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over the past year, coffee brands such as man, nowwa, santonban, yongpu and yutianchuan have successively won multiple rounds of financing. Santonban also ranked second on the tmall food list in 618 this year, leading McDonald’s and second only to KFC. The coffee market has also attracted the attention of cross-border players. Convenience stores and tea brands have entered the coffee market one after another. Even Li Ning and Huawei have begun to register coffee related trademarks.
the key inflection point generally recognized in the industry comes from Ruixing. Ruixing coffee, which has been exposed to fraud scandals, achieved full profits in its own stores in 2021. In the first quarter of this year, it announced profits, with more than 7000 stores, and sold 100million cups of raw coconut lattes, opening the trend of domestic coffee brands to become drinks. Ruixing’s products, price bands, store types and brand playing methods have also brought great inspiration to the coffee market.
an investor once used the tea five years ago to compare the coffee category opportunity to us today. “The top ten companies in the tea industry are extremely excellent. What they have in common is that they all took the tea elevator five years ago. Today, the coffee category is also the biggest dividend for Ruixing and manner, so they can quickly climb from the first floor to the tenth floor.”
in the context of the rapid development of the industry, the back-end supply chain has also begun to receive capital attention.
one is “happy drink innovation”, a boutique coffee supply chain company. Le Yin almost grew up with the development and changes of the brand end of the coffee industry. In 2017 and 2018, Leyin successively developed cold extract coffee production equipment and launched cold extract freeze-dried coffee with freeze-drying process, serving high-quality instant coffee brands such as yongpu, Yingji, fisheye, etc.
in 2020, Leyin’s “flash extraction process” and standardized large-scale production equipment were successively Coffee chain brand services such as JPG, tag, oatly and Yongxia coffee. With the participation of cross-border players such as existing catering stores, new tea and convenience stores, Leyin also set up a sales company in Shanghai this year, and plans to provide these companies with one-stop solutions for coffee sales.
another “Cezanne Dairy”, which disclosed the financing information in May this year, is a supplier of Ruixing, which has developed thick milk latte and velvet latte together with Ruixing. In addition, Bing blog, which serves nearly 1000 coffee and tea brands such as Xicha, Lele tea and M stand, has also received two rounds of financing in the past two years.
returns to the brand side. The financing brands in these two months are different from those in 2021. First, more and more regional brands get financing, and second, the trend of coffee drinks is becoming more and more obvious.
in terms of regional brands, “RUU” wholly owned by Ningji and “Doc” invested by shuyishaoxiancao are both from Changsha. The “bafu coffee” and “xiaoyangqiao” that obtained financing in May are coffee brands from Guangzhou and Hainan respectively. The former two stores are located in Chengzhong Village in Guangzhou, and the latter claims to have opened offline stores in Xinglong, Chongqing, Beijing, Zhangjiakou and other places in Hainan.
“crooked coffee”, which obtained financing in June this year, plans to penetrate the Ningbo market this year, and then make layout in other regions of Zhejiang. It is worth mentioning that the coffee market in Ningbo is currently in a period of development, and there are basically coffee brands in all price bands, such as Starbucks, Ruixing, m stand, Tim’s,% Arabica, etc.
in June this year, Xi Cha invested in minority coffee. Minority coffee is a roasted coffee service provider with a store in Hefei. Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xi tea, has also invested in two regional coffee brands, namely crow coffee in Changsha and kuddo coffee in Shenzhen. NIE is the controlling shareholder of the former.
but in these two months, the regional brands outside the first tier cities have basically received financing. At least from the second half of 2021, almost every new first or second tier city has run out of the regional small and medium-sized coffee chain brands.
meituan food released the 2022 China’s current coffee category development report, which showed that the number of coffee stores in the new first tier and third tier cities increased the most, nearly 19%. Takeout data showed that coffee orders in third, fourth and fifth tier cities increased by more than 200% year-on-year.
coffee brand in the regional market?
