At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the capital market was rarely active. In June 2020, Aunt Shanghai announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan of Series A financing; From June 5438 to February 2020, Xiaoman Tea Farm announced the completion of tens of millions of Pre-A rounds of financing; 202 1, 1, Nai Xuecha announced that the C round of financing exceeded 1 billion US dollars.

Recently, even Mi Xue Ice City, which has always been low-key, rarely broke the first round of financing. Although the brand later denied the news, one good news after another showed the outside world that new tea was breaking the "ceiling" of China tea market, bringing more possibilities.

After a series of operations such as rapidly expanding stores, launching new products and trying to get rid of homogenization, the hot money in the market has also pushed this niche new tea to a new height.

Looking back on the 20 years of milk tea industry in China, it is not difficult to find that tea has been endowed with more sense of value and social functions, from milk powder milk tea, barreled milk tea, hand-cranked tea to now-made fruit tea.

This seemingly low threshold, but very popular with young people, milk tea industry is heading for the deep water area of fast-moving industries.

"Xicha has created a precedent in the industry. Putting fresh fruits into milk tea is essentially a change in the way fruits are eaten." Liu Zizheng, the founder of Xiaoman Tea Farm, told the Frontier of Entrepreneurship.

10 years ago, with the change of consumer demand, a new type of tea featuring freshly squeezed tea came into being, and the tea shop revolutionized the selection of raw materials, manufacturing technology and shop decoration. When fresh fruit and other ingredients are added to tea and become the mainstream, tea that loves tea and snow has also become a representative brand in new tea. Since then, the tea industry has also begun to develop into sub-sectors, and new tea brands such as Xiaoman Tea Farm and Modern China Tea Shop have emerged.

Taking Xiaoman Tea Farm as an example, this kind of "high value" cup of fresh fruit tea with cherries as the main raw material has won many consumers with its unique products and positioning, but this kind of fruit tea is rare in the tea industry in the past.

As we all know, under the traditional consumption mode, the delivery form of fruit is always limited, either in the original form or in the form of cutting fruit. Therefore, before the birth of fruit tea, the sales of fruit cutting on the take-away platform increased rapidly.

Liu Zizheng analyzed that after adding fruit to tea, the price of fruit beverage is lower, the taste is better, the product is also creative, and other accessories can be added. The delivery form has been upgraded, and drinking fruit is better than eating fruit. This is also the fundamental reason why ready-made fruit drinks can be popular.

"The charm of the beverage industry is that it can continuously obtain the content and share of other fields, and the cup has all the ingredients." Liu Zizheng said.

In fact, the key to the continuous innovation, enduring and spanning the market cycle of the tea industry lies in its "addictive" characteristics.

Pearls, coconuts, milk caps and even fresh fruits are usually added to new tea. These sweet ingredients can make people's brains secrete dopamine, which makes people feel happy and cured. Not to mention that new tea is healthier, richer in taste and more ornamental than milk powder milk tea, and it is generally easy to capture young users with diverse needs.

This also scientifically explains why milk tea is becoming an indispensable new consumer product and lifestyle for contemporary young people, and even evolved into a social currency.

With the emergence of tea forms and brands and the expansion of consumer groups, the tea market is expanding. Among them, the most direct performance is the surge in the number of registered milk tea enterprises in China in recent ten years.

According to the data of "an enterprise information inquiry platform", there are 306,300 milk tea-related enterprises (including self-employed) nationwide. According to the changing trend of the registered volume in the last ten years, the number of milk tea-related enterprises registered in 20 10 is only 74 10, which exceeds 10,000 in 20 13, and exceeds 50,000 in 20 17, 20.

This increasing data year by year is the "momentum and drang" of the new tea market in China. According to CBNData data, the market size of new tea in 20 19 is close to 1000 billion yuan, and the White Paper on New Tea in 2020 also shows that the market size of new tea is expected to be 202 1 1000 billion yuan.

It can be seen that new tea still has great market potential, especially the "post-90 s" and "post-00 s" of the younger generation have become the main consumers of new tea. They have a high degree of acceptance of new things and pursue personalized, diversified and experiential consumption. Therefore, practitioners still have the opportunity to seek gold in the field of new tea.

However, there are many competitors in the new tea market. How can we make products and brands deeply rooted in people's hearts?

Looking back on the development history of new tea, it is not difficult to find that in the early days, some brands became famous by virtue of the explosion of single products and the differentiation of products.

