Towards the end of the year, looking back at the new consumer track in 2021, it can be said that a few happy and a bit sad. Some are boundless and enter the arena with their heads high, some are constantly twists and turns, and leave the arena sadly; some survive with a broken arm, some survive from desperation, some disappear, and some return to glory.
This year, good shows continued to be staged. Some old brands were rejuvenated, some new brands challenged the old giants head-on, some foreign brands overturned their cars, and some catering brands left behind… exciting enough, difficult to forget.
The following is the “Top Ten Phenomenon in 2021” of the new consumer industry compiled by Moose’s new consumer team.
1. The discount collection store grows quietly
In March of this year, Ai Discount (formerly known as Huibang) completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of yuan; at the same time, Prosperity Market BBM has also completed a pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of yuan, which was exclusively invested by Challenger Capital; in April, Little Elephant Life, a discount supermarket with Nanjing as its home market, completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of yuan; in June, Hi Tebu, which had just been established for 2 months, completed equity financing; in August, Hao Te Mai completed B round of financing, which was obtained in 2019 Since the angel round of financing, Good Sale has received five rounds of financing.
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Except for Hao Temai, which has been established for 7 years, several other discount store brands have been established after 2020. Among them, Hi Tesco was established in January 2021. In less than a year, there are nearly 200 stores nationwide, with more than 100 stores. Concentrated in Beijing, it is expected to reach five or six hundred stores by the end of next year.
Abroad, discount brand companies such as Don Quixote in Japan, ALDI in Germany, and Dollar Tree in the United States have decades or even a century of history. In China, the track of discount collection stores has just opened. The two leading brands, Hi Tesco and Haote Mai, which started with selling impending food, have gradually turned around from a temporary food track of 100 billion yuan to a competition in the trillion discount retail industry. road.
2. Yuanqi Forest vs. Nongfu Spring
This summer, the most exciting business battle took place in the beverage freezer.
In August, Yuanqi Forest released a large number of smart freezers to traditional offline channels such as mom-and-pop stores and commissaries, and gave a lot of rewards. Nongfu Spring, led by the founder Zhong Sui Sui himself, launched the “God of Wealth” activity aimed at grabbing territory. When a dealer displays a bottle of Nongfu Changbaixue in the vitality forest freezer, he will give a bottle of Nongfu Changbaixue. Cap 48 bottles.
In this regard, the corresponding trick of Yuanqi Forest is that all the stores that display Farmer’s soda in the Yuanqi Freezer will not honor the display fee.
In fact, the battle between Yuanqi Forest and Nongfu Spring started as early as April. In April of this year, Nongfu Spring launched sparkling water products. From the bottled style to the slogan of “0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 card”, the shadow of the vitality forest can be seen everywhere.
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Nongfu Spring, with a market value of 400 billion yuan, is so wary of the fledgling vitality forest? In 2020, the performance of Yuanqi Forest will increase by about 270% year-on-year, and the annual sales volume will reach 3 billion yuan. The sales target for 2021 is locked at 7.5 billion yuan.
At the same time, the logic of the Internet-born Yuanqi Forest to make products has also made the traditional fast-moving giants jealous. In addition to grabbing channels with Nongfu Spring, Yuanqi Forest also has to grab the production line with Coca-Cola. In the history of China’s FMCG, there have been many incidents of giants fighting, but it is the first time in history that all giants have played an innovative brand.
From products to channels, Yuanqi Forest and the traditional fast-moving giants must have a battle, and this battle has only just begun.
3. Hey Tea begins to invest
Hey Tea, which is firmly established in the field of ready-made tea drinks, has made a small show of investment in the second half of 2021. In July, it led Seesaw Coffee’s more than 100 million yuan A round of financing. In August, it acquired Wang Ning Lemon Tea, which accounted for 70% of its shares. In September, it invested in the oat milk brand “Wild Plant YePlant”. In October, it invested in tea brands and Peach Peach. , Participated in the A round of financing of the pre-mixed drink brand WAT. In November, it became the largest shareholder of the “Molecular Juice” brand Yecuishan.
