VCPE Reference (vcpecankao) Original
Author | Guan Diu Diu Li Zixuan
Oat milk is creating a boom, and this boom is brought about by OATLY.
On May 20, 2021, OATLY officially landed on Nasdaq , becoming the first stock of plant milk, with the stock code "OTLY", the issue price was US$17 per share, and the company's market value exceeded US$10 billion.
OATLY's revenue in 2019 and 2020 was US$204 million and US$421 million respectively; gross profit was US$66.585 million and US$129 million respectively; operating losses were US$30.76 million and US$47.09 million respectively. As for the loss, OATLY claimed that it was caused by investment in production, marketing, distribution channels and manufacturing facilities.
In the US, OATLY oat milk is the second best-selling plant-based milk in the US after almonds, beating out the once-popular soy. At the beginning of
, it was originally to meet the needs of lactose intolerant people, but after a series of fierce operations, in the market even looked for it. In the United States, it was reported by many media due to out of stock.
In July 2020, OATLY raised US$200 million, Blackstone was the lead investor, and co-investors included Howard Schultz, former chairman and CEO of Starbucks , talk show host Oprah , actress Nata Leigh Portman and Roc Nation, the entertainment agency founded by rapper Jay-Z, valued at $2 billion. The success of
OATLY has made countless entrepreneurs see hope and make product . Its products, marketing and strategy have also been learned and imitated by successors.
In December 2019, AdeZ, a plant-based beverage brand under Coca-Cola , launched a coffee master specializing in oat cereal beverages on Tmall . AdeZ was originally AdeS, a brand of soy beverages and juices. Its main markets are in Latin America such as Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. In 2017, Coca-Cola acquired AdeS from Unilever , and launched the plant-based beverage production line Adez in the UK in 2018 to produce milk-free protein drinks, including oatmeal, almond, and juice. At present, AdeZ has reached a cooperation with Ruixing.
Earlier this month, Nestlé, the world's largest food company, also announced the launch of a pea-based milk alternative called Wunda. In the near future, Wunda products will be launched in French , Dutch and Portuguese , and plan to promote to other European markets to compete with OATLY.
OATLY has also influenced China entrepreneurs. Plant protein drink startups such as Mai Oye, oatoat, and Cereal Planet have all started with oatmeal and have all received financing. Everyone agrees to define their company as China's OATLY.
01 Repositioning: Milk replacer
OATLY, a company that started out in Malmö, Sweden, but became popular in the United States.
Professor Arne Dahlqvist of at Lund University in Sweden discovered the phenomenon of lactose intolerance in 1963. His student Rickard Öste was very interested in this and devoted himself to the development of oat milk. The original intention was to allow people with lactose intolerance to have milk. Product freedom.
Bjrn Öste is Rickard Öste's older brother. He started a software company in partnership with a friend. Later, he felt that his younger brother Rickard Öste's products were reliable, so they started a business together.
In 1994, two brothers co-founded OATLY to focus on the production of oat-based milk products. Currently, the two brothers are engaged in the research and development of healthy food, and the main market is aimed at the United States. The founders of
and Lianchuang are academics. The biggest contribution lies in the enzymatic hydrolysis of patent and the proportion of oat milk. The technology is as important as the taste. But such a founding team cannot run the company. For a long time, OATLY was unknown.
After 18 years of brand development, the new CEO Toni Petersson took office and made drastic reforms from positioning to product strategy, and the situation finally changed.
Toni Petersson is a miscellaneous family. He studied marketing strategy at business school . He has a lot of things to do. He has run an izakaya, and also opened another owner during this period to sell wine and beer. Later, he also founded real estate company .
In 2012, the headhunter recommended Toni PeterssonI as the CEO candidate to OATLY. Toni PeterssonI's first reaction was to trick the board of directors.
The fact is that this company has rejected five or six candidates from the food industry, and there is indeed only one candidate left in the headhunter. Unexpectedly, he was really selected.
Toni Petersson also brought in his old friend as creative director, and together created a new image of OATLY.
In the past, OATLY has always positioned itself as a food company, highlighting the function of oatmeal. After Toni Petersson took office, he rebranded OATLY and resolutely positioned OATLY as a "milk substitute", and made a corresponding brand advertisement .For example, OATLY's more eye-catching advertisements: "Wow No Cow!" "It's like milk, but made for humans" Relevant, he has always revolved around the lifestyle business.
In order to educate the market and make oat milk popular, OATLY made more aggressive advertisements. In , Los Angeles, USA, , OATLY's "anti-milk campaign" took off, and sixty giant outdoor billboards "occupied" Los Angeles. Combined with social networks, OATLY made the shocking truth of the dairy industry public—the industrialized production of milk was accompanied by Excessive crushing and mutilation of cows. Compared with milk, OATLY is environmentally friendly, healthy and harmless.
has made many adjustments and changes in design and product packaging. Ordinary food packaging, such as making oat milk, releases visual information such as oats, milk, sunshine, Sweden, etc., while OATLY can see a lot of text information in the packaging of a whole box, presenting the brand concept , OATLY even put the customer's Bad reviews are printed on product packaging and on street advertising walls.