from the supply side, coffee is an incremental bonus after the new tea, but the supply of coffee brands in first tier cities tends to be saturated, and the regional market has more opportunities. Caoyuzhi, the founder of
crooked coffee, had more than ten years of entrepreneurial experience in the tea industry before establishing the coffee brand, and once founded the tea brand maichade. Guo Xingjun, the founder of
nowwa coffee, said that coffee products have dividends in other regions outside the north. “Commercial real estate may have recruited 10 milk tea shops, so there is no need to recruit any more milk tea shops, but oneortwo cafes are needed.”
from the demand side, Starbucks and Ruixing have gradually improved consumers’ acceptance of coffee. Cao Yuzhi believes that compared with the first tier cities, coffee consumption demand is also growing vigorously in the sinking markets such as the new first tier cities, but because of the relative lack of palatable products, branding is relatively elementary.
“beverage” is the key for coffee brands to open the mass market. For example, in the U.S. market, Starbucks has reached a wider non coffee customer base through its more beverage product “xingbingle”. In the past year or two, Starbucks’ products launched in China are also mainly milk flavored and sweet coffee, such as “toffee Hazelnut Latte” last Christmas season and “ice shock concentrate” recently.
Ruixing also verified this point. Ruixing has been trying to drink coffee since its inception. What really came out of the circle was the raw coconut latte launched in April 2021. Raw coconut latte has not only achieved a sales volume of 100million cups a year, but also become a permanent drink in many coffee shops. In addition to
raw coconut latte, Ruixing has also launched thick milk latte, Yeyun latte and velvet latte. In May this year, Ruixing also launched Orange Gold bubble coffee again, and announced a batch of fruit lattes and the return of American style on Weibo.
among them, the popular coffee brand from Starbucks is the core of coffee drinks. Inspired by Starbucks, Ruixing and even tea brands, they began to add milk, sugar, fruit and spices to make the originally sour coffee palatable.
for example, locate nowwa coffee and double win coffee similar to Ruixing and manner. Guoxingjun, the founder of nowwa, believes that it is easier to cultivate consumers’ taste preferences by making coffee with the modulation of new tea. At present, their sales of flavored coffee account for more than 50%. The founders of
double win believe that there is a distance between coffee and the Chinese people. They want to become a bridge between milk tea people and coffee people through flavored coffee. Lucky coffee even added sweetness directly in the coffee baking process, and finally provided the American style self bringing sweetness to consumers at the terminal.
in the fine instant sub category, yongpu and Shicui also try to add various flavors to coffee, such as hazelnut, strawberry, grape, etc. Tin PI, the founder of yongpu coffee, once told us that yongpu can be a more popular coffee beverage market, and flavor must be an important trend in this market.
some instant coffee brands even directly launched lattes that can be drunk directly. For example, huatiancui, a Chinese coffee brand invested by Castle Peak capital in April this year, has launched three types of milk coffee freeze-dried powder: thick milk latte, rose latte and Dahongpao latte. Fino, one of Ruixing’s coconut milk suppliers, also launched a ready to drink raw coconut latte.
for example, in the “Doc” incubated in the lemon season, more than half of the permanent menu is creative coffee. After the latest brand upgrade, non caffeinated drinks such as Yangzhi manna and fresh fruit tea have been added. Doc takes flower and fruit fragrance + plant base as the main line of product research and development, and has launched Meilong maixing latte, super banana latte and other creative coffee. Hu, the founder, likes to regard Ruixing as a benchmark, and believes that Ruixing has created the explosion mode of coffee with raw coconut latte as the starting point, and that “popularity of taste” and “popularity of price” are the success factors of explosion.
