In 2017, Hurun Research Institute released the first "30X30" entrepreneurial leaders list, with 30 entrepreneurial leaders under the age of 30 shortlisted. On this list, there are the much-anticipated rich second generation like "National Husband" Wang Sicong, and elites from prestigious schools like ofo founder Dai Wei. The "leaders" are mostly engaged in high-tech industries such as IT, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality.

Nie Yunchen

Among the stars, Nie Yunchen, who sells milk tea, seems extremely ordinary.

Nie Yunchen was born in an ordinary family in Jiangxi. In junior high school, he came to Jiangmen, Guangdong with his parents and studied at an ordinary university. Both parents are engineers and they are rigorous people. In such a family atmosphere, Nie Yunchen's life seems to be orderly and orderly.

However, Nie Yunchen is a person who "can't sit still". When he was in high school, he wanted to start a business and opened a mobile phone store at the age of 19, deviating from the "normal" life path.

“I think entrepreneurship is a natural trait for me.” As for the judgment of “business opportunities”, Nie Yunchen may be more of an intuitive impulse, but it must be said that he does have a rare ability for ordinary people. keen.

Nie Yunchen, founder of Heytea

The year when Nie Yunchen opened the mobile phone store was a critical year for the development of domestic smartphones. In 2010, the iPhone 4, which was of epoch-making significance, was launched, Google's Android system began to rise, and Nokia barely glowed with its final glory.

Nie Yunchen initially thought very simply. In addition to selling mobile phones, he could also make money by jailbreaking and rooting phones, charging two hundred at a time. This kind of business without capital sounds like a bright future.

However, because of the remote location, no one cared about it.

Nie Yunchen made a bold decision - all flashing services are free!

Nie Yunchen

"It's not his fault that the customer doesn't come, it's our fault. We didn't let him know about us. Now he comes here to receive free service, maybe in the future You will have the opportunity to become our customer.”

This is truly Internet thinking! Because of the free service, the number of customers really increased. Some people are embarrassed and will buy some accessories such as mobile phone cases to "compensate".

Nie Yunchen found that this routine actually created a better business: accessories require no after-sales service, are consumed frequently, are low-cost, have high gross profit margins, and have low inventory pressure.

Nie Yunchen

In this way, he earned the first pot of gold in his life and the original start-up capital of Heytea

02

< p>When people found out that they had to queue for more than two hours for a cup of milk tea, Heytea became popular.

In February 2017, Heytea opened its first store in Shanghai’s People’s Square. Within a month of its opening, it set a record of “queuing for seven hours to buy a cup.” Hundreds of people queued up, and there were three queuing areas. On-site scalpers were either peddling queues, or reselling the goods at a higher price. A cup of milk tea for 30 yuan could be sold for 100 yuan.

Since then, every time Heytea opens a store in a new city, there will be huge queues.

On the day Heytea landed in Beijing, there was a heavy rain in August. The bad weather could not stop consumers from being enthusiastic about this cup of "Internet celebrity" milk tea. They had to wait for 4 hours in the rain, and even queued up at night. The queue lasted for more than an hour.

HiTea Store Party

The clock is turned back to 2012, back to the starting point of HeyTea.

21-year-old Nie Yunchen opened a milk tea shop in an alley called Jiangbianli in Jiangmen, Guangdong, with 200,000 yuan saved from opening a mobile phone store. The store is only over 30 square meters. In the early days of opening, business was deserted, with a turnover of only 20 yuan on the worst day.

Nie Yunchen

This scene is very similar to the dilemma at the beginning of the mobile phone store. However, the experience of starting a mobile phone store taught Nie Yunchen to adapt to changes in circumstances - many things are unpredictable, but they can be changed. So, how should milk tea shops change?

Nie Yunchen asked himself a question: "If no one in the world has opened a milk tea shop, and I am the first to open one, how will I make products, select materials, and do the process?"

In the 1990s, as Taiwanese pearl milk tea entered the mainland, the mainland tea chain industry began to rise. The original milk tea was brewed with various powders, which had the taste but not the substance. It was called the "Powder Era"; as it continued to evolve and upgrade in the future, traditional milk tea brands such as Coco and Happy Lemon began to appear, and there was a real Tea leaves now have various fruits and more complex formulas, but the milk used is still mainly powder.

"Although this powder is legal, I don't want to use it. Why do people eat the powder in their stomachs?" Nie Yunchen said bluntly that not using powder was the starting point for the development of Heytea.

For this reason, Nie Yunchen spent more than half a year debugging, "Starting from scratch, without any foundation, it took a long time just to understand the structure of milk tea."

Finally, the first milk tea without powder added on the market was born - Heytea's first cheese milk cream tea, which is made with fresh cheese cubes and fresh milk. The original tea leaves are freshly brewed and ready to drink. Take a sip of rich cream before taking a sip. The new shape and taste made this product very popular as soon as it was launched.