Toni Petersson is very different. He chooses to endorse himself. In February of this year, OATLY released a new advertisement in the Super Bowl. The 30-second advertisement in the Super Bowl cost 5.5 million US dollars. In this advertisement, Toni Petersson plays the electronic keyboard in the wild, While singing "Wow No Cow!" cheerfully, as soon as the advertisement was broadcast, it became a huge controversy. He immediately took this opportunity to turn the complaints of netizens into T-shirts. The T-shirts were quickly sold out. At the same time, more People know the company OATLY.
Currently, OATLY sells products in more than 20 countries and is the world's largest oat drink company. In addition to oat drinks, OATLY also launched oat-based cream, oat yogurt, oat ice cream and other products.
02 The alternative channel
OATLY did not specifically target the coffee market at first, and it was Toni Petersson's idea to combine it with the coffee market. Toni Petersson has opened coffee shop before, and also knows many baristas in Sweden. He thought that since OATLY is an alternative to milk, the most commonly used place for milk is cafe , and he thinks this is an opportunity.
So they persuaded coffee shops to use their oat milk, and to complement the coffee shops, OATLY created a product called "Coffee Master".
Use the coffee channel to enter the market to establish a brand and reputation, and then open the market and explore opportunities to enter other channels. This B2C strategy is indeed effective. The shrewdness of doing this is that, paired with coffee, oat milk becomes a high-frequency consumption.
At the end of 2016, in order to successfully introduce oat milk to the United States, OATLY sent representatives to high-end coffee shops in New York City to share the product with local baristas in person.
The move was an immediate success, because the coffee culture in the United States is too mature, and OATLY has covered more than 3,000 boutique cafes in North America in a short period of time.
In addition, OATLY has made changes to the packaging. The red font on the corners of the carton was changed to bold and bubble letters. Product information has also been changed from Swedish to to English so that no matter where it is sold, everyone can read it.
△New packaging
△Old packaging
Before, there was a local company producing oat milk, but it was completely unknown and Americans had hardly heard of it. Almost overnight, OATLY became known to both women and children. With the growth of
, OATLY has also exposed problems, and OATLY's production capacity is limited. In 2018, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden encountered serious product shortages. Some people took the opportunity to raise the price of OATLY. Fanatical oat milk lovers could even accept the premium of 5 times and buy a box for $200, which made OATLY popular again. Bundle.
Although OATLY has been sold in 60,000 retail channels and more than 30,000 cafes in 20 countries and regions, there are only a handful of OATLY factories, which means that OATLY's products in the world depend on cross-border transportation. .
Since 2019, OATLY has successively built factories in the United States and the Netherlands. At present, there are three other factories under construction or under planning, located in Singapore, Peterborough, UK. Since China is also a big market, OATLY has already planned to build a factory in China, and chose Maanshan to further expand its production capacity.
In 2020, OATLY's revenue in the main market EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa ) accounted for nearly 65%; America and Asia accounted for 24% and 13% of sales respectively. According to OATLY, the Asian market (mostly China) accounted for 18% of sales in the first quarter of 2021 and is growing at an annual rate of 450%.
OATLY recently partnered with Singaporean beverage giant Yeo's to start producing oat milk outside of the US and Europe for the first time in order to meet the needs of the Chinese market.
03 Entered into China
1. Frustrated
In 2016, China Resources Weilin invested in OATLY and held 60.5% of the shares by the end of 2020. China Resources Weilin is a joint venture established by China Resources Group and Belgium Anheuser-Busch InBev family fund management company Verlinvest, each holding 50% of the equity, and China Resources Group is one of the largest shareholders of Verlinvest, which means that China Resources Group is in OATLY The effective shareholding of 30.25%.
Due to the investment of China Resources Group, OATLY entered the Chinese market.
OATLY's key figure in China is Zhang Chun, president of Asia. Zhang Chun has more than 15 years of management experience in diversified group companies. He has worked in Siemens, General Electric, etc., and has held important positions in sales, marketing, investment, strategy, management, and operations.
At that time, OATLY was already popular in Europe and the United States. Although it opened up the market through coffee shops, from the perspective of income structure, the cafe channel only accounted for less than 1/4, and more than 70% of the income came from , Walmart, , 7-11 and other merchants. Chaohe convenience stores and retail channels are the important channels for OATLY. is backed by the rich offline retail channels of China Resources Group, and Zhang Chun is very confident in the Chinese market.
