Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - The 24 Solar Terms - Love tea and vitality forest are in full swing.

Love tea and vitality forest are in full swing.

Author | Yun Mengze

Edit | Fishes

The sweetness of milk tea is somewhat saturated, but the heat of bubble water is still heating up.

When Xicha meets Yuan Qi Forest, two unicorns, as new drinks, are facing each other head-on.

In the past month, Yuan Qi Forest has successively launched two flash milk tea shops in Chengdu and Beijing, and made its debut with pomegranate, raspberry and pear-flavored bubble water limited in southwest and limited in north China, which set off a craze on social platforms such as Sina Weibo and Xiaohongshu. This is also the ambition of Yuan Qi Forest to invade the "milk tea" track again after arranging bottled "milk tea".

The domestic bubble water market is still developing. According to the report of Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, it is estimated that the overall domestic foam water market will reach 32 billion in 2025. This also attracted many players to join in and chase the same cake.

But the new tea market is not so easy to break through. At present, the competition in the whole new tea market has been very fierce. Naixue, with a market value of 24 billion, and Xicha, with a valuation of 60 billion, are racing around, and many Chinese waist brands are facing losses, financing difficulties and expansion difficulties.

If Yuan Qi Forest wants to tear a hole in the new tea industry, it is doomed to be a money-burning war. At present, hi tea, Naixue tea and Lele tea occupy the high-end market; A little, coco, happy lemon, tribute tea, etc. Occupy the middle market; In the low-end market, there are brands such as Gu Ming and Mixue Ice City. No matter from which angle, Yuan Qisenlin will face a strong opponent.

The full-scale war between Xicha and Yuan Qi Forest is going on, which also indicates that the industry has already developed from single track competition to multi-track, and more brands are eager to get a piece of each other's track.

Yuan Qi Forest opened a "tea shop".

From July 24th to August 2nd, Yuan Qi Forest opened a pop-up shop at the entrance of Chaoyang Joy City. The overall theme of the store is vitality, naturalness and refreshment, aiming at creating a flash space simulating natural ecology, which is also in line with the brand positioning of Yuan Qi Forest focusing on health.

In terms of products, Yuan Qi Forest launched pear smoothies and grape smoothies, pear milk tea and grape milk tea, and a grape pear ice cream in the pop-up shop this time. All products are made of bubble water from Yuan Qi forest, which still keeps the healthy orientation.

In fact, in early July, Yuan Qi Forest also opened a pop-up store in Chengdu, Sichuan, and attracted a large number of young people to watch and punch in.

This time, Yuan Qi Forest opened a pop-up store in Beijing, and also launched milk tea products. Obviously, it intends to enter the milk tea track.

After this war, Yuan Qi Forest began more planning and layout of the "milk tea" track.

According to Tianyan survey, Forest (Beijing) Food Technology Group Co., Ltd. recently added a number of trademark application information, including "adult milk tea", "Shi's freezer", "ice making in our palace" and "Nunu snowman". , involving internationally classified convenience foods, beer and beverages, and the trademark status is "being applied for registration".

According to the forecast of Daily Financial Weekly, the forest revenue of Yuan Qi will be nearly 2.9 billion in 2020 and will reach 7.5 billion in 20021year. At the same time, Tang Binsen, founder of Yuan Qi Forest, revealed that 95% of the products of Yuan Qi Forest have not yet been launched, and this year will be the "product year" of Yuan Qi Forest. If we can maintain rapid growth and further increase market share, it will consolidate its position in the eyes of capital and help it prepare enough food and grass before listing.

At the dealer conference held by Yuan Qi Forest in June, 5438+February last year, Tang Binsen also proposed an offline sales target of 7.5 billion yuan. The growth of single product is very limited, so it is difficult to achieve the current sales target of Yuan Qi Forest. Therefore, the urgent task of Yuan Qi forest is still to spread the net widely and expand the subdivided categories continuously.

On the road of Yuan Qi forest expansion, it is also a strategic and inevitable choice to aim at the "milk tea" track.

In order to match the revenue target of 7.5 billion yuan and the strategy of "product year", Yuanmianlin "crazy" set up a factory, and it is also frequently explored in various fields, and it is also constantly explored in the "milk tea" track.