In terms of time, the projects invested by Hi Tea are mostly new brands established in the past two years. Ye Cui Shan, Wang Ning, Wild Plant YePlant were all established in 2020. Although WAT was established in Taiwan at the end of 2019, it did not enter the mainland until early 2021; Heji Taotao’s first store did not open until the end of December 2019; Seesaw, established in 2012, is the oldest brand.
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The two brands of Hey Tea and Naixue’s tea have used their own efforts to raise the price of milk tea to 30 yuan, giving milk tea a new consumer status. Now, the parabola has started to go down. Among the top ten entrepreneurial minefields in 2021, milk tea shops rank first.
One way to break the development space is to not define yourself as a milk tea shop. Hey Tea, which has been in contact with young people for a long time, has also shown its ability to insight into young people in investment. Coffee, lemon tea, plant-based, new alcoholic beverages, and fruit juices, every time I shot, I stepped on a steady rhythm, with a flexible body and agile movements.
After this wave of fast-moving investment debuts, Hi Tea is no longer “Hi Tea”, but a platform with a number of innovative beverage brands, and the development space of the platform can afford a larger valuation.
4. Luckin Coffee comes back to life
Luckin Coffee has been on the roller coaster again in the past year, but it is in the upward direction. In 2020, Luckin Coffee’s net income was 4.033 billion yuan, an increase of 33.3% over 2019. In the third quarter of 2021, Luckin’s total net income was 2.350.2 billion yuan, an increase of 105.6% over the same period last year. With 5671 stores, it has become the chain coffee brand with the most stores in China.
While the numbers are developing, Luckin Coffee also launched the “Shareholder Equity Plan” (commonly known as the “Poison Pill Plan”) to resist external hostile takeovers. At the same time, a series of historical issues are also in the process of resolving, including reaching a settlement agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on the suspected financial fraud of some former employees; reaching a restructuring support agreement with important creditors; completing a new round of financing with a total of 250 million US dollars Agreement; signed a letter of intent for a settlement of US$187.5 million with the representative of the plaintiff in the US class action; and fulfilled the obligation of periodic report disclosure.
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Luckin Coffee is a “legendary” enterprise. Founded for 17 months, it went public in a flash, setting the world’s fastest IPO record, but what I didn’t expect is that it went from listing to delisting faster. After the financial fraud was exposed, Ruixing Coffee was plunged into the abyss of irreversible public opinion and became a taint on the image of China’s general stocks.
But Luckin’s “legendary” lies in that it can actually crawl out of the abyss. In this regard, thanks to the madness of the coffee track in 2021, Luckin borrowed the power of the wind. In the first 7 months of this year, more than 10 coffee brands have announced financing. Within one week of July alone, three coffee brands announced financing. On the other hand, financial fraud caused an uproar at the capital level, but it did not affect products and stores, and consumers did not abandon Luckin.
Luckin, who was lucky enough to survive, is not sure whether he can live well, because the competition is now more intense.
5. Capital fancy snacks
In 2021, Gao Leng’s capital is particularly down-to-earth, and a lot of money is spent on the food and drink of ordinary consumers. Statistics show that as of October 2021, more than 10 Chinese pastry companies have obtained financing; at least 8 lo-mei brands have completed a total of 10 rounds of financing, many of which are financings of more than 100 million yuan; Lanzhou is common on the streets and alleys. Ramen has also become the target of competition for top investment institutions, with Ma Jiyong, Chen Xianggui and Zhang Lala calling out a valuation of 1 billion yuan. Fried skewers from low-tier cities quickly spread across the country and went straight to thousands of stores.
