Is ice cream or "high"?

Wen | Ningwen

Summer is here. When buying ice cream checkout, many young people feel that they have lost their freedom of ice cream.

Recently, "why the ice cream is selling more and more expensive" once rushed to the hot topic of Weibo. In just two days, it received 340 million reading. On the topic of the topic, the host Sina Finance said the voice of many netizens: "The price of 10 years has increased by three times, and 66 yuan is robbed.

In fact, netizens' feelings are not illusory. "Beijing Youth Daily" visited Beijing 7-11, Rosen, and the whole family, and found that "it is difficult to see 1 yuan ice cream". Most of the ice cream prices are more than ten yuan, even tens of yuan.

Although the trend of consumption upgrade in the past two years is swept by all walks of life, a healthy market requires high, middle and low -end products to distribute. In the past two years, the price of ice cream has risen collectively, which seems to be a good market trend.

New and old brands collectively rush high

When the market has an incremental dividend, it can bring imagination to the company. Different from most industries have entered the stage of stock growth, the ice cream market in the past two years has remained rapidly growing.

According to data from the Foresight Industry Research Institute, in 2018, the size of the Chinese ice cream market was only 124.1 billion yuan. It is expected that in 2021, this number will reach 160 billion yuan, an increase of 28.92%, ranking first in the world.

With the expansion of the market size, Chinese ice cream -related companies have become more and more. Data from Tianyan Check shows that as of June 2022, there are nearly 65,000 ice cream -related companies in China. In the past five years, China has established an average of over 5,000 ice cream -related companies each year, with a growth rate of about 10%.

In this regard, at the Q1 performance meeting in 2022, Unilever Management frankly stated: "We continue to see that Chinese ice cream is performing strong."

According to general industry experience, at the beginning of the establishment of the new brand, most of them will deeply cultivate the low -end price segment market. After the industry stabilizes the foot, it will seek high -end breakouts. But the ice cream industry is not so.

Taking Zhong Xue Gao as an example, it was established in March 2018. Most of its products focus on the price range of 10-20 yuan. When many people think that Zhong Xuegao is just jumping beam clown, this start -up brand has created sales myth.

According to official information, only 16 months after the establishment, Zhong Xuegao's all -channel sales exceeded 100 million. In 2020, Zhong Xue's sales exceeded 48 million. In 2021, Zhong Xuegao's revenue doubled again.

Coincidentally, even cross -border brands have begun to launch high -end ice cream products. At the end of May 2022, Moutai and Mengniu jointly launched three Moutai ice cream. Among them, the price of green plums is 59 yuan/box, and the classic original and vanilla flavors are priced at 66 yuan/box.

Picture source: Moutai

According to official information, Moutai Ice Cream offline flagship stores were sold for 7 hours, and sales exceeded 200,000; the "I Moutai" APP was sold for 51 minutes, with a total of 40,000 sold, with a sales of about 2.5 million yuan.

In fact, not only new brands, but also the "traditional forces" of ice cream have also begun to rise. Taking Yili as an example, in 2015, it launched the high -end product line of milk ice products "Zhelian". Among the five products under the "Zhen Dian", the most expensive products, the price of vanilla ice cream reached 7 yuan.

Picture source: Illi

From the financial report, from 2015 to 2018, the average export price of Yili cold drink products rose 29%. From this point of view, high -end products can indeed bring bright performance.

Through other high -end ice cream brands, we can also see this trend. In 2015, data released by BCG showed that Hagens Das took away 70%of the profit in the industry, of which 50%of them contributed by the Chinese market.

This data not only shows that high -end ice cream can bring higher profits, but also implies a strong demand for high -end ice cream in the Chinese market.

Ice cream has to be "high"

However, it is worth thinking that the market economy pays attention to efficiency, not high -end. Of course, high -end products can bring higher profits, but through large -scale means, thin profits and more, in fact, can also maintain good cash flow.

Take Xiaomi, a well -known "cost -effective" enterprise in the smartphone industry as an example. The financial report shows that in 2021, the gross profit margin of its smartphone business is only 11.9%, and the unit price of smartphone customers is only 1097.5 yuan. However The amount reached 190 million units, so Xiaomi's total revenue of the smartphone business also reached 208.87 billion yuan.

Considering that the ice cream market is still growing, there are certain development opportunities in all price sections. Ice cream manufacturers are doing their best to "all in" high -end. There may be differences in the production, transportation and even sales levels of ice cream and traditional standard products.

First of all, from the perspective of production, because the product needs to refine raw materials such as milk, fresh cream, and involve the cost pressure of cold chains, ice cream materials, logistics and other costs.

According to the data released by the Food Business Network, from 2008 to 2020, the raw materials such as milk and radio cream needed to produce ice cream from 2008 rose by about 80%. In addition, because the whole process needs to "keep fresh", the cold chain transportation cost of ice cream is about 40%to 60%more expensive than traditional freight.

This also means that even if it is not deliberately impacting the high -end, with the precipitation of time, ice cream manufacturers need to increase the price of the product accordingly to cope with high costs.

