As a modern fast food drink, milk tea, Heytea’s most popular time should be in 2017. Topics such as “long queues in front of the store”, “scalper purchasing”, “new store opening” and “new product launch” are constantly on the rise. Hot search.

After being popular, it is natural to be indifferent. Heytea later also fell into public opinion and was publicly criticized on the Internet, but in the end it was gradually forgotten over time.

How does this young man born in the 1990s stand out among the many milk tea brands?

Nie Yunchen was born in Jiangxi in 1991. Later, his parents were transferred to Guangdong to live. Although he was not good at studies, his character was very gentle. His parents were open-minded and never forced him to excel academically.

As a result, Nie Yunchen's young life was relatively free. After the college entrance examination, because his grades were not satisfactory, he went to Guangdong Science and Technology Vocational College to study at a junior college.

Most people are in a state of relative confusion in their teens, and Nie Yunchen is no exception. When choosing his major, he was melancholy for a long time and didn't know what he wanted to do in the future. Finally, after communicating with his parents, he chose majored in administration.

The knowledge learned in the past three years is not very useful. It is like a ball of muddy water mixed with flour swirling in my mind. I can barely understand some business basics, but I can't grasp the essentials.

After graduation, he followed the army of fresh graduates and wandered around the society for a while, but he could never find a satisfactory and suitable job. When he was confused and at a loss, he considered starting a business.

At that time, smartphones had just started. Nie Yunchen realized that smartphones would be the main electronic product in the future, so he opened a mobile phone store. He not only sells the latest smartphones but also helps people repair their mobile phones.

It’s just that there are many store locations and it’s not well-known, so the business has always been mediocre. In the end, the money earned in a month was barely enough to cover the store expenses.

With the meager business knowledge in his mind, Nie Yunchen tried to flash people's phones or install software for free to increase the flow of people in the store.

This method did attract him a lot of customers, but they were all for free business, and his store's revenue still didn't change much.

Later, he bought some mobile phone cases, earphones and other small commodities in the mobile phone store. The prices were not expensive. Customers came in to repair their mobile phones and would buy them after seeing them when they had nothing to do.

Slowly, the store’s business got back on track. As the number of mobile phone repairs increases, Nie Yunchen's skills become more and more sophisticated, and many repeat customers will bring him new customers.

However, with the development of the Internet, online shopping became a trend, attracting a large number of consumer customers and seriously affecting the operation of offline stores.

Nie Yunchen's small shop has also been affected. Customers are becoming increasingly rare and it is about to close. He began to consider changing careers, but there were so many industries that it was difficult to choose.

The young man in his early twenties thought about it for a long time and decided to go out for an inspection.

He walked out of his remote alley, crossed the streets, and came to the busiest commercial center. The streets were bustling with people and passers-by were in a hurry. He stood there and thought for a moment, raising his head. Feet walking from the street to the end of the street.

Nie Yunchen looked from door to door. Clothing stores, snack bars, jewelry stores, beauty shops, beverage shops...these businesses had mixed business, and it was impossible to judge what was most suitable.

However, he accidentally observed that in addition to the purchased goods, many young people also held a drink in their hands, chatting with their companions while walking and taking a few sips.

So he intentionally or unintentionally turned his attention to milk tea shops and thought about the feasibility of transforming the beverage industry. First of all, online shopping has not had a great impact on the beverage industry, and the customer base group is relatively stable.

Secondly, beverage stores generally have small storefronts, and the initial investment is not too much, so the risks are relatively small. The only thing that takes a lot of trouble is the location of the store. It must not be opened in a place with little traffic like a mobile phone store.

After determining the direction, Nie Yunchen closed his mobile phone store and invested the 200,000 yuan he saved in the two years of starting his business into the milk tea industry.

He found that the milk tea on the market today is mostly blended with powder and has a sweet taste. Although the profit is huge, the product has no characteristics and it is difficult to stay in the market for a long time.

There are also Hong Kong-style milk teas with a strong taste. Although the taste has been improved, the types are relatively single and there is no innovation. It is difficult to satisfy the pursuit of young people.

He wants to make milk tea that is unique and popular among all ages, so he needs to change the raw materials, use fresh milk, brew with good tea, and make milk tea in the true sense.

On May 12, 2012, Nie Yunchen opened his first milk tea shop, ROYALTEA, on Jiuzhong Street, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province.

Before opening the store, he spent several months studying the ratio of milk tea seasonings. He drank no less than 20 cups of milk tea every day and recorded the taste of different proportions.

On the opening day, the uniqueness of the milk tea and the promotion of half-price for the second cup resulted in pretty good sales. However, after the promotion, the store's business declined rapidly. At its worst, only three cups were sold a day.

