The global consumer market and the main consumer groups are changing, and an era of exploding consumer brands is coming. In recent years, new tea drinks represented by "Hey Tea" and sugar-free tea drinks represented by "Vitality Forest" have become a new trend in the consumer market and capital market. In addition, many teabag brands are gradually emerging in recent years.
Teabags: local forces continue to rise
Tea bag is a kind of tea product in which tea leaves are packed in bags made of permeable materials and brewed in a cup. According to different tea properties, teabags can be divided into original leaves, broken leaves and granules; according to different packaging, teabags generally come in four-corner bags, hanging-string four-corner bags, triangle bags, M bags, double pouches and single pouches.
At present, the domestic tea bag consumer market is mainly divided into two types: one is the online domestic brands with Taobao as the core, such as Chali, Baishuo, Tashanji tea, Chaxiaohu (small pot tea brand), etc. , New-style teas, including Naxue’s tea, Yinwei tea, and boiled leaves, have established their own brand of original leaf tea; the other is international teabag brands, such as Lipton, Twinings, Singapore TWG, etc. tea. In general, international brands are predominant and local brands come from behind.
The emergence of tea bags has made tea a fast-moving product, which has changed consumers' inherent perception of traditional tea, from producing area + variety to brand + product, providing the possibility for companies to build their own brands. Secondly, in terms of nutritional components, properties, taste, etc., tea products are also different from traditional tea drinking scenes, and have broader adaptability. However, the current consumer market's understanding of tea is mostly based on the traditional "Kung Fu tea" ideology, and new consumer groups need to use new methods and new ideas to break the previous single perception of tea.
The tea derivatives market is hot, and the traditional tea market has also broken through. According to the statistics of China Tea Circulation Association, since 2012, my country's total tea consumption and total per capita consumption have continued to rise. In 2019, the domestic tea market sales reached 273.950 billion yuan. In recent years, teabags, which are marginal products in the Chinese tea market, have gradually expanded in scale. According to iiMedia’s data, the online teabag market in my country was 5.03 billion yuan in 2019, accounting for 21.4% of the online 23.5 billion tea market. In light of changes in diversified consumption scenarios and consumer demand, it is expected that it will exceed 10 billion yuan in 2020, reaching 12.87 billion yuan, with huge market potential.
New demand, nurturing new consumer market
Unilever's 2019 annual report shows that the tea business includes well-known brands such as Lipton and Tazo, and its annual sales are about 3.3 billion U.S. dollars, because the scale of revenue in 2019 has almost no growth compared with 2012. Consider selling the relevant sections of the tea business, which means that Lipton, the benchmark teabag brand in the past, may be sold. The occurrence of this incident does not mean that the market share of tea consumption has decreased. Teabag is an important part of the world's tea consumption. In terms of the proportion of teabag consumption in total tea consumption, the world average is 23.5%. The consumption of teabags in developed countries in Europe and the United States is significantly higher than the world average, with 80% in Europe and 90% in the United States and the United Kingdom. In contrast, China is a large tea producer, accounting for more than 50% of global production, but the consumption level of teabags is only 5%.
Perhaps, the reason why teabags are mainly imported products such as "Lipton" has led many consumers to believe that the "broken tea" in teabags represents ordinary tea, which is far from "Chinese famous tea". At the same time, the common tea bags in the early stages of the development of domestic tea bags are indeed used to crush low-grade tea and leftovers into small pieces and put them into tea bags. However, in foreign countries, the development of tea shredding technology is quite complete, and equipped with a complete quality evaluation system, high-quality tea can also be made into broken tea. Think about it carefully, tea bags are just a way of packaging tea. In China, except for a few special strips of tea, it can be made into tea bags. However, in recent years, in order to more intuitively show that they are using high-quality raw materials, putting whole leaves into tea bags has become a trend.
The changes in consumer groups mean that brands have to capture the preferences and needs of the new generation of young people. From the perspective of the development of Japanese beverages, the consumption concept of carbonated beverages, juice beverages, tea beverages and water beverages has been roughly experienced. Corresponding to the current Chinese market, "healthy drinks" are the general trend.
Many young consumers have not started drinking tea. First, there is no suitable product. Second, their knowledge of tea is still at the stage of only knowing black tea and green tea. As an oriental healthy drink, tea is more likely to nurture a new consumer market and open a healthy and high-quality lifestyle, whether from a health perspective or a variety of flavors.
Diversification, seeking the future in innovation
As consumers pay more attention to dietary health and food functionality, herbal teas and fruit teas have received widespread attention in recent years. For example, ginger, turmeric and other ingredients began to be used in herbal teas, doubling the performance of many brands.
People say that China is the hometown of tea and has a rich cultural heritage, but it is more or less full of ages. Whether it is the product form or the drinking scene, many young people stay away. But teabags are different. Its inherent convenience and speed have a natural connection with the youthful vitality of young people. On the basis of ensuring product quality, the diverse tastes and fashionable and exquisite packaging are more in line with young people’s attitudes in this era. The pursuit of beauty and taste has also injected new vitality into the teabag market. For example, a series of beverages that meet the taste of young people such as flowers + tea, fruit + tea, dairy products + tea, etc., while enriching the product line, it also broadens the larger consumer market.
In addition to the common tea bags, ear-hanging tea bags, bag stick tea and other products have also appeared in recent years. Taking advantage of the great heat of hanging ear coffee, hanging ear tea bags are also faintly emerging. Many hanging ear tea bags "advertise" that they use raw leaf tea, but the original leaf itself is not as fast as the broken leaves, and the tea leaves are difficult to stretch in the hanging ear bag, which restricts the extraction speed of tea juice. Bag stick tea is to put tea leaves (broken tea) into a tin rod with multiple filter holes. It can not only filter the tea bag, but also be used as a stirring rod to precipitate tea materials while stirring, but it is relatively small, and there is no Popularize.