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At the beginning of the 2020 epidemic, convenience foods and semi-finished products passively took the lead, but by 2021, the epidemic became the norm in life, and the rigid-need categories suitable for personal consumption became the biggest winners, such as noodles, lo-mei, fried skewers, and dim sum. The indispensable categories in consumption have filled most of the shopping mall scenes through upgrading and re-engineering of tastes and brands.
Their common feature is to do offline scenes and be a national chain. Therefore, what capital fancy is not that the mochi is delicious or the skewer is very enjoyable, but the digital management and operation of chain stores, supply chain resources, etc., because opening a store is easy to achieve profitability, but opening 100 and 1,000 stores There is another logic.
However, the outlet of snacks always comes and goes fast. Fast update is the kingly way. New categories will definitely appear in 2022, and some hot categories this year may be replaced.
6. Light meals are abandoned
On December 14, the well-known light food restaurant New Element issued a notice announcing bankruptcy and liquidation, stating that the company’s operations have encountered unprecedented difficulties due to the impact of the epidemic, and the store operations have been severely affected. New Elements is about to reach its “20 years old” in China, and it has opened more than 50 stores in the first and second tiers.
Wagas Wagas has just passed the “20 years old”, and there have been repeated sales news. Yum China, Jollibee and Burger King are among the bidders.
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A light food brand that sells American daily meals such as salads, sandwiches, brunches, pasta, and coffee was also the “sweet and pastry” in the hands of capital. In the years after 2014, the entire market flooded with a lot of capital. In those years At least 1 billion of funds have entered the light food market, and many light food brands have been born: sweetheart rock salad, gaga fresh language, sand green light food, etc., but the wind quickly passed.
The threshold for light food is low, the product homogeneity is serious, and the customer unit price is as high as 100 yuan or more. In addition, the take-out platform lowers the barrier to entry for the catering industry. Light food restaurants with a small customer base are under great pressure to survive. Now, popular products in the name of health are plant meat and plant milk.
7. The main anchor disappears
Live delivery of goods was once the hottest new economic field during 2020-2021. A large number of delivery anchors have risen rapidly with the support of the platform’s traffic, and the turnover has been rising steadily. The live broadcast of goods represented by Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi The anchors not only earn a lot of money due to high pit fees and huge sales commissions, but also because of the siphon effect of traffic, they once occupied a strong right to speak in the upstream and downstream of the product supply chain.
However, in the second half of 2021, as the national taxation department increased tax inspections on live broadcast anchors, a group of head anchors such as Sydney and Wei Ya were investigated successively. They were not only chased by tax authorities due to tax evasion and tax evasion. Because of the huge fine, the live broadcast room and related social media accounts were also blocked, and they have completely disappeared from the Internet.
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Now, looking back at the two years of live broadcast and the hustle and bustle of goods, the original innovative sales method has long been transformed into a game of traffic and capital.
Especially in recent years, as mobile Internet traffic has peaked, it has entered the era of inventory competition. However, the cargo anchors use sufficient capital to purchase massive amounts of traffic, and then rely on the huge traffic to realize it, thus forming a closed-loop game of traffic and capital, which means that the living space of a large number of small and medium e-commerce sellers is further compressed. The brand side also had to sell pricing power, and profits were also squeezed. Obviously, this is not a normal economic phenomenon.
It is foreseeable that with the strict inspection of the cargo anchors by the national taxation department, the era of huge profits for cargo anchors will be completely over. And the platforms that provide live broadcasts with cargo anchors also need to rethink how to better balance the interests of the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, instead of letting a single anchor dominate and eat all the dividends.
8. Foreign brand rollover
A reporter from the Beijing News found that the two Starbucks ingredients in Wuxi City continued to be used after their expiration date and sold as a variety of best-selling beverages; supervisors and clerk “teached by word and deeds” tampered with the shelf life, and some ingredients were artificially “extended” for one week; promised to “open the seal” The pastries will be put on the shelves secretly the next day. After the exposure, Starbucks apologized for two Starbucks stores in Wuxi City that were exposed to food safety issues by the media.
