Founder of Xicha: I have opened many failed stores. No one can succeed by marketing alone.

Founder of Xicha: I have opened many failed stores. No one can succeed only by marketing

In the future, we hope to make the brand potential of Xicha even higher. I think what domestic brands lack most is potential energy. Many brands die not in the speed of expansion, but in the final lack of potential energy.

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This southern teenager is floating and sinking in the tide of public opinion.

before I met him, I had heard at least three friends recommend his products. In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, his shop has become a local phenomenon and a popular culture. Many people often queue up for more than an hour to drink a cup of tea in his shop. On the day we met him, we met a catering media person and investor, who waited at the appointed place two hours in advance and said that he would like to? Xiao Nie? study And? Xiao Nie? I also found that some big coffees that he paid attention to and admired in Weibo before suddenly began to comment on the brand he founded?

On the other hand, every day, some accusations and criticisms pop up on his mobile phone screen. They said, hi tea tastes bad, hi tea hires people to line up, hi tea will soon encounter problems, and hi tea won't last long.

Standing in the center of the storm, this young man keeps proud and calm, but he can also make people feel his pressure and tension. After taking a photo with us, he realized that his expression was too serious just now. We took another photo, and he smiled hard and restrained. When we were sent out, he regained a slightly serious expression.

He didn't want to respond to some voices on the Internet, but he talked to us about his ideas, blueprints and past. In the mind of this young man who believes in Jobs, is it at all to respond to the question? Not funny, not cool? . He believes that time is on his side, and like Jobs, his products, aesthetics and ideas will gradually silence those who doubt him.

when he started his business, he sold mobile phones. One day, he found that he couldn't go on walking, and many street tea shops didn't have any tea, just used some milk powder and added some more? What the hell? Rush against it, and customers will be full. He feels that he can make different, better and more popular teas, which may change the industry.

unwilling to follow suit, let him set off. Tea-loving is now on fire, and he thinks it is a natural reward for his efforts, which is not unexpected. And how far can he go? Nobody knows.

anyway, he has plenty of time. The world is still an orchard waiting for me to mature gently. (Xi Murong)?

His name is Nie Yunchen. Like tea? Founder, 26 years old.

Some time ago, a public article said that the research and development power of tea is mainly in Taiwan Province, and hi-tea is the formula that Master Taiwan Province helped to adjust. This statement reflects a sense of cultural inferiority. There is indeed much to learn from the tea industry in Taiwan Province. We have also cooperated with some Taiwan Province manufacturers and R&D assistants from Taiwan Province. They are all excellent, but this does not mean that our products must depend on these.

Hi-tea is our own research, including the blending of tea, including going to tea workers and communicating with tea farmers to transform their production technology. These are all our own efforts to explore and develop, without Taiwan Province's master behind us.

This is like the law of 1, hours. You have no direction at the beginning, and you are a layman. I decided to make this tea before I went to study it. Anything that takes time and effort to study will always have a direction. Otherwise, human society will not progress, and we can only rely on inheritance without innovation.

the core of hi-tea is the product. Consumers are actually not that complicated. Young consumers mainly like our products.

all along, especially in strange places, it is completely out of the question that we find people to queue up. This is a fact, not the kind of question that can be discussed. We have never found anyone to queue up since we started our business five years ago, and I don't think this can be operated. If you just need to find a company and find some people to line up to achieve a brand, it is too simple, everyone can do it, and the business of each store can be very good. This statement actually turns business into a standardized thing.

and the so-called sex? Hunger marketing? It's not true. Up to now, our company doesn't even have a marketing department, only a planning department, which is responsible for WeChat official account's articles. Our WeChat official account is not marketable, and I have my own judgment on this. If you pay attention to our WeChat official account, you can find that the whole style of the article, including the size of the text and the layout of the article, is not easy to detonate, not easy to spread and not inflammatory. We never use exclamation marks, never use headlines, and never add preferential activities to articles. It is deliberately marketed. Including decoration, our decoration is a very cold style.