In 2021, in an interview, for the "Ecuador Pink Diamond" ice cream with a price of up to 66 yuan, the founder of Zhong Xue Gao Lin Sheng explained: "The most expensive ice cream sells for 66 yuan, and the product cost is almost 40 yuan. It is that price. "

If ice cream is a product that is balanced every quarter, then through large -scale shipments, it may also take a thin -selling route and hedge the high cost. But the problem is that the summer attributes of ice cream determine that its shipments have peaks and valleys.

Data released by GlobalDate show that in 2021, although the per capita ice cream consumption in China is higher than that of the Asia Pacific, it is only 2.1kg. In comparison, data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that at present, the per capita egg consumption of Chinese people every year is about 21kg, and the rice is about 110kg.

It can only be a half -year business, which means that manufacturers need to consider the cost and income of the other half year. Naturally, they tend to choose ice cream with higher unit price and more profitable profits.

In addition to the increasing cost of cost and the same steps as Zhong Xue's products, accompanied by economic development and generations of Z to become the main force of consumption, China also scratched the cyclone of consumption upgrades. According to the data released by TalkingDate, in 2021, the consumption scale of the generations of generations reached 4.94 trillion yuan. It is expected that as of 2035, this number will reach 16 trillion yuan. This market foundation is also a major cause of rising ice cream prices.

A survey data released by the China Youth Daily shows that 83.02%of college students who are interviewed will pay for their joy and satisfaction.

For the preferences of generations, many brands have created "cultural and creative ice cream". For example, in 2020, Yili launched the "NOC must be happy" high -end ice cream brand. The main group fan shape; Based on the "new Chinese" cultural concept, Zhong Xuegao created ice cream based on Chinese tile design. According to data from the Foresight Industry Research Institute, as of the end of 2021, there were as many as 16 scenic spots that launched cultural and creative ice cream, and the price of these ice cream was mostly between 10 yuan and 30 yuan.

Picture source: Zhong Xuegao

In fact, we can see similar trends in the beverage market. In April 2022, the "Gen Zen Drink Consumption Survey Report" released by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission showed that when buying beverages, 41%of the Shanghai Z generation will choose "0 sugar" beverages, and more than half of the Chinese products brand.

This also directly spawned a new consumer brand represented by the vitality forest. It is understood that the vitality forest was established in 2016, and the main product is the soda. According to official information, in 2021, the vitality forest revenue was about 7.02 billion yuan, a year -on -year increase of 2.6 times.

"Special return" with the new tea drink?

Although from the perspective of market trends and supply chain, a few ice cream brands have sufficient reasons to impact the high -end market, but this does not mean that the ice cream market that is now in price increase is absolutely reasonable.

In the past two years, due to the repeated turbulence and geopolitical conflicts of the epidemic, the economic situation in the world has faced a severe test. One of the great impacts of this is that consumers are becoming more rational when consumption.

The "China Investigation Report" released by Fidelity International shows that the younger generation of the 18-34-year-old China pays more attention to pension reserves. The savings ratio in 2021 is 25%, a new high since 2018.

Consumers have tightly tightened their wallets and have splashed a pot of cold water for the new tea competition that was in full swing.

Take Naixue's tea as an example. Before the epidemic, it ranked ten major brands of Chinese tea and completed hundreds of millions of A+round of financing, with a valuation of 6 billion yuan. Although Naixue's tea was successfully listed in the mid -2021, whether from the financial report or from the performance of the capital market, Nai Xue's tea was not optimistic.

The financial report shows that in 2021, Naixue's tea loss was 145 million yuan. The stock price fell from about HK $ 6.12/share at the time of listing to about 65%of Hong Kong dollars per share today. It is also because of this that the hi tea, which has the intention of impacting the IPO, not only actively cut the price in 2022, bid farewell to the "30 yuan" price section, and even launched a drink for the unit price of only single digits.

Picture source: Baidu

Faced with the trend of the ice cream market that increased prices, many netizens not only spit on the Internet, but also voted with their feet. Two years ago, the high -quality Northeast board went south, sweeping cities such as Hangzhou and Jinan. In this regard, Zhai Weil, the ice cream business and brand development manager of Nestlé Greater China, said: "People without money will still choose cheap things."

Coincidentally, the Zhiyan Consulting data shows that in 2021, the offline market in China's ice cream, the market share of local low -end ice companies Tianbing was 3%, ranking among the top ten. In comparison, in 2018, Tianbing also ranked Top 10.

In the final analysis, a healthy market really requires high -end products, but does not require all brands to make high -end, so that there are almost no mid -to -low -end products in the industry to choose from.

At present, the problem facing the ice cream industry is that players in the industry have seen the restrictions of the supply chain and the market trend, and they hope to split a share in the high -end ice cream market, which relative to consumers' demand for low -end products.

But the problem is that even if the market size of the ice cream industry grows, it is difficult for Chinese people to eat ice cream like eating rice. Therefore, players in the ice cream industry should still see the gap in the low -end market to try their best to meet the needs of most consumers.

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