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Text | Xi Rui
Niche milk brands are gaining popularity among young people.
On Xiaohongshu, there have been more than 30,000 notes about “Xinjiang Milk”. Half a year ago, the number was still 20,000.
Xiyuchun, Tianrun, Huayuan, Nanda, young people are familiar with these Xinjiang milk brands. Some evaluation bloggers can even taste the front, middle and back notes of Xinjiang milk. “The top note of Western Spring is sweet and fragrant, the middle note of golden and green milk is mellow, and the back note of Maiquer is fragrant.” A few years ago, these brands Almost never left Xinjiang.
Drinking milk starts with adopting a cow, pre-ordering the amount of milk from it for a year in advance, watching the exclusive cow live happily, and sending the milk output to the mouth healthily. Adopting a cow also attracts the attention of young people with the new brand story.
Young people who are tired of “choose between Mengniu and Yili” think they have finally found their own milk. However, the high-end pastures, high-quality milk sources and high-quality protein in front of us may all be just the foam blown by the brand. The milk that is drunk in the mouth may come from a foundry, and there may even be food safety issues.
Internet celebrity milk may be just a marketing routine, and more barriers are needed to go far in the future.
Young people prefer “niche brands”
With the love of young people, these Xinjiang brands have forcibly opened a gap in the dairy product market dominated by Mengniu and Yili.
In the sales ranking of Double 11 in 2021, the sales volume of Mai Qier once surpassed Yili’s Jindian, and was close to Mengniu’s Telunsu. In 2021, the largest listed dairy company in Xinjiang, Tianrun Dairy, saw its sales increase by 22.7% year-on-year, while Yili, the industry leader, only increased by 6.8%.
This year, the popularity of Xinjiang milk is still unabated. According to the pre-sale data of Tmall 618 provided by the digital retail data service provider Mojing Market Intelligence, during the period from 20:00 on May 26 to 23:59 on May 31, the top 10 list of pre-sale brands of milk and dairy products is still in the top 10 list. Xinjiang brand appeared. Macquarie topped the room temperature dairy category, beating Mengniu and Yili. Among low-temperature dairy products, Tianrun also appeared in Top3.
Not only Xinjiang milk, but also buffalo milk from Guangxi has become a popular type of milk among young people. In Xiaohongshu, the number of notes about buffalo milk also exceeded 30,000. In this year’s 618’s top 10 pre-sale list of milk and dairy product brands, buffalo milk brand Parfie also ranked fourth, second only to Mengniu.
Social platforms plant grass and e-commerce platforms pull weeds. Dairy companies in these places, relying on the preference of young people, are touted as “Internet celebrity milk”. Interestingly, those who evaluate local milk and recommend niche brands are all non-locals. It is not the “Amway Hometown Food” that is common in the past, but the public is tired of choosing between Mengniu and Yilili, and spontaneously looks for new milk brands.
“Previous pure milk tasted like water, and it tasted less and less milky,” Chen Yin complained to Tech Planet after 1995. Milk has become her immediate need. On the basis of nutritional supplements, the pursuit of taste is the key to her consumption decisions.
With the mentality of being curious and early adopters, young people like Chen Yin have a better impression of niche products with regional and flavor differences. This has created opportunities for local dairy companies to get out of the circle.
The adoption of a cow born out of the Internet has captured young people’s more advanced demand for milk. From the beginning of its establishment, it has carried the characteristics of “net red” and captured the hearts of young people in a shorter time.
Adopt a cow The “Adoption” mechanism is launched, and consumers can regularly receive growth photos of the cow, health reports, and even decide the name of the cow to adopt. Although the dairy companies in various places have only come out of the circle in recent years, they have been precipitation in the local area for decades. Adopt a cow is a new brand that has only been established for 6 years.
On Double 11 in 2019, the sales volume of adopting a cow in the first 6 minutes exceeded the whole day of Double 11 in 2018. In this year’s 618’s top 10 list of pre-sale milk and dairy products brands, adopting a steak ranks second. In 2021, the operating income of adopting a cow will reach 2.57 billion yuan.