Nie Yunchen ended the milk tea era in which the structure of the tea industry has remained almost unchanged for nearly 30 years. Through the innovation of the milk tea series, this traditional industry has gained new opportunities and rekindled the public's enthusiasm for tea consumption.

Nie Yunchen

The new era of tea drinking has arrived:

The reputation has risen, and Heytea has emerged from the riverside. It is popular everywhere, and it is even more popular in 2016. Qiu Qi opened 50 stores with an annual turnover of over 100 million. In 2017, Heytea went all the way north and ushered in its highlight moment in Shanghai, becoming an "Internet celebrity" milk tea that young people across the country want to drink.

HiTea store party

03

The daily sales volume of a single store exceeds 2,000 cups, and the monthly sales volume of takeaways reaches up to 5,000 orders; the maximum monthly turnover exceeds 3 million, It can turn over 100,000 yuan a day, and its square footage efficiency exceeds that of Starbucks; it has more than 100 stores across the country; it has raised more than 500 million yuan, and its valuation exceeds 6 billion.

This is the report card delivered by Heytea in the past two years.

“Many brands die not from the speed of expansion, but from lack of potential in the end.” In Nie Yunchen’s view, Heytea has sufficient potential.

“The core of HeyTea is the product.” Nie Yunchen believes that making products is not about innovation for the sake of innovation, but about improving the product from its essence. In his eyes, there are only two most important things - pre-launch screening and post-launch iteration.

In order to maintain its position as a leading brand, HeyTea is under great pressure to innovate. It is reported that Heytea has a research and development department with about 30 people, including a tea beverage research and development laboratory, a baking laboratory, a tea tasting room and a quality control laboratory. Nie Yunchen has publicly stated that Heytea will develop more than 100 products a year, but less than 10 will eventually be launched.

HiTea's menu basically undergoes a relatively large iteration every year. From the early days, there were more than ten categories and more than 50 products, and it has been streamlined all the way. The tea drinks only have the star products cheese tea, fresh tea and fruit, The quantity of the four major series of Bobo tea and pure tea is about half of that of ordinary milk tea shops.

Nie Yunchen

It can be seen from the product structure of Heytea that, except for the first-of-its-kind cheese cream series, the others are the most popular hot-selling products that have withstood the test of the market—— Various fruit teas with rich taste, and the new Internet celebrity "Bobo Tea".

Although Nai Xue was called "plagiarism" for this, for Heytea, which "always relies on market results," this is just a rational and correct market choice.

After all, the reason why consumers pay is not just because “it tastes good”, but also because: this is “Hi Tea”.

Nie Yunchen, born in the 1990s, understands the psychology of his peers.

Young consumers pursue novelty and trends, and “a cup is hard to find” has successfully stimulated their curiosity and herd mentality, allowing the brand to be spread and shared spontaneously by consumers on the Internet.

HiTea has also taken advantage of the situation, not only advertising heavily on social media, but also doing cross-border marketing with Nike, Durex, Maybelline, Canon, Shenzhen Airlines and other brands. Sufficient exposure brings huge traffic, online and offline mutual support, and real money pours in.

Nie Yunchen

HiTea Nike co-branded marketing

Looking more deeply, this group of young consumers are not only satisfied with the product itself, but also pursue the impact of consumption on themselves Recognize your taste and identity, pay attention to your inner feelings, and be willing to interact with consumption scenes. Heytea has met this demand to a certain extent and has won the recognition and favor of consumers.

“From products to stores are all links in the overall consumer experience, and the design of each store is a process of inspiration and interpretation. For tea shops, the store is the only embodiment of the brand "Window." Nie Yunchen said, "Every time I open a new store, I attach great importance to it."

Every time he enters a city, Nie Yunchen will personally lead the team to carefully study the geography and culture of the city, and choose the most famous one in the city first. Open a store in the core business district, establish the brand image of Heytea, successfully win the recognition of local young people, and then sink and spread.

In order to cater to the diverse personalities of young consumers, unlike the previous model of milk tea shops with stalls covering dozens of square meters, Heytea’s main specialty stores are all over 100 square meters and are designed in different styles. Themes, such as LAB store, black gold store, pink store, DP (Daydream Project) store, etc. Theme stores bring consumers into an immersive space scene. This space is no longer a consumption space, but a unique and lively social space.

In August this year, Beijing’s first DP store opened in Zhongguancun, called “Chaliao Tingyu”. Hundreds of mirrors poured down like ink splashes, and the wind and rain came from the shop.

Nie Yunchen is a Virgo.

He would drink no less than 20 cups of milk tea every day in order to debug the product; he would have tossing and turning because of nonsensical comments such as "Hitea does not taste like love"; he would have trouble sleeping because his home delivery was wrong. He is so angry that he smashes the TV because of his goods; he is worried about others and wears many hats and does everything himself. From logo design to store decoration style, he personally draws it on the computer...

Nie Yunchen

< p>"I love my brand, so I will protect it and be aggressive."

