Zhong Xuegao, Zhongjie 1946, Xu Jinhuan... Internet celebrity ice cream brands produced by various "powers" compete to appear. After 2019, which is known as the "Year of Ice Cream", how far can the new ice cream brands in the melee go?
Wang Yongqing, the founder of Formosa Plastics Group, known as the "God of Management in Taiwan", once had an "ice cream philosophy" called "ice cream should start selling in winter."
Because winter is the off-season for ice cream, compared to summer when market competition is fierce but you can always survive, starting a business in winter requires you to desperately optimize the operating conditions of procurement, distribution, etc., and forces you to continuously By improving your marketing capabilities, in order to survive in difficult situations, you can hone your super survivability, and be better than your opponents in good times.
As the temperature gradually rises, the cold winter of offline business that suddenly appeared due to the epidemic this year is coming to an end, and the moment of real fierce battle in the ice cream business is coming. Lin Sheng, the founder of
Zhongxuegao, once defined 2019 as "the first year of Chinese ice cream" in an interview with the Beijing News. This year, big brands have continued to make moves, new brands have emerged one after another, and consumer enthusiasm has been high. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for China's ice cream industry.
According to statistics, there were more than 60 online ice cream brands in 2018, and this number increased to more than 140 in 2019. In 2019, 140 popsicles were sold in the first hour of Tmall 618, and two of the top three sales in the fresh food category were ice cream brands; on Double Eleven in the same year, ice cream sales increased by 123% year-on-year; the total volume of China’s ice cream market reached 123.937 billion yuan, with production and sales reaching 5.0642 million tons.
From the children's market to a national snack, from a "summer companion" to "suitable for all seasons", from 20 cents a piece 20 years ago to 20 yuan a piece today, ice cream, an "off-season product", has already grown in 2019. It has developed to a scale of hundreds of billions, and China has also overtaken the United States to become the world's largest country in terms of total ice cream consumption.
Is the explosion of the ice cream industry a flash in the pan? How long will the Internet celebrity ice cream under the new retail remain popular in China?
1. The three major camps of ice cream in China
China's ice cream market has been divided into three major camps for a long time.
According to market data from institutions such as Qianzhan Research Institute, foreign brands such as Heluxue and Haagen-Dazs occupy most of the domestic high-end market and some mid-range markets; Mengniu , Yili , etc. are mid-range products. Mainly, accounting for about 45%; regional established ice cream companies such as Zhongjie, Wuyang and a large number of small and medium-sized local private enterprises are positioned at the mid- to low-end, accounting for about 30%.
The first camp: foreign brands represented by Heluxue
In 1993, the Heluxue brand under Unilever entered China to invest and build factories to develop ice cream production and sales business.
Heluxue, which had just entered China, used the "freezer strategy" to quickly enter the horizons of Chinese consumers and launched 6,000 freezers into the Chinese market every year. At that time, convenience stores and small supermarkets in China's streets and alleys were printed with "and" overnight. The freezers with the "Lu Xue" logo are occupied. At the same time, the iconic red heart-shaped logo is deeply rooted in people's hearts. Even the three characters "He Lu Xue" under the heart-shaped pattern are also Chinese characters, causing many consumers to mistakenly think that He Lu Xue is a local brand. Only half a year after
entered China, the sales of Heluxue ice cream exceeded 3.5 million liters, setting a record for the highest sales in the first year of operation of a new Unilever global ice cream company.
currently promotes three major series of products with Luxue China, namely Kaiduo, which takes the youth pure love route, Menglong, which takes the high-end fashion route, and McCoolshi, which specializes in the children's market. Foreign brands such as Haagen-Dazs, which later entered China, occupy the domestic mid-to-high-end product market.
The second camp: leading dairy companies represented by Yili and Mengniu
After the millennium, due to the high gross profit margin of products in the ice cream industry, my country's dairy companies have suddenly emerged, relying on their own raw material advantages such as milk and sugar, and using their own sales channels With its brand advantages, it has entered the mid- to low-end ice cream market competition and quickly become a national ice cream brand.
Yili and Mengniu, two dairy giants, also became "dead opposite" in the ice cream industry in the 2000. As long as Illi has the ice cream, Mengniu will definitely have the same paragraph, and the packaging is very similar: Yili launched the small pudding of the Eli Ranch, Mengniu launched the launch Mengniu pudding ice cream; Yili launched an ice factory, Mengniu launched ice+; Mengniu launched a green mood, and Yili launched Yili mood ...
, you come between me and me. Most markets. Mengniu's 2017 annual report shows that its annual revenue of ice cream and ice cream products reached 2.629 billion yuan, an increase of 20.6%. The 2018 financial report of Yili showed that the revenue of cold drink products was 4.979 billion yuan.