Ruxi tea is considered as the pioneer of cheese milk cover; Naixue's tea first featured "tea+soft European bag"; Lele tea pioneered dirty tea and dirty bags; Lujiao Lane took the lead in launching brown sugar bubble tea; Aunt Shanghai added glutinous rice to her tea. ...

When these mixed tea products are recognized in the market segments, they will have the opportunity to develop "out of the circle". And "galloping around" is an important proof of brand development and an important way for each family to "show their muscles".

Take the head brand Hi Tea as an example. Since 20 16 got a round of financing, it has not stopped expanding. From 20 17 to 20 19, the number of its stores is 80, 163 and 390 respectively, which is behind the brand's desire for scale. In 2020, Xicha will open about 289 new stores, exceeding the plan of 200 stores in the whole year.

Naixue's Chaze is also a head brand, creating a dual product model and constantly developing new categories. In 2020, Naixue created many new categories such as "Fresh Fruit Bubble Tea" and "Fruit Milk Tea", as well as new retail products such as snacks and around Wenchuang.

By the end of June 5438+February 2020, Naixue Tea had opened nearly 500 direct stores in more than 70 cities, Japan, Singapore and other places in China. In addition, it has also opened up various physical stores such as Naixue Wine House BlaBlaBar, Naixue DreamWorks and Naixue PRO. Obviously, Naixue's "ambition" is not just a new tea market.

Another relatively low-key new tea brand, Mi Xue Bing Cheng, focused on sinking market groups and inadvertently grew into an "invisible" giant. In June 2020, Mixue Ice City announced that "the number of global stores in Mixue Ice City exceeded 10000", becoming the first tea enterprise with more than 10000 stores.

In 2020, other tea brands are also practicing internal strength. Xiaoman Tea Farm has completed tens of millions of Pre-A rounds of financing, and Aunt Shanghai is preparing to attack the first-tier cities from the sinking market. At present, 2,300 stores have been opened.

However, among many different new tea brands, completely different business logic has been derived-taking Naixue's tea as the representative, focusing on upgrading iteration, keeping the rhythm of a new product every month according to seasonal raw materials, and adopting multi-category strategies.

Liu Zizheng believes that in the new tea industry, the era of super categories has arrived-high-frequency novelty is not necessarily the best way to play.

The explosion is not a bump, but a systematic play. "Our product selection logic is' one horizontal and three vertical'." "One horizontal" is the core category, and "three vertical" refers to the flow category, seasonal category and currency category. For example, in the strawberry season, Xiaoman Tea Farm can stack the cherries and fresh strawberries in the season. Making explosions in this way does not need to be particularly high-speed and novel, but it needs mental precipitation. "He added.

In his view, the existing new tea industry has ushered in the era of "reduction". More than a decade ago, there were only a few choices for milk tea. Since then, most brands have been expanding their categories and doing SKU "addition". But when everyone can buy all products anywhere, there is actually a lack of differentiation, and specialized division of labor will inevitably appear.

For example, he also said that if the new tea industry is regarded as a whole, the upper part is a high-value solution such as Hi Tea and Naixue, and the lower part is a cost-effective solution such as a little bit and CoCo, with Xiaoman Tea Farm in between. "In the future, we are optimistic about high-value solutions in the entire consumer sector, because the user's mind is here."

According to Zhuang Shuai, founder and analyst of Ambry Consulting, the retail industry usually has two development directions, one is horizontal development, that is, expanding more channels and opening more stores. The other is vertical development, that is, expanding from product categories.

It can be seen that whether it is multi-category expansion or the operational logic of single product explosion, there is an ambition to create influence behind the brand.

With the market competition entering the middle game, tea brands are also keenly aware of the breath of incremental markets outside first-and second-tier cities-channel sinking has gradually become the standard action of the industry.

At the beginning of 2020, Xicha launched its sub-brand "Xiao Xi Tea", with different product prices and packaging, which was considered by the outside world as an important measure to enter the parity market; Aunt Shanghai focuses on the second, third and fourth tier cities, and now she has begun to gradually counterattack the first tier cities. Shan Wei Jun, the founder of Shanghai Auntie, said, "We already have 65,438+000 franchise stores in Shenzhen, and we plan to open 50 stores in Shanghai next year."

In his view, the first and second lines are actually saturated at present, and the third, fourth and fifth lines have become more and more saturated. The future is more about competition in the stock market. "Head brands will squeeze waist brands, and the space for small and medium-sized brands will become smaller and smaller. The chances of surviving in the future are very small. " Shan Wei Jun said.

