In the tea circle, there have even been strange situations in which the cottage “strikes” the genuine.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Commercial Street Detective” (ID :bustanan), author Xia Zhi.
On September 3, Rui Xing announced that the Xiaolu tea brand was independent and focused on sinking the market. He specifically mentioned the problem of the cottage that may be encountered in the future, and said that the deer tea will be full. App trading, although it is unrealistic to completely eliminate the cottage, but at least consumers can use the Deer Tea App to identify whether it is a genuine deer tea.
The “counterfeiting” example of tea is a chronic illness in the growth of various brands:
The brand name of today’s online black tea drink tea was Huangpu when it started in 2012. Because these two characters can’t be registered trademarks, in order to distinguish it from a lot of cottage brands, in 2016, it was renamed HEEKCAA tea. Renaming may be the only resort for many tea brands, but the only “right to defend” means. At the end of August, the Nanjing tea brand “Yujing Tea”, which received tens of millions of Pre-A rounds of financing, was also announced to be forced by the cottage. Taoshan.”
The most well-known tea house in the current tea circle should be counted as Antler Lane:
There is a lot of cottage shops in Shanghai’s Lujiao Lane, but there are only a dozen of his actual stores. At present, Lujiao Lane is trying to use the method of speeding up the store to fight against the cottage, but the irony is: The faster the new store in Lujiao Lane is opened, the more the cottage is. Take Guangzhou, the location of the authentic Antler Lane is open in a densely populated high-end business district like Zhengjia Plaza and Dongfang Baotai. It is necessary to queue up to buy, and there are four streetsides in the Beijing Road, “Deerhorn Lane”, and one of them has also heard the story of this horror.
Lessons of trademarks
The founder of Lujiao Lane, Qiu Maoting, once said that he wants to be a Starbucks tea, so in the early days of development in the Mainland, he did not pay much attention to the speed of expansion:
In September 2017, the first Lujiao Alley in the mainland opened in Shanghai. In April 2018, the first store opened in Guangzhou and became popular on the Internet. In July of the same year, the inside of Lujiao LaneThe number of local stores has increased to 14 and they all adopt the direct operation mode. However, the cottage shops in Lujiao Alley have already opened up to the north and south. According to incomplete statistics, there may be hundreds of Li Guis; and you can search on the takeaway platform. Go to “The ALLEY”, “Angle Lane”, “The Alley”, “The Alley”, “The ALLEY”, “The Alley”, etc…. and many other brands that play the antler lane.
Qiu Maoting once admitted in an interview that he was “helpless”, even if “(those cottage stores) are mad and ridiculous.”
The reason is that the three words of Antler Lane are not registered trademarks.
An industry insider Mr. Y told [Commercial Street Detective] (ID: bustanan): When Lujiao Lane opened its first store in Shanghai, it was targeted by “hearted people” and found that the brand was not registered. The trademark, and then registered the trademark, began to expand the store indefinitely, as to how arrogant these cottages? There is a tea chain called the antlers, saying that he is the renamed Lujiao Lane. Qiu Maoting still has no choice but to blame. In the middle of 18 years, he said that “Deerhorn Lane has not changed its name, nor has it planned to join. Registered trademarks can join the investment promotion)”.
In fact, the trademark issue is almost the death of all tea brands, and there are two reasons for this death:
The first is that brand owners themselves have insufficient awareness of trademark registration.
Mr. Y told [Commercial Street Detective]: General entrepreneurs are reluctant to register trademarks from the beginning.
Registering a trademark process is easy and requires only:
1, clear and no-frills logo design style map;
2, fill in the trademark application registration form;
3, the applicant’s identification materials;
4. Trademark entrustment agency registration contract (only if there is an agency, you need to prepare this material, and the self-registered business does not need it);
5. A copy of the business license of the individual industrial and commercial households.
After the materials are ready, they can be handed over to the relevant institutions. The price is not high. The registered consultant of Pig Bajie told [Commercial Street Detective]: The official registration fee for a single brand single category is 270 yuan/piece.
But the chances of a successful registration are not high:
First of all, if there is a problem with the application materials, the trademark will be rejected;/p>
Secondly, if a unit or individual (such as a quick recruiting company) submits a trademark application first, it will still be rejected.
After being rejected, if you continue to prepare materials, you will also need to spend more time and energy on the entrepreneur.
In the view of Mr. Y, the entrepreneurs themselves are not fire on the brand. Whether they can open and join in the future is not the bottom. Even if they can live for half a year, they have no confidence: “Whoever has nothing to register This is a meaningless thing. The average fast food can be good for half a year. After half a year, it will be sold to others or change direction.” For many small entrepreneurs, the premise of the trademark problem is the survival rate, so they Will pay more attention to the operation of products and stores, and have the expectation of a shot to change a place.
The second reason is the existence of the company, and the problem encountered in Lujiao Lane is the typical “quick company tragedy”.
Mr. Y told [Commercial Street Detective], the so-called “quick move” is the abbreviation of fast investment, this company is particularly good at creating or packaging one or more so-called by various means in a short time. “Explosives”, followed by large-scale publicity and investment, charging franchise fees or other fees, will get a lot of income in the short term.
When the heat is no longer hot and the investment is difficult to continue, the company will quickly create the next explosive product and continue to attract investment.
Quick recruiting companies generally register multiple trademarks in advance.
“Come around a name, the company will register all the names that are easy to be imitated. Because they are familiar with the road, the application materials will generally not be problematic, and there will be a special risk assessment, the success rate will be higher. Successful registration, you can not use the trademark can be sold. Assume that the registered trademarks are passed at one time, the rigid cost of one hundred trademarks only needs tens of thousands, but sold to a boss who has opened three or four volume chain stores. The key to the seven or eighty is that this price is acceptable to the boss,” Mr. Y said.
Mr. Y told [Commercial Street Detective]: His friend had a chain of 10 chain stores called Snails. Because there was no registered trademark in the previous period, they were now found by the fast recruiting company and asked them to spend tens of thousands of dollars. (It is not convenient to disclose the specific amount) to buy the trademark.
In fact, the company is not in a hurry:
Mr. Y’s friends can ignore their requests and even continue to use the trademarks.