Third Camp:
, an old ice cream company represented by the region, is restricted by the cold chain logistics factors before the upgrade. Old ice cream companies mainly rely on the promotion of offline dealers, and the price has fallen to the low -end sinking route. Therefore The features are more obvious.
was in the gap between Mengniu and Yili, and the northeast Zhongjie freezer, Hong Polei and Lao Dingfeng seized a place with the taste of "milk flavor".
Northeast is the major production area of raw milk milk in my country. Heilongjiang's raw milk production was the highest among the provinces across the country. Although it was overtaken by North China, it was still retained as a feature of ice cream.
glutinous rice 糍, Tsar dates, mid -street Da Guo, Harbin sorius and other star products of Northeast Ice Cream have left the impression that most consumers are delicious.
also has its own choice in Shanghai and Guangdong. The first cold drink brand in New China, the status of Guangming at the time in the Yangtze River Delta, was plentiful. The development of sweet and salty salted saltwater rods is all the rage.
circulates such a sentence in Guangdong:
summer, Cantonese's life is given by Wuyang ice cream.
, the parent company of Wuyang, became the company of Nestlé Holdings in 1999. It was exclusively managed by Nestlé China. But fortunately, the brand of Wuyang was retained and a long period of time was in a family in the Pearl River Delta region for a long time. Independent.
egg milk batch, taro cone, red bean batch, other ice cream has the taste, five sheeps; double skin milk flavor, litchi flavor, cheese oolong tea flavor, other ice cream flavors, and five sheeps.
"China Ice Cream Maps"
Bright and Wuyang's two representatives of the localization routes have catered to the tastes of the locals while becoming a hegemon of a hegemon.
2. "Net Red Brand" occupies the young people's market
. For young people now, when it comes to the ice cream, it is no longer the products in these three camps in their hearts.
has been rising under the wave of consumption upgrades in recent years and new retail, especially the "net red brand" has strongly occupied the shopping cart of young users.
In the ice cream V list of Tmall's recent official shopping guide "Tmall V List Annual Product 2020", there is no shortage of domestic red ice cream.
1. According to Zhong Xuegao's founder Lin Sheng, Zhong Xuegao's name comes from the homophonic of "Zhongxu Cream". High recognition.
, a brand established in March 2018, has successively obtained the Zhenge Fund and Fengrui Capital Angel Wheel Investment and Pre-A-round investment. In 2019, Zhong Xuegao's sales exceeded 4 million yuan on the day, ranking first in the ice category of the e -commerce platform, becoming a veritable phenomenon -level Internet celebrity product. Zhong Xuegao, who has an average price of
, is a high -end market. It once occupied the first place in Tmall's pre -sale single category with a 66 yuan "Ecuador Pink Diamond".In order to support the high -end market positioning, Zhong Xuegao will also actively emphasize the Turpan Red Ti, Irish cheese, Japanese matcha tea and other high -quality raw materials used in publicity. Product positioning.
2. Zhongjie 1946
In addition to the new brand, the brand of the old Zhongjie freezing point Zhongjie 1946 also jumped into the new net red ice cream in the past two years. Last year's 618th promotion, Zhongjie 1946 ranked second only to Tmall Supermarket in the entire fresh -selling brand in the entire fresh category, with sales of 5.8 million.
Zhongjie 1946 provides production and brand authorization from Zhongjie freezing point, and the brand operator is Shanghai Shengzhi Advertising Co., Ltd.
Shengzhi once imitated Mallinl's model to plan to open the street offline, but the effect was not ideal, but in 2016, the new brand of Zhongjie 1946 was launched, focusing on the mid -to -high -end market. And red. With the positioning of "fresh zero addition", the pricing of 1946 products from Zhongjie ranges from 5 yuan to 28 yuan, of which 13 ~ 18 yuan products are its main sales force, which is slightly higher than the average price of ice cream on the market.
At present, the 1946 online Tmall flagship store in Zhongjie has 1.06 million fans. By establishing a "front warehouse", it can realize the service of 2 hours after the order of Tmall in Shanghai. The theme design, each of more than 50 stores has different themes. It is worth mentioning that
is worth mentioning that the previous trader of Zhongjie 1946 was Lin Sheng, the founder of Zhong Xuegao, and Zhong Xue Gao was also the brand founded by Lin Sheng team in the early 2018 brand after the consultation agreement expired with Zhongjie 1946. Essence
3. NOC must be happy
In addition to emerging brands, dairy giants Yili also seized the online market share. NOC must be happy to be the high -end ice cream brand tailor -made to adapt to emerging e -commerce channels and O2O channels to adapt to emerging e -commerce channels and O2O channels. Essence The
brand was officially launched in May last year. Tmall's official flagship store's total transaction volume reached 1.31 million yuan in the first month. As an Yili's brand test water, the current performance is unexpectedly bright.
must be full of spokesperson, Zheng Yunlong
NOC must be priced at about 20 yuan. The product is characterized by the inner layer with yogurt as the cream, and the outer layer is a soft hanging skin made from pure fresh fruit and vegetable juice. At present, there are carrot orange. , Purple potato, mango, raspberry and other seven flavors. High -saturation colors can attract users' attention. At the same time, it is necessary to have a lot of national tide routes on the brand. From the name "must be happy" and the "one -leaf living colorful ice cream" slogan, it is not difficult to see that the "national wind" is strong.
