Nova Coffee Wang Chunsheng: Coffee, like beauty, is pleasing to yourself

Produced by One View Commercial

Author/Meng Jiayi

Edit/Wooden Fish

With the continuous upgrading of public health awareness, more and more consumers have begun to pursue fresher, natural and simple ingredients, becoming the "ingredient party". Looking back on the new tea and coffee products in recent times, the healthy wind has also blown to the tea and coffee track.

On March 25, Heytea invited Pamela to serve as a "health recommendation officer" and launched a series of "light burden recommendation" drinks. On March 26, the Shanghai Nutrition and Health Guidance Pilot Project was launched, and the first batch of "Nutrition Choice" logo pilot units included Bawang Tea Ji and Nai Xue's tea.

In addition to tea, the coffee track is also reducing the burden. For example, Tims Tianhao Coffee launched low-decaffeinated coffee, Starbucks launched a variety of raw coffee, and Nova Coffee shouted "refuse high calories".

On May 14th, at the New Coffee Conference held by Nova, Wang Chunsheng, co-founder of Nova Coffee, shared how to find a solution for brand differentiation based on the needs and consumption trends of young people, combined with Nova Coffee's successful experience in creating a "low-calorie" fruit coffee explosion.

Wang Chunsheng pointed out that for coffee brands, young consumers are very important. Nowadays, many young people have grown up "looking at the ingredient list", and they are very concerned about health. Therefore, coffee brands should keep up with young consumer trends, focus on health and low calories, and do matching product research and development. In addition, we should also cultivate internal skills, and do a good job of layout from the source of the supply chain to the product end. On this basis, brands can go through the cycle and develop in the long run.

It is understood that Nova was established in June 2019 and has completed 5 rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 10 million. Three of the four founders are former executives of Ele.me. In 2022, Nova began to expand independent stores across the country and open stores to join, according to data from Narrow Door Restaurant, as of May 10, the number of Nova coffee stores was 1,133.

In the second half of 2023, Nova's revenue fluctuated to a certain extent. The founder, Guo Xingjun, decided to adjust his strategy and take "low-calorie coffee" as the differentiated positioning to provide consumers with "the same delicious and lower calorie" products. Among them, tons and tons of fruit coffee have become the popular specialty products of Nova Coffee.

According to the official data released by Nova Coffee, during the May Day period, orders in new first-tier cities increased by 156% year-on-year, and sales of tons and barrels increased by 483% year-on-year. This set of data also confirms Wang Chunsheng's statement: when brands grasp the hobbies of young people and walk out of the road of differentiation, they can form unique competitiveness and survive in the fierce market competition.

The following is the full text of the speech by Wang Chunsheng, co-founder of Nova Coffee (edited by Tea Coffee Observation, with deletions):

Shanghai is an international metropolis with a very strong coffee culture and the largest number of cafes in the world. Nova Coffee is also honored to be born in a city like Shanghai to participate in and witness the development of the Chinese coffee market.

In fact, 3 of Nova Coffee's founding team are from the Ele.me team. Before starting our business, we observed the development of China's food delivery industry, and found that the growth of the coffee category was very large.

It is worth mentioning that the attributes of the takeaway platform are different from those of other e-commerce platforms, and consumers will only take the initiative to open the APP search when they have dietary needs, so the data growth of coffee sales is the result of consumer demand, which shows that the development potential of the mainland coffee market is very large.

The rapid development of China's coffee market in recent years has also confirmed the original prediction, and in our opinion, there are three main drivers for the rapid growth of the coffee market:

First of all, the level of national income is gradually rising, the disposable income of the younger generation of consumers is getting higher and higher, and young people can afford to spend. Secondly, coffee is an addictive category that is being consumed more and more frequently. Finally, China's consumer market is huge, with more than 8 million restaurants and only a few hundred thousand coffees.

These three factors have underpinned the rapid development of China's coffee industry in recent years, and we firmly believe that the growth rate of the coffee market will continue.

At the same time, we refer to Japan's consumption data, in the Chinese New Year's Eve from 1992 to 2022, only two categories of Japanese consumer goods maintained growth, one is coffee and the other is beauty.

If you look closely, you can see that coffee and beauty have a common attribute behind them – pleasing oneself. Coffee is to make one's mental state better, and beauty is to make one's mood state better. In our view, these two categories have a certain enlightening effect on the development of the Chinese coffee market.

Nova Coffee has also made certain achievements in the past five years of development, with a total of 1,800 stores nationwide, and the top 10 stores in the world, covering 160 cities across the country. At the same time, we have also won the favor of capital, and have received some awards and reports from the industry and the media.

In the midst of this, we are also asked how Nova coffee goes through the cycle.

In fact, in recent years, Nova has been more inward-looking, cultivating internal skills, and has made a lot of layouts from the product end to the source of the supply chain.

At the supply chain level, Nova Coffee has established its own coffee production areas in Yunnan and Ethiopia, starting from the roasting system and building its own industrial system and supply chain system step by step.

At the product level, we are also observing a trend of consumers becoming more health-conscious. Last month, we went to a store in Wenling County, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, and met a 22-year-old girl who asked her why she drank Nova coffee. She said that she was past the age of drinking milk tea. In the process of communicating with the other party, we found that consumers' perceptions are changing.

In fact, this generation of young people grew up looking at the ingredient list, and the educational environment from a young age has paid a lot of attention to health. At the same time, there is a lot of popularity on social media for content related to "low calories". We can also see that some brands that have done very well under the trend of healthy consumption, such as Yuanqi Forest and Oriental Leaves, have been particularly popular in the past two years.

We believe that behind this is a strong consumer demand for low calories and good health. Therefore, in line with the consumer trend, we put forward the concept of rejecting high-calorie products and carrying out comprehensive product upgrades.

In addition to products, our actions at the level of channel construction and product marketing are also based on brand positioning.

First of all, in terms of spatial vision, we want to be closer to young people. Our logo is an orange pony, which represents vitality, youthfulness, and positivity.

Secondly, at the level of online channel construction, because our founders have relevant experience before, Nova is better at digital operations. On online platforms in nearly half of the cities, Nova has achieved the first place on the coffee hot list.

Finally, at the marketing level, Nova has always been doing co-branded brand promotion under the premise of fitting the brand tonality and similar target consumer groups, such as co-branding with Mao Geping last year.

At the same time, because more and more stores are opened, the location will be linked to cultural tourism, and Nova will also combine cultural tourism hotspots for marketing. For example, when the Zibo barbecue fire, the store immediately pushed fruit coffee; When Harbin tourism was hot, it took less than a week for the product department to urgently launch frozen pear American and frozen pear latte.

On the whole, Nova is keeping up with the trend of young consumers, responding to the demand for health and low calories, and doing research and development at all levels such as products and marketing.