Perhaps, sinking the market is the key to who can become the first share of new tea drinks.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Invest in China” (ID: China-Venture) , author: Qi rock.
Recently, Lele Tea has been replaced by the store at Tiantaijiao in Beijing Grand Pacific Mall, and Lele Tea is next to Hi Tea. According to Juntai, this shop has been prepared by the mall for the Internet celebrity brand. The confrontation between Lele tea and hi tea shops revealed the strong smell of gunpowder in the new tea battle.
Previously, “Neixue’s Tea” has been contacted by investment banks and intends to go to the United States for listing next year. Hi Tea has also reported that it will launch a listing plan. Although both have denied this news, the battle for new tea is intensifying.
Cultivation of internal skills and expansion of boundaries, is there no shortage of money for Hi Tea and Nayuki?
In August 2019, it was reported that Xicha completed a new round of financing. According to rumors, this round of financing was led by Tencent and Sequoia. After this round of financing is completed, Xicha will also become the new highest valuation at present. Tea brand.
Only a few days later, Tianyan’s data showed that the operating body of Hunan Chayue Catering Management Co., Ltd., a local tea brand of “Chayan Yuese” in Changsha, had undergone industrial and commercial changes, and Suzhou Yuanchu Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership) Become a new shareholder with a 6.32% stake. It is worth noting that by consulting the equity structure of Suzhou Yuanchu Investment, it was found that one of its shareholders is Hangzhou Alibaba Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. This means that the two giants of Tencent Ali will start a new match against the Nuggets’ new tea track.
This track, which is favored by Ali Tencent, “stands” on the wind as early as 2016. With the blessing of capital, with high valuations and industry visibility, Hi Tea and Nai Xue Tea have become new styles. The “protagonist” of the tea industry. Different from the past, although many investors have publicly expressed their optimism about the new tea, in 2019, Nai Xue, who has completed three rounds of financing for two consecutive years, did not announce new financing news, and the cumulative financing exceeded 500 million yuan. Hi Tea has not officially announced the completion of a new round of financing.
For a startup, financing is the key to a company’s longevity, and lack of money is perhaps the most reasonable explanation for not financing. For Naixue Capital, its investor Pantu Investment Management Partner Pan Pan once said, “Consumer goods companies are relatively profitable once they enter the business model and form a closed loop. They will have good cash flow, so Naixue is not very big. Financing power. “
In addition to expansion this year, Hi Tea is busy expanding its borders, launching coffee beverages to enter new fields, and setting up wholly-owned technology companies with animation and toy design businesses. CTO Chen Xilin also revealed thatBe social. In addition to “cultivating internal skills”, Nai Xue and Wangwang launched co-branded drinks, co-branded pop-up stores, and artificial meat products to play cross-border marketing. In addition, Nayuki also launched new formats such as “Naiyuki Wine House” and “Naiyue Dream Factory”.
While tea and Nayuki settled on the new tea head brand “Throne”, the new “Challenge” is also attacking the two industry leaders.
In April 2019, Lele Tea announced the completion of a 200 million RMB Pre-A round of financing invested by Xiangfeng Investment China Fund, Zhijun Waterdrop, Pusi Capital, Zhonghai Investment, Ruchuan Investment, etc. With the support of the round of financing, Lele Tea opened stores in multiple shopping malls in Beijing in 2019, and also launched a Qianping store in Shanghai to compete with Hi Tea and Nayuki.
For new tea brands, the bigger challenge comes from more and more “cross-border people.”
Cross borders disrupt the situation, the new tea industry will welcome the shuffle
At the end of March 2019, those new tea drinkers who have successfully sold tea to young people are thinking about how to sell coffee to young people who come to drink tea. On March 22, Xicha Coffee was officially launched in four stores. There are also coffee teas such as big coffee, big coffee lemon, big coffee orange, and other tea brands. CoCo also has dozens of coffee drinks. At this point, the new tea brands have their own coffee drinks, and this cross-border has officially started.
