Everything can be "bubble +"? Can Dali's Heqizheng "bubble herbal tea" surpass Wang Laoji and Jiaduobao?

And it is beginning to "test the water" of the sparkling water market. On July 7, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily found that he was brewing herbal tea that had been listed and sold in the Tmall flagship store of Dali Group. In the past two years, due to the taste of carbonated beverages and the concept of "zero sugar" and "health", sparkling water has become a dark horse in the beverage segment. Under the outlet, both the beverage head brand and the new tea drink have seized the market share of sparkling water. In the eyes of industry insiders, in recent years, The Dali food and beverage sector has not performed well, and the sparkling water entering the game is hoping to find new increments to boost performance.

Entering the sparkling water market

Dali Foods' brands and its "herbal tea + bubbles" combination into the sparkling water market. It is understood that this new product is based on herbal tea, adding non-phosphoric acid bubbles, focusing on "pure natural formula" and "0 preservatives, 0 fat, 0 sodium".

Behind The entry of Darley Foods into the sparkling water market is the huge market potential of sparkling water. With the increase of consumer demand, sparkling water is gradually popular in China, and the market scale is constantly expanding under the impetus of the concept of "sugar-free" and "healthy". Forward-looking data shows that the overall domestic sparkling water market size in 2019 is about 15 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 40 billion yuan in 2025.

The huge market size attracts many enterprises to enter. It is understood that in 2017, Coca-Cola spent $220 million to acquire the Mexican sparkling water brand Topo Chico to expand the sparkling water business; in 2018, PepsiCo acquired the Israeli household soda manufacturer SodaStream for 3.2 billion yuan to lay out the sparkling water track; in 2019, the Yuanqi Forest sparkling water exploded, achieving the capital myth of "four-year valuation of 14 billion"; in 2020, dairy giant Yili entered the sparkling water market and launched the Yiran milk mineral sparkling water...

In addition, the new type of tea also grabs the market share of sparkling water, Naixue's tea launched "fresh fruit sparkling tea", Xi tea sub-brand "Xi Xiao Tea" launched soda production line... The entry of various capitals has continuously expanded the scale of the sparkling water market and intensified competition. According to reports, the sparkling water market has been running wildly under the drive of various new and old forces, and has expanded into a huge outlet of 20 billion yuan.

Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, said in an interview with the Beijing Business Daily reporter that at present, sparkling water is one of the most favored categories of the new generation, and many companies want to seize the market with the help of the outlet. "The development prospects of the sparkling water industry are still very good, but it still belongs to the introduction period, and in the next three years, there will be relatively large development."

Regarding the reasons for the layout of the sparkling water market and the future planning of Dali Food, the Beijing Business Daily reporter interviewed the relevant person in charge of Dali Food, but as of press time, he did not receive a reply.

Find new growth points

At present, Dali's industrial layout mainly includes household consumption plate, leisure food plate and ready-to-drink beverage plate, of which leisure food and ready-to-drink beverage plate belong to mature plates. In the ready-to-drink beverage sector, and its brand herbal tea is an important part.

It is worth mentioning that the Revenue of The Dali Beverage Sector has been declining for many years. According to the data, in 2018, The revenue of Dali Food was 20.86 billion yuan, an increase of 5.4% year-on-year, of which the sales of its herbal tea fell by 6.3%. In 2019, the sales revenue of Darley Group's ready-to-drink beverage segment fell by 2.1% from 7.294 billion yuan in 2018 to 7.142 billion yuan. Revenue from ready-to-drink beverages in 2020 fell 13.5% year-on-year to MOP6,176 million.

In this case, the industry believes that it is entering the sparkling water market may be trying to find new growth points with the help of the air outlet of sparkling water. In the view of Xu Xiongjun, a strategic positioning expert and founder of Jiude Consulting Company, under the binary competition of Wang Laoji and Jiaduobao, and its herbal tea sales have continued to decline, in addition, the entire herbal tea market has grown slowly in recent years, the transformation of herbal tea is imminent, and sparkling water has developed rapidly in recent years. Combined with the above situation, and its entry into the sparkling water market is hoped to boost the performance of The Dali food and beverage category.

However, from the current point of view, in the brand promotion of new products, there is still a certain gap between the head brands and emerging brands in the Duly food and sparkling water industry. Bao Yuezhong, a new retail expert in the FMCG industry, believes that as a traditional enterprise, the biggest shortcoming of Dali Food is that it has not established a new communication and promotion system, basically relying on the past advertising form, and the new Internet communication platform, such as Weibo, B station, Little Red Book, etc., Dali Food has not yet been used, lack of Internet thinking.

Industry insiders believe that the rise of a new generation of sparkling water is the product of Internet marketing, and it is better at brand marketing and more attractive to young consumers. Taking Yuanqi Forest as an example, after cooperating with celebrities and advertising pushes on various Internet platforms, Yuanqi Forest uses KOLs and KOCs to further promote to ensure the full spread of popularity.

In addition, in the layout of the channel, even relying on Dali Food and its positive does not have obvious advantages. Bao Yuezhong said that although the offline channel layout of Dali Food is very strong, the channel layout of beverages is not very good, and the offline channels are not attractive to young people at present. And it is needing to switch to new channels, focusing on online stores.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Guo Xiujuan intern reporter Yan Hui (Source: Dali Group Tmall flagship store)