in addition, on the basis of satisfying consumers’ basic coffee, Wai coffee gradually introduced mango, pineapple, strawberry and other fruit coffee from coconut juice coffee such as Yeqing American style and raw coconut latte Wai. Among them, the sales of special latte and Fruit Coffee accounted for 30%-40%, and there was a gradual upward trend. Most of the products of
“bafu coffee” are milk coffee and fruit American style. There are several tea drinks with regional characteristics, such as old salt lemon tea and cinnamon olive juice, on the menu. “RUU” except for four basic Italian coffees, other products are American and latte special. Mint leaves and plum are added to the only two American styles in the signboard list to improve palatability. In the final analysis, the beverage of
coffee is related to the coffee consumption preferences of Chinese consumers. When resuming the popularity of raw coconut lattes, Zhou Weiming, the senior vice president in charge of Ruixing’s product system and supply chain management, made a judgment from the perspective of consumer demand and changes.
compared with more than 70% of black coffee in European and American markets, Chinese consumers prefer milk coffee. In order to make the product more in line with the preference of most coffee consumers who don’t like the bitter taste of coffee, they choose to make lattes from coconuts with high public acceptance, and adjust the milk structure to remove the bitter taste of coffee.
on the other hand, they believe that raw coconut latte may have stepped on the trend of changing from milk tea users to milk coffee users. Students who have consumed milk tea since 2015 have gradually become office workers, either for the sake of health and less sugar, or for the sake of caffeine, they have begun to change from drinking milk tea to drinking milk coffee. Caoyuzhi, the founder of
crooked coffee, once clearly pointed out in the interview that the products made by crooked coffee are substitutes for tea upgrading. Most of the users of crooked coffee are young people aged 20-30, including white-collar workers, blue collar workers, and even students in school. These people are relatively interested in fresh things, and are willing to try and pay. Due to the increased pressure, the demand for coffee and coffee drinks is also gradually growing. Guo Lei, the founder of huatiancui, predicted that the boundary between milk tea and coffee would become increasingly blurred in the next few years.
this explains why new tea brands such as Michelle ice city, Naixue and Xicha have successively entered the coffee market through the establishment of sub brands and investment.
in addition to coffee drinks and regionalization, the brands financed by the catering industry mainly focus on new tea and fast food. For the consumption investment and financing in these two months, we also summarized the following four trends:
with the trend of sports and leisure and people’s demand for a healthy lifestyle, sports shoes and clothing have increased rapidly in the past two years. In addition, sports and leisure shoes and clothing have many adaptation scenarios, and the degree of standardization is relatively high. It is not as complex as ordinary clothing inventory, so it is relatively more capital friendly.
cocofit, which was financed in May this year, is a light sportswear brand, and its core piece is yoga pants. Yuan Wei, the founder of cocofit, once served as the general manager of Amoy factory, the director of c2m commodity supply chain and the director of rhinoceros manufacturer center in Alibaba, emphasizing the ability of product supply chain.
however, some investors believe that it is difficult for brands to form a very strong differentiation process in this category, and the perception of this difference at the C-end is slowly weakening, and it is more important for brands to establish a spiritual height. Just like lululemon, it can slowly expand its categories after building a spiritual height, becoming a typical case in the field of sports and leisure. One of the reasons why
“make friends” incubates “reload” is to focus on the growth trend of categories. Sports shoes and clothing and outdoor equipment are consumer categories with rapid growth in the past two years. After playing the basic set, they may further explore the sub category of outdoor equipment. However, “reload” has been accused of “plagiarism” or even worse since it was launched, because the value of sneakers lies not only in the design itself, but also in the brand’s heritage and culture.
eqlz Inc., which obtained financing in June this year, is a brand company that grew out of basketball and emphasizes basketball culture. At present, it has basketball culture brand equal ® And sneaker brand eqlz ®。 EQUALIZER ® He once co founded a Sino American All-Star game with the world’s top Street Basketball League “dyckman”, and created a series of content with community culture as the core, such as the original documentary “something out of nothing”.
nowadays, with the rise of indoor Frisbee, luchong, camping, skiing and other new urban sports and outdoor sports, there will be more possibilities in the field of sports and leisure. We will also continue to pay attention to the subdivision trend of sports and leisure categories, related cultural and technological progress.
