Text |Jin Wei.
The head tea brand Heytea overturned.
On November 28th, Heytea launched a "My Buddha Holding Cup" series of co-branded milk tea, jointly launched by Heytea and Jingdezhen Chinese Ceramics Museum, the theme of the cup is the Arhat statue, the most familiar of which is the "Speechless Buddha", because of its three points of exhaustion, three points of shock, two points of speechless image and became popular on the Internet.
After the launch of Heytea's "Buddha Xi" tea latte, it also caused controversy because of the religious elements on its outer packaging. The supervision acted quickly, and Heytea was interviewed on suspicion of violating the regulations on the management of religious affairs.
According to ** report, on December 4, the staff of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs reported that the bureau interviewed Heytea Company on December 1, and the company removed it from the shelves on December 3, and at the same time inspected the relevant situation. The above-mentioned staff said that after consultation and research by the civil and religious affairs department and the market supervision department, they (Heytea) are actually playing a "side ball", "Now they can only be interviewed, and the interview is also one of the legal means, and their company is also very cooperative, and the attitude of admitting mistakes is very good, and they sent us a rectification report on Friday night, and all of them have been removed from the shelves on December 3."
According to the "Regulations on the Administration of Religious Affairs" and "Several Opinions on Further Governing the Commercialization of Buddhism and Taoism", commercial propaganda in the name of religion is prohibited.
At present, there is no "Foxi" tea latte on the "Hey Tea GO" mini program. But on the official Weibo of "Hey Tea", there are still two Weibo posts about this product.
In fact, this is not the first time that Heytea has launched a new tea drink in the form of a joint brand recently, on October 16 this year, Heytea and Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo jointly launched Buffalo Milk Double Matcha . In addition, in November, Heytea announced the formula raw materials, nutritional ingredients and raw material traceability information of more than 40 tea products in one go, causing the industry to roll up the ...... of the ingredient list
Whether it is announcing the ingredient list or launching the "Buddhism" milk tea, Heytea is nothing more than attracting traffic and shaping brand image through marketing, but it is due to the intensification of competition in the industry.
In recent years, more and more capital has entered the tea industry, all kinds of stores have blossomed everywhere, and the new tea drink market has become saturated. According to the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, the total number of new tea stores in operation reached 48 at the end of 202260,000, up from 37 at the end of 202080,000 is up 28 percent, a jump of 100,000 from two years ago.
However, according to iiMedia data**, from 2020 to 2023, the growth rate of the domestic new tea beverage market will slow down significantly, only 51% to 135%, compared with the 10-fold growth in 3 years after 2016, the expansion rate of the market cake cannot keep up with the speed of the "predators" entering the game.
At the end of July this year, Heytea announced that the total number of stores had exceeded 2,000 stores and entered more than 240 cities. According to the data on the operation of Nai Xue's tea in the third quarter, as of September 30, Nai Xue's tea operated a total of 1,360 stores, but the speed of opening stores has slowed down significantly.
Behind this, the enthusiasm of capital for the tea market has decreased. In 2021, the new tea beverage industry led the "new trend of consumption", with more than 30 financings and an amount of more than 14 billion yuan that year, but by 2022, the financing data will be less than one-third of that in 2021.
In June this year, Tea Baidao received 1 billion yuan of strategic financing led by Orchid Asia and followed by CICC Capital and other institutions, with a post-investment valuation of about 18 billion yuan, which is one of the few financing news in the industry.
In the past two years, brands such as Mixue Bingcheng, Tea Baidao, Gu Ming, and Shanghai Auntie have launched IPO impacts, but there has been no further action on the listing, and the rumored "second share" of tea has not arrived.
In September 2022, Mixue Bingcheng disclosed the A-share prospectus for the first time, intending to hit the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, which has now been stranded. Chabaidao submitted an application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August this year, and it is said that it will be listed within this year, but there is no latest news.
Even if they are listed, the performance of tea companies is not good. In June 2021, taking advantage of the heat, Nai Xue's tea took the lead in landing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as the "first stock of new tea drinks", but the market value of HK$29.3 billion at the peak is now only about HK$5.5 billion, trapping a large number of high-level investors.
For the market, the story of the new tea drink is losing its appeal. Without the impetus of capital, the new tea drink bid farewell to the savage growth and entered the stage of stock game, the industry reshuffle is accelerating, and some brands that lack advantages such as capital, brand, and chain are accelerating their clearance.
Recently, the well-known milk tea "a little bit" has been mired in "bankruptcy" rumors, although the company has denied it in a statement, it is a fact that the "little bit" stores have been greatly reduced. The new tea drink brand and lemon tea brand "Uncle Qiu" was exposed to cash flow constraints and repeated arrears of employee wages, and the company's response was indeed delayed, but the news of the collapse was untrue.
At present, Heytea, Naixue, Lele Tea, etc. occupy the high-end market;Mixue Bingcheng has the advantages of **, scale and **chain, and firmly grasps the sinking market;The track in the mid-end market is also the most crowded, with new and old brands such as Tea Baidao, Yidian, Coco, Chayan Yuese, and Gu Ming fighting head-on, each showing their powers.
In the stock market, major brand enterprises also have difficulties. Due to the low barriers of the tea industry, it is easy to imitate, and the product homogeneity is serious. Since the beginning of this year, the coffee and new tea drinking circle, not only co-branded every three or five, but also new products one after another, discounts from time to time, from the volume **, volume marketing, to the volume store, volume raw materials, should be rolled up, "involution" has become a hot word in the ready-made beverage industry.
Even if it is the head tea, all kinds of similar products are constant. Like Nai Xue's tea, the domineering jade oil orange was launched in March 2021, which was widely acclaimed, and Hey Tea immediately launched the same model, which was called by netizens as the "inspired tea" of Hey Tea.
For example, after this year's "raw coconut latte" became a hit in one fell swoop, Hey Tea and Nai Xue's tea have launched a series of coffee products, and many familiar milk tea categories can also be found in coffee brand stores.
In the highly involuted market, no brand can "sit back and relax", fierce competition and elimination have always existed, and under the continuous "involution", the brand that has fallen behind may become cannon fodder.
Therefore, in this knockout competition, the brands used "eighteen kinds of martial arts" to go to the sinking market, explore overseas markets, explore new subdivisions, and continue to co-brand, and strive to survive to the end.
As a head enterprise, this time Heytea is also a joint marketing rolled up to the "Buddha Gate", although it brought a temporary sales, but soon suffered a rollover, which also reminded Heytea and the entire industry that it is time to brake on uncontrolled co-branded marketing.
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