According to Zhang Jian, an industry expert of China Electronic Commerce Association, the competition in first-tier cities has become saturated, and the consumption power and consumption concept of second-and third-tier cities have been greatly improved, and the sinking of channels has become inevitable.

But in his view, first-tier city brands may encounter four obstacles in the process of sinking:

1. The consumption orientation of first-tier cities is definitely different from that of second-tier cities. Does the consumption power of second-and third-tier cities match the price positioning of first-tier cities?

2. A long front line will inevitably lead to a long supply chain, which will lead to problems such as untimely delivery and inconsistent quality.

3. The rapid expansion of enterprises will lead to various problems such as great financial pressure, shortage of talents and increased management costs;

4. If the brands in first-tier cities sink, they will face resistance or even suppression from the original brands in the region.

At present, direct selling and joining are the mainstream forms in which tea brands choose to sink.

In Liu Zizheng's view, the final direct selling and joining may encounter bottlenecks. "The bottleneck of the direct selling model lies in the limited number of gold shops in high-end shopping centers across the country, which is the' ceiling' for brands to open big stores." He said.

The bottleneck of joining mode lies in the unhealthy expansion of the whole beverage industry in the past 10 years, and the word "harvest" is endless. "In fact, joining must not be a means of making money, but a reasonable expansion path. Nowadays, the era of boutique joining has arrived. " Liu Zizheng said.

"The advantage of the direct mode is that the gross profit of products is high, the management of chain stores is difficult, and it is easy to make decisions and analyze through data access. Disadvantages are slow scale, high capital pressure and high labor cost. On the contrary, it is the disadvantage and advantage of the franchise model. " Zhang Jian added.

In addition to carefully choosing expansion methods, enterprises need to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the logic of exerting strength in the supply chain is also applicable to the new tea industry.

In Liu Zizheng's view, a weakness of the new tea industry is the complexity of materials, which also leads to the cumbersome design of back-end warehousing and moving lines. "Therefore, strengthening the control of the back-end supply chain is one of the necessary capabilities of the brand." He analyzed.

"Now the new tea industry has reached the era of supply chain drive." He added that brands can provide more valuable products, and the essence is supply chain capability. If there is no supply chain support and the price cost is relatively transparent, then all brands can only strangle their own inventory, and it is difficult for new brands to stand out from the encirclement.

It is understood that in 2020, the average monthly purchase volume of fresh fruit in Xiaoman Tea Farm has reached 10000 kg. At present, Xiaoman Tea Farm has reached cooperation with top upstream suppliers such as Jinguo, the largest cherry importer in China. At the same time, all the core materials of cherries have been fully self-researched.

Wang Yi, senior public relations director of Naixue Tea, also told Entrepreneurial Frontline that the brand has always adhered to the advantages of the upstream supply chain. In addition to cooperating with high-quality suppliers, we have also established exclusive tea gardens, orchards and central factories, and applied digital management and regulation to ensure stable and high-quality raw material supply.

With the continuous emergence of new tea brands, "product homogeneity" has gradually become an industry problem.

It is reported that the formula of Xi tea can be bought online for only a few tens of dollars. Naixue's tea and the founders of hi-tea are also popular in the circle of friends because of product innovation and plagiarism, and Lele tea has also been exposed to plagiarism by modern China tea shops. "Without looking at the logo, even few customers recognize the source of milk tea at a glance." Some media described the homogenization of new tea.

Therefore, if brands want to stand out, they must constantly bring forth the old and bring forth the new, expand new products and give them meaning beyond drinks, which has become the foundation for the continuation of tea industry.

Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xicha, once bluntly said, "I am very anxious every day." In just 20 18, Xicha launched 48 new products. There are even rumors that Nie Yunchen's office has more than a dozen newly developed milk tea and bread every day, and each one should be tried by himself.

Zong Hao, vice president of Yuan Qi Forest, once said that the company has a research and development team of 300 people and spends a lot of money on research and development every year.

Shan Wei Jun believes that the previous milk tea menu may not change after 20 years, but now it is necessary to enhance the brand influence through continuous innovation.

To this end, Aunt Shanghai set up a market research team. In addition to interviewing consumers, purchasing third-party research data and data from Tmall and JD.COM to analyze fashion trends, she will also visit the shelf sales of various supermarkets in order to understand the needs of consumers at the first time.