In a short period of more than 1 year, Yuan Qisenlin invested heavily to promote the construction of four self-owned factories. Roughly calculated, its production capacity will exceed 654.38+0 billion bottles, and the sales of self-produced drinks will exceed 5 billion, which has accumulated strong potential for the subsequent product expansion. In terms of channel expansion, Yuan Qi Forest also launched 80,000 smart freezers in the first half of the year to ensure the efficiency of the supply chain through digital networking.

The Pop-up shop, which was recently launched in first-tier cities such as Chengdu and Beijing, is also a test of the milk tea track.

However, although Yuan Qi Forest has established a bubble water empire in just a few years, like all established beverage companies, Yuan Qi Forest also lacks practical experience in offline markets and stores. This time, it's just a pop-up store, not a real store.

If we want to open offline stores all over the country, we need a lot of money and manpower, which will be a major decision of Yuan Qi Forest. At present, this step has not really been taken.

Unlike Yuan Qi Forest, which only drinks tea in the pop-up store to test the water, it is bold to invade the "soaking water" track with hi-tea.

As a leading enterprise in the tea industry, Xicha has also launched a variety of bubble aquatic products since the middle of last year, and launched a storm track in Yuan Qi Forest. With the high standard and popularity of Xicha, the online and offline channels of bubble aquatic products have achieved good sales.

According to the sales data reported by Tencent News, during the Double Eleven in 2020, the sales volume of Xicha soda exceeded 40,000 boxes and 500,000 bottles, ranking in TOP5 in many lists, such as Tmall healthy soda list, Internet celebrity bubble water list, heart choice sugar-free bubble water list and acid-base balance soda list.

During 20021Spring Festival, the new product Haiyan grapefruit sugar-free bubble water drove the whole line of tea bubble aquatic products to sell nearly 65,000 boxes and about 750,000 bottles during the New Year Festival.

The explosive sale of bubble water may prove that the exploration of Xicha in the bottled beverage market is feasible, but what many people don't know is that the invasion process is not easy for Xicha.

As early as 20 19, Xicha has already started to prepare the bottled beverage business. In order to broaden its consumption scene, it chose the phenomenal product category in the market segment-bubble water.

However, after 100 formula iterations and polishing, the two kinds of bubble aquatic products launched in July 2020 were not recognized by the market and consumers as expected. On the contrary, some consumers are dissatisfied because of a slight lack of taste.

It takes a long time and energy to make products that are not favored by the consumer market. This result is undoubtedly a huge blow to brands that have just entered this field. However, Xicha was not discouraged.

After the feedback from consumers, Xicha took a radical approach-taking the initiative to remove all the first batch of bubble aquatic products listed on the market.

Then, after two months of "recycling", the formula of bubble water was optimized, and finally three bubble aquatic products with brand-new formula, packaging and taste were launched in September 2020.

In order to promote bubble water, Xicha has been doing its best.

Relying on the brand effect of Xicha itself, Xicha Bubble Water drives the overall sales by tying its own stores, and arranges online platforms, offline convenience stores and supermarkets. , almost entered all saleable channels.

The rapid development of hi-tea in the bubble water market has also led to the rapid expansion of sales channels, which has also had a feedback effect on its own brand. Xicha Online has mainstream e-commerce channels such as Tmall and JD.COM, while the number of offline sales outlets has exceeded 30,000. In addition to fully covering its own stores, it also includes mainstream convenience stores represented by 7 1 1 and the whole family, as well as new retail channels represented by Box Horse, Ding Dong Shopping and Daily Fresh Food.

In terms of price and capacity, the average price of tea bubble water per bottle is 5.5 yuan, with a capacity of 500ml, while the average price of Yuan Qi forest bubble water per bottle is 5 yuan, with a capacity of 480ml. This can be described as "hand-to-hand combat" with Yuan Qi Forest.

Xicha also tries to find the difference with competing products such as Yuan Qi Forest. To this end, it emphasizes that real juice has been added to its bubble aquatic products. Take grape-flavored soda as an example, it tries to amplify the natural fruit flavor in the drink by adding grape concentrated juice and purple carrot concentrated juice.

In addition, the addition of dietary fiber, vitamins and other ingredients is also one of the key points of differentiation of tea soaking water. Even though many brands in the market are trying to introduce lactic acid bacteria bubble water, hi tea still needs to add prebiotics to make a little taste innovation.

Innovation and differentiation are the keys to a brand breakthrough. Will tea-loving and vibrant forests eventually become a threat that cannot be ignored?

