After the epidemic, how does the tea market rebound?
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “electricity suppliers Online” (ID: dianshangmj) , Author: Cui Hengyu.
Author | Cui Hengyu
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This is the ninth report of the “Resumption Diary” article series. This series finds and records how “smart” companies heal themselves in the epidemic, finds commonalities, and shows that ordinary people are working hard and really overcome obstacles. This series also: “all the people” live with a cargo “”, Parallel World of E-commerce Anchor “,” , “a” = “a: // 21 # wechat_redirect “> Entering the disinfection artifact of Wei Ya Live Studio, the epidemic situation has increased by 740% against the trend 》 ……
After the Spring Festival in 2017, hi tea “rushed” into the Yangtze River Delta, and it was fierce.
A cup of hi tea costs 20-30 yuan, which is ordinaryMilk tea 2-3 times. It is exaggerated that people can stand in line for 7 hours in order to drink a cup of hi tea, or increase the price by 50 yuan for errands and cattle purchases. Not only that, there is a limit of 6 cups per person.
The market ca n’t understand: Is the consumer crazy, or is tea like crazy? A flash in the pan, or is a new air outlet coming? No one can give the answer.
Three years of ups and downs, tea brands have come and gone, and seats are beginning to appear.
Xi Cha, Nai Xue’s tea, and Lele Tea become the top three new Chinese tea drinkers; Little, Coco, and Antler Lane stand in the second echelon and have a large waist market; Honey Snow Ice City offers low prices Stand firm and sink the market. There are also regional invisible champions such as Chayanyue and Fushimi Taoshan; players in the entire industry chain, Hakata Holdings, hold multiple brands such as honey fruit, sweet tea, doctors of tea with milk, and tea with orange, and the number of stores exceeds 10,000.
Today, the horse racing enclosure of the tea track is not over yet, and it coincides with the three years of industry upgrading. The emergence of new coronaviruses directly drags the schedule into the “eye-closed mode”-the loss of store suspension, how to prepare for the next stage, for them, the fight is bayonet.
“During the epidemic, most of the 420 offline stores opened by the brand throughout the country were suspended.” Naixue’s tea founder Peng Xin told the media.
In fact, in addition to the loss of revenue, the new Chinese tea brands represented by Nai Xue’s tea and hi tea also bear the labor and rent costs under the “direct sales model” and “space concept”.
Specifically, both stores have about 400 stores, and the number of directly managed employees exceeds 10,000, resulting in huge labor costs. In addition, under the concept of focusing on space experience, the store area is more than 200 square meters. The area of ordinary milk tea stores is 3-4 times. Under the impact of the epidemic, revenue has fallen sharply, and pressure on manpower and rent has become prominent.
Under heavy pressure, digital operations such as takeaways, mini-program appointments, online shopping malls, etc. have become part of the key additional investment in the tea industry.
“E-commerce Online” (Public ID: dianshangmj) Learned from Naixue’s tea that currently, the order applet order accounted for 45% of the total channel, compared with 30% under the previous routine. The 2019 operating data disclosed by Hi Tea mentioned that 82.31% of Hi Tea users chose to place orders online.
After three years of rushing, consumers ’enthusiasm for milk tea is unprecedented, but the outbreak of the epidemic has brought the tea industry a brake or an opportunity to hone its internal skills? Will the low-efficiency, low-efficiency new Chinese tea drink short board be improved? Can the new coffee retail next door inspire the tea industry? “E-commerce Online” conducted interviews and observations on the above issues to explore the milk tea economy after the epidemic.
Resumption of milk tea: demand is strong and burst orders are few
With further control of the epidemic, milk tea shops in the city have opened their doors and orders have started to be active.
On February 23, a tea-colored tea opened in Changsha, and a line of nearly 100 meters was lined up at the door. 280 million reads and 23,000 discussions.
In Hangzhou, many 1 o’clock stores have been unable to make orders, so they have to go online intermittently on the take-out platform. They take orders for a few minutes after being online. Some people say that they switched from “grabbing food” to “scracking milk tea”.
“E-commerce Online” learned from the hungry aspect that milk tea ranks second among the top 5 categories most popular in office take-back among takeaways since the week of resumption (February 17-23); meanwhile, Takeaway orders for milk tea juice from office buildings nationwide increased by 100% month-on-year, and Hangzhou ranked first with 831% in cities with growth. In Guangzhou and Shenzhen, milk tea also ranks among the city ’s hottest takeaway items.
“The opportunity (for the milk tea industry) is that in terms of consumption in the entire market, enthusiasm has remained strong. A recent survey showed that (people) most want to do after the epidemic, drinking milk tea is ranked first. 2 people. “Luo Jun, founder of National Tea Lab, told” e-commerce online. ”
Indeed, this is a consumer demand that has been held down for a long time.
In the days when you ca n’t drink milk tea, sales of hand-cranked milk tea and instant milk tea on Taobao have greatly increased. Searching on the keyword of “milk tea”, Karima ’s instant milk tea and Gu Kangsui ’s “explosion brew “Milk tea” and Guoyu tea “Bao Shao milk tea” ranked in the top three sales.