III. Net red ice cream red routine
combines the popularity of these net red ice cream, you can summarize the following routines:
1. Cross -border joint
is not new. The products that get up are often because of the expectations of consumers.
Zhong Xue Gao has launched cross -border products with three brands such as three squirrels, Luzhou Laojiao, Roewe Motors, Xiaoxian Stew, and Naixue, and is very good at creating memory points for consumers on social networks.
2. Although the old feelings
, because of the former ice cream products, due to the problems of materials, craftsmanship, and supply chain, in all aspects such as taste, the new products are not as delicate today, but we will always miss the taste of childhood. The brand has feelings.
Therefore, old brands such as Zhongjie 1946, Northeast Board, and Wuyang have also received a vote support of consumers under the trend of domestic products today.
is even Wang Laoji, who is not an ice cream brand, and launching herbal popsicles across the border. It also attracted the attention of a group of young consumers because of the fun of old herbal tea and popsicles. Essence
3. Scarcity
Hunger Marketing can always create a topic, especially the "limited edition" of food, which is really sold, and has a strong scarcity.
, for example, Zhong Xuegao had grabbed a batch of very few Ecuador Powder Coco, and launched the "Ecuador Diamond Diamond" with a limited edition of 20,000. The focus of the topic.
The combination that creates the most buzz is undoubtedly the combination of "offline pop-up store + limited flavors". For example, the GODIVA x White Rabbit pop-up store opened in Shanghai last year and was limited to three weeks. Although it was priced at 55 yuan each, the special restriction of "no waiting when it is out of date" still made people who wanted to try something new queue up from early morning to late at night. The effect is excellent.
4. Health brand + celebrity effect
Traffic star KOL attracting fans and driving sales are unbreakable rules in FMCG marketing. As long as you find the right person, it is basically a foolproof routine. It can also generate expansion according to the characteristics of the spokesperson. The effect of the circle.
Like Zhong Xuegao, the three brand spokespersons are Ao Ziyi from the TF family, as well as actors Tong Liya and Zhou Yiwei. The images of the three artists are relatively positive and healthy, which is in line with Zhong Xuegao’s main health route. The 17-year-old Ao Ziyi's brand endorsement is a development for the post-00s market.
5. KOL planting strategy
According to the first "big data on planting" released by Meiguang, 83% of young consumers' purchasing decisions are mainly influenced by the planting sharing of Internet celebrities around them and on various platforms.
In the process of
, Internet celebrity KOL has used its own network influence to drive the discussion of Internet celebrity products, increase the exposure of various Internet celebrity products, and also increase consumers' attention to various Internet celebrity products. Ultimately, The overwhelming "planting" and evaluation have transformed into purchasing and consumption actions.
Internet celebrity ice cream brands are basically all experienced in social media operations. In the early days of Zhong Xuegao's founding, he drove his ice cream truck directly to Xiaohongshu's headquarters and invited platform KOLs to conduct tasting reviews.
Evaluation of various Internet celebrity ice creams on Xiaohongshu
4. Where is the future of “Internet celebrity ice cream”?
"Internet celebrity" was the common label used by these new ice cream brands when they suddenly emerged, but today they are no longer satisfied with this label. Lin Sheng, the founder of
Zhong Xuegao, once said in a public sharing:
"Popular" is the way to survive for contemporary consumer goods companies, but at the same time, we must be careful about "popularity". "Internet celebrity is the only way to go, but after you become famous, what you have to think about is how to go down."
The challenge has come:
First of all, while major brands are seizing the ice cream market, the phenomenon of ice cream homogenization But it is becoming more and more serious, and imitations of many Internet celebrity items appear frequently.
For example, if you search for coconut ash ice cream that became popular last year on Taobao, in addition to the Tiankaile brand that first became popular in this category, brands such as Aoxue, Kangyi, and Kubile have also quickly followed up. The highly similar products also show that It is difficult to achieve long-term sustainable development by relying on a single product.
