Written by Chen Cheng
Three years ago, Meituan’s huge investment in Heytea was condensed into a joke:
Wang Xing said to his assistant: “Go Buy me Heytea.”
After a while, the assistant came back: “Boss, it’s 400 million.”
On April 25, 2018, Heytea acquired Meituan. Its subsidiary Longzhu Capital has raised a huge 400 million yuan in Series B financing.
No one thought that Meituan boss Wang Xing would invest 400 million in this post-90s guy?
11 years ago, 19-year-old Nie Yunchen came to Jiangmen, Guangdong from Jiangxi with his parents to start a business. He opened a mobile phone store.
Competition in offline mobile phone stores was fierce. At that time, there were many counterfeit mobile phones. He often helped others flash their phones for free. Others were too embarrassed to let him service for free, so they would buy some products such as power banks and data cables to show their gratitude. .
The mobile phone store was losing money every month and it was really unsustainable, so he had to close the mobile phone store. When he didn't know what to do, he bought a cup of milk tea one day and drank it very uncomfortable. Suddenly he had an idea, why don't I try to open a milk tea shop?
Unexpectedly, his life would be cheating and singing all the way...
In September 2017, he was selected into the "2017 Hurun 30X30 Entrepreneurial Leaders" list.
On August 2, 2018, he was selected into Forbes China’s 2018 30 Under 30 list.
In December 2019, he was selected into the "2019 Forbes China's 30 Most Influential Social New Retail People" list.
On November 2, 2020, Nie Yunchen ranked 42nd in the "2020 Hurun Post-80s Self-Made Rich List" with a wealth of 4.5 billion yuan.
As a college student who is less than 30 years old, I came to Guangdong from Jiangxi to work. According to normal development logic, it would be great to be able to work in Guangdong and buy a house and start a family with your own efforts. However, he went from a small shop owner who opened a mobile phone store to becoming the head of a 16 billion company in 10 years. What exactly did he go through in his entrepreneurial journey? What are the ups and downs in his entrepreneurial story? What experience does he have in starting a business that can provide reference and inspiration for entrepreneurs?
Nie Yunchen was born in an intellectual family in Jiangxi in 1991. His parents are both supervision engineers. Later, he followed his parents from Jiangxi to Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province.
In 2010, after he graduated from the Administration Major of the Humanities College of Guangdong Vocational College of Science and Technology, he did not choose to find a job. At that time, he only had a college degree and directly chose to start a business.
Opening some recruitment websites, when many companies recruit employees, they write down a bachelor’s degree as their first degree. Thinking about it now, fortunately Nie Yunchen only had a college degree at the time. If his first degree was a bachelor’s degree, he might have applied for it. A job, if you go to work steadily, there will be no story behind it.
Nie Yunchen opened a mobile phone store in Jiangmen City. Because the mobile phone store is located in a relatively remote location, few people come to buy mobile phones, but there are quite a few people who come to flash their phones. At that time, there were many copycat mobile phones, and many customers came over to flash their phones.
Business was not good to begin with, and he was too embarrassed to charge customers for flashing the phone. Nie Yunchen felt very anxious. But then he thought about it. Helping customers flash their phones for free could increase the flow of people in the store and bring some business.
He made a prompt decision and helped customers flash their phones for free. Customers are embarrassed and always buy some mobile phone accessories from his mobile phone store, such as mobile phone power banks, data cables, etc.
In 2011, after the rapid rise of online shopping platforms such as Taobao, people became more and more accustomed to online shopping, which is convenient, fast and cheap. Nie Yunchen's mobile phone store became more and more difficult to operate, so he decided to close the mobile phone store.
It is easy to close a store. What will you do after closing? This incident made Nie Yunchen, who was still a young boy at the time, very anxious and couldn't eat well or sleep well.
One day, he bought a cup of milk tea after dinner. I thought the milk tea would be delicious, but it was very uncomfortable after entering the mouth. It would be better to drink a glass of boiled water to refresh myself.
He did not immediately throw the unpleasant milk tea into the trash can. Instead, he opened the lid of the milk tea cup and stirred the contents of the cup with a straw to see why it tasted so unpleasant.