Interestingly, in April 2019, Ruixing launched 4 new “Little Deer Tea” products in its APP to test the water. On July 8, Ruixing Coffee announced the launch of more than 10 in nearly 3,000 stores in 40 cities across the country. This little deer tea product has officially entered the tea market. On September 3, Ruixing Coffee announced the independent operation of its brand “Little Deer Tea” and also hired Xiao Zhan as the spokesperson for the “Little Deer Tea” brand image. In addition to Ruixing, Pacific Coffee has also opened the first independent store in China for its new series of tea brands “Tai Cha”.
Hi tea and Nayuki entered the coffee field one after another, Ruixing and Pacific Coffee entered the tea, and two popular beverage categories entered each other’s hinterland. Are they expanding against the trend or helpless?
China’s food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng believes that “multi-brand, multi-category, multi-scenario, multi-channel, multi-consumer group will be the future development trend of the entire Chinese consumer goods industry.” According to Nai Xue’s tea and joint release The “2019 New Tea Consumption White Paper” shows that the total scale of China’s tea beverage market will exceed 400 billion yuan in 2019, and the total size of the coffee market will approach 200 billion yuan in 2019. The huge market scale makes the two parallel lines of coffee and tea quickly cross, and the cross-border beverage becomes inevitable.
It is worth noting that Xiabu’s high-end hot pot restaurant brand Minato has also officially launched a series of milk tea, and the hot pot brand Xiaolongkan has launched an independent store tea brand Long Xiaocha.
These crossovers are changing the tea industry. The double battle of “star endorsement + burn-in subsidy”Slightly, Fawn Tea’s “crazy” expansion, once opened 42 stores in 28 cities, Xiao Lu tea launched Xiao Zhan signed version of the small praise cup, the first batch of 30,000 in 3 minutes were robbed.
It is also reported that there are more than 100 directly-operated stores in Changsha, which will leave Changsha and choose Wuhan and Changde as their first stops. If tea tea with word-of-mouth and two-way blessings really comes out of Changsha, what will happen to the new tea industry pattern?
In addition, in 2019, the net red label of the new tea brand is slowly fading, and tea is becoming a daily routine in consumers’ lives. According to the information of Tian’s eye inspection, as of November 29, there were 3,478 milk tea companies that were cancelled or cancelled in 2019, and there were 21,800 companies operating abnormally in the industry. It is foreseeable that the new tea industry will accelerate its reshuffle in 2020.
Sinking the market will become a new opportunity for new tea?
In fact, the new tea is far from as good as the outside world looks. The heavy red label, serious product homogeneity, and excessive sugar content / caffeine are always the “weakness” of the new tea.
The queuing up of consumers has made tea shops such as Hi Tea and Nayuki’s tea become famous overnight, and they have become popular online shops. The “Internet Red” label was an important way to acquire customers in these tea shops, which brought considerable traffic, but Nie Yunzhen, the founder of Xicha and Peng Xin, the tea founder of Naixue, did not like to be called “Internet Red” In their opinion, “Internet celebrity” often means fame, but it hides strength. Pan Pan, a investor in Naixue, also believes that “Internet celebrities are just a process, and in the end, they must be long-term.”
Besides the “net red” label, what is more serious is that the homogeneity of the products of the new tea drinks is serious. It has been reported that hi tea formulas can be bought online only for dozens of pieces, and the founder of Nai Xue’s tea and hi tea have also been in the circle of friends for product innovation and plagiarism. Delightful.
In addition to these “weak spots”, competition for new teas is even more brutal. Peng Xin once said that the light restaurant only remembers the first card, and only the industry’s second and largest can survive. In order to survive, new tea brands have invariably set their sights on opportunities outside the sea and first-tier cities. Hi Tea has already been in Singapore and other places, and Nayue will open in the United States in March and April next year. In the urban distribution, Xiaolu Tea mainly focuses on sinking the market, and the Nai Xue Guiyang store can make 200,000 turnover a day in the first few days.
Other data show that the growth rate of tea shops in second- and third-tier cities is much faster than that in first-tier cities. Second-tier cities have increased by 120%, and third-tier and below cities have the highest growth, reaching 138%. In addition, Honey Snow Ice City, which focuses on high quality and low prices, has also given tea brands the opportunity to sink the market. Perhaps, sinking the market is the key to who can become the first share of new tea drinks.