At the beginning of 2018, OATLY entered China. They wanted to replicate OATLY's success in Sweden, Europe and the United States, and chose to land on supermarket shelves.
3 In March, the first batch of OATLY products arrived at Shanghai and placed on the shelves of boutique supermarkets such as Ole' and blt under China Resources , but they found that there is no such shelf category as oat drinks or vegetable protein drinks in China. They were placed in the breakfast area, and some were placed in the milk area.”
Zhang Chun happily gave gifts to relatives and friends everywhere.Before and after the Spring Festival is the peak period for gift-giving, but OATLY oat milk is nowhere to be seen on the shelves. This is very similar to the situation at the beginning of OATLY's development.
Asians are mostly lactose intolerant, and milk substitutes actually have great market potential in China. However, Chinese people have the habit of drinking soy milk . There are freshly ground soy milk in restaurants and ready-to-drink soy milk on supermarket shelves. Cafes such as Starbucks will also use soy milk as a substitute for milk as a "hidden menu". According to Euromonitor International, from 2014 to 2018, the annual compound sales volume and sales growth of packaged soy milk beverages (including ready-to-drink soy milk) in the Chinese market were 9.3% and 12%, respectively, far exceeding the 1.1% and 4.6% of milk.
2. Following the cafe strategy
The market response was not as good as expected. Zhang Chun took the Chinese team to study at the headquarters in Sweden. After returning to China, Zhang Chun and the team established three focus strategies: one product (coffee master oat drink BARISTA) , a city (Shanghai where the development of specialty coffee culture is the most representative), and a market (a specialty coffee market closely following the outbreak of the third-generation coffee wave).
At the same time, Zhang Chun also formed his own team. At first, OATLY did not have its own team in China, and it was all supported by the staff of Pacific Coffee under China Resources. After returning from Sweden, Zhang Chun established a professional barista team, brand team, supply chain and quality control team.
Through the personal connections of the barista team and the internal promotion of the barista group, OATLY quickly got in touch with boutique coffee shops in Shanghai and successfully settled in.
Internet celebrity boutique coffee shop is OATLY's first choice, in order to attract those young people who are pursuing innovation and high style.
In March 2018, OATLY entered Shanghai's new landmark, the fashion brand buyer shop + coffee shop DOE. This store integrates sneakers, coffee, trendy brands, and street culture elements. The store is designed by designer Aoyama Zhouping. The founder Himm is also the founder of the street culture-focused magazine "URBAN". Because it is maverick enough, DOE is all the rage on Xiaohongshu.
A few days later, OATLY has partnered with Little Bean coffee shop. Little Bean was once a popular store in , Shanghai Pudong . Its industrial minimalist interior design, professional coffee and roasting craftsmanship have attracted many literary and artistic youths. There are many articles about punching cards and planting grass on Douban.
Consumers who come to a coffee shop will first see the OATLY brand at the door of the shop, and then see OATLY products on the counter of the coffee shop. The coffee shop will also hold promotional activities to introduce creative menus related to oatmeal. Many consumers in Shanghai are familiar with the brand OATLY while they are familiar with the category of oat milk.
OATLY achieved a breakthrough. From the first coffee shop, it only took five months to realize the cooperation with more than 1,000 independent boutique cafes.
China Resources also spared no effort to support it. In July 2018, Pacific Coffee , a chain coffee brand under China Resources, launched oat-based coffee products in more than 300 stores in mainland China. At that time, Pacific Coffee was encountering growth bottlenecks, and the introduction of oat milk could enrich the Its own category creates new marketing points, which also enhances the influence of OATLY.
This route has been used for reference by new and old domestic plant milk brands. In 2018, Vitasoy also cooperated with boutique coffee shop manner to launch new products such as soy milk latte, and launched the "Coffee Master Exclusive Edition Soy Milk" in the second year.Later, the local oat milk born in China also copied this path. As soon as it was launched, it cooperated with coffee and tea shops. 1L large-capacity packaging was standard.
By the end of 2018, the number of boutique cafes covered by OATLY in China was close to 1,500, mainly in coastal cities in the south. At the beginning of 2019, Starbucks of in Hong Kong was the first to introduce OATLY, and the sales volume of the latter in local retail channels increased rapidly.
3. Cut into more scenarios
OATLY has always emphasized that environmental protection and animal protectionism will not work in China. After entering China, OATLY weakened the claim of "anti-milk", and instead emphasized the characteristics of oat milk with 0 fat, 0 cholesterol, 0 sucrose, rich in dietary fiber , friendly to people who are lactose intolerant, and "weight loss" " The functions of "meal replacement" and "fullness" are of course the "non-GMO" that Chinese people were keen to discuss at the time. This is also the initial impression of oat milk to domestic consumers.