He discovered that the so-called milk tea was not real tea at all, and there were no fruits. The so-called fruits were actually the taste of fruit powder, and the milk cap was also made from milk cap powder. This kind of milk tea that tastes extremely bad and is not healthy. If you drink it in your stomach, it not only tastes bad, but is also bad for your health, but the business in the store is very good.
He thought to himself: "The threshold for a milk tea shop is not high, why don't I open a milk tea shop? I can make delicious milk tea for customers, and maybe I can make money!"
Opportunities are often prepared for those who are prepared. After Nie Yunchen closed the mobile phone store, he opened a milk tea shop.
Building a milk tea shop seemed easy. Only after he opened a milk tea shop did he realize how deep the water was inside.
It is easy to open a store, but difficult to do it, especially the beginning is difficult, not to mention that Nie Yunchen knew nothing about milk tea at the time.
When running a milk tea shop, Nie Yunchen knew that he was a layman, but he had very high requirements for himself.
He knows two things very well: first, the milk tea he makes must be genuine, and since it is milk tea, it must taste like milk tea; second, his milk tea must be youthful, and make it more youthful. People are interested, and the beverage market has a large group of young people.
As a post-90s generation, he knows that he is a sample customer for the milk tea he will make in the future. If he does not like the milk tea he makes, consumers will not buy it.
After wanting to make milk tea, Nie Yunchen thought about product information and reports about milk tea all day long.
First of all, he positioned his products to be genuine and resolutely not to mix things up. The main raw materials are fresh milk and tea. Fresh milk is very convenient to buy, and tea is also easy to buy. He originally lives in Guangdong, which is close to Guangxi, Taiwan and Vietnam, and these places are rich in tea.
The raw materials were lagging behind, so he began to consider the user preference of the product. Although he has never made milk tea, after studying the beverage shops on the market, he felt that the target audience for milk tea should be young people. There are many Hong Kong-style milk teas and Taiwanese pearl milk teas on the market.
Nie Yunchen bought all these milk teas and wrote down his intuitive feelings while drinking them. He feels that the taste of Hong Kong-style milk tea is a bit bitter, while the taste of Cantonese people is relatively light, so it may not be suitable for Cantonese people. Taiwan's pearl milk tea is made with tapioca flour and is more in line with the tastes of teenagers.
So when you make milk tea in Guangdong, what kind of flavor do you make that young people like to drink?
Nie Yunchen didn’t have a recipe, so he was going to adjust it himself because his sense of taste was very sensitive.
On May 12, 2012, Nie Yunchen’s milk tea shop opened. He called his milk tea brand Imperial Tea, which was also the predecessor of Heytea.
At that time, Nie Yunchen’s Imperial Tea Shop was located on a very small street. The shop was only 30 square meters and the price was about ten yuan a cup.
Nie Yunchen thinks it tastes good and the price is affordable, so demand should exceed supply. However, the market gave him a slap in the face, and his daily income was only about 20 yuan.
This result was unexpected for him. What was the problem?
Nie Yunchen’s Imperial Tea Shop has a narrow facade and simple decoration. Like many small shop owners, Nie Yunchen wears many hats: boss, clerk, cashier, and milk tea maker.
Nie Yunchen stands behind the half-person-high counter every day and waits for customers to come. Looking at the endless flow of people on the street, no one came in to buy milk tea.
The fragrant milk tea and inner depression were mixed together. He was in a very depressed mood. How could he start a business?
While he was waiting for customers at the milk tea shop, he was thinking hard about how to break through the current predicament.
The product is very important, the price of the product is also crucial to sales, and the brand is even more critical...
Under the predicament, either break out or wait for death, Nie Yunchen definitely belongs to the former .
Nie Yunchen made a breakthrough in products and chose all in products.
After a new product is launched, he often searches for customer reviews online, and he often goes to the Weibo comment section.
Nie Yunchen put "users are God" into practical actions through solid improvements. Every time he saw that after improvements, users' positive reviews increased, negative reviews decreased, and sales increased. Two plus one minus. The data excites him. This may be because although starting a business is difficult and the road ahead may be bumpy or smooth, every bit of progress in front of him will give people strength and motivation to continue to support him.