Some time ago, Peng Xin, the founder of Nayuki Tea (hereinafter referred to as "Nayuki"), publicly named Heytea copied many of its products, and Nie Yunchen responded unceremoniously by leaving a message, claiming that the other party was "moaning for nothing."

Perhaps due to this personality, Nie Yunchen has extremely strict requirements on products and brands, and prefers centralized management. This makes Heytea only have direct-operated stores and firmly refuses to accept franchises.

Before the emergence of Heytea, a major feature of the traditional milk tea industry was large-scale franchise stores.

Franchising means product standardization, convenience and speed, but it often results in suppliers having a huge say. Whether there is new product research and development depends largely on supply chain companies rather than the brand itself.

HiTea takes the initiative in its own hands, making demands on suppliers through first-hand consumer feedback from the market, and even building its own supply chain system.

Nie Yunchen once made it clear that Heytea rarely uses samples provided by suppliers, but adheres to the principle of "starting from consumers and reverse customization" in the supply chain.

Nie Yunchen

After receiving over 100 million yuan in Series A financing in 2016, Nie Yunchen announced that Heytea would establish its own tea gardens, supply chain and training school. The Heytea team not only goes deep into the upstream of the supply chain to directly purchase tea gardens, but also invests in customizing and cultivating exclusive tea leaves according to market demand, improving the soil, and improving planting and tea-making processes to ensure product quality and unique taste.

Today, Heytea’s tea suppliers are all over India, Taiwan, Henan, Guangxi and other places, and they are still increasing. The volume of tea has also increased from a small amount at the beginning to an average of dozens of tons per month. One store The tea consumption in one day is 20 times that of an ordinary teahouse. Tea that usually sells for thousands of yuan per catty, Heytea controls the supply chain and finally presents it to customers with a drink priced at about 20 yuan.

In 2017, Heytea launched digital management and launched the ERP system to further standardize the standard operating procedures for logistics center procurement, inventory, and distribution management, open up information flow, rationally purchase and replenish goods, reduce inventory pressure, and realize the supply chain Maximize efficiency.

In 2018, Heytea completed a Series B financing of 400 million yuan, funded by Longzhu Capital, an industrial fund under Meituan-Dianping.

This financing will be used to do two practical things. The first is to launch takeout services, and also launch a self-developed ordering app "Heytea go", which can pre-order orders in advance, shorten consumers' waiting time and improve consumers' shopping experience; the second is to enter overseas markets, starting in November The website has landed in Singapore, and preparations for stores in other overseas markets are also in full swing.

On November 10, Heytea successfully "went overseas" and its first store in Singapore officially opened. In just one week, with an average daily sales of 2,000-3,000 cups, it set off a wave of crazy queues in the Lion City.

When Heytea was just a small store in Jiangmen, Nie Yunchen once encouraged the clerk, "This is the place where a brand is born."

At that time, everyone laughed.

No one expected that five years later, under the entrepreneurial trend of no capital and no future, Heytea would develop and grow by relying on its own profitability without relying on any external funds or loans. After two rounds of icing on the cake, Nie Yunchen not only created a cup of milk tea with a valuation of over RMB 6 billion, stirring up a market worth RMB 100 billion, but also set sail to the sea, kicking off the great era of tea drinking in China.

The Economist magazine called HeyTea the "Starbucks of China".

In this regard, Nie Yunchen modestly stated that Heytea has never wanted to become Starbucks; then, he asked immodestly: Why must it become Starbucks? Maybe it can be better than Starbucks!

Compared to Starbucks, which is spread all over the world and has thousands of stores in China, Heytea seems too young. But Nie Yunchen's vision is not far away.

Euromonitor data shows that based on the current operation of new Chinese tea shops, the total number of leading stores in the industry will reach about 1,000 in the future (about 1/2 of Starbucks), and the average annual sales of a single store The sales volume is expected to reach 12 million yuan (about twice that of Starbucks), and the annual sales revenue is expected to reach more than 12 billion yuan, which is equivalent to the sales volume of Starbucks.

China is the birthplace of tea culture, the only producer and exporter of oolong tea and Pu'er tea in the world, and the largest producer and exporter of green tea in the world. Although the traditional tea beverage industry has long faced the embarrassing situation of "70,000 tea companies losing to one Lipton", now, new tea beverages led by Heytea are ready to take off, with a potential market size of up to 100 billion yuan, and are expected to become the same as Starbucks Nie Yunchen was encouraged by the competition among international brands.

Nie Yunchen

“Based on traditional culture and the heritage of tea, we hope to bring tea to the world, not just in China.” The low-key Nie Yunchen finally did not hide his ambitions.

Compared with the entrepreneurial myths above the clouds, Nie Yunchen is down-to-earth and insists on "putting everything at the core of products and customers". He has made new ideas in traditional businesses and innovated the usual ones. In the traditional Chinese tea drink industry, step by step leading Heytea to become younger and more international.

“Keep growing and conquer everything”, this is Nie Yunchen’s struggle.