The location of the store has been carefully considered. Although the interior decoration is ordinary, it will not affect the customer flow. The milk tea flavor has been introduced after thousands of trials. Nie Yunchen can't figure out what went wrong.

He logged into social platforms and searched for his own brand, hoping to see other people’s reviews of Imperial Tea online. He paid special attention to negative reviews, obtained useful information from them, and made adjustments based on other people’s opinions.

With limited suggestions, he conducted research online to collect young people’s views and preferences on milk tea.

In order to enrich the taste of milk tea and reduce the simple sweetness, Nie Yunchen added fruity and salty cheese to the drink, which not only changed the appearance of the milk tea, but also made the taste more flavorful.

After the launch of the new cheese milk tea, it immediately received extraordinary attention. Although the price is slightly more expensive than ordinary milk tea, the taste is indeed very different, and consumers are willing to pay for the taste.

Moreover, the main consumer group of milk tea in the market is women. Women have multiple visual enjoyments. Regardless of the taste, they will choose to buy it just because they like the appearance.

Coupled with the refreshing taste and the ease of drinking without too much psychological burden, there are more and more customers, and there are even queues in front of the store. Nie Yunchen's store has been revived.

He told his employees in the early days of starting his business: "This is a test field, a place where a brand is born." The employees found it a bit funny and thought he was talking big words. Unexpectedly, within a few years, Nie Yunchen would open multiple branches.

By the second half of 2015, Imperial Tea had opened more than 50 stores in Guangdong. However, Nie Yunchen's application for the trademark rights of Imperial Tea has not been approved in recent years, which has indirectly led to some copycats borrowing their brand for sales.

It has been four years since Nie Yunchen founded Royal Tea, which is relatively well-known in Guangdong. He has done follow-up development to make the brand bigger, and decided to abandon "ROYALTEA" and change it to "HiTea" HEYTEA”.

This move was like destroying the foundation and starting over from scratch, but after careful consideration, he still insisted on making changes.

Although there is no difference in essence between Imperial Tea and Heytea, the former is the beginning of his business and is of great significance, while the latter is his fruit that has begun to take shape, giving him the determination to move forward.

The packaging must first reflect the brand and be impressive. Then print the brand logo on the cup and make the cup thicker to enhance the texture.

Site selection is more important. He first opens a store in a city's commercial center. If the sales volume reaches the expected standard, he will consider opening branches in other local areas.

In June 2016, Heytea received a first-round investment of 100 million yuan from Robust founder He Boquan.

Since then, Heytea has begun to expand across the country, winning more markets step by step. In January 2017, Heytea’s first theme store was unveiled in Shenzhen’s Vientiane City, with a spacious space of 100 square meters.

Nie Yunchen followed up the whole process to create what he thought was a leisure place. The store design is mainly black gold, mainly showing the youthful fashion and coolness. We hope it can not only give people taste enjoyment, but also bring visual relaxation to customers.

In February of the same year, Heytea entered the Shanghai market, thus completely opening up its popularity. The super-good-looking "Zhizhi Berry" attracted hundreds of people rushing to buy it.

The long queue has no end in sight. Outside the store, there are all young people queuing up with their heads down and playing with their mobile phones. After being photographed and posted on the Internet, it immediately became a hot search topic.

Not only did the long queue not scare away the onlookers, but it actually caused a larger queue. There was even a business of purchasing yellow beef steak on behalf of the team. A cup of twenty-thirty milk tea was directly fired. The price reached hundreds of dollars.

For netizens who do not have a Heytea store in the city, they are simply watching a fantasy scene. They cannot imagine what magic Heytea has to create such a scene.

At the same time, he also said that even if he drives to the local area, he will never spend so much time queuing. Some netizens also expressed their curiosity about Heytea and hoped that the headquarters would open more branches as soon as possible.

As for Heytea, as netizens heated up the discussion, it continued to be on the hot searches and was directly defined as an "Internet celebrity" product.

There is an endless stream of people lining up to check in, and the longest wait can be seven hours. The first time you buy the milk tea is not to insert a straw to taste it, but to take photos from multiple angles and post them online.

With the launch of new products "Zhi Zhi Mang Mang" and "Zhi Zhi Tao Tao", the popularity of Hey Tea has only increased. On average, nearly 4,000 cups can be sold every day, which can be said to be a success in the milk tea industry. No two.

After the popularity rose to a certain level, doubts also followed. Customers were impatient with long queues, and the product experience was greatly compromised. There were constant negative reviews for a while.

Some people claim that the so-called "Internet celebrity" products are all created by scalpers, and that the queue for Heytea is just a means of hunger marketing, and the people at the door are hired with money.