Shan also revealed that Aunt Shanghai will launch 2-4 new products every quarter. After the new product is successfully developed, the company will first try to sell it through direct stores. When the sales amount reaches 4% of the total monthly sales of the store, it will be fixed in the menu and gradually promoted in the franchise stores. Today, Auntie Shanghai has formed more than 40 SKUs in several product lines, mainly composed of five-grain tea and fruit tea.

However, the entry threshold for the new tea market is not high. Facing the increasingly fierce and diversified competitive market, in addition to product expansion, forming a highly iconic and well-known brand core has also become the focus of new tea brands.

"Offline stores can not only provide tea, but also expand to related categories, such as soda, coffee, snacks and cupcakes." Zhuang Shuai believes that expanding product categories is the only way for new tea brands to achieve sustained growth.

Facts have proved that many brands have opened up categories such as coffee, soda and even desserts besides tea. For example, Xicha and Naixue Tea have launched coffee drinks in some stores. Ali local life big data shows that in the sample tea shop, the sales of coffee products account for about 10%.

Wang Yi believes that for Naixue, its product research and development has never been separated from the core of "tea". From the first store, Naixue launched a retail gift box for tea and herbal tea.

At that time, consumers were indifferent to this niche product, and the average daily sales volume of the store was only two or three cups. However, after five years of research and development of pure tea and related tea products, Naixue's customers after 95 and 00 have become more and more fond of tea culture. Wang Yi revealed that the sales volume of pure tea in Naixuemen Store has reached 10% of that of tea.

Most importantly, opening a store is still the focus of competition among brands.

Wang Yi revealed to Pioneering Frontline that the expansion and upgrading of stores is an important link to reach more customers and better meet the daily needs of consumers.

"Tea is not like a big supermarket. Generally, it is difficult to open a second shopping mall within a certain range, but four or five tea shops can be opened in one street, and even more than a dozen can be opened in a lively neighborhood. " Zhuang Shuai said that space conditions also allow tea brands to continue to choose to open stores online.

Shan also believes that tea brands will have many opportunities to open stores. "Starbucks has 20,000 stores in North America, and the population of China is four times that of North America. By analogy, there may be a brand in China that opens to 50,000. "

Facts have proved that in order to continue to expand and seize the market, new tea players will obviously not miss any opportunity.

In addition to the layout of stores, we can also see the changes in the industry pattern from the flow of hot money in the capital market.

The data of "an enterprise information inquiry platform" shows that after 20 16, the investment and financing activities of tea brands began to be frequent. In 2020, there were 12 investment and financing events of tea brands, and the disclosure amount exceeded1700 million yuan, slightly higher than last year, and the financing amount was also much higher than last year.

Judging from the financing times of tea brands, "Richard in Tea" ranked first with six financing cases, while "Naixue Tea" and "Xicha" tied for second with four financing cases.

Judging from the total financing amount of tea brands, the data of "An Enterprise Information Query Platform" shows that "Naixue Tea" won the first place with 65.438+0.52 billion yuan, "Yinwei Tea" ranked second with 500 million yuan, and the investor was Liu.

Judging from the financing trend of tea brands in the past decade, brands mainly squeezed fresh and brewed by hand in the early years are easy to obtain financing; Later, with the rise of hi-tea, high-end tea brands dominated by young people blossomed everywhere; In recent years, tea brands focusing on health, high-end, business and other market segments have been favored by investors, and tea brands focusing on raw materials such as brown sugar drinks, mango drinks and cherry drinks have entered the market one after another.

According to the latest news from Lastpost, the new tea brand Mi Xue Bing Cheng recently completed the first round of financing. This round of financing was jointly led by Longzhu Capital and Gaoyao Capital, with each party investing 654.38 billion yuan. After the completion of financing, the valuation of Mi Xue Ice City exceeded 20 billion yuan, and the former subsequently denied the news. After the completion of the C-round financing of Milk Snow Tea, its valuation is expected to be close to 654.38+0.3 billion yuan, and the valuation of Xicha has exceeded10 billion yuan as early as last year.

From another perspective, judging from the valuation of Naixue Tea, Hi Tea and Honey Snow Ice City, the threshold for investment institutions to enter the market is getting higher and higher. Take the financing event in 2020 as an example, among which there are many potential waist dark horse brands.

In Zhang Jian's view, the current market space of new tea brands is large enough, so it is still in the stage of barbaric growth. After capital injection, enterprises will be required to develop rapidly to seize more markets, and the ultimate goal is to go public and get a return of 10-30 times.

