Interview with the founder of Ufresh Workshop: How to break the cheese snacks after getting investment from Panda Dairy

Data shows that in recent years, the cheese snacks market has been developing fast, with a compound annual growth rate of about 25%, especially in the 3-4 line market growth rate of more than 200%. China's casual cheese (snack cheese) market is in a period of rapid development, traditional giants, emerging brands all the way to step on the gas.

How is the market for ambient snack cheese at present? Can it become the new explosion point of the market? In this regard, the food board interviewed Ding Xiangyang, founder of the representative enterprise of room-temperature cheese snacks from the dealer transformation, and listened to his business experience together.

The following is an interview between the Food Panel and Ding Xiangyang, general manager of Hangzhou Langduo Trading Co. achievements?

Ding Xiangyang: Langdao Trading is located in Hangzhou, a unique geographical location. From offline stores to traditional e-commerce such as Jingdong, Tmall, Taobao, and then to new retail platforms such as community group purchasing and Jitterbug, each channel change can keep up in time, and the scale has been in a steady state of growth. Of course, this year has also been affected by some of the epidemic, but the overall sales are still relatively stable.

Food Panel:At present, Langdor Trade mainly represents which brands?

Ding Xiangyang: We are still mainly imported food, mainly acting as an agent for imported chocolate, cookies, seaweed, pomelo tea and other categories, and national brands such as Starbucks, Red Bull, White Elephant and so on. With the rise of national products, we also represent new consumer brands such as Empty Moment. New consumer channels are also covered, such as the national box horse fresh life.

Food Panel: We are doing very well in the distributor ranks, how do we stay ahead of the curve?

Ding Xiangyang: Dealers are the role of service providers, I think the most important thing is to keep up with the pace of market change and channel change, to seize the dividends of change.

Mastering the initiative of product upgrading and iteration

Food Panel: Since the trading company has been doing this for more than ten years, and the sales of all channels are good, how do you want to get up to go to Huzhou to build a factory?

Ding Xiangyang: It can be said that doing private labeling is the ultimate dream of all trading company owners. Because of the trading company always feel is for others to do, and they already have so many channels, then production of a product can leverage existing resources.

The daily exchange of upstream brands will give dealers a feeling that I think I can do it. Plus dealers know more about what products sell well in the market and what products are the future development trend. Therefore, each do trade for a long time, the larger dealers will be transformed into most of the brand.

Food Panel: trading companies to turn upstream is to do factories and brands, downstream is to open retail stores, I see peers in the downstream transition is also quite a lot of that downstream is also the direction of transformation?

Ding Xiangyang: dealers are in the middle of the upstream and downstream, to go downstream I think the technology content is a little lower, but the challenge is greater, because the downstream brick-and-mortar stores is the red sea, the competition is very fierce; upstream is relatively more demanding, because of the construction of factories and production technology requirements.

I built a factory seven or eight years ago to produce lollipops, and it ended with a loss of six million dollars. Everyone thinks it's easy to build a factory, and at first I thought so too. But distributors don't have experience in manufacturing, so it's easy to invest in a factory and fail.

Food Panel: What's the difference between building a factory this time and last time?

Ding Xiangyang: After summarizing the thinking, we are more mature, before the dealers see what products sell well in the market, they will follow the trend to produce the same products.

With the lessons learned from the last failure, we first need to ensure that we choose a large track, and then the establishment of technical reserves to ensure that the quality of the product is good, to have repeat customers and re-purchase rate, and then have a clear plan for the enrichment of the product line, the production of a series of products, non-stop iterative, and their own ability to control the initiative of the product upgrades and iterations.

This iterative process is not about finding a foundry and letting the foundry do the product iteration and upgrade, but rather, it's about getting the product development and industry technology in your own hands, and understanding the industry in depth, which is the biggest difference from the last time you built a factory. To this end, we have invited with nearly 20 years of scientific research experience in the food field, the former Nongfushanquan, Kang Enbei food R & D director, Jiangnan University, PhD, Zhejiang University, postdoctoral Cheng Kouwei led the team of dedicated research and development.

Food Panel: Which kind of products does the factory mainly produce this time?

Ding Xiangyang: This time it focuses on the cheese industry. Milk protein and milk calcium for human absorption is the best, in the liquid milk on the basis of ten parts of milk concentrated into one part, is cheese. Cheese is already a very mature product in Europe and the United States, is the human body's most needed source of protein.