In addition to the brand competition within the industry, there are also endless competitors from outside the ice cream industry:
- Handmade ice cream at the mall counter, "smoking" liquid nitrogen ice cream, a bowl of DIY yogurt ice cream worth hundreds, Internet celebrities "Turkey" and other ice cream categories in other consumption environments also have many consumers;
- At the same time, Holiland launches semi-ripened cheese and other flavored ice cream, and Heytea launches Jinfeng Tea King and Bobo Tea ice cream, many external brands have also begun to seize the ice cream market;
- KFC, IKEA and other fast food and chain brand ice creams are also selling well. During last year’s Double Eleven, KFC ranked first in terms of word-of-mouth alone 350,000 dark chocolate ice cream cones were sold, and the price was only 1 yuan. IKEA’s ice cream can sell 16 million units a year;
- In addition, self-service ice cream machines in office buildings in major shopping malls also want to enter the cold drink market. Get a piece of the pie. In July last year, the smart ice cream self-service terminal brand ICE completed a RMB 10 million A+ round of financing. ICE, which integrates material supply, unmanned retail, terminal sales and other operational dimensions, has been launched in more than 40 cities across the country. 500+ smart ice cream machines.
In addition, corresponding to the increasingly fierce market competition, there is pressure brought about by continuously rising costs.A large number of new brands that aimed at the mid -to -high -end ice cream market emerged, forcing the factory to change from manufacturing normal products, to manufacturing mid -to -high -end products. Therefore, the cost of upgrading the product line upgrades has increased market manpower costs, as well as prices of major raw materials such as sucrose and milk powder. The rise has also pushed up the average price of ice cream category on the market. The pricing of the new red ice cream in the new net red ice cream is still high. Young consumers are willing to spend higher prices to consume higher quality products to obtain a pleasant experience -especially low -customer unit price like ice cream, non -rigid low -frequency products, even the price is several times higher than before, It will not add too much pressure on consumers' daily expenses. It is the object of consumers willing to pay for "occasionally indulgence". But in the long run, such high prices must also require products and brands to support it to ensure that users are willing to pay for them in different market environments.
So, how do you want to return to the needs of user needs and make users more favorite products in the winter in winter?
Making an article in the concept of "health" may be one of the directions worthy of attention.
Market Consulting Institutions Yingmin's "2017 China Ice Cream Report" shows that 85%, 76%, and 65%of consumers are willing to pay for the health, quality and product experience of ice cream. This means that consumers' requirements for products in terms of health and quality have accounted for their dominance. In recent years,
has become stronger and stronger in food health. Even the "ingredient party" that even the ingredients of ice cream are not only paying attention to the "ingredient party".
is in the United States. VAN Leeuwen, which is at its core, has recently announced a $ 18.7 million Series B financing and aiming at this healthy market. The "Circular Low Card" series of ice cream of the Internet celebrity brand Pree also uses "natural 0 calorie sweeter chimglitterol" to replace sucrose to reduce the calories and reduce consumer guilty sense. After
, after the "first year of Chinese ice cream" in 2019, today's domestic ice cream market has been in a melee model.
data shows that in addition to Zhong Xue Gao, in 2019, at least 16 ice cream brands such as fresh fruit jungle, Nobibi, Topcream, Bingtian Mei Emperor, Marios, vivi Dolce have completed angel round financing. The involvement of capital has accelerated the ice cream industry. At the same time, the favor of capital also reflects the development potential of the ice cream industry.
Foresight Industry Research Institute has analyzed that by 2021, the size of the Chinese ice cream market is expected to exceed 160 billion yuan. Although this year, due to the epidemic, the industry's capacity was affected, and the procurement channels were blocked due to delayed exhibitions. But in the face of the "summer" that has already arrived, people who sell ice cream in "winter" will inevitably break through in the "summer".
References
- Foresight Economist "2018 Ice Cream Brand Competitive Analysis" Three -point World Competition Pailated "
- Zinc Finance" Compassion for New World: Breakstration of Internet Red Ice Cream "
- China News Ichu cream drawing, you Which favorite is it? "
- The" New Year "is about to end. Is the 2020 of the ice cream industry still hot? 》
- China Industrial Information Network "2017 my country's ice cream market overview and industrial competition analysis"
- Chinese ice cream "" You must be happy "to be aimed at the Tmall V list, and Yili has also started to aim at the net red ice cream." How to get from traffic to new brands? I found the five secrets of Zhong Xuegao. "
- foodaily Daily Food Network" The Red Ice Cream Development Plan: How can your product be placed on the list? 》
- First Finance Weekly "Zhongjie 1946, Malline, Northeast Board, the same previous life and different this life"
- Sina Finance "Cold drink production and sales plan due Founder: Zhong Xuegao, three and a half, the popular tea style, can you copy it? 》
Author: Guan Ning, Public Number: Baokuanfaze, Deep Rush "New Media in the field of consumption and marketing.
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