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Scenarios-breaking IP
The innovation of products and store models
doesn’t change the fact that the new-style tea drink,
which has developed for almost a decade, has limited
and certain consumption scenarios. However, first-tier
companies dedicated to creating brands still want a
product that breaks boundaries between different life
moments. To this end, they have turned their brands
into IP and cooperated with designers to create stylish
cultural products under different themes. For example,
daily life products like canvas bags, phone cases and
coffee mugs never go wrong with customers.
IP making also goes on in other fields. To amplify
the fresh image of new-style tea drink, brands like Heytea,
Nayuki and Sexy Tea team up with suppliers of tea leaves
and set up online flagship stores to sell the same tea leaves
used for their drink, allowing customers to bring the fa-
miliar flavor to every nook and cranny of life.
Heytea moves further by launching flavored soda
drinks named after its sub-brand Mini Heytea, which
occupies the shelves of glass fridges in supermarkets and
once again show up in front of customers with no tea
drink identity. Last year, the Heytea Tmall store sold
about 1.4 million bottles of soda drink and over 250,000
weekly tea gift boxes. Notably, its cup with straw which
sold out in seconds also secured a sale of 40,000.
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Mini programs on WeChat (works similarly to the ‘Going down’ seems to be the way. To “bring the
online-order applications on phone) and fast delivery high-level life represented by new-style tea drink to
services are another way to keep going. Taking cues from more cities”, brands start to march to second- and
the membership and online order services of Starbucks, third-tier cities, while taking the tide of capital invest-
Heytea launches its mini program Heytea Go, which cap- ment from first-tier Chinese cities. According to New-
tured 35 million members last year with an increase of 13 style Tea Drink White Paper 2020 by Nayuki and CB-
million over the previous year. The mini program makes NData, the offline tea drink market finally got favored
it convenient to control online and offline orders, and also by investment for consumption and received over 4
calms the long-time complaints and doubts of long queues. billion CNY. Nayuki has finished its Round C of financ-
ing with over 100 million USD, and submitted its IPO
Small-entry Industry Sailing in Blue Ocean to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited right
before spring new year of 2021, possible to be the first
Founded in port cities, typical new-style tea drink listed new-style tea drink brand. Some second-tier
brands like Heytea, Nayuki and LELECHA have a natural brands like Guming, MIXUE, SWEET7 and HSAYI have
spirit of going global. Their ambition for the internation- also won attention from investment, and went through
al market could be smelt in 2018. Their first destinations Round A and Pre-IPO of financing in the second half
were Singapore, Japan and other countries with large of 2020. Notably, these brands use the business mod-
Chinese populations. Meanwhile, South Korea, Thailand el of direct-sale stores and franchise stores, small yet
and Malaysia with massive numbers of Chinese students highly potential. They are likely to fill the gap be-
also embraced Chinese brands including Tigersugar, tween their brand IP and large stores with special
Chatime and Gong Cha. All of the international stores, consumption models, and guarantee profits with
though only a few in number, get good performance, but down-to-earth operation.
the army of new-style tea drink brands still don’t start For customers, the change for new-style tea drink
their international expedition in scale. Look at the chang- is like a Mobius Loop, where the popular flavors fade away
ing and slightly sluggish market, we can tell there are only and return to fashion, where business models in other
a few market entries like flavor and ingredients, and the consumption fields are replicated for trial, and where
stream of different brands all flow to the same red ocean: familiarity and novelty in turn push the industry to go
gradually mature new-style tea drink market. Because of forward. Yet luckily, the brand controllers have a good
COVID-19, brands hesitating near boundary lines start to sense for fashion, and lead the way instead of making
rethink about their roadmap for expansion. changes after customer response.
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