What we want to do first is to lighten the flavor of cheese fermentation, and then develop room temperature cheese to address the inconvenience of taking out and storing low-temperature cheese. Our partner, Dr. Cheng, developed the ultra-micro-particle water-locking technology, which successfully turned the low-temperature cheese into room-temperature cheese.

After snacking on room-temperature cheese, it will become a permanent product

FoodPanel: I noticed that our brand has changed its name, right?

Ding Xiangyang: Our brand name wasn't Cheese Project before, but during media promotion we found that the correlation between the original name and the category was weak, so we changed the name to Cheese Project after a lot of consideration. Consumers type in cheese-related search terms and the product pops up.

Food Panel: Some people say room temperature cheese products are not the future trend, or just a small trend suitable for China's national conditions, what do you think?

Ding Xiangyang: Ambient cheese products may not be as big as low-temperature cheese products, but they still have great potential for growth. In particular, room-temperature cheese is moving towards snacking, and combined with ingredients such as seaweed and cod, it will become a permanent product. What companies need to do now is to let consumers get used to the form of cheese snacks.

Food Panel: What is the current state of the room temperature cheese market?

Ding Xiangyang: The whole industry is groping to promote the change of cheese from liquid to solid, and from low temperature to room temperature, which is suitable for more consumer needs. Whoever can take the lead in making products that meet the market trend will be able to take the initiative in the market.

Currently, Yili, Dr. Cheese and other companies are trying to promote room temperature cheese snack products, You Fresh Workshop is also producing cheese sandwich seaweed for Dr. Cheese, in addition to the foreign brand BEL Belle Group for the Chinese market to create a Kiri Sweetheart small cheese. However, the industry is still in its infancy, and particularly mature brands have not yet appeared. A few days ago, Ufresh Workshop received a 10 million level investment from listed company Panda Dairy, which triggered the industry's attention.

Food Panel: Panda Dairy also has its own ambient cheese brand, Panda Companion, is his investment in Yufeng Kobo motivated by product upgrading?

Ding Xiangyang: Panda Dairy has a room-temperature cheese factory in Shandong, and he invested in us because we have the technology accumulation and development ideas. It is also the investment from Panda Dairy that has given UFW sufficient funds for research and development and promotion.

Fast iteration speed, continue to walk in the forefront of product innovation

Food Panel: In the field of room temperature cheese snacks, the Cheese Project has already possessed the financial advantage and technological reserves, in the face of more brands to join the competition, how should we build the brand How should we build a brand moat?

Ding Xiangyang: First of all, quality is the most important thing, for example, cheese sandwich seaweed pursues a clean formula, high casein content, the taste is more suitable for children. The second is the diversity of eating scenes. Cheese sticks are an upgraded version of Japanese fan house, replacing starch with cheese, the taste is closer to the original cheese flavor, and more suitable for heavy fans, expanding the eating scene for cheese lovers.

Another point is to continuously push new products and to do so one step faster than competitors. Currently, the first phase of the Cheese Program's product launch plan includes four individual products: 55% cheese sandwich seaweed, new fish cheese, triangle cheese crisps (new product pre-launch), and cheese crisps (new product pre-launch).

The first and second products already have followers. More followers is not a bad thing, it pushes the pace of innovation of the cheese program, and we also hope that more companies will follow suit to quickly cultivate the market need for the normalization of cheese consumption and make the category bigger.

This year, the online and offline channels accounted for 6:4, and sales exceeded 30 million

Food Panel: At this stage, there is no synonym for the cheese snack category in the minds of consumers, and there is still a lot of room for the growth of the Cheese Program, how to balance between online and offline channels?

Ding Xiangyang: After the new consumer brands listed, the marketing path has a similarity, through the small red book planting grass, looking for the head anchor with goods, online to make achievements and then layout of the offline.

The cheese program was started as an offline channel, and compared to other new consumer brands, it has a better understanding of how to play the offline channel and a stronger offline gene. At present, including RT-Mart, ole, box horse, baby channels have been stationed in the national market has developed thirty or forty agents, online in many platforms also have direct store store.

Food Panel: Tell us what you expect from the cheese program this year.

Ding Xiangyang: Most of the new consumer brands can reach 80% or even 90% of their channel sales. After the channel structure adjustment and promotion, the cheese plan predicts that the ratio of online and offline channels will be 6:4 this year, and the sales target will exceed 30 million.

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