in addition, in 2021, the new consumption star companies “milk candy pie” and “white small T” obtained round B financing in June. Among them, the online competition of the underwear track of milk candy sect has been extremely fierce in the past two years, and milk candy sect has a firm foothold in the sub category of large cup bras. Chen Chuan, the managing director of Hejing capital, once told us that there are still subdivided investment opportunities in the underwear track, mainly due to the positioning differences of people, functions and scenes.
it is worth noting that this round of financing of milk candy sect will be mainly used for offline layout to create a new online and offline integrated retail system. Before that, several online start-ups such as Neiwai, jiaonei and ubras had already begun to expand offline channels. Liu Xiaolu, the founder of Neiwai and Neiwai, once told narrowcast that 90% of China’s intimate clothing market is offline, so Neiwai and Nei resolutely entered offline in the third year of their establishment. Dabai, the founder of milk candy school, also mentioned that the experience of offline users is much higher than that of online users, and from the data point of view, the user’s net recommendation value is more than twice that shown.
to the clothing industry in the first half of the year, such as the lack of spring clothing inventory, summer clothing and the vulnerability of the traditional multi-level wholesale circulation link, also made more businesses and brands start to think about the urgency of digitalization, industrial chain upgrading and small order quick reaction. The core of the cloud factory direction of
youbu is to solve the problem of flexible production. The upstream integrates the factory capacity of several garment production enterprises, and the downstream undertakes the orders of garment brands. The platform splits the orders to cooperative factories in the middle, so as to establish a garment supply chain network with small batch, multi batch and fast production.
in this round of financing, youbu announced that it would upgrade from cloud factory to star chain factory, and give the factory the ability of digital management on the basis of order supply, including factory process system, work instructions, etc.
in the last stage, Shenzhou International, a company with great capital value, ran out of the clothing manufacturing sector, but the growth of Shenzhou has a historical background. With the fragmentation of end orders, Shenzhou International in the new era will not be a large-scale factory, but can integrate upstream and downstream “industrial routes”, which is the direction of cloud factory.
Lingdi’s cloud design direction is to connect garment enterprises and supply chains. Through digital 3D design tools, communication efficiency is improved in the design link, design costs are reduced, and the market for design printing and supply is shortened from three months to about 15 days.
because the underlying technology of 3D design can be combined with metauniverse to produce virtual fashion, some cloud design companies began to develop metauniverse related businesses. In this round of financing, Lingdi mentioned that in April this year, in the virtual fashion concept release and digital collection sale project jointly developed by Shanghai Fashion Week and little red book, their self-developed 3D simulation engine provided simulation technology for it.
in the past two years, many emerging makeup brands in China have received financing, such as “dewylab”, “blank me”, “mistine”, “passion love”, “Caitang”, etc. Among them, the Korean cosmetics brand passion love invested by MARUMI achieved rapid growth and profits with an “invisible liquid foundation”; Caitang, the makeup brand in which pelaya has a stake, also takes the base makeup products as the starting point, and achieved a sales volume of 246million in 2021. Although the proportion is not high, it has become the second largest brand under pelaya.
the reason why Winona’s parent company “betaine” is among the investors may also be that it is interested in the rapid growth of base makeup. It is worth mentioning that after Winona became a domestic skin care head brand, Bertini further expanded the territory of the group. In addition to the investors, this year it plans to launch the lady anti-aging brand aoxmed and a functional food brand. The financing of
skin care products is mainly in the category of beauty instruments. In addition, the oral beauty brand “Dr. Qingyan” has obtained the strategic investment of the parent company “yujiahui” of yunifang.
beauty instrument has been a hot investment in recent one or two years. Although there are still doubts about the technical barriers of products and the frequency of use by consumers, it is undeniable that after the planting of grass and the popularization of knowledge by overseas brands and skin care bloggers, consumers’ awareness and acceptance of beauty instruments and even medical beauty projects are indeed getting higher and higher. Household beauty instruments have received more and more attention on the consumer side because they are faster than smear skin care products, cheaper than medical beauty projects, and more convenient than theater beauty instruments.
in 618 this year, there are three beauty instrument brands in tmall beauty category – ulike, Yameng and tripolar Chupu, and the ranking of ulike and Yameng has improved compared with last year. According to JD 618, the turnover of RF Beauty Instruments increased by 500% year-on-year.
