Editor's note: This article is from the WeChat public account "Future Consumption APP" (ID: lslb168), author: Dong Chailing, 36Kr is published with permission.
Internet celebrity ice cream that is moving towards high-end is catering to consumption upgrades.
Author | Dong Chailing
Produced by | 36Kr - Future Consumption (WeChat ID: lslb168)
The weather is getting hotter, and ice cream is also coming back and on the new season. Recently, the internet celebrity ice cream Zhong Xue Gao has launched a new summer limited series, 5 kinds of fruits and milk flavored popsicles.
Ice cream, more than one Internet celebrity. Summer high temperature superimposed holiday travel, a batch of cultural and creative ice cream began to brush the screen network, such as sanxingdui bronze mask ice cream, Baotu Spring cultural and creative ice cream and so on. In addition to cultural and creative ice cream, some strange flavored ice creams such as mustard flavor, liquor flavor, Northeast iron pot stewed ice cream and so on are listed, which satisfies the curiosity of foodies. There are also low-fat low-calorie, zero sucrose, probiotics, and plant-based ice cream waiting to erupt.
Marketing with novel tastes and fun is a common method for merchants. The reason why the net red ice cream is hot is inseparable from one word: expensive. The unit price of 1946 in Middle Street is between 12-32 yuan, Yili's new brand NOC must be happy at a unit price of 16 yuan, Zhong Xuegao's unit price is generally more than 13 yuan, and the Ecuadorian pink diamond flavor previously launched is sold for 66 yuan, known as the "Hermès" of the ice cream industry.
An internet celebrity ice cream is hot again, and the sense of existence is almost zero in the area where the traffic cannot be touched. Some ice cream industry practitioners said to 36Kr - Future Consumption that positioning low-end products is truly in line with the needs of mass consumption. The regular tastes on the market now, including some special flavors, are basically unchanged, and most people still eat milk and fruit.
Net red ice cream clearly leads the high-end trend. Fighting taste, quality and appearance is indeed conducive to building product barriers in the early stage, but the pursuit of extreme is not the starting point for mass consumption of ice cream, delicious and convenient is the most important. High-end brands that are positioned as relatively niche need to break through channel restrictions to find new growth points.
<h2>A slice of ice cream went viral</h2>
There is no ice cream that does not want to become an Internet celebrity, and Zhong Xuegao also walked towards the position of "top stream". Zhong Xuegao, who was founded in March 2018, sold 7 million ice creams a year after going online, ranking first in the Tmall ice category and most favored by consumers aged 27-35.
Zhong Xuegao's popularity first comes from the unique shape of the product, ice cream like curved tiles, with a regular palindrome on the top, the main national tide; ice cream raw materials use pure milk, claiming that the formula is not mixed with water, eating a dense taste, with a more mellow milk aroma than most ice cream. Sticks are pure straw degradable materials, taking the environmental protection route.
Compared with giants such as Mengniu and Yili, which have 5 to 6 key ice cream brands and dozens of SKUs, Zhong Xuegao does not provide consumers with many choices. There are more than 30 kinds of ice cream in Zhong Xuegao's product catalogue, and the regular products are only about 8 types of light milk, velvet cocoa and Ghanaian black gold. Others are mostly co-branded and seasonally limited models, which are often removed from the shelves quickly.
For the limited SKU, Zhong Xuegao founder Lin Sheng once said that the overall SKU will be controlled at about 15, some of which belong to short-term products, such as a cross-border product only sold on the day of double 11, even if it is sold out. The reason why Zhong Xuegao does not push explosive products, on the one hand, wants to make the core products to the extreme, on the other hand, it is more important to meet some people than to meet everyone.
In the past, people needed to go to physical retail channels such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants to buy cold drinks, and when they wanted to eat, they bought one. Due to seasonal factors, the frequency of ice cream consumption is not high. Zhong Xuegao is aiming at the family warehousing consumption scene, and most of the sales in Tmall stores are full-box combinations, with a price of more than 100 yuan, and distributed to home through dry ice refrigeration. The purpose is to hope that when consumers want to eat, they can open the refrigerator at home to eat, rather than buying from offline channels.
From the perspective of the rhythm of product iteration, Zhong Xuegao will keep it new every month and lengthen the consumption cycle. In addition to regular models, there are also limited editions and joint editions. If you encounter traditional festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival, brown-flavored ice cream will be launched for a limited time; every autumn, the taste of golden gui red beans will return and be sold for three months in season.
