Traditional handmade refined tea ceremony broken silver

Did you drink the first cup of milk tea in autumn?

Contemporary young people want to drink a cup of autumn milk tea, not because it tastes good, but to commemorate the "autumn cup", which is as precious as the "first kill" in the game.

As a symbol of consumer goods in the Z era, milk tea acts as a blind "concoction" in boring life; Realizing the "freedom of milk tea" is a rare self-comfort for young people after work.

As a brand, it constantly caters to all levels of audiences, from the high-end route of Naixue tea and hi tea to a little milk tea that is close to the people, such as Honey Snow Ice City, step by step, positioning services.

The successful listing of Naixue's tea has undoubtedly given players on the milk tea track a new punctuation mark, vying for big brands to complete capital accumulation, while high-end milk tea players who also like tea are in a slightly embarrassing situation.

Nai Xue's breaking before the listing covered up the imagination of the future, followed by Honey Snow and Ice City. The siege and interception stopped the sinking road, and Xicha's "arms race" was doomed to be restless.

In the face of hi-tea, both competing on the same stage and saving the field with curves seem to feel anxious.

If we want to rank the high-profit industries in China, milk tea can definitely occupy a seat.

Under the influence of low threshold, high gross profit, standardization and other factors, many milk tea players are rushing into the market with huge sums of money.

With the birth of new tea, the existing tea market in China has also begun to accelerate its expansion. The market scale will increase from 20 1 136 billion yuan to 42.2 billion yuan in 2020, with a growth rate of 2 1.9%. It is expected to grow to 340 billion yuan in 2025, with a growth rate of 24.5%, leading the growth rate.

In the general environment of chasing the concept of consumption fever, the potential consumption demand established in various sub-sectors has been wantonly amplified by brands, and the high profit of milk tea has just become the most direct grasper of capital, so the story of China New Tea begins.

Since Naixue went on the market, the story of high-end tea has been proved to be effective, but high-end fruit tea also has its disadvantages. The process is complex and requires a large number of employees to operate. Coupled with the baking business in the store, we have to invest more money in store area, labor and equipment.

According to the prospectus published before Naixue Tea, Naixue Tea has not yet achieved sustained profitability. During the reporting period, snow-resistant tea recorded net losses of 69.729 million yuan, 39.68 million yuan and 203 million yuan respectively. Among them, the scale of losses in 2020 increased by 465,438+02.35% year-on-year.

Reflected in the secondary market, Naixue's tea broke immediately after it was listed. On the first day of listing, Naixue's tea opened at HK$ 18.86, lower than the issue price of HK$ 19.80, and closed at HK$ 17. 12, lower than the issue price of HK$ 13.54. After more than a month, Naixue's tea share price also continued to fall.

Although Naixue's tea was successfully listed, it injected a shot in the arm into the new tea industry, but as a representative of high-end tea, it suffered a "cold treatment" after listing, which meant the failure of the high-end tea route in the secondary market.

Xicha, which also focuses on the "high-end" label, also faces the same problem. For Xicha, which hasn't got the listing tickets and tells high-end tea stories, the capital market may not pay the bill.

In addition, while the brand holds high the high-end banner and strengthens the brand image by marketing means, consumers' expectations for milk tea are also rising. After all, consumers should spend more money on the same type of products, regardless of taste or service, and should enjoy a higher product experience.

In the first half of this year, Xicha launched the new product "Zhi Zhi Snow Mountain Broken Silver", which focuses on high-end tea. As a kind of Pu 'er tea, the price of "broken silver" can reach 2000 yuan/kg.

However, the reputation of this new product, which is priced in 28 yuan, has been frequently overturned on social platforms. Many consumers spit out new products as bad as traditional Chinese medicine. Adding sugar destroys the original light taste of broken silver and is not suitable for milk tea.

Taking the high-end route means that the brand has a higher premium space. Specific to the product, or focus on taste, variety, price competition.

The story of tea lovers' high-end tea route, or hitting the rocks in the capital market, seems difficult to tell.

With the birth of "the first share of milk tea", the new tea track also ushered in the influx of players.

According to the data of Yiou think tank, the unit price of high-end market customers is around 24 yuan, and the representative brands are Xicha, Naixue and Lele Tea; The average ticket price in the waist market is about 18 yuan, and the representative brands are Modern China Tea Shop, Yi Shu Diancao and Shanghai Auntie. The average ticket price in the sinking market is around 8 yuan, and the representative brands are Mi Xue Bing Cheng, coco Cocoa and 1.

In terms of store development, beverage players are also full of horsepower. According to media statistics, as of February 20021year, there were about 12000 stores in Mixue Ice City, followed by about 5,000 books and 4,000 CoCo. In contrast, hi tea is only about 600, but snow is only about 480.

Xicha and Naixue, which take the high-end route, are not dominant in quantity because of the audience and physical cost, but they are still competitive in the penetration rate and gross profit margin of first-tier cities.

In this new tea involution campaign, players from all walks of life showed their magical powers and grabbed the offline market.

One of the most successful cases is the honey snow ice city, which is popular all over the network this year. With a song "Sweet Snow and Ice City", it quickly burst into red circles and blossomed everywhere in third-and fourth-tier cities. At the same time, it began to extend its commercial tentacles to the base camp of tea lovers.