The domestic oat milk brand that was born later has always been unable to escape this routine in publicity, but the oatoat brand born last year has weakened these well-known functions in publicity, focusing on the refreshing taste. After
, the coffee route became the focus of OATLY's promotion in China, but OATLY did not forget to cooperate with Green Monda vegetarian restaurant, and participated in cultural festivals, coffee exhibitions and other activities , to promote its own small cylinders and small square bricks for direct drinking product.
In September 2018, OATLY entered the Tmall store , and the small cylinder, small square brick and coffee master series began to be sold online, priced at 30~50 yuan/L.
Today's domestic oat milk brands such as wheat ouye and oatoat can also be roughly divided into 1L packages with coffee and direct drinking small packages of various flavors, but most of the prices do not exceed 35 yuan/L, which is relatively cheap. Among them, wheat ouye is relatively cheap. Ye even used the slogan of OATLY "replacement product" during marketing. After
established a firm foothold in China through the coffee route, in order to achieve "coffee shop", OATLY aimed at restaurants with a very high degree of overlap between the audience and itself. It has successively cooperated with Taicha, HEYTEA, New Elements, WAGAS, Paris Baguette and other brands.
At this stage, OATLY cooperated with new tea, dessert and bakery brands on the one hand, and launched oat-based products, which became the production raw materials that can be seen everywhere, which is subtly accepted by more and more people; Light food restaurants, Michelin restaurants, five-star hotels , etc., appear more in front of consumers as an independent direct-drinking brand image.
During this process, OATLY also penetrated into breakfast, fitness, party, travel and other scenes, making the positioning of "lifestyle brand" more convincing.
In May 2019, OATLY launched the first "vegetarian" ice cream in China. The oatmeal base is packaged in paper cans, which is convenient to buy and share with friends. Although there are only three flavors: strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, the jar has nine different designs on the paper lid, and one is the CEO's signature.
OATLY not only pushes ice cream trucks to sell in several hotspots in Shanghai, but also launched the Tmall platform, but it can only deliver to surrounding areas such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. However, the brand has carried out a wave of media launches simultaneously, and the role of ice cream is mainly to attract traffic and create momentum.
Along with the ice cream, OATLY's peripheries came.
On the eve of the June 18 promotion in 2019, OATLY entered JD.com and launched a series of peripheral products such as T-shirts, hats, coffee cups, spoons, ice packs, bundle pockets, thermal beach bags and even speakers, with a large OATLY logo printed on them. , you will have the opportunity to purchase the product.
With the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, OATLY's online business has ushered in an outbreak. From January to April 2020, OATLY's sales on Tmall and Taobao increased by 115.4% and 2305.7% year-on-year respectively, and online sales in the first quarter accounted for 1/3 of the total business.
The company has also shifted its business focus to online, and has carried out omni-channel delivery on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu and video platforms, which is an important layout of OATLY in the Chinese market.
In April 2020, Starbucks launched the "GOODGOOD Star Good Foodism" campaign in China, and introduced OATLY oat milk to coffee shops across the country. Starbucks has more than 4,300 stores in China, OATLY's market recognition and offline sales have reached a new level. In the same month, OATLY finally had a Chinese name - Oh Mai Li.
Soon, OATLY has prepared a new story for China. OATLY is positioned as a "lifestyle brand", what kind of lifestyle is it? Environmental protection and vegetarianism have never had a market in China, and nutrition and health are too common. OATLY began to promote a new concept "Lagom".
The word "Lagom" comes from Sweden, which means just right. "Lagom är bäst - just right, is the best state." In order to shorten the distance with Chinese consumers, OATLY likens this concept to China's golden mean.
Soon after, the Lagom collection was born, including T-shirts and very practical canvas bags. This time around is no longer the benefit of purchasing goods or lottery, but sold separately, but only limited to WeChat stores.
From specialty coffee to "Lagom", every step of OATLY has stepped on the hearts of young people.
At the same time, OATLY is also promoting the development of the entire category in China. In July 2020, OATLY joined the "Plant Protein Drink Alliance" initiated by Tmall as an advocate, along with St. Euphe China, Vitasoy, Hebei Yangyuan, Dali Foods, Yili Group , etc. On the day of the alliance's establishment, OATLY and Tmall also jointly "white paper on the innovation trend of plant protein beverages in 2020".
Like in European and American countries, OATLY single-handedly set off a wave of oat milk in China, and at the center of this wave is the generation Z crowd.
In the past two years, emerging oat milk brands such as oatoat, Aomai Planet, Daily Box, Wheat Oye, and vegetable protein brands represented by Grain Planet have successively obtained financing. Yili , Mengniu , Vitasoy , Ximai, etc. also launched oat milk products, and their target group is also the current young people.
OATLY is the brand leader of oat milk in China. China originally had oat milk, but it always sounds like health care and health care. It is too far from the lives of young people. Business.