The topic "HiTea hires people to queue up" once again became a hot topic, and there were constant disputes. On June 7 of the same year, HeyTea officials responded on the public account and questioned: "Why Will an unconfirmed incident be widely spread as fact? ”

In any case, Heytea’s reputation has been established, and whether it is intentional or not, it has more advantages than disadvantages for them. But Nie Yunchen is not happy about his brand with the "Internet celebrity" label.

He believes: "Internet celebrity is derogatory. I don't like to hear this kind of comment." He hopes that Heytea can be used as a daily drink and be liked by people, rather than being time-sensitive and easily popular. It’s also easy to forget about products that people try.

Queuing in the store is not his original intention. Nie Yunchen said that he will make a more convenient ordering method in the future to avoid customers waiting in line for a long time.

He tried online shopping at a store in Guangzhou, but due to the concentration of orders, the results were unsatisfactory, so he temporarily gave up on this plan.

However, as the popularity dissipated, the queues in stores gradually disappeared, and the purchasing process returned to normal.

The following year, through cooperation with Meituan, it launched a takeaway service and completed Series B financing with 400 million yuan invested by Longzhu, a fund under Meituan-Dianping.

In the same year, the first overseas store, the Singapore branch, opened, marking Heytea’s official entry into the overseas market. At the same time, Heytea is fully engaged, focusing on large shopping malls in major provinces and cities, with stores covering 22 cities in China.

Heytea has appeared in Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Zhengzhou and other regions, but there are still many cities where it has not been able to open stores.

Some self-operated small business owners saw the brand effect of Heytea and searched for franchise channels online. However, they finally discovered that the franchise brand introduced by the intermediary was not Heytea.

In fact, Nie Yunchen has never considered opening a franchise store. All Heytea stores across the country are directly operated stores. He believes that once his brand joins, it will be far away from the original intention of starting a business.

However, the company always received a lot of messages from people who were fooled, so they specially used symbols on their official account to indicate that Heytea would not join the franchise.

However, the number of people who accept the information is limited after all. Some scammers are very clever and use information gaps and some half-true photos to deceive many business people.

Heytea had no choice but to put in a lot of effort on the website. Now, when searching for "HiTea Franchise" on the Internet, the words "Officially Not Open for Franchise" appear at the top.

Although it is not a franchise, Heytea still plays a significant role in the market. In July 2019, Heytea completed a round of financing from Tencent and Sequoia Capital, with its brand valuation reaching 9 billion.

During the 2020 epidemic, they also donated 1 million to the Red Cross of China to provide help in fighting the epidemic.

In the same year, Heytea once again completed a round of financing jointly invested by Hillhouse Capital and Koto Capital, with a valuation of more than 16 billion yuan. This year Heytea also opened its 500th store in Shanghai.

At the same time, the types of products are also increasing, and tea bags, desserts, bread, etc. are also sold in stores, and have received a lot of praise, attracting more customer traffic.

With the rapid development of the brand, Nie Yunchen's net worth has naturally increased. In November 2020, at the age of 29, he appeared on the "2020 Hurun Post-80s Self-Made Rich List" with a net worth of 4.5 billion yuan, becoming the only one among them. Post-90s.

In 2021, Heytea completed a round of financing of US$500 million, directly breaking the financing record in China’s tea drinking industry and bringing Heytea’s valuation to 60 billion yuan, far exceeding other domestic companies. Tea brand.

In fact, Heytea is not an old brand in China's new tea drinking industry. Mixue Bingcheng, which has become popular in the past two years, entered the market earlier, but due to its different positioning, its market valuation is not suitable for analogy.

However, it is rare for HeyTea to become a rising star or even catch up from behind in just a few years.

Its path to success can only be said to be accurate choices and directions, seizing the needs of young people, and strict control of products. Therefore, we can rise quickly and become invincible.

In August 2021, Heytea became the first place in the "Top 15 Chinese New Tea Drink Brands in the First Half of 2021".

In March this year, Nie Yunchen’s personal wealth reached 10 billion. In the past few years, he has gone from being an unknown person to becoming a billionaire with a place in the business. He can be said to be a model of self-made wealth.

Society is changing rapidly. Although the brand has been established, there is still huge room for development in the future. However, he is still young at this time and there are still unlimited possibilities in the future.

[1] "The Paper", September 30, 2021, "Rising Figure Nie Yunchen: To be a real brand"

[2] "Economic Observer", 2022 February 9, 2019, "HiTea, with a valuation of 60 billion, has reached a critical intersection"

[3] "Interface News", August 1, 2019, ""Exclusive Interview" with the founder of HeyTea Nie Yunchen: Many of the reasons for our success summarized by the outside world are wrong.