According to the monitoring of polar sea data, the expansion trend of Honey Snow Ice City to new first-tier and first-tier cities is gradually enlarged this year. As of August 18, the number of stores in first-tier cities, new first-tier cities and second-tier cities exceeded 7,000, accounting for nearly 40%.

For high-end beverage players who have been entrenched in first-tier cities for a long time, opening stores in first-tier cities has always been limited by scale, opening costs and employing costs.

Both tea-loving and snow-resisting will face a stage of weak growth, and infiltration into the sinking market is another growth curve.

In order to distinguish itself from the main brand, Xicha, and further sink into the market, Xicha began to incubate its sub-brand Xixiao Tea last year, and the price was set at around 8- 16 yuan.

According to the Report on the First Anniversary of Xixiaocha released in October/May, 2002, Xixiaocha has opened 22 stores in first-and second-tier cities in Guangdong Province, accounting for 2.8 million cups of drinks.

Although Xicha quickly cut into the low-end market at a relatively low price, it is still far from the real sinking market.

Judging from the geographical location of the store, the expansion radius of Xixiaocha has never left Guangdong Province, and it is basically concentrated in first-and second-tier cities. The low-end infiltration of Xixiao tea has yet to be reclaimed.

On the one hand, the low-end market is becoming more and more saturated, and it has no advantage in cost performance in competition with players such as Mi Xue Bing Cheng, Coco brand and Little Point. On the other hand, the product positioning begins to deteriorate, and the user's consumption experience will also decline, which will affect the main brand positioning of Xicha in the future.

With the gradual saturation of the incremental market, the competition in the tea industry will inevitably involve itself, and it will also promote the diversification of products after encountering bottlenecks in different segments.

By then, the distance between high-end tea and people-friendly brands will become blurred, and the brand effect will be amplified again.

In July, 20021year, a group of old shareholders such as Gaoling Capital and Black Ant Capital followed suit, and Xicha completed the D round of financing with a financing amount of 500 million US dollars. Since then, according to the market value estimation, the valuation of Xicha is about 60 billion, which is almost three times the current market value of Naixue's tea.

According to media reports, Xicha is also seeking listing, or choosing to go public in Hong Kong next year, with a target valuation of HK$ 654.38+050 billion.

However, Naixue's listing was broken, which made a bad start and weakened the market's imagination of high-end tea. No matter how beautiful the data surface is and how fast the small program drains, the milk tea production end still operates in the traditional form, and it needs to be piled up one cup after another to make the tea fragrant.

According to the 2020 annual report of Xicha and Euromonitor data, the annual sales growth rate of Xicha in 2020 is 18%, which is far less than the growth rate of 19 of 165%.

At the same time, while the number of stores has expanded significantly, the sales of single stores have declined. In the past 20 years, from 390 to 695, the average annual sales of a single store has dropped from 144 1 10,000 yuan to 9.56 million yuan, and the daily sales of a single store has also dropped to 26,000 yuan.

The rapid expansion of the number of hi-tea stores may not be more conducive to its foothold in the market, especially for high-end tea players.

Compared with milk tea brands that take the low-end route, the investment in high-end tea is greater. From the gross profit of the store to the net profit of the company, additional expenses need to be balanced, such as management expenses, product research and development expenses, brand promotion expenses and so on.

New tea drinkers who have been entrenched in first-and second-tier cities and high-end business districts for a long time may not make money, although they can keep up with the high-consumption crowd whose per capita is nearly one cup in 30 yuan. A large part of the expenses come from the raw material cost, staff cost and rental cost brought by expansion.

According to the survey results of China Merchants Securities, a tea shop can only make a profit if it sells 800 cups a day. Taking into account the cost of rent, water and electricity, employee salaries, etc. A tea shop earns 6.5438+million yuan a year, and will eventually get about 6.5438+million yuan with a net interest rate of about 654.38+00%. This means that a cup of milk tea with a price of more than 30 yuan only earns about 3 yuan.

In addition to high cost, low technology, simplicity and easy replication, it is also a long-standing problem in the new tea industry. Insufficient product innovation and serious homogenization further weaken the brand value of high-end tea.

Since the beginning of this year, Xicha, Lele Tea and Modern China Tea Shop have launched Huangpi series drinks almost at the same time. Huangpi Lu Xian, who likes tea, Huangpi, the "hand-pounded meat" of Lele Tea, and Huangtao, the "golden partner" of Huangpi, a modern China tea shop, have cut into the market from the perspective of relieving summer heat.

Although the main products of major brands are different, they still take fruit tea, milk tea, original tea and other product lines as support points.

Common plagiarism and imitation in the tea industry have also caused consumers' loyalty to tea brands to plummet. For high-priced tea, it means that the brand premium ability is compressed.

Before the snow closed the mountain, after the snow chased the ice city, the expectation of hi-tea listing was far from so high.

On the one hand, Naixue's listing broke and its share price continued to fall, which has proved from the side that the market's response to tea is far from ideal. On the other hand, the story of high-end tea drinking is invalid, hi-tea is in urgent need of the next business story, and the sinking market development is still in the "cradle".

From fighting for supply chain and taste, to fighting for stores, fighting for traffic and fighting for word of mouth, hi-tea's listing journey is also doomed to be not simple.