Although the revenue of the top brand is incomparable, it took only 6 years to adopt a cow to complete the achievement of 2.57 billion yuan. And, adopting a cow has already started to go on the market.
High price and quality do not match?
In the Taobao flagship store, the preferential price of adopting a cow’s ordinary pure milk is 3.54 yuan \ 250ml, and the preferential price of high-end Jersey pure milk is 6.9 yuan \ 250ml. The general price of Mai Qier is 3.35 yuan \ 200ml. The unit price of Baifei cheese buffalo milk is as high as 4.4-5 yuan/250ml. The price of ordinary pure milk from Mengniu and Yili is basically stable at 2.5-2.8 yuan/250ml.
But the reason consumers embrace the high premium is that these niche brands claim to be better-quality products.
Xinjiang is generally considered to have more high-quality milk sources because of its high-quality dairy cattle breeding belt. Brands such as Mai Quer also use “quality” as a promotion point in the live broadcast rooms of top anchors such as Li Jiaqi, and “Xiang Nong” is the proof of the high quality of his milk source.
There is no natural geographical advantage to adopting a cow, but they raise the cows to be “higher”. Listening to music, doing SPA, and enjoying medicinal baths are the daily life of adopting a cow of 60,000 Australian Holstein cows. It even claimed that the average daily food cost of dairy cows has exceeded 80 yuan. “If the cows are raised well, the milk will be good” has also become their slogan.
“The daily cost of food for dairy cows is higher than mine,” a consumer joked. “The cows are so happy and the milk they produce should be better, so I’ll upgrade my consumption indirectly.”
But Chen Yin told Tech Planet that she found that Bright Dairy appeared in the place where she adopted a cow. “I’m used to looking at the ingredient list and the manufacturer, and I didn’t realize that there was light in the manufacturer who adopted a cow. This is different from what they advertised, and I felt that they were nothing special.”
In fact, according to the prospectus, Bright Dairy will be the largest supplier of adopting a cow in 2020 and 2021. In 2021, the proportion of Bright Dairy’s purchase scale will reach 11.48%. Not only Bright Dairy, but Junlebao is also its supplier. They all provide raw milk, feed, and outsourced processing to an adopted cow.
Before the farm that adopted a cow is officially produced, what consumers drink is only the bright pure milk that has changed the packaging. And the “high-end life” of own cows who adopt a cow also requires a question mark.
In addition to corn and soybean meal dairy cattle feed, the prospectus does not disclose other “food” for dairy cows. In 2021, the company’s total feed procurement will be about 200 million yuan. According to a rough estimate of the number of 60,000 cows, the daily food cost of each cow is about 9 yuan. Even adding about 100 million yuan of production accessories, the daily catering cost per cow is about 13.7 yuan.
Consumers think that the cows live a fairy-like life, but in fact they repeatedly eat feed with a unit price of no more than 4 yuan every day. But consumers are still pulling out their wallets for what the cows call healthy growth.
In fact, Macquarie, which emphasizes pasture resources, is not as self-sufficient as the brand advertises.
As early as 2002, Macquarie entered the dairy industry, but it was not until half a year ago that Macquarie built its own ranch. McQuier once said frankly at the performance briefing that the company’s dairy farming is still in its infancy, and the milk self-sufficiency rate is still relatively low. According to McQuier’s financial report, in 2021, the amount of raw milk directly purchased by it will reach 416.6 million yuan. The purchase of raw materials from cooperatives or farmers accounts for more than 30% of the total purchase amount, and accounts for 67% of the operating cost of the entire dairy product.
For niche brands, it is understandable to source milk from outside. But whether it’s Macquarie or adopting a cow, they all regard quality as the distinguishing feature of their products in exchange for consumers. The fact is that the proportion of external milk sources is so large that they may not be able to control the quality of milk sources.
Not long ago, it was revealed that the content of propylene glycol in milk exceeded the standard. Excessive intake will burden the liver and kidneys, thereby increasing the risk of disease.
