Interface News Reporter |Zhao Xiaojuan.Wahaha's layout in sugar-free tea products has lasted for 5 years and is still continuing.Interface News Editor |Ya Han Xiang.
Wahaha will launch another pure tea series at the 2024 sales work conference, including four flavors: Jasmine Tea, Zhengshan Small Seed, Dahongpao, and Green Mandarin Pu'er. Among the more than 20 new products to be launched in 2024, Wahaha said that sugar-free tea is the focus. Wahaha has not disclosed more information about the price and sales channels of this new product.
Wahaha sugar-free tea is a new product. This is not the first time Wahaha has made sugar-free tea-related products. Unlike Nongfu Spring, which has been dormant for several years and finally waited for the Oriental leaves to erupt, Wahaha's sugar-free tea brand is more scattered, more like chasing the outlet.
For example, in 2018, Wahaha launched pure tea products such as Anhua Black Tea, Yanyun Oolong, and Pu'er TeaAt the 2022 sales work conference, "Into the Tea" was also launched, including two flavors of black tea and oolong tea. In addition, the kellyone brand, founded by Zong Fuli, vice chairman and general manager of Wahaha, has also launched a sugar-free tea series "Yicha".
The life cycle of these products is relatively short, and some sugar-free tea brands are not easy to buy in supermarkets. Jiemian News visited RT-Mart and Yonghui hypermarkets in Beijing, and Wahaha's tea products are more tea beverage items such as honey fruit green tea and honey grapefruit tea, while pure tea products are rare. In channels such as **, Jingdong, Pinduoduo, etc., Anhua black tea and Wahaha Pu'er tea will appear in the stores of some food and beverage wholesalers, and the price is about 5 yuan per bottle.
On the whole, Wahaha's sugar-free tea is more like a "shoot and run" strategy.
For Wahaha, they will definitely follow up on the big popular products in the market, because Wahaha's dealers need these popular categories to update their products. A beverage distributor told Interface News. Oriental leaves.
And sugar-free tea is an outlet that Wahaha doesn't want to miss.
Judging from the current industry trend, the popularity of this category is still spreading.
According to the "2023 China Sugar-free Tea Industry" released by Yiou Think Tank, sugar-free tea beverages have maintained a growth trend since 2017, and the growth rate of sugar-free tea in 2022 will be 79%, much higher than sugary tea;The sugar-free tea market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 102%, the market size is about to reach 10 billion;In the next five years, China's tea market will enter a period of rapid growth and full explosion of sugar-free tea drinks.
The report pointed out that the purchase of sugar-free tea is mainly completed through convenience stores, supermarkets, and food and beverage stores, and the sum of the share of these three channels is 58%, and the main consumer groups are concentrated in young consumers in first-tier and new first-tier cities.
The above-mentioned dealer has the same experience, he told Jiemian News that since 2022, the sugar-free tea track is currently very "rolled", and it will be "rolled" for another two years, especially in the convenience store channel that everyone is more optimistic about.
According to his observation, there are many manufacturers of sugar-free tea involved in the past two years, in addition to Oriental Leaves, Yuanqi Forest's burning tea, including tea, Jeancha and other new brands. However, convenience store channel display space is limited, so the investment of various brands is extremely intense.
For example, in convenience stores, if you don't do 'add one yuan more than one piece', sales may decline immediately, which will make the input costs of each company soar, for example, the usual sales cost is 20%, but convenience stores may reach 60%. He said. And in the warm cabinet of the Shanghai FamilyMart convenience store, the battle is also quite fierce. For example, as soon as Yuanqi Forest's product "buy one get one free"** ended, Oriental Leaf launched a lower discount file.
RT-Mart supermarket sugar-free tea shelves (**Photo: Zhao Xiaojuan) Wahaha may not have any advantages in making sugar-free tea in terms of brand, but it has a strong dealer network system.
Once Wahaha produces new products and dealers store them, the volume can be more than that of other new brands. The above-mentioned dealer said.
This may also be the reason why it can willfully change a batch of new sugar-free tea products every year - with the help of dealer channels, through the volume of new products in the tuyere, to achieve performance growth, rather than precipitating a popular brand.
Zong Fuli also mentioned such advantages at the sales work conference, and the joint sales model created by Wahaha is like a capillary all over the country, going deep into counties, towns and villages around the country, and building a stable market. But this is far from enough, in the new year, Wahaha should grasp the strong market at the same time, aim at the special channel, and actively explore new markets.
Wahaha also boosted their confidence this year by directly rewarding dealers. Zong Qinghou disclosed the 2024 dealer annual incentive plan at the Wahaha Economic Work Conference, revealing that he would further increase the incentive for outstanding dealers, expand the scope of rewards and increase the intensity of rewards, and planned to take out 100 million yuan to reward outstanding dealers.
At present, whether such incentives can bring specific support to Wahaha's sugar-free tea products, Wahaha did not reply to this. However, with the help of channel advantages and continuous innovation, at least in terms of performance, Wahaha has recovered in the past two years. According to the list of "2023 China's Top 500 Private Enterprises" released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Wahaha's sales performance in 2022 reached 51.2 billion yuan, thanks to the fact that in the past one or two years, Wahaha proposed to "turn over the battle of water", and promoted its performance through a large number of new products and strengthening marketing and other actions.
As for whether it can make a brand like Oriental Leaf, it may not be so important to Wahaha.