The traffic dividend of e-commerce channels is obvious, especially the node where platform traffic concentration is concentrated on Double Eleven, which is an opportunity for the brand to grow in both word of mouth and sales. Zhong Xuegao's most expensive ice cream Ecuadorian pink diamond flavor was a hit on Singles' Day in 2018, selling 20,000 copies on the same day and selling out in 15 hours.
By the 2019 Double Eleven, Zhong Xuegao launched 5 new flavors of ice cream in one breath before the festival, which were jointly launched with Roewe Automobile, Xiaoxian Stew, Three Squirrels, and Nai Xue's tea. On the day of Double Eleven, Zhong Xuegao's sales exceeded 4 million yuan.
Like Zhong Xuegao, who set sales records online, there is also Middle Street 1946, a new brand launched by Middle Street Freezing Point in 2015. Middle Street 1946 developed more than 20 flavors, and the top of the product was made of iconic vertical reliefs, which quickly became a hit, becoming Tmall's first brand with annual sales of more than 100 million yuan in the ice cream category in 2019.
The circle of internet celebrity ice cream also stems from being good at cross-border marketing and creating hot topics. For example, in September 2019, Zhong Xuegao jointly launched the "Baijiu Fragment Ice Cream" in Luzhou Laojiao, and the milk ice cream mixed with pineapples contained 52 degrees of liquor, and the number of readers on Weibo topics reached 150 million. The combination of ice cream and wine, Zhong Xuegao continued, in the past year, in conjunction with Martell launched a degree of ice cream, with brandy with velvet cocoa ice cream.
In addition to cutting-edge brands, established companies have also used the Internet celebrity style of play to achieve brand rejuvenation through cross-border joint names. For example, Guangming Co-branded Great White Rabbit launched milk candy ice cream, taking the national tide route; Mengniu's casual and three squirrels launched a joint nut ice cream; and Lu Xue and Xi Tea, Nai Xue's tea have jointly launched milk tea flavor ice cream.
<h2>Too expensive to afford? </h2>
The value provided by net red ice cream is delicious, good-looking, and can be dried, with a price range of 10-20 yuan, which is already comparable to many new tea brands. From another point of view, Zhong Xuegao's competitors are actually tea, juice and coffee.
To make a simple ice cream, the lowest threshold is to use milk and sugar-based ice cream powder to mix a variety of flavors. A bag of 1 kg of ice cream powder costs about 16 yuan, which can make 70 cones or 50 sundaes, and the cost of a single ice cream is about 2 cents.
Ice cream with cheap ingredients has a general taste, such as flavors, colors and other food additives mixed with water. New brands that emphasize high-end quality first open the gap from raw materials. The main raw materials of ice cream are drinking water, milk milk, milk powder, white sugar, cream, etc., of which the milk fat content and protein content distinguish the quality.
Depending on the milk fat content, ice cream is divided into full milk fat type, semi-milk fat type and vegetable fat type. In the past, some ice creams were vegetable fat ice cream, using vegetable oils or margarine, and the nutritional value and cost were relatively low. Creamy ice cream, which uses milk and natural cream, is better in taste and healthier. From the price point of view, the price of one liter of vegetable fat light cream is about 20 yuan, and the price of animal cream is 2-3 times that of vegetable cream.
In addition, high-end brands usually choose some high-quality, fresh ingredients, which increases the overall price. For example, Zhong Xuegao's most expensive Ecuadorian pink diamond flavor ice cream, the raw material is made of Japanese Kochi lemon grapefruit, the price is 600 yuan a catty, the cost of a piece of ice cream is close to 30 yuan. In terms of packaging materials, the use of straw sticks is a degradable and environmentally friendly raw material, and the cost is 10-30 times that of ordinary sticks. In the end, the so-called scarce product was priced at 66 yuan.
From a profit point of view, the high-end ice cream business is also very attractive. An ice cream product supplier from Jiangxi told 36Kr - Future Consumption that the factory produces high-end ice cream with a retail price of 10 yuan, excluding the distribution link, the retailer can get 50% of the profit. There are more products of different grades and prices, the minimum retail price is 1 yuan for ice cream, and the retailer gets a profit of more than 30 points.
For consumers, delicious food is important, and whether it can be satisfied with instant food is also very critical. The freezers of offline channels such as supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores have long been occupied by brands such as Yili, Mengniu and Lu Mengxue, and dealers are distributed to physical retail terminals through professional cold chain vehicles, and then refrigerated sales by stores. For new brands that started from e-commerce platforms, it is necessary to cut off the distribution link to reach consumers, and more is to pay tuition on logistics.
