Share 5 secrets of brands that have grown against the trend

This article analyzes the five emerging brands that have emerged in the market in the past few years - how can new forces achieve counter-trend growth in the market. The author analyzes cases and summarizes the marketing and operation secrets of these five brands based on actual situations. Recommended to novices in marketing and operation, read and exchange ideas together.

In the previous article, we introduced how some brands with an average age of nearly 40 are trying to become younger. At the same time, new forces cannot be ignored.

The market environment in the past few years has brought unprecedented challenges to emerging brands. Unlike many mature groups, they are not as well-off as others. Even a short period of suspension can be fatal to them. This is why there are so many “closure waves” and “bankruptcy waves”.

Although the overall environment is not as active as before, we have also seen some emerging brands achieve growth against the trend. Some of them have sorted out their product structure more clearly, and some have stepped on the channel rhythm to break through. At the same time, most brands have not stopped the rhythm of online/offline activities.

In this collection, you will see the essence of growth strategies of five brands: Good Hope Water, Shaye Light Food, Super Bowl, BLUE DASH, and Add a Bit of Flavor.

1. Hope Water has found different scenarios for its three SKUs, and has started to promote sales through demands such as coffee blending and wedding banquets. It has used its brand proposition to attract distributors with the same philosophy, and has achieved a win-win situation for offline terminals, brands, and distributors.

2. Shaye Light Food adopts a differentiated business model, starting with takeout. After running the minimum profit model, it began to open up franchise expansion, using a full-category self-operated supply chain and a self-operated takeout operation team to ensure profit retention.

3. Super Bowl calculated the appropriate store location by building its own site selection model and created a strong franchise model called "Super Partner" to ensure that the brand can maintain organizational stability during rapid expansion. The supply chain adopts a decentralized central kitchen model, which enables creative co-creation and two-way development with suppliers.

4. The core of BLUE DASH is to quickly find the right crowd. It uses the logic of social APP to build a brand, first attracting a group of seed users, and then through the strong social links of seed users, breaking through the circle little by little to influence the general public.

5. Add a little flavor has hit the opportunity of market and channel innovation. By covering daily and DAU-level scenarios, it quickly penetrates users and generates dynamic sales, gradually penetrating downward from the top-level KA channel to create potential energy.

For more detailed gameplay, please read on.

1. Good Hope Water

What beverage brands fear most is poor sales.

At the end of 2022, when the epidemic was coming to an end, the new herbal sparkling juice brand "Good Hope Water" broke through from the offline channels. In 2022, the offline terminals increased by more than 100% year-on-year, and the number exceeded 30,000, penetrating multiple channels including high-end hotels, restaurants, coffee bars, boutique supermarkets, etc.

Reviewing Haowangshui’s offline experience, we found that the brand is remarkable both in terms of overall strategy and practical solutions for to B and to C.

In terms of overall strategy, Haowangshui chooses to create new scene associations in addition to serving as a beverage with meals.

In recent years, offline chain restaurants have continued to upgrade, and the demand for healthy formulas in coffee shops, teahouses, and new stores has increased sharply. Therefore, Hope Water launched Hawthorn Coffee in Hangzhou and held a series of "Coffee Map" activities to encourage people to come to Hangzhou boutique coffee shops to take photos and check in, and spread through social platforms; for its Wangmeihao and Wangxingfu products, which have beautiful names and clean ingredients, Hope Water chose the wedding banquet scene to enter, starting from social platform users to find amateurs who have wedding banquet beverage needs, and through co-creating content with bloggers, it has attracted the attention of nearly 20 high-end hotels/B&Bs.

Strategically, using activities to attract the attention of terminals is only the first step. New and emerging brands are more concerned about accumulating terminal "favorability" and working in both directions with dealers.

On the B-side, Hopewater mainly cooperates with three types of dealers: the first is the regional head dealers; the second is the dealers born after 1985 and 1990 and the so-called "second generation of dealers"; the third is the Datong dealers. Hopewater will recruit core city managers in the three major regions of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and the dealers in these areas are also the brand's "city regional partners". In addition to coordinating the interests of offline terminals, brands, and dealers, Hopewater will continue to practice the brand's positive value proposition to attract regional partners with the same concept.

