The Ice Cup is in the middle of the battle, and there may be no room for new entrants

Why does the ice cup product track leave no room for new entrants to develop? This article will help you understand the market situation of the ice cup track. This article is also recommended for companies or individual operators to read.

If we have to find a new top-tier player in this year's consumer goods sector, the ice cup must be one of them.

As an imported product that only entered the Chinese market around 2019, although it has long been a regular product in many convenience stores, it has only really become popular this year. It has moved from the corner of the freezer to the most conspicuous position in the freezers of various convenience stores.

The only dark humor is that since the Ice Cream Assassin incident, consumers have been demanding high-quality and well-reviewed ice cream products. Coupled with the large amount of inventory in 2023, the price of ice cream has been falling, and is basically concentrated in the price range of 3-10 yuan. In comparison, the price of ice cups is not too affordable. The price of ice cups in supermarkets and Nongfu Spring brand is almost concentrated at 3.5 yuan. If it is an ice hockey cup or various flavored ice cups, the price will quickly reach around 6-12 yuan.

So, as a popular internet celebrity ice cup with a relatively high unit price, will it be a good business?

1. Ice cup: a special new top-tier product, or a new high-priced "assassin"?

From the consumer's perspective, ice cups are clearly a two-tiered business.

Some consumers think that a 160g ice cup costs 3.5 yuan, which is a new assassin compared to the 2 yuan or so of 500ml mineral water. Others say that compared to going through the trouble of making it by themselves, which requires a refrigerator, ice tray and a lot of time, it is obviously much easier to just buy an ice cup, and the price is completely acceptable.

Of course, the essence of this dispute is that consumers’ usage scenarios and needs are different.

First of all, in social scenarios, if we carefully observe the brand ice cups that are popular on social media, it is not difficult to find that almost all brands have put a lot of effort into the outer packaging, all of which are made of hard and transparent materials. Even if the so-called practicality is not discussed, at least it can be placed on the desk to take pictures, and you can get a good effect. If you recall the convenience store cocktails that became popular on social media around 2022, you will find that the ice cup can almost be said to be a plus upgraded version of the convenience store cocktails, which can not only be cooler in taste, but also more beautiful in appearance.

Secondly, in addition to the changes at the scene level, changes in experience are also an important part.

For most consumers, doing it yourself can completely change the shopping experience of the past. Consumers can choose different types of beverages according to their preferences to combine their own "convenience store special mix".

Finally, if we only consider the price, we need to realize one thing - for consumers, the essence of ice cup is a new type of freshly made beverage. The bottled drinks in the freezer are not so much its competitors as they are raw materials for consumers to DIY. Therefore, to some extent, the competitors of ice cup are actually new tea drinks and chain coffee.

If we compare prices from this level, for many consumers, iced American coffee is a necessity to sustain their spirits at work every day, from 30 yuan at Starbucks, to 9.9 yuan at Luckin Coffee, to the current 3.5 yuan homemade iced cup of American coffee, and even the 1 yuan iced cup launched by price killers like Mixue Ice City, for those consumers who have needs, if they directly buy an iced cup and use the company's coffee machine to make a cup of coffee, the price of the iced American coffee will obviously be lower.

Obviously, for consumers, ice cups are a long-term demand only if they meet specific consumption scenarios. If they cannot meet this requirement, then they will be just like the convenience store cocktails and convenience store Mark set meals of the past, which are just temporary internet celebrities.

2. Offline channels are the main space for ice cups to survive

On the channel side, the ice cup market is also in a two-tier differentiation situation.

For consumers, ice cups are more like the basis of freshly made drinks, which can meet their specific needs in specific scenarios, so it doesn’t matter if the price is slightly higher. But for the channel, ice cups are essentially no different from bottled drinks in the freezer.

This split positioning makes all ice cup companies face a problem that many new consumer beverages have encountered when entering the channel:

If one wants to respond to consumers' special usage scenarios, the channels that can be entered will inevitably be limited to office buildings and around CBDs, such as FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, and Convenience Bee, which have a certain brand effect. However, entering these channels means that the brand not only has to pay a considerable entry fee and freezer fee, which will further push up the product pricing.