because our products are explosive, it is easy for people to queue up, so I hope that all links outside the products, whether online or offline, are a kind of indifference, and we will not deliberately engage in some so-called selfie spots. We hope that our overall style is balanced, combine with our products and use our products as marketing to make money.

our product is innovative, which has never existed before in this industry. Before us, there was only a milk cover factory. Let's not talk about the taste of the milk cover. First of all, it didn't add cheese. And the taste is one thing, it is all made of powder, that is, milk cover powder. And our cheese (tea series) is the first one on the market that can be made without powder, which is also the starting point of our research and development.

although this powder is legal, I don't want to use it. Why do people eat powder in their stomachs? Many merchants in the milk tea industry like to add creamer with powder, including milk cover powder, fruit powder and all kinds of messy powder. This thing is not good. As a consumer, I don't want to eat it.

we don't need powder. This is our real starting point. As for its good taste and elegance, it is the icing on the cake when it goes with tea. So this cheese itself is our initiative, and it originated from our place, not from abroad. Its marketing nature is also really strong, not to mention that everyone likes it, at least some young consumers really like our product and catch up with it to the point of madness.

when we enter a strange place, we rely on this word-of-mouth communication, and we will use this word-of-mouth communication.

for example, when I was in Jiangmen, we jumped directly to Zhongshan City to open a shop. At first, there was no business, no business at all. Later, we re-planned and chose a Xiaolan town in Zhongshan. First, the people in Xiaolan town have strong consumption power and are very rich in Zhongshan. Second, Xiaolan Town is next to Jiangmen, and a small number of Xiaolan people have already drunk our tea. There is a migration here. As I said just now, a small number of people who have drunk our tea are loyal fans, and they will publicize it with their friends crazily, just like the water army, which is self-funded, so the whole Xiaolan exploded. After Xiaolan exploded, these Xiaolan people had relatives, friends and classmates in Zhongshan City, so our shop in Zhongshan City, which had been open for two years and had been in poor business, suddenly became better.

Word of mouth spreads and migrates in this way. From Xiaolan, we expanded to Shunde, because Shunde is next to Xiaolan, and it only takes ten minutes to drive, then from Shunde to Foshan, and from Foshan to Guangzhou, which is a step-by-step development and expansion. After we arrive in Shenzhen, we plan to go to Shanghai, because many Shanghainese will come to Shenzhen and have our tea in Shenzhen. If you cross Shenzhen and go directly to Shanghai, it will definitely not work. Many people wonder why this newly opened store can queue up at the beginning, thinking that it must be fake and hired. This is because he is not from there, not the part of people who have come into contact with us, and he doesn't know the logic behind it.

Our customer orientation is a white-collar worker aged 2 to 3, especially a young white-collar worker aged 2 to 25. Many people who comment on the Internet don't belong to this group, and they have to wait in line for a few hours to try, and they will definitely be dissatisfied. He can't understand the hobbies and mentality of young consumers.

I basically didn't respond to those who smeared or abused us. Maybe it's the age. I don't have such a strong psychological quality. Every day I read those articles that are black on us, I will be so angry that I can't sleep at night. But angry is angry, and the response is not cool. As a young entrepreneur, I am not as complicated as they think.

I have my own standards. I think people should be cooler. Like Jobs, I think he lives a cool life. Some people like him because he is successful, and I like him because he is really cool. What we are doing is actually very small, and it is not so meaningful compared with Apple. But I hope that even if I do such an industry, I can feel like Apple. At least in our hearts, we have always followed this example.

I want to be the first to like tea, not the second to Starbucks.

I made all the advertisements in the tea shop myself. We can't find a designer. Entrepreneurship is forced out. We are in Jiangmen, where there are designers. So is site selection. Up to now, although we have the whole development department, we have hired people from McDonald's, but we still do development and extension according to the site selection law I summarized at the beginning. I still control the design myself until now, such as the menu in the store, which I made by computer myself.

We have summed up a whole set of ideas, which are cool, inspiring and sincere in the domestic environment, and should be considered mature. We hope it is a completely different style from Starbucks. I don't think many people are qualified to judge us. Our enterprise has absolutely no shanzhai in this respect, and we hope to go our own way. From a modest point of view, we have never publicly mentioned Starbucks, and we are going to fight Starbucks.