“Sales in February increased tenfold, compared with the previous month’s sales atAbout 200,000 yuan, this month broke through 2 million yuan. “Guo Yu Cha person in charge told” e-commerce online. ”
Another online milk tea brand Gu Kangsui also said that since the resumption of work in February, the sales volume reached a record high in the month. In the most recent live broadcast sale, 10,000 boxes of inventory were originally stocked, and more than 20,000 boxes were sold Can only hurry to production. “Selling too much” has become a concern for milk tea merchants.
Offline, with the advent of resumption of work, milk tea shop business is gradually picking up, but for most brands, orders have not reached the “explosive order” status.
On February 23, Lele Tea in Hangzhou Kerry Center opened. Jiang Yan (a pseudonym) placed an order from a small program and successfully obtained milk tea 10 minutes later. Previously, the same action required at least an hour to line up.
The same situation also happened in Hi Tea. A reporter from “E-commerce Online” ordered a store in Hangzhou through a small program. After 20 minutes, he successfully obtained milk tea. There were no orders and long waits.
“The stores only accept orders for the Hi Tea mini program. At the same time, smart tea collection cabinets have been set up in some stores, which can be opened with one click to retrieve tea and reduce face-to-face contact. At present, the tea collection cabinet has covered more than 150 stores.” Hi tea revealed.
Resumption of work has brought new vitality to the milk tea industry, but has not been able to “return blood” quickly.
Highlight of milk tea
In the past three years, milk tea has quickly become a fertile ground. In addition to making consumers “addicted”, capital has contributed a lot.
Take hi tea as an example. In May 2012, hi tea started in a small shop in Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, and it took more than 3 years to move to Shenzhen. After standing still in Guangdong, instead of heading directly to Beijing and Shanghai, he went to Guangxi. It didn’t officially enter Shanghai until February 2017, and then there was the story of “Shanghai residents line up to buy milk tea for 7 hours”.
Hi Tea has burst into the beach without the foundation of capital. In August 2016, the capital behind Hi Tea already included today’s capital and IDG capital, and received 100 million yuan in investment.
Different from the milk tea market at the beginning of the century: brewing-based, mostly franchise system, brand influence can be quickly joined and copied, and can spread across the rivers and rivers overnight; new Chinese-style tea drinks burst It is mainly brand-operated stores, and each store is a hard expenditure, which requires capital to follow up continuously.
In April 2018, Meituan Reviews stood behind Hi Tea.
Hi Tea got 400 million yuan in Dragon Ball CapitalExclusive investment, and Dragon Ball Capital is a Meituan review industry fund. At that time, Xicha’s valuation reached 8 billion. In the same year, Nie Yundi, the founder of Xicha, and Zhang Yiming, a fast-moving hand, and Li Guo of Xiaoguo Culture were among the “36 great entrepreneurs under 36”.
In 2018, Hi Tea fully disclosed its operating data for the first time: 163 stores. The store sold a maximum of 5,200 drinks per day. The mini-program was launched for 7 months and reached 6 million users.
In the same year, Nayue ’s tea reached a valuation of 6 billion. According to the data of Tianyan Check, Na Xue’s tea A round and A + round investment came from Tiantu Investment, with a total investment of several hundred million yuan. Tiantu Investment’s record in consumer goods companies includes Zhou Heiya, Gan Qishi and other brands. Its strength and vision Unique.
Favorite capital, continued expansion of stores, and unabated enthusiasm for consumption, 2018 has become the first year of a new round of milk tea economy. The previous “Shanghai Milk Tea Phenomenon” found the answer.
According to company search data, more than 120,000 milk tea companies have been added in 2010-2019. Among them, 2018 is the year when the milk tea economy broke out. Within a year, the number of registered milk tea companies reached more than 20,000. Both Xicha and Naixue’s tea received billion-level financing, and Lele Tea also received hundreds of millions of financing in 2019.
According to previous reports, a number of tea industry executives have disclosed the annual revenue of Hi Tea, Nai Xue Tea, and Lele Tea, which were 3.5 billion yuan, 3 billion yuan, and 960 million yuan, respectively. Bloomberg reported on February 25 that Nai Xue plans to conduct a US IPO as early as this year and raise $ 400 million. The imagination of the milk tea economy continues.
In the past 3 years, milk tea has become one of the most popular consumer circuits. However, with the outbreak of the epidemic, the “loss of more than 100 million yuan in 10 days” has revealed the problem that the direct sales cost is too high, which will definitely affect the expansion speed. , And what upgrades will this immature circuit face?
Blood loss: manpower and space
It is difficult to say whether the milk tea industry is fiercely competing with the “bayonet” or the collective silence in the epidemic is even more hurt.
According to the Survival Report on Tea Drinking Epidemic, between January 25th and February 9th, 2020, more than 90% of tea drink stores will be closed, of which 65.56% will be closed and 25.38% will be closed. (Brand) Only a few stores remain open.
“We estimate that (new Chinese-style tea, including coffee) has at least 150 million heavy consumers, with heavy losses throughout the epidemic.” China Food