Capital pursues profits, so the dispute of "the first share of new tea" is more urgent.

According to public information, Naixue's tea has been reported to be ready for listing; Xicha also seeks to be listed in Hong Kong before the end of 20021,seeking financing of 400-500 million US dollars; Mixue Ice City plans to be listed on A shares, and the listing process is expected to be completed within 202 1 year. However, the three companies have repeatedly clarified that there is no relevant plan for the time being, which also makes the market more complicated.

"This industry is far from mature." Liu Zizheng said that the current chain rate is less than 30%, and the national market is waiting to penetrate. When a single player really runs out, it is possible to reach the decisive moment of the new tea industry.

Nowadays, new tea is entering a new digital era, which also provides different competitive latitudes for brands.

For example, since 20 19, Naixue has increased its investment in digital R&D and applications, reaching more users through small programs, e-commerce platforms and other channels.

Wang Yi believes that the front-end digital application can help it to close the distance with consumers and establish closer ties. "So far, about 80% of Naixue's order transactions have been completed online," she said.

In her view, the rapid development of new tea industry also puts forward higher requirements for the optimization of internal efficiency of enterprises, which requires the introduction of technology and intelligent decision-making, such as intelligent scheduling and ordering of stores, as well as the research and development of automation and semi-automatic equipment.

In fact, Naixue's tea, hi tea, Lele tea and CoCo have all launched WeChat applets for self-service ordering and self-extraction, which laid the foundation for brand digitalization.

Wang Yi told the Frontline of Entrepreneurship that in the face of the epidemic in 2020, Naixue's annual income rebounded through strategic adjustment and efforts in digitalization and new retail. The average monthly revenue of a single store is about 654.38+000-654.38+0.5 million, and the cumulative membership in the past year exceeded 30 million.

In May 2020, Xicha released data that the number of registered users of Xicha applet has exceeded 26 million, the repurchase rate has reached more than 300%, and more than 80% of online orders in stores come from applets.

Shan said that not only the first tea brand, but also the digital brand has a portrait recognition rate of 100% compared with the traditional retail method. Not only can we know consumers' consumption frequency, age group and repurchase rate, but we can also know consumers' preferences more intuitively. Let the previous product-centered, completely transformed into consumer-centered.

He revealed that Shanghai aunts accounted for 30%-40% on average. The take-away ratio in first-tier cities even reaches 60%-70%.

"Online orders, offline performances." Ordering takeout is one of the scenes that can't be ignored in fast-selling products. Zhang Jian believes that the take-away of new tea will definitely develop better and better. However, with the arrival of new retail, offline experience is also the focus of new consumption, so we are more optimistic about the new retail model of offline experience online repurchase in the future.

However, the new tea industry is similar to the catering industry. Consumers only remember the "number one" and can only survive in the industry.

As Zhang Jian said, the new tea market will be a process of continuous growth for at least five years, but judging from the characteristics of consumer goods, the development of Internet companies and venture capital, there will be 3-5 head companies in the future, and the remaining enterprises can only solve the problem of food and clothing.

Nowadays, the basic pattern of the new tea industry has formed a situation in which direct sales stores such as Hi Tea, Naixue Tea and Lele Tea are the three pillars, while franchise brands such as Mi Xue Bing Cheng, Yi Shu Shao Cao and Shanghai Auntie are catching up. In the future, with the escalation of competition, Matthew effect will be highlighted. After the industry enters the supply chain, the products will be more homogeneous, and it is difficult to find market segments through marketing.

With the rise of personalized Z generation, milk tea should take the road of differentiation. To put it simply, brands that want to enter the industry now need to find a different positioning and make their own "explosive products".

Of course, the product research and development of new tea industry is no longer limited to simple application research and development, such as the selection and collocation of fruit and tea bases, but extends to the research and development of raw materials. The focus of research and development is more on the improvement of stability, including the standardization of raw materials such as fruits and tea bases, as well as the research and development of automatic and semi-automatic production equipment.

As Wang Yi said, for all brands, the next stage is no longer the era of winning by one point, but the need for brands to go hand in hand in many aspects and develop in all aspects, such as products, brands, stores and digitalization.

It is undeniable that in 2020, new tea will continue to exert its strength. This year, this new track is crowded and lively. In a blink of an eye, it's 202 1, and new tea is stepping on a brand-new runway.