The line between the new tea track and the bottled beverage track is becoming increasingly blurred. New tea brands such as Xicha and Naixue Tea invaded the bottled beverage track, while bottled beverage brands such as Yuan Qi Forest and Wahaha entered the field of "milk tea".

They tried to challenge the head players by breaking through the layers of brand explosions and relying on existing single products to expand the category boundaries.

However, although the new tea industry has broad prospects, it is already a difficult field to attack.

According to the user survey data of the White Paper on New Tea in 2020, consumers after 1990s and 00s have become the mainstream consumers of new tea, accounting for nearly 70% of the total consumers. After 90 s and 00 s, the monthly expenditure on tea drinks accounts for 27% in 400 yuan, and 200-400 yuan accounts for 3 1%.

Faced with such a broad market prospect, it is the general trend for both sides to invade the track, and the support behind it is not just sufficient ammunition.

Nowadays, the tea market has entered the Red Sea from the Blue Ocean. Every year, there are more than 20,000 newly registered milk tea enterprises and more than 20,000 enterprises with abnormal operations, which have entered the reshuffle stage.

Breakthrough is not easy. Yuan Qi Forest, Wahaha and other bottled drinks head players launched an attack on the "milk tea" track, especially Wahaha, who took the lead in entering the offline tea market. Wahaha Tea Shop relies on the original brand products, including AD calcium milk series, milk tea series, lactic acid refreshing series, fruit tea series, cheese nutrition express series and winter hot drink series, with "childhood memories" as the propaganda point. When it was first launched, it really caused quite a stir.

But in operation, Wahaha has little to do with the parent company by cooperating with other companies to cut into new tea. Therefore, it is difficult to build the brand power of tea and realize the fan effect. The battle did not arouse the expected response.

Wahaha took the lead, and the invasion of Yuan Qi forest tea traces was more conservative. At first, it was mainly about "milk tea", but now I want to test the user's reaction through pop-up shops instead of directly opening milk tea shops on a large scale.

The barriers of head players in the field of new tea have been initially established.

Head tea enterprises such as Xicha and Naixue Tea have a strong brand potential foundation, which is helpful to the early distribution and marketing, while Yuan Qi Forest is dwarfed in this respect; In terms of products, tea enterprises have relatively outstanding product research and development strength and supply chain advantages in the field of finished tea, while bottled beverage enterprises are weak; At the same time, tea shops attach great importance to opening offline stores and need a lot of financial support. Head players have to expand with losses, which makes new players have greater breakthrough pressure.

The new tea ceremony is difficult to attack. In the bubble water track, does the tea that loves tea and snow threaten the vitality forest?

At present, in the face of the invasion of many brands such as Xicha and Naixue Tea, Yuan Qi Forest has temporarily stabilized its position, and it is not so simple to break through its own soaking empire. According to public data, the scale of forest sales in Yuan Qi will increase by 2.7 billion yuan in 2020, up by 309% year-on-year.

The status of bubble water empire in Yuan Qi Forest is stable, and the "market leading rule" grasped the consumption mentality of "0 sugar bubble water" at the beginning of Yuan Qisen's forest. The bubble water in Yuan Qi's forest is essentially out of the circle because of ideas. Although soaking in water was not the first thing in Yuan Qi forest, soaking in water with 0 sugar was the first thing that Yuan Qisen did in forest fire in China. This makes Yuan Qi Forest occupy a "first-Mover advantage" in the subdivision of bubble water track, and it is also the core competition point of products.

Even if the latecomers imitate the appearance and taste, it is difficult to reverse the established market cognition of Yuan Qi Woods in a short time. At present, tea is a micro-innovation in taste, and it is difficult to have subversive innovation.

The success of Yuan Qi Forest Bubble Water can not be separated from the founder Tang Binsen's attention to brand marketing.

In 2020, the omni-channel marketing expenses of Yuan Qi forest will account for about 1/4 of the income. This figure can even be basically the same as the bottled water "marketing guru" Nongfu Spring.

Marketing investment has provided a strong impetus for Yuan Qi Forest. In addition, the rapid rise of Yuan Qi forest benefits from the expansion of convenience stores in first-tier cities to some extent.

At present, in order to gain more users, Xicha and Yuan Qi Forest will not stop invading each other's tracks, and a full-scale campaign has begun. In the future, they may also appear on more tracks such as beer and coffee together to build a larger business map.