The propylene glycol incident of Mai Qier this time may be due to the lack of control over the milk source. It may also be deliberately done to create the so-called mellow taste. A food and health professional said, “The taste of milk produced by captive dairy cows is different from that produced by cows grazing on grasslands. The purpose of adding propylene glycol is to make the milk taste more fragrant. It’s absolutely not allowed in the milk category.”
How far can a marketing-heavy influencer brand go?
In fact, being able to become an Internet celebrity in the eyes of young people is not only driven by consumers’ own needs, but also due to the heavy marketing of niche brands.
From 2019 to 2021, adopting a cow will cost a total of about 1 billion yuan in sales expenses. Among them, marketing and promotion expenses will increase from 71.13 million yuan in 2019 to 414 million yuan in 2021, and the proportion will increase from 36.63% to 85.73%.
In addition, the sales expense ratio of adopting a cow is higher than the average value of A-share listed dairy companies, and compared with brands with similar income scales such as Huangshi Group and Tianrun Dairy, the sales expense ratio of adopting a cow is two or three times that of them. times.
But in stark contrast, from 2019 to 2021, the research and development cost of adopting a cow increased from 0 yuan to 6.87 million yuan.
Adopting a cow uses huge marketing expenses to convey its brand story of “adopting model” and “high-quality pasture”. But from the actual practice of adopting a cow, “adopting” is just a marketing gimmick.
Through digital traceability, data monitoring and other technologies, under the premise of perfect production industrialization, the model of consumers adopting dairy cows can indeed be realized. Behind the so-called adoption is actually to make the milk production process transparent to ensure quality and safety.
But the “cloud adoption” activity that the vast majority of consumers are currently participating in is just a game.
In the “cloud adoption” game, consumers can exchange the gold coins obtained in the ranch farming game for canvas bags, mugs and other brand peripherals or product discount coupons. For brands, this is more like a means to increase user stickiness, but it is far from adoption.
According to media reports, the adoption of a cow once invited KOLs, such as Dad Wei, Wang Han, Du Haitao, Luo Yonghao, etc. to carry out “real-name adoption”. But this is only a fairly invitation to invite KOLs to promote the brand concept, and it is actually difficult for ordinary consumers to access “real-name adoption”.
From the data point of view, the adoption model is not realistic. According to the data reported by Sohu Finance, the number of members who adopt a cow is 8 million, the number of paying users is 11 million, and the number of its own dairy cows is 60,000. This is equivalent to hundreds of people jointly adopting a cow.
But marketing is still the focus of adopting a cow for the future. According to the prospectus, the IPO of adopting a cow plans to raise about 1.851 billion yuan. Among them, 520 million yuan is used for “brand building and marketing promotion projects”, accounting for about 30%.
Heavy marketing seems to be the fate of Internet native brands, but how far can Internet celebrity brands rely on marketing?
Before the food safety problem, McQuier actually relied on online channels to “return from the dead”. In 2021, Maiqer achieved revenue of 1.15 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.9%, of which dairy products revenue was 730 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 57.8%.
Adopting a cow starts online from the very beginning. According to the prospectus, from 2019 to 2021, its online sales revenue will be 528 million yuan, 1.246 billion yuan and 1.951 billion yuan respectively, accounting for 62.30%, 77.50% and 77.67% of the sales channels, respectively.
For the layout of offline channels, the adoption of a cow is dominated by new retail channels such as Yonghui and Hema. The entry of large supermarkets and mom-and-pop stores is still very limited.
But online channels seem to be the focus of adopting a cow in the future. “The company will continue to expand online channels, maintain cooperation with mainstream e-commerce platforms, and follow the development trend of the mobile Internet and actively cooperate with emerging online formats,” said adopting a cow.
The sales growth of niche brands is inseparable from the dividends of the channel. Online channels such as live e-commerce and social e-commerce allow niche brands to avoid direct competition with top brands such as Mengniu and Yili.
With the quality problems of Mai Quer, the public’s enthusiasm for Internet celebrity milk has entered a cooling-off period. When the online bonus is exhausted, new brands and local enterprises still have to go back to offline and compete head-on with traditional big brands. At that time, it is the real test of the brand from quality to channel, and marketing alone may not go far.
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