And where did it go?
In supermarkets, restaurants, hot pot restaurants, and its herbal tea seem to have "disappeared", replaced by shelves of Jiaduobao and Wang Laoji. If you encounter a restaurant owner who says, "Only be in harmony," you may hesitate to do so.
What exactly caused this discrepancy, and can it still "make a comeback"?
First, from "industry second" to "silent"
There have been brilliant moments with Qizheng, and behind the loneliness is the failure to reflect the differentiated market positioning and the helplessness of not keeping up with the pace of head competition in time.
In 2007, when the herbal tea market was just getting started, Darley Group realized that this would be the outlet, so it launched "Heqizheng" herbal tea. At that time, Wang Laoji fired the first shot of herbal tea, and the image of "red can herbal tea" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, in order to distinguish it from Wang Laoji, he chose the bottled field and shouted out the slogan of "bottled more enjoyable".
At that time, the "Wang Laoji" trademark dispute between JIADUOBAO Group and Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group had not yet begun, and it was as a dark horse that won the second market share with sales of nearly 2-3 billion yuan around 2010, when the sales volume of "boss" Wang Laoji was about 15 billion, which was the highlight of its positive moment.
The reason why he was able to show such a strong momentum was closely related to the market pattern at that time.
Previously, herbal tea, as a special herbal drink in Guangdong, was born specifically to eliminate the heat in the human body in summer or to treat diseases such as sore throat caused by dryness in winter. Traditional herbal tea is cool and bitter, and it is not a beverage that can be generally accepted by the market, jiaduobao group in order to promote Cantonese herbal tea, created the concept of "sweet herbal tea", which opened the herbal tea market in the country.
In the eyes of most consumers at that time, "herbal tea" was still a new thing, but its efficacy was blown "god-like" by the people of Guangdong, and in this contrast, consumers could easily have a strong curiosity, and then gathered a market with great potential. It is precisely by seizing this market opportunity that it has been able to develop rapidly. Until now, the habit of hot pot with herbal tea still stays in the minds of most consumers, and the view that herbal tea is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
At the same time, and its back is backed by The Dali Group, it can directly use the Group's dealer resources to quickly roll out the offline market and seize the opportunity. When the brand effect has not yet appeared in the herbal tea market, the high exposure rate offline has successfully established a brand image for Heqi and become a powerful boost for it to win the second place in the market.
The turning point came around 2012, when the "Wang Laoji Controversy" began. As the battle between JDB Group and Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group around the "Wang Laoji" trademark intensifies, consumers' eyes are attracted to a large number, which has enhanced the popularity of JDB and Wang Laoji to a certain extent. In addition, with the escalation of the competition, the advertising and publicity resources invested by Jiaduobao and Wang Laoji have also begun to increase, on the one hand, the lawsuits that can bring a large number of topics, on the other hand, the titles and advertisements that are scrambling for the first place, and the exposure of the two has increased unprecedentedly.
But this is only part of the reason why it is turning from prosperity to decline, and there is also a part that there is not much difference in taste between it and JDB and Wang Laoji, the difference is not obvious, and it is more influenced by the parent company Dali Group, but Dali Group not only has one product, it is impossible to pour all its resources on herbal tea like JDB and Wang Laoji.
The latest data show that the current herbal tea market pattern shows a trend of Jiaduobao and Wang Laoji dividing the world, of which Jiaduobao's market share accounts for more than 50%, Wang Laoji follows closely behind, while the market share of other brands accounts for only 5%.
Second, in the cracks, and its "difficult survival"
The watershed of the decline of the herbal tea industry is about 2016, when the market size of China's tea beverages reached 129.5 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 19.23%, accounting for 19.89% in the beverage industry, while the scale of the herbal tea industry was 65 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 22.7%, reaching its peak. Since then, the growth rate of the herbal tea industry has shrunk all the way, and has dropped to 15.4% in 2019.
The ebb and flow of herbal tea has also been affected to some extent by the rise of new tea drinks, in 2015, Nai Xue's tea was established; in 2016, Imperial Tea changed its name to Xi Tea and opened the first round of financing. In addition, the market for functional drinks continues to expand, and it is also squeezing the living space of herbal tea. In 2019, the market size of functional beverages reached 111.9 billion yuan, of which energy drinks accounted for 70.2%, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.1%.
In this context, and its positive sales continue to decline. At the same time, the parent company Dali Group took a fancy to the energy beverage market and launched the "Lehu" to compete with Red Bull; the 2020 financial report shows that "Doubendou" has become the group's key beverage in recent years, after all, in the case of the decline in the income of the leisure food segment and the beverage segment, the household consumption segment dominated by douben bean milk has become the only positive growth sector, with a revenue growth rate of 41.6%.