Shipping by courier parcel is costly and will eventually be passed on to consumers. To reduce the risk of melting and spoiling ice cream, full cold chain distribution is required, with foam boxes or insulated bags and built-in dry ice. If you use SF cold transport to send 1 kg of ice cream to a nearby city, the freight plus packaging fee will cost at least 20 to 25 yuan.
Cold chain distribution has always been a pain point in the logistics industry, and with the decline in costs, the online consumption of ice cream has become a trend. Mr. Wu, a practitioner of ice cream cold chain supply chain, said that with the increase in the demand for cold chain distribution in the entire fresh market, including frozen products, packaged dishes, etc., logistics costs have dropped significantly, and the proportion of declines in the past three or five years has reached 20%.
<h2>Ice cream is rolled inside</h2>
Under the new consumer trend, there will always be one explosion after another. Driven by internet celebrities and high-end, ice cream merchants work taste, raw materials and packaging to basically meet the needs of deliciousness, health and appearance.
Coconut ash, double egg yolks, milk tea ice cream, the pursuit of novel flavors. Milk dates became an Internet celebrity snack last year, and there are brands that have launched milk date ice cream. There is also vegan ice cream, which advocates alternative milk, and the plant-based market behind it is also a hot spot in the venture capital circle.
Among them, the high-end brands that focus on the concept of health, such as Zhong Xuegao, Middle Street 1946, Yili's Su Quanhuan, guangming Beiyou, focus on low-fat, low-calorie, zero-add and other segments. Among them, Yili launched a new brand NOC in 2019, positioning probiotic ice cream, ensuring fresh and original taste through liquid nitrogen gelatin technology, the outer layer is soft cinnamon of fruit and vegetable juice, and the inner layer is live mushroom yogurt core.
With the trend of sugar reduction in the food industry, zero sucrose has gradually become the standard for ice cream. Some foreign brands that have entered the domestic market, such as Kemiku, mainly promote healthy functional ice cream, and Light Andyo and Baxi use steviol or erythritol as sugar substitutes. Almost all the head brands in China, as well as new players Pree, Zero Penguin, etc., have also launched sucrose-free ice cream. For example, Zhen Xian and Hankou No. 2 Factory jointly launched two flavors of bayberry and beer pear, labeled as no sucrose, and the price per cup is about 10 yuan.
Internet celebrity products rely on a single explosive model to go out of the circle, but the later heat declined, resulting in a decrease in sales. Zhong Xuegao's approach is to keep a small number of regular models, and some new products are sold out offline, strictly controlling SKUs. But selling high-end products, the audience is small, and the scale cannot be too big. Zhong Xuegao also hatched another ice cream brand, Li Da Tangerine, to IP the orange cat.
New brands don't want to be defined as influencers, they are also moving from online to offline convenience stores and supermarkets, competing with two or three yuan of ice cream. In this 100-billion-level ice cream market, in the end, it depends on taste and channels to win.
Giants such as Yili, Mengniu, guangming and other giants, with milk source and channel advantages occupy more than half of the market share, have been positioning the mid-end market, to the high-end market to dig gold has become a breakthrough. Occupying the high-end market are foreign brands such as Häagen-Dazs, Heluxue, Nestlé and Meiji, of which Häagen-Dazs is regarded as the benchmark for high-end ice cream.
Other regional local brands, such as Madier in Harbin, Middle Street Freezing Point in Shenyang, Wuyang Ice Cream in Guangzhou, and Northeast Daban, have been focusing mainly on the low-end market. They are faced with both innovating and getting out of their home markets. Among them, the influence of Martin's head anchors and food KOLs such as Via has gradually become popular, and the most expensive ice cream has also sold for 22 yuan.
An ice cream ingredient manufacturer said that the high-end market must have high-end channels, and now the competitiveness of the low-end market is too large, and it is necessary to ensure that the high-end market can be volumeized and profitable. "In fact, there are many good things, including different flavors, depending on whether it can afford the cost, such as imported jam, hazelnut sauce, these are all good things to add." Your raw materials are not in stock and need to be ordered according to the quantity. ”
Some merchants have stopped at making ice cream, and have begun to cut from ice cream concentrated in summer to frozen food for daily consumption. For example, Zhong Xuegao launched a new brand "Lixiangguo" in November last year, began to sell dumplings, and recently served new buns and hair cakes. The same strategy was adopted by Baxi Ice Cream, which also launched three flavors of dumplings in March this year.
The inner volume in the field of ice cream has pushed up the price ceiling, and the essence is that new brands pursue quality upgrades, create greater profit margins, and use the Internet to play and promote the iteration of consumption scenarios. However, the level of consumption frequency determines the life cycle of the brand, not to mention that there are various teas and beverages competing with the Internet celebrity ice cream.