On the user side, Good Hope Water is a typical example of combining the hot product category strategy with the brand crowd strategy. Taking Good Hope Water's Mid-Autumn Festival event this year as an example, Good Hope Water filmed a short story with the theme of "Cape of Good Hope in the City" to communicate with young people who spend the New Year away from home. If "Wang Shanzha" is based on the category to create a product mark, thereby strengthening the brand's position in hawthorn beverages; "Good Hope Water" has been expressing its brand around the crowd.

2. Sandy and Wild Food

The light food industry has been in the limelight since 2016, and gradually returned to rationality in 2018. In recent years, the pace of store openings has been disrupted due to well-known reasons, which has also affected the operation of many stores. However, Shaye Light Food, which was established in 2016, has been expanding steadily over the past six years and has always remained profitable.

2016 was the bonus period for food delivery platforms. At that time, many light food brands did not pay attention to food delivery operations, but Shaye Light Food adopted a differentiated business model and carried out refined operations in store menus, pictures, food descriptions, pricing systems and activities. In that year, the monthly sales of a single store exceeded 10,000 orders, and the net profit of a single store could reach more than 120,000 yuan during the peak season.

By 2018, after having more than 10 directly-operated stores, Shaye Light Food opened up for franchising, and the number of stores achieved exponential growth within four years, with lower procurement costs and greater profit margins.

In addition, Shaye Light Food is the only light food brand in the industry that has achieved a self-operated supply chain for all categories. When the brand was founded, there were no dedicated suppliers in the light food industry, so Shaye Light Food started from a warehouse in Shanghai and spent two years polishing it. The team includes logistics professionals and purchasing managers from large catering companies. By the beginning of 2019, the supply chain achieved overall profitability.

In addition to its own supply chain, Shaye Light Food has also built its own takeaway operation team. The operation staff are all selected from the store employees. They know best which dishes have high gross profit margins, which dishes require less manpower, and which dishes are suitable for hot-selling products. Based on practical experience, they consider the form of activities and dishes from the perspective of gross profit and meal delivery efficiency.

When the epidemic hit, Shaye Light Food worked hard to maintain the normal operation of the company, while "bottom-fishing" prices and investing more actively in the preparation of new stores.

3. Super Bowl

In the light food market, Super Bowl was founded early and has continued to develop. In a sense, it can be said that it has survived the epidemic cycle and broken the curse of the market's decline.

It was founded in 2015, focusing on balanced nutrition, providing a variety of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and other food options. It currently has nearly 50 stores in Beijing and Chengdu. At the same time, it is one of the few brands that completed tens of millions of RMB in financing last year.

The secret to Super Bowl success lies in its site selection model and single-store operation model.

In the site selection model, Super Bowl starts with the brand user portrait, observes their consumption habits and consumption scenarios, and then summarizes a quantifiable site selection model. By adjusting the weights of specific variables, the scores are given separately to evaluate the store potential. In the site selection model, the highest weight is always the consumer.

In terms of the single-store business model, Super Bowl has always insisted on direct brand operation since its inception. At the end of 2021, Super Bowl launched a "super partner" model. This model is a strong franchise model, similar to financing, and is a financial lever to help brand development. Super partners usually start with 3 stores and do not participate in store decision-making, but call on their own resources to assist in operations. Their income is strongly bound to the store's revenue level. In terms of cross-regional store organization and management, Super Bowl has also set up a "super store manager" position to manage multiple stores at the same time, and the corresponding brand's organizational structure is more stable.

The key to the ultimate competition in light meals is to return to the supply chain to see the speed and quality of product launches. The upstream supply chain of China's catering industry already has very strong management capabilities, so the Super Bowl adopts the "decentralized kitchen" model and forms an open and cooperative relationship with the supply chain: first, the brand's ideas for new products can give the upstream supply chain new research and development directions; second, the technological breakthroughs of the upstream supply chain can also directly empower new products, achieving "two-way development."

