By 2020, the hot sauce industry will release a market size of 40 billion.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “New Retail Business Review” (ID: xinlingshou1001), author Tian Qiaoyun.
The net reds broke into the hot sauce market, and the powerful cargo capacity increased. The possibility of industry shuffling.
Please say the top three hot sauce brands! In addition to the first old godmother, you can’t tell the second and third.
A brand represents an industry. This is the ultimate dream of most brands. In the positioning theory, Laogan Ma’s case of occupying the mind of consumers is undoubtedly a classic.
What kind of market is hot sauce? Professionals predict that the industry will release 40 billion market size by 2020.
“At present, nearly half of the people in China can eat spicy food, and the number is on the rise.” Chen Huifang, the head of the brand’s own brand sales department, confirms the potential of this market.
But at present, the competition pattern and market size of this industry do not match. Except for Laoganma and the whole category of condiment brands, almost no other hot sauce brands can be quickly identified by consumers.
Public information shows that Laoganma’s operating income in 2017 was 4.549 billion yuan, down to 4.447 billion in 2018. On average, Laoganma’s annual revenue is about 4.5 billion yuan, accounting for only 11% of the industry. . In other words, nearly 90% of the market is left, giving emerging brands “a chance to take advantage of it”.
From Lin Yilun’s Yuye, Yue Yunpeng’s “Skin Pi” and Li Zikai, there has been a wave of “new faces” in the hot sauce industry. Zhang Wei’s “嵩二” was one of them.
The new face of the pepper industry “嵩二”
Today, retailer wants to take advantage of the entrepreneurial experience of this emerging brand, and take you to see the pepper “sauce” lake together.
Brands sent out
The establishment of “嵩二” is purely accidental.
Founder Zhang Wei is an authentic Guizhou native who has lived in Shanghai for 15 years. He used to work in the media, and later left the media to start his own business. He currently manages three companies including the “Secondary”.
In the memory of Guizhou people, there is one thing that will never be absent – spicy sauce.
Spicy taste is something that has a memory heritage. Once you fall in love, it is very difficult to quit. Today, the well-known old godmother is to quickly occupy the customer’s mind and continue to circle. Plus product prices are close to the people, quality is stable, and consumer loyalty is high.
In order to verify this point of view, Retail Jun interviewed two Laoganma heavy users, their experience is very interesting:
Mrs. Sun’s first time to eat Laoganma is used to match the cucumber to relieve the heat. Since then, it has been out of control, and it is inseparable from Laoganma for three meals a day.
In addition, like ice cream, cakes, moon cakes, these greasy foods that don’t seem to be able to be beaten with spicy sauce, as long as they are old, she can eat. In her eyes, no food can not be “shun” with a spoonful of old godmother, if there is, then use two spoons.
Ms. Huang’s “Laogan Ma’s Age” has been for more than 20 years, and it is called Laoganma’s diehard powder. She likes Laoganma mainly because of the good ratio of pepper and soybean meal, and the quality is very stable over the years.
Either stir-fry, steamed fish, or fried rice, put a small spoon and the taste will be different. Even the children who dare not eat spicy at the beginning, in the cultivation of this habit, fell in love with Laoganma.
“Laoganma is a great company, so that the whole world knows the spicy sauce of Guizhou. But in Guizhou, there is no one to eat Laoganma, mainly because every family’s mother will make their own spicy sauce.
Zhang Wei said that in the eyes of Guizhou people, the spicy sauce (Guizhou people called oil pepper) has only two kinds of “do it” and “doing others”. If there is no hot sauce, they are embarrassed to say that they are Guizhou people.
On the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival in 2017, Zhang Wei began to ponder after seeing the gift application report submitted by his subordinates.Can you send your own handmade hot sauce to your customers, both creative and have a heart.” In this way, he purchased a batch of raw materials from Guizhou, borrowed a stove from a friend who opened the restaurant, and began to try.
After many tests, Zhang Wei confirmed that the taste of the spicy sauce reached its own requirements, and the first batch of more than 200 hot sauces were officially delivered to customers. At first, he was a little embarrassed. Although he had made adjustments to the spicyness, he was worried that customers would not be used to it.
However, unexpectedly, customer feedback was particularly good. Even Shanghai customers saw Zhang Wei’s home-made hot sauce in WeChat, and drove the car directly to the door to “grab”.
At the end of the year, Zhang Wei went to Shenyang to do spicy sauce to customers. In the winter, he used the earthen stove in the raft, from cutting to frying, and the various procedures were busy for a long time. Finally, the hand shook and even the chopsticks could not hold. However, dozens of bottles of hot sauce that are hard to make are not enough.
The friends around me suggested that Zhang Wei set up a hot sauce brand. He didn’t take it seriously at first, and he said that there were more people. Zhang Wei began to think about feasibility and started to conduct market research.
The big market behind the small peppers
Zhang Wei discovered that the small chili sauce was actually sitting in the big market of tens of billions.
Besides the strong supply chain, high cost performance and stable quality, the company has surrounded the market of 4.5 billion, and other local brands of various sizes share the rest of the market. The hot sauce industry maintains a delicate balance.
But in the past two years, with Lin Yilun, Huang Lei and other celebrities involved in the spicy sauce industry, their strong ability to bring goods has broken the balance of this market and increased the possibility of market reshuffle – if Brands can find unique positioning, avoid homogenization competition, and squeeze into the hot sauce market is not a problem.
