Sales in the live broadcast room surged 400 times. Has the No. 1 milk tea stock gone viral?

Xiangpiaopiao has gained huge traffic and attention by leveraging the hot topic of "Japanese-themed packaging", but the brand still faces the huge problem of lack of innovation. Let's take a look at the author's analysis.

There is never a shortage of twists on the Internet.

On this side, Xiangpiaopiao was just pushed into the spotlight because of its "satirical packaging", with its stock price hitting the daily limit for two consecutive days and sales in its official live broadcast room soaring 400 times; on the other hand, the topic on Weibo "Japanese store denies selling Xiangpiaopiao's satirical cup milk tea" became a hot search, and some netizens began to question Xiangpiaopiao's marketing hype.

But no matter what, Xiangpiaopiao understands traffic, and perfectly caught this wave of traffic and returned to our sight again.

In fact, when freshly brewed milk tea for around 10 yuan is available all over China, many people have forgotten about brewing milk tea. Although Xiangpiaopiao has maintained the largest market share in China's cup brewed milk tea for 12 consecutive years, it is inevitable that people sigh, "What's the point of being the first?"

Even if it catches the current wave of traffic, the single product category and lack of innovation are still the huge mountains that Xiangpiaopiao is unable to overcome.

1. Overwhelming Wealth

During the May Day holiday, some netizens discovered that the packaging of Xiangpiaopiao's products in Japan had content mocking Japan's nuclear wastewater, such as "0.1% of the land polluted 70% of the ocean. We can live without Japan but not without the ocean. The ocean is not Japan's sewer. Japanese politicians drank the nuclear wastewater."

According to reports, Xiangpiaopiao said that it did not know that it was its employees who did it at first. But after Xiangpiaopiao became a hot topic on May 4, Xiangpiaopiao quickly posted on Weibo, saying, "Our employees are great!" That night, Xiangpiaopiao's chairman held up a sign to welcome employees who returned from Japan late at night.

On the afternoon of May 5, Yang Dongyun, president of Xiangpiaopiao, appeared in the live broadcast room and announced that a cash reward of 100,000 yuan would be given to the employees involved in the incident; all income from the live broadcast room from 20:00 to 24:00 on the day of the live broadcast would be donated to the environmental protection foundation.

Then, "wild consumption" came as expected. On May 4 and 5, tens of thousands of netizens flocked to Xiangpiaopiao's official live broadcast room to buy the same product. Xiangpiaopiao also cooperated very well by playing patriotic songs in the live broadcast room and calling consumers "comrades". The store's live broadcast day sales soared from 2,500 yuan to 1 million yuan, an increase of 400 times.

The live broadcast room mainly sells the same "Meco" juice tea that is currently in the controversy, and the same cup sleeve is given away with the purchase, but it is already in pre-sale status in the official live broadcast room. The Xiangpiaopiao Tmall flagship store shows that more than 400 people have bought the "Meco" juice tea within 24 hours, but only 99 people have bought the classic milk tea, which ranks first in sales.

As a result, many new "memes" about Xiangpiaopiao have appeared on the Internet. "Xiangpiaopiao, you are doing great things quietly" and "Xiangpiaopiao, pack up and prepare to upgrade your status", which is like a traffic carnival.

But things soon took a turn, and "Japanese store denies selling Xiangpiaopiao's satirical cup milk tea" became a hot topic. Some local netizens also said that the supermarket did not sell the same cup sleeve products, and suspected that it was a marketing campaign by Xiangpiaopiao. Some people began to criticize Xiangpiaopiao for sacrificing national sentiment for the sake of profit.

Veteran media figure Hu Xijin also commented on Weibo, "Posing with a cup holder, pretending to be selling in a Japanese store, and pretending to be 'hard-core', is suspected of deceiving domestic consumers for commercial interests, which seriously violates business ethics."

However, there are still many netizens standing on the side of Xiangpiaopiao, "No matter what the original intention is, it has indeed stirred up the popularity of nuclear wastewater again. For this reason, Xiangpiaopiao is worth it."

After all these operations, Xiangpiaopiao's stock price hit the daily limit for two consecutive days, and its market value increased by more than 1 billion yuan. Xiangpiaopiao has firmly received this overwhelming wealth.

2. So what if you are number one?

But to return to the top, this wave of traffic alone is far from enough.

According to Xiangpiaopiao's financial report, Xiangpiaopiao's revenue in 2023 was 3.625 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.9%, of which the revenue of the ready-to-drink business was 901 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.16%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 280 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.04%.

However, looking at the long-term trend, since Xiangpiaopiao's revenue reached 3.961 billion yuan in 2019, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 347 million yuan, the overall revenue and net profit have shown a downward trend; in 2019, the revenue of the ready-to-drink business has reached 1.005 billion yuan, and the MECO juice tea was officially launched in 2018, which also means that after 4 years of development, the ready-to-drink business has not improved substantially.

In 2004, Jiang Jianqi, the founder of Xiangpiaopiao, keenly discovered the product structural opportunities in China's milk tea industry. The freshly brewed milk tea in stores could not meet consumers' demand for drinking at any time, so he innovatively developed the first instant milk tea product and promoted it nationwide in 2005.

Since 2000, the milk tea industry has roughly gone through three stages: from the blending stage of tea powder and creamer, to the brewing of tea leaves and fresh milk, and then to high-end tea drinks under the milk tea IP, attracting consumers with product power, space and brand culture.