During the Double Eleven period, consumers complained about the L’Oréal incidents because the purchase of a facial mask in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room was much higher than the spot purchased at L’Oreal on the “Double 11” period. Customer service: “Li Jiaqi is only a hitman, and the difference cannot be refunded at all.” The two leading anchors and L’Oréal announced the suspension of cooperation, and finally L’Oréal officially issued an apology.
In August, Menglong was questioned by netizens on social media that the materials used in China and foreign countries are different. For the same product, China uses reconstituted milk and milk powder and water; Europe uses water and concentrated milk. The topic of “dual labeling” has sparked heated discussions.
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Hongxing Erke became popular overnight, and the 9.9 yuan “bee flower” conditioner evoked the memories of the Chinese people. With the rise of the new consumption wave, it has driven a number of national fashion brands, such as digital domestic products, national fashion clothing, domestic beauty makeup, and domestic film and television. In all aspects, such as the national travel, young people’s love for domestic products and cultural self-confidence have made the current consumer market no longer “worshiping foreigners” and no longer blindly worshiping “imported products”.
If foreign brands want to make money in China, they need to abide by Chinese laws and regulations and respect Chinese culture and consumers.
9. Double 11 no longer fight data wars
If it were not for Double Eleven, the China Consumers Association issued 6 reminders to remind consumers to pay attention to the shopping items on “Double Eleven”. Maybe many people can’t remember, there is also the “holiday” of Double 11.
In the past, Alibaba JD.com would announce the real-time transaction volume of Double Eleven, but both parties remained silent this year and did not announce the final transaction volume until the end. At 0:00 on November 12, 2021, Tmall Double 11’s total transaction volume was 540.3 billion. As of 23:59 on November 11, JD 11.11 exceeded 349.1 billion yuan. Tmall and JD.com’s sales data both reached new highs, but the growth rate has slowed down. A large number of users turn to live broadcast rooms to watch and consume.
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The new generation of young post-90s and 00s, who grew up in the Internet era, have experienced more price wars, and the impulsive consumption of hoarding is much lower than the previous generation. Of course, they can choose more cost-effective channels. Participate in Double Ten. Yi’s enthusiasm and purpose are gradually fading. In addition, in the context of e-commerce, the rise of live broadcasts, the normalization of platform “tens of billions of subsidies” activities, and the usual various holiday promotions have all diluted the attractiveness of Double Eleven to consumers.
Pinduoduo seems to be on Double Eleven every day, see if Douyin can buy clothes In the live broadcast room, a variety of products that exceed the reserve price have been arranged. The group buying group in the community can fully meet the daily needs. Shop offline, and discount collection stores such as HI Special Sale and Hao Special Sale are constantly refreshing consumer expectations. The bottom line of price perception.
10. Haidilao, Chayanyuese closed a large number of stores
On the evening of November 5th, Haidilao announced that it will gradually close about 300 stores that have failed to meet expectations within this year. Coincidentally, on November 10, there were media reports that Cha Yan Yue Se closed 87 stores.
In contrast, in 2020, both of these companies have opened up a large number of stores. In 2020, Haidilao will open 544 new stores. In the past two years, Cha Yan Yue Se has also opened a surprising number of stores. According to data, Cha Yan Yue Se opened its first store in Changsha in December 2013. Before 2018, the number of stores was relatively small, but it suddenly increased to 200 in 2020, and by the beginning of 2021, the number of stores reached 300.
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Excessive expansion is the main reason why Haidilao and Chayanyuese will close their stores in 2021. The continued impact of the epidemic has also made these newly opened stores fail to achieve the desired turnover. Haidilao and Chayanyuese chose to close their stores at the same place in November this year, apparently to stop bleeding in time.
Looking forward to the future, whether the epidemic will completely disappear in 2022, the situation is still unclear. Offline companies such as catering and tea still need to move forward under an environment of uncertainty, and each step needs to be more solid and stable.