BLUE DASH

In 2022, the number of financings for new low-alcohol brands dropped sharply compared to the previous year, and most financing events were only in the millions of yuan range. At the same time, BLUE DASH, a new trendy beverage brand that was established only two years ago, has quietly entered the field of vision of more people.

BLUE DASH focuses on the 15-degree zero-sugar liqueur series and the 5-degree zero-sugar soda series. The brand achieved sales of nearly 100 million yuan last year, with the highest monthly sales exceeding 15 million yuan, an increase of about 5 times compared with the same quarter in 2021.

The reason why such results can be achieved is that BLUE DASH used the logic of social APP to build its brand: first attract a group of seed users, and then through the strong social links of seed users, break the circle little by little to influence the general circle, laying a solid foundation for the brand to distribute products in the general population market and increase channel sales.

A stable channel is an important moat for offline consumer goods. Based on indicators such as economic development, drinking stock, and young people's activity level, the team divided the country into three levels: East China + South China, Central China + Southwest China, and North China + Northwest China. Taking into account the number of young customers, consumption sentiment, etc., the team started with the two cities of Wuhan in Central China and Chengdu in the Southwest for a pilot project, negotiated with a unified pricing system, and then quickly replicated the successful business cooperation model to other cities.

When the epidemic disrupted the rhythm of offline theme activities in 2022, the brand did not venture out of the current development status of the channel network, but built channel barriers while leading various online activities of all sizes; when the time was relatively ripe, BLUE DASH used completely different scenarios as the entry point to seek more effective pan-population breakthroughs. The two "Metaverse Music Festivals" had tens of millions of exposures, and the "Master Blue Atmosphere Experiment Cabin" theme pop-up store also gained a good reputation on social platforms. As a new brand that has only been in operation for 2 years, BLUE DASH has shown a mature side in its marketing strategy.

5. Add some flavor

Founded in 2020, the compound seasoning brand "Add a Little Flavor" completed three rounds of financing within two years, and has been ranked No. 1 in Tmall's soup seasonings for many times. It is currently ranked No. 1 on the Douyin seasoning category emerging brand list , and has blazed a new trail in the 500 billion+ seasoning market.

In the early days of its establishment, Jiadianziwei had its own thoughts on products.

They use the "single dish scale" to calculate the use of condiments at home. For example, pickled fish, crayfish, spicy hot pot and other dishes that can be sold as single items in a store have a premium and audience base, and the degree of chain stores is higher than that of comprehensive restaurants. Therefore, turning these dishes into condiments will also make it easier to sell and penetrate users faster.

Considering the consumption frequency, the first priority of Add a Bit of Flavor is to cover homely, DAU-level scenarios, such as the currently promoted small restaurant series; the second is the flavor soup base series, which the brand defines as soup base rather than hot pot, helping to increase the original weekly demand to half-weekly demand; and then comes the local cuisine series, which is a weekly-level category to meet the needs of users to entertain family and friends.

In terms of channels, in 2021, Jiadianziwei chose to start from online platforms such as Tmall and Douyin, using the most typical Internet strategy of new consumer brands. The team started with two vertical categories, food and good things sharing, and constantly explored experts and amateurs who could cooperate for a long time, and continuously promoted products.

Since 2022, many KA channels have realized that the compound seasoning category is growing rapidly, and they want to better meet the needs of consumers through the iteration of shelves , so they will take the initiative to contact and invite brands to settle in. Add some flavor divides the national KA channels into 6 major systems based on the number of stores and sales scale. It has initially achieved the penetration of the top KA channels (Walmart/Sam's system, Metro, China Resources, RT-Mart, Yonghui and Hema), and began to advance into regional chain supermarkets.

From a longer-term perspective, Add a Bit of Flavor is not only a brand of compound seasonings, but also a brand that provides solutions for the new generation of family cooking people.

In the past two years, some new brands did rely on rapid financing and extensive growth, but problems were later exposed, triggering public criticism or discussion.

But there are also a number of admirable brands that are still at the table. Although new brands are sometimes relatively weak, we can see their careful cultivation, and we will continue to look forward to their growth.

Author: Daofa Xingyan

Source: WeChat official account: "Knife Skills Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub)"