In the process of transitioning from the first stage to the second stage, Jiang Jianqi seized this market gap and established a firm foothold in one fell swoop. In 2009, he first launched the slogan "More than 300 million cups sold a year, the cups can be connected to circle the earth", and soon became the leader in cup brewing milk tea, and has maintained the first market share for 12 consecutive years since 2012.

The problem is that while maintaining its original advantages, Xiangpiaopiao ignored competitors other than cup milk tea, because it was not another cup milk tea brand but milk tea shops that subverted the industry.

In 2012, Heytea pioneered cheese tea by using real milk and real tea, thus creating a new tea beverage industry. According to data from iiMedia Research, the scale of China's new tea beverage market has reached 293.85 billion yuan in 2022. Unfortunately, Xiangpiaopiao missed such a huge market.

An investor once asked at a financial report meeting whether Xiangpiaopiao had considered opening an offline tea shop. Xiangpiaopiao immediately stated that the company had no such plan and hoped to focus on its own areas of strength and focus on the research and development and sales of solid instant milk tea.

Although Xiangpiaopiao has been working hard to innovate over the years, such as being the first to launch red bean milk tea and launching various new flavors such as cheese oatmeal, black rice coconut milk, blueberry, and mango pudding, its innovation has always revolved around the category of solid instant milk tea.

It was not until 2017 that Xiangpiaopiao launched "Meco" milk tea and "Lan Fang Yuan" silk stocking milk tea; in 2018, it launched "Meco" juice tea. Since then until now, the company's brand matrix is ​​still composed of the three major brands of "Xiangpiaopiao", "Meco Honey Valley" and "Lan Fang Yuan".

Having firmly held the top position in the solid instant milk tea category for 12 years, when solid instant milk tea was about to be abandoned by the times, the first to be affected was Xiangpiaopiao, which had a single product structure.

In fact, the fundamental reason for the single product structure is the lack of innovation. Innovation is an endless internal competition that requires a certain amount of luck. Even if you spend countless money and manpower, the probability of winning is still very low. What's more, Xiangpiaopiao's focus may not be on innovation.

3. Is the “Milk Tea Princess” still not working hard enough?

In 2016, Jiang Jianqi's daughter Jiang Xiaoying joined Xiangpiaopiao as general manager of the Internet Innovation Center. According to media reports, Jiang Jianqi deliberately adjusted the e-commerce department to the Internet Business Department and handed it over to his daughter for the reason that the e-commerce department is just a subdivision of the channel, and the business department has relatively independent decision-making and voice, and is responsible for the entire chain from R&D to sales.

The following year, Xiangpiaopiao launched its sub-brands Meco and LAN Fang Yuan, entering the mid- to high-end liquid milk tea market, which became Xiangpiaopiao's second growth curve. However, in the following years, the sales of ready-to-drink beverages represented by Meco and LAN Fang Yuan remained around 1 billion, and there were no new breakthroughs in the product line.

In March 2022, Jiang Xiaoying served as the general manager of the Xiangpiaopiao Brand Innovation Center. But outside of Xiangpiaopiao, Jiang Xiaoying seems to have made more efforts.

Jiang Xiaoying was born in 1993. She had excellent grades since childhood and was recommended to Zhejiang University after graduating from high school. During her college years, she started her own business. In 2014, the camping reservation management platform "Easy Camping" she founded also received investment from Xu Xiaoping, with a valuation of 50 million yuan; "Orders are Coming", which she founded in 2016, provides data services for the homestay industry, and its transaction volume exceeded 100 million yuan in less than a year.

It was also in this year that Jiang Jianqi wanted his daughter to return home to take over. Jiang Xiaoying believed that "taking over is also a second start-up to a certain extent", so she chose to return to Xiangpiaopiao, but at the same time she did not stop exploring the outside world.

According to the Qichacha APP, Jiang Xiaoying works for as many as 14 companies, including catering, advertising planning, information technology, construction engineering and other industries; all affiliated companies include 21. She is also the legal representative of Hangzhou Fuyang Monet Clothing Store and holds a 20% stake in Hangzhou Huoran Kailang Technology Co., Ltd. Her Huoran Kailang MCN has signed many celebrity internet celebrities with the halo of "childhood memories", including the "reading machine girl" who had a scandal some time ago.

For a young man under 30 years old, who is working on innovative business at Xiangpiaopiao while investing and looking for new projects everywhere, it is hard to say which job is his main job.

During her tenure, media reported that Jiang Xiaoying planned to expand the breadth of product categories from two perspectives: expanding overseas markets and deepening the penetration of lower-tier markets. However, the overseas market accounts for less than 1% so far, and Mixue Bingcheng and Tianlala, which are spread all over the lower-tier markets, have not given Xiangpiaopiao much room to play.

In 2021, Xiangpiaopiao officially announced that Wang Yibo became the brand spokesperson and launched a new product "Bobo Milk Tea", but the subsequent effect was not obvious.

More importantly, consumers are increasingly inclined to choose food and beverage products with health attributes such as "low sugar", "low fat" and "low calories". However, Xiangpiaopiao's raw materials are mainly non-dairy creamer and skim milk powder, and its survival space is likely to be further compressed.

Simply expanding channels or simply creating hot spots can certainly bring a wave of traffic, but this growth is often limited and not long-term. Xiangpiaopiao still needs to innovate its products and meet deep-seated consumer needs in order to continue to be "rich".

Author: Cheng Rumeng, Editor: Si Wen

Source: E-commerce Online (ID: 1089127)