Starbucks is a mature enterprise with a lot to learn. We can't be arrogant and say that we are now? Starbucks in China? . However, from an arrogant point of view, why should we make Starbucks? Maybe we can do better than Starbucks.

Many people like to say that China's economy is developing, and China will definitely develop its own brand. But why should the brands produced in China be one level lower than the American brands? Why does it have to be what's in the United States and what's next in China? We don't want to be the second Starbucks. We will talk about it internally.

there is modesty and arrogance here. Why follow the Starbucks style? Starbucks is an industrial style, and it is the kind of culture of coffee. Maybe we can explore a younger style of tea. It should have a Zen spirit and an inspiring feeling in it. It is modernism, and its expression doesn't need to be Chinese. It's like Japanese design, which is generally very modernist. Unlike China, it must have some so-called China elements. It is very Japanese, but it will not be expressed by so-called Japanese elements.

We have a problem in China, that is, we like to use elements instead of souls. For example, when it comes to Chinese style, we must do something red, a Tang suit and a substitution. These are just elements, and the essence is not here.

My earliest idea was to give tea a functional label. As we all know, coffee can refresh people. Besides being delicious, it has a refreshing function. What is the function of tea? I've been thinking about this problem. If it is refreshing, it is definitely not as good as coffee.

Later, I felt that returning to ancient times, those poets actually used tea and wine as an important tool to inspire their poetry writing. In China's ancient poems, tea and wine were two important images. So we hope to extract a concept of inspiration, which can also return to what we have been instilling in consumers in our early superficial days, that is, we are original, we are the pioneers of cheese and tea, and others are copying. This kind of indoctrination, later I feel very ineffective, what consumers need is * * * sound, especially young consumers. Now what we convey is the concept of inspiring and creating inspiration. Hi-tea is a product of inspiration and an original product.

that's how we groped for it, and then we extended it more. Inspiration itself is also a cool thing, which can be combined with other ideas. These are all long-term explorations, not to make a few slogans. If I simply make a slogan, such as? The originator of cheese-loving tea? Better tea, make tea with your heart? These are actually very superficial. We hope that we can refine something that is more cultural, vocal and eternal, rather than just spreading.

Xicha has 5 stores now, and plans to open 5 more this year. In terms of turnover, we have no special plan. In fact, our turnover is very high, and our single store can achieve up to 3 million a month.

Our store makes drinks and processes purchases very quickly, much faster than Starbucks. If the speed is not fast enough, you can't do such a high turnover. In fact, queuing is of little help to the turnover. Even if this store doesn't queue up, as long as people keep buying it, it will end up with the same turnover as it has been queuing.

Our highest single-store turnover is in a store in Guangzhou, which can make 1, pieces of running water a day, equivalent to 5, cups of hi-tea. Making 5 cups a day is definitely the first in the industry. No one can do it, nor can Starbucks. In fact, there are very few stores that make 1 million a month now, and most of them are two or three million.

We also started to upgrade our space very early, unlike some articles. We started to open a big store in 213, and we haven't opened a small store since 214. All our stores are 1 to 2 square meters, and the standard stores are more than 1 square meters. The largest store in Guangzhou, with three floors and more than 2, square meters, is a flagship store. The third floor is an art space for some photography exhibitions, including the sale of new books by local writers. It has been integrated into local life, which is a very meaningful thing.

Starting from selling mobile phones

When I sold smart phones, I was also influenced by Jobs. It was 21, when I was 19 years old. At that time, smart phones were just emerging, and many people couldn't use them. Android machines had to be refreshed, and ordinary machines were jailbroken. Those who make smart phones charge a lot of money for this, and 2 yuan for jailbreaking. In fact, this thing has no cost.

At that time, as a novice, I was not very good at site selection. When the new store was about to open, I was very worried. The location of that place was very remote, and I felt that there would be no business after opening. Later, I decided that our store, whether it's jailbreaking, computer brushing or installing software, is all free, and not only in our store.