difficult to make a profit from new tea drinks by selling tea alone, and Nai Xue's tea is the best example. Judging from the current status quo of the industry, on the one hand, several of the most mature new tea brands are lowering the threshold for joining, and on the other hand, Bawang Chaji, which is in the limelight, charges millions of franchise fees to accelerate its expansion. So, if the brand makes money, how long can the franchisee make it?
What's more, compared to the peers who have been working steadily for more than ten years, the foundation of Overlord Chaji is not as solid as imagined.
Don't love R&D and marketing?
Zhang Junjie once said in public: "Bawang Tea has never built a factory, only focusing on brands and users", and also said that "I don't make fruit tea because I can't afford it".
One View Business believes that the idea of Bawang Tea Ji is very good, and it can avoid fruit freshness and transportation problems by not making fruit tea. Using tea and milk as the core raw materials is conducive to product standardization on the one hand, and reduces the cost of the supply chain on the other hand. For example, the ingredient list of Boya Juexian only includes tea, milk and syrup, and this minimalist recipe can minimize the difficulty of the supply chain.
With his eyes focused on the back of milk and tea, Overlord Chaji didn't dare to really narrow the road.
In November last year, Bawang Chaji and Tea Baidao partnered to build a supply chain. Bawang Chaji, who says that she does not make fruit tea, has quietly launched a new "Vitality Light Fruit Tea" series in its menus in Yunnan, Guangdong and other places, and lemon tea, grape fruit tea and other products are impressively listed.
Even if it started to do the supply chain, Yilan Business found that compared with its peers, the new frequency of Bawang Chaji's products can be regarded as the most "non-volume". In 2023, there will only be four new products on the official account of Bawang Chaji, and since the beginning of this year, there will only be a new "Awakening Spring Mountain" on the official account of Bawang Chaji.
On the contrary, in terms of marketing, Bawang Chaji's investment budget has not fallen at all. A staff member who undertook the launch of the social media platform of Bawang Chaji told Yilan Business that the marketing budget of Bawang Chaji has always been more than 10 million, and it is very generous in the cooperation between celebrities and talents. Just a few days ago, Bawang Chaji also invited a number of traffic stars to stand on its platform, from the perspective of the entire industry, even the largest companies in the store have not been able to do this.
Overall, the success of Bawang Tea Ji is inseparable from three key words: the packaging of plagiarism, the differentiated competition strategy of focusing on healthy milk tea, and the marketing of sufficient funds.
In the new stage of the industry's rush to go public, if Bawang Chaji, which has only a dozen SKUs, wants to be invincible, tell more moving original stories and make more differentiated products, which are all issues that it needs to consider.