Dr. Qingyan has a professional founder IP, and the product itself needs a lot of popular science, which means that the brand can produce a lot of content, which is also the core feature of the brand. Dr. Qingyan has opened several accounts in Tiktok. The account name, account introduction and the background of the live studio will emphasize the brand gene of “five female doctors” and the professional background of the brand. The five founders released popular science videos on different accounts, emphasizing the importance of anti sugar and anti-aging, explaining the role of core ingredients, answering skin care questions, and reflecting the brand’s insufficient materials through brand stories.
compared with the search logic of shelf e-commerce, such a brand is easier to win the trust of users and has higher conversion efficiency through Tiktok e-commerce.
prior to this, the beauty and skin care category of tiktok has successively produced many tiktok brands, such as Betty Bonnie, kleeney, muscle prophet, FV. These brands emphasize the source factories / suppliers, and their main sales come from Tiktok self broadcast. Their playing methods match the logic of interest e-commerce, so they have successively entered the top of the beauty and skin care list.
Betty Bonnie and kleeney are anti-aging skin care brands. The core method is to shape the founder IP, through the background of beauty salon professionals, and show the harmonious family and successful career life that middle-aged women yearn for, so as to resonate and attract buyers. For example, Yaqin, the founder of Betty Bonnie, claimed to have focused on skin care products for 8 years and operated offline beauty salons for 7 years, showing family stories, his career and the importance he attached to skin care through videos. Kleeney’s founders, Xiao Feifei and Da Bingbing, claimed to be eight years’ beauty salon product suppliers. The shooting background was a mansion or their own company. They often shared small tricks related to women’s skin care and life, and also invited 54 year old mothers to shoot the use experience of brand anti-aging products.
muscle prophet and FV pay more attention to “goods”, emphasizing the efficacy of the product itself in live broadcasts and short videos. For example, skin care brand “muscle prophet” will repeatedly emphasize the spot lightening effect of the product and relevant supporting documents in the product details page, product banner and live broadcast. FV, which mainly sells liquid foundation, shows its selling points through a large number of effect videos, such as making up in rainy days and swimming to show that liquid foundation does not take off its makeup, showing its makeup effect through before&after, and showing its fluidity by squeezing liquid foundation into the water.
dairy brand “armailk island” focuses on “healthy dairy products without additives”, which is aimed at consumer groups who love sports, fitness and healthy diet. “Xiwan hekwan”, which cuts into the quick-frozen food of meatballs, proposes to launch targeted meatball products for children, fitness people, middle-aged and elderly people and other different groups with the characteristics of functional nutrition.
in the past two months, there have been two strategic investments in the food sector. New hope dairy invested in the vegetable milk brand “yifanmai”, and SanRui agriculture invested in the melon nut brand “sanpang egg”. Narrow broadcast mentioned the trend of “vertical integration” in its annual keyword forecast at the beginning of this year, including the integrated expansion of production enterprises to the downstream.
in addition to entering the plant-based beverage market by investing in “yifanmai”, new hope also entered the on-site milk beverage market by acquiring “a sour cow”, the core of which is the complementary extension with its main business. The main business of SanRui agriculture is related to sunflower seeds. Considering the industrial value chain, investing in sanpang eggs is conducive to driving the company’s variety sales.
in addition, stewed vegetables, prefabricated vegetables and tea drinks, which have become popular since 2021, are still popular for food investment. Low temperature prefabricated food brands “benweixianwu” and spicy halide obtained round a financing and angel financing respectively. Oncha began to drink tea, capsule tea language and find tea duck.
food people are “watching”
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