Even if we put these aside, compared with various bottled beverages with extremely complicated filling processes, the OEM and production of ice cups are not difficult, which makes these channels almost all have their own brand ice cups, although these ice cups are almost all OEM-produced, such as the ice cups of 7-11 and Convenience Bee, which are produced by Bingjixian Food Technology Co., Ltd. and Xiaode Food Co., Ltd. respectively. But this still means that if a brand cannot win the favor of consumers in terms of design and brand power like Nongfu Spring, it will be almost difficult to compete with the own brands of various channels.

What's more, for Nongfu Spring, even if the ice cups make no money at all, it can still make a profit by boosting the sales of other products under the brand by selling the ice cups.

So would leaving the convenience store be a good choice?

Obviously, this is more difficult. If it leaves the special usage scenario, unless it directly launches a 1 yuan ice cup like Mixue Ice City, it is highly likely that it will be difficult for consumers to accept it. Or we can put it more bluntly. If the ice cup leaves the CBD and enters various individual supermarkets in the community, it would be better to print the two big words "Assassin" on the cup. But the good news is that, at present, except for Nongfu Spring, other ice cups have not formed a strong brand awareness. At this stage, the ice cup business is still in the stage of category, that is, brand. So even if it is really called the new assassin by consumers, all brands will suffer together.

In addition, due to the special nature of ice products, it is difficult for them to survive offline. This means that although the ice cup is a new internet celebrity, the ice cup market has long been a red ocean.

3. The gift of the 1 yuan ice cup is the clerk's contempt and disdain

Finally, returning to the production side, or the brand side, ice cups are also an increasingly crowded business.

As we said, there is no shortage of new entrants in all internet celebrity businesses. If we search for "ice making" as a keyword on the Tianyancha APP, we can find 6,076 existing and operating companies, 436 of which were established within a year.

From a market perspective, the ice cup is quite similar to the coffee market of that year. As an imported product that only entered China in 2019, the ice cup is obviously an emerging business model. But what is very similar to coffee is that according to Zhiyanzhan Industry Research Institute, the annual consumption of disposable ice cups in convenience stores in Japan has reached 2.57 billion cups, and ice cups have become a mass consumer product like beverages.

However, when consumers are pursuing experience and channels are facing difficulties in entering the market, it may take a lot of time and energy for a brand to succeed. Perhaps replicating the crazy linkage between coffee and tea brands in the past would be a good idea, but I am afraid that after the craze is over, only those OEM factories will be able to survive safely.

So, is it a good choice for ready-made beverage chains like Mixue Ice City to enter the ice cup market?

The answer to this question is actually the same as the conflict between the staff and customers of Manner Coffee not long ago. A cup of ice cubes can drive the customer, the staff and the store to death. For the staff, producing drinks every day is already tiring. Now they have to add a lot of extra ice cup orders, which are not much simpler than tea drinking. The low salary will naturally make the staff say something bad to the customers intentionally or unintentionally.

For the store, the ice cups have little profit and will consume the already insufficient ice stock in the summer, so removing the product from the shelves has naturally become a common option. In the end, the customer who did not buy the ice cup and was also criticized by the store clerk was naturally not a good experience.

Perhaps Mixue Bingcheng’s public apology letter today is enough to explain everything.

In general, ice cups are nowadays considered to be the top trend on the Internet, but it is difficult to draw a conclusion whether it is a good business model or a good tool to attract attention. For Nongfu Spring, selling ice cups can stimulate the sales of its other products through marketing. For convenience stores, ice cups can become another trend like convenience store cocktails. For Mixue Ice City, ice cups are a new means of marketing.

So what does the ice cup mean to companies that are planning to sell their own brand of ice cups? We may have to wait until the craze subsides to find out the answer.

Author: Innocent Roland

Source: WeChat public account: iBrandi (ID: ibrandi)