This means that the Group's resources will continue to tilt towards other brands, with limited attention, and they are having to "save themselves".
In fact, from the earliest "bottle more enjoyable" to "national tide ancient text bottle" to "bubble herbal tea", and it has been trying to innovate, but the market has always been flat. The most direct embodiment is that although the "National Tide Ancient Text Bottle" launched last year took the shuttle bus of "National Tide" and received a certain positive market response, it still failed to pull the revenue growth of the group's beverage sector from negative to positive.
In fact, he has fallen into a more embarrassing situation. In the strategic planning of Xu Shihui, chairman of Dali Group, "by 2025, Dali has 4 brands with more than 10 billion, namely Dali Garden, Doubendou, Meibaochen and Lehu". And it has come to the edge of the enterprise.
This is undoubtedly fatal to the blow of Heqizheng, which is why compared with Jiaduobao, Wang Laoji, and its Zhengmingming have a full production line from bottle to can, they have advantages in price and net content, but they still "can't do it" important reasons.
But the road to "self-help" is also full of question marks. Looking back at the actions of the past few years, it is not difficult to find that its logic is "what fire does what", such as the national tide, such as sparkling drinks. This is a business philosophy inherited from Dali Group, on the one hand, it can effectively avoid risks, but on the other hand, it is also prone to unclear market positioning.
For example, the recent launch of "bubble herbal tea", it is difficult for us to paint a customer portrait of it. The purpose of sparkling water is to stimulate the taste buds and bring excitement to consumers, and herbal tea has always been the image of "clearing heat and detoxification", and consumers default to its "fire" effect. When the two are combined, we don't know what kind of consumer masses and consumption scenarios it is mainly for, and the magic is that he himself may not know.
Third, do you continue to "innovate" or choose to "lie flat"?
Now what lies in front of it is a dilemma, innovation, but not necessarily to grasp the user's mind, lying flat, it may be eliminated by the times.
Obviously, He Qizheng, who is actively "self-help", does not want to lie flat, whether it is "following the trend" or "self-research", and he is still looking forward to returning to the previous glorious era. So, and what is it going to do?
Innovation is still an important direction, but we cannot "blindly" innovate. The Yuanqi Forest brought sparkling water on fire, but this was not accidental, but stepped on two nodes.
First, health, Yuanqi Forest replaces sugar with sugar substitutes, replaces carbonated drinks with sparkling water, and plays the banner of "0 fat" and "0 sugar", stepping on the background of consumption upgrading, consumers' demand for weight loss and health.
The second is product remodeling, Yuanqi Forest pays attention to the difference between taste and raw materials, does not use aspartame, which is used by other sugar-free drinks, but chooses erythritol, which is better in taste and more friendly to human health. In addition, with the prevalence of "refined consumption", consumers are willing to pay for it.
It can be seen that innovation must find consumer pain points. And it is the key to effective innovation, increasing the proportion of research and development, and tapping into the potential needs of consumers.
Among young people, there have been some interesting views, such as "beer soaked goji berries" and "hot pot with honeysuckle", which reflects the potential health needs of young people. Herbal tea can actually be understood as a kind of health care tea, according to statistical analysis, the health tea market is currently mainly involved in three areas: weight loss, intestinal and blood lipid reduction, blood sugar and blood pressure, and in the form of tea bags. Consumers have the need for health care, but they have not yet formed a habit and are deeply cultivated in the field of segmentation, which is a potential opportunity for it.
In addition, in the context of the increasing impact of e-commerce live broadcasting on consumers, and it is also necessary to learn to use online channels to create momentum, reshape products, and re-tell brand stories.
Reinventing products and retelling brand stories has put forward higher requirements for cultural empowerment. Chinese herbal tea has a long history, originally a product of the protection of human health, from this point of view, and it can trace the origin of herbal tea and redefine the brand on this ground. At the moment of the domestic renaissance, it is not impossible to restore its former glory.
In the context of reshaping products, on the one hand, it is possible to cooperate appropriately with head e-commerce anchors to expand their influence in the form of live streaming with goods, and at the same time actively participate in e-commerce festival activities, using head streaming media platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou to actively carry out online publicity; on the other hand, cooperate with catering variety shows for soft implantation to better integrate products and scenes.
Nowadays, it seems that "bubble herbal tea" is just a "youthful" exploration under the background of new consumption. The old brand, which has been established for more than ten years, has not stopped moving forward, but whether it can create a phenomenon-level product to achieve revival still needs time to test.
Author Vast
Wen | Pinecone Finance (ID:songguocaijing1)