Lin Yilun Endorsement Master
So, how can we avoid homogenization competition? This requires consideration of the positioning of the brand. Generally speaking, you can think in three ways: One is the product itself, the second is the target group, and the third is the sales channel.
Zhang Wei believes that although the spicy sauce does not seem to have a high technical content, “the person who really needs the hot sauce will recognize the nuances of the export taste.” The net red sauce flow is an advantage, but the disadvantage is that many of them do not understand the product, and the quality is difficult to guarantee.
So, is the hot sauce brand a success?In the end, it depends on whether consumers will continue to pay. “The most important evaluation index for products such as hot sauce is the repurchase rate.” Yang Huifang also holds the same view.
For the sake of quality, Zhang Wei went to Guizhou to find a factory, insisted on using Guizhou local peppers, and healthier sunflower oil for hand-made, and constantly worked hard on product innovation.
The second one was originally only spicy, mushroom, and beef. This year, another abalone sauce was developed.
However, when developing new products, Zhang Wei encountered a big challenge – the factory manager Lao Xie considered from the eating habits of Guizhou people and thought that “using abalone for hot sauce is not crazy or stupid”, and does not agree with life and death. Produce this spicy sauce.
But Zhang Wei’s point is that the target group of Yuji is a white-collar or enterprise middle-level outside the Guizhou area. This group needs a high-end spicy sauce. After three months of research and development and testing, the abalone sauce was launched and is now one of the best-selling products in the second.
In addition to product innovations, Zhang Wei also innovated the use of the product. He believes that “handmade hot sauce can not only be eaten by itself, but also can be used as gifts for relatives and friends.”
Based on this, at the beginning of 2018, he began to design and test product packaging from the perspective of gifts, and repeatedly researched bottles and bottle stickers. After consulting the opinions of women of all ages, he finally established the hot sauce industry. There are few square bottles in the market. It is said that the inspiration comes from the perfume bottle.
As a senior planner, Zhang Wei knows the importance of brand image and copywriting.
He carefully studied a lot of brands and found that the old label of the old godmother with the head, plus the round bottle is classic, but the young people will not PO to the circle of friends; the net red sauce is diverse in style, both have rice The simple and rough wind of the lord also has the classical style of Li Zikai, and the animation card ventilation of Xiaoyue Yue, but there is no decent copy.
Zhang Wei decided to break the circle and put a copy of each hot sauce with the characteristics of the product, such as “Life is not lacking waves, but mouth is afraid of loneliness” “Every day is not spicy, it is the burden of life “Wait, it can be said that it is very heart-warming.”
At the end of last year, Yuji successfully settled in after a rigorous evaluation. Two months ago, Yuji went to another box through another evaluation.
Zhang Wei acknowledges that the main reasons for entering these two channels are: first, they have strong brand endorsement, consumers have strong trust in these two channels; second, the consumer groups and these two channels The brand positioning of the second match is very precise.
The positioning of the segmentation area is important
As of the day of the interview, under the premise of not using any marketing means and not promoting the promotion, the pure natural sales of the two hot sauces of Yuji exceeded 20,000 bottles. But compared with the Net Red brand, this number is very small – it is said that the rice can bring tens of thousands of bottles for an event.
Zhang Hao is not eager to increase sales. In his opinion, his own advantages are the selection of ingredients, the craftsmanship, the high-profile packaging, and the attributes of gifts. He hopes to polish the products better, and on this basis, from the content side to force marketing.
When product quality and marketing planning match, rely on a city layout with box horses to selectively expand channels.
This brand idea seems simple, but it fits well with the four-step rule of positioning:
• First analyze the environment to determine what the value of the opponent is;
• Secondly, avoid the advantages of competitors in the minds of consumers and find their own value;
• Again, find a reliable proof of this positioning;
• Finally, apply this positioning to all aspects, especially communication, to implant the minds of consumers.
However, I think that in the sub-sector of hot sauce, it is not only Zhang Wei who meets the needs of consumers for more subdivided needs – the box horses that the second one relies on are also eyeing this opportunity.
As a new retail pioneer of Ali, Box Horse will not participate in the competition of the hot sauce industry as a channel merchant, but from the perspective of brand owners, it will provide another kind of hot sauce to the residents of the “box house” and the middle and high-end consumers. Consumption choices.
Not long ago, Box Horse has signed an agreement with the Rwanda Development Committee of Rwanda (Rwanda Development Committee) to exclusively introduce Rwandan Havana Lantern Pepper.
Havana Lantern Pepper
According to the exclusive news of Retail Jun, Box Horse is currently testing the hot sauce products with the R&D team intensively, and is preparing to launch the first batch of products by the end of this year. The products will include two categories of catering sauce and table sauce. SKU does not. More than 10.
Boxma’s entry, on the one hand, because of its strong supply chain advantage and product development capabilities, on the other hand, it can analyze consumer behavior through big data, and then make accurate judgments on the trend of hot sauce consumption.
“We found that the current consumers are not satisfied with the appetite, but they are more concerned about the kind of ‘the hardship to buy me.Happy’s emotional needs. Chen Huifang believes that this trend is bound to bring more opportunities to new brands entering the hot sauce market.
Pepper “Sauce” Lake, who is ups and downs, may wish to wait and see.