When I write this, I think of Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, who was working at Kingsoft. At that time, the company spent almost all of its net worth, more than 20 million yuan, to develop software. It was the late 1990s, and the 22-year-old Lei Jun was working in Beijing. A research and development team was formed to be specifically responsible for this project.
It took three years, and team members worked day and night to develop the software, but it eventually failed. Kingsoft's team went from a team of more than 200 people to more than 20 people overnight. 25-year-old Lei Jun reported to the company He submitted his resignation letter, but fortunately the leader at the time did not approve Lei Jun's resignation and gave him a six-month leave.
Lei Jun used this time to reflect. After returning to the company, he not only created the glory of Kingsoft Company, but also later founded Xiaomi, which successfully entered the world's top 500 companies in such a short period of time. Ranking 422nd, 124 companies from mainland China (including Hong Kong) have entered the world's top 500, creating a miracle.
In October 2012, through continuous improvement of products, Nie Yunchen's milk tea shop finally came to an end. The plot turned around and he was unexpected. I used to look forward to it, hoping that customers would come to the store to buy milk tea, but suddenly customers crowded the milk tea shop and had to wait in a long queue to buy a cup of milk tea.
The queuing issue also quickly caused controversy. Some people questioned that Nie Yunchen's milk tea shop paid people to queue up. Nie Yunchen ignored this because by queuing up, he was more confident in the future development of his milk tea shop. He was very happy especially when he learned that a pair of customers became a couple because of the long queue at his milk tea shop. .
The business of the first and second stores was booming. He immediately decided to open a third store, but the business was unexpectedly bleak.
After the success of Imperial Tea’s two stores in Jiangmen City, Nie Yunchen decided to open a new store in Zhongshan City, which is closest to Jiangmen. Because he saw some customers queuing up to drive to Zhongshan City, Shenzhen and other places to drink milk tea, he thought that if he opened a milk tea shop in Zhongshan City, business would be good.
After Nie Yunchen opened the Imperial Tea Shop in downtown Zhongshan City, the business was bleak. It feels like the smile hasn't bloomed on my face yet, and it's about to go back to before.
Nie Yunchen calmed down and reflected, and quickly found the reason. The reputation of his milk tea shop in Jiangmen could not spread to Zhongshan City. He decided to adopt the strategy of surrounding the city from the countryside and chose to open a milk tea shop in Xiaolan Town, a town at the junction of Zhongshan and Jiangmen. This strategy proved to be effective.
Through franchise expansion, Nie Yunchen’s Imperial Tea chain store has developed rapidly in three years, with more than 50 stores in the Pearl River Delta region.
24-year-old Nie Yunchen has become the owner of 50 milk tea chain stores. At that time, 24-year-old Lei Jun was still leading a team to develop software, and his future was uncertain.
At this time, a new problem posed in front of Nie Yunchen. At that time, copycats were rampant and there were a lot of Imperial Teas on the market. Consumers could not tell which ones were genuine Imperial Teas. This was just like when he turned on his mobile phone. Like the store, there are many fake mobile phones, and most people who come to the store come to the store to flash their phones for free.
He knows that if he does not have his own brand, his future development will be seriously affected. Every well-known brand in the world has its own resounding brand.
At the beginning of 2016, he made a major decision and spent 700,000 yuan to buy Heytea. This amount of money seems small now, but for Imperial Tea at the time, it was a huge sum of money. Philippine funds.
Long-term pain is worse than short-term pain. This is money that needs to be spent wisely, so you cannot save a penny of the money you should spend. If the Heytea brand had not been bought back then, after several years of development, it might have started, or it might have already withdrawn from the stage of history in the market melee without a brand.
In August of that year, after Imperial Tea changed its name to Heytea, 100 million was spent on it.
The small goal of 100 million came from the mouth of Wang Jianlin, the richest man at the time. It once became a jingle and was selected as one of the top ten buzzwords of the year by "Biting Words". In August, Heytea received 100 million yuan investment from IDG Capital and He Boquan.
He Boquan dropped out of school at the age of 15. He once led a group of young people to not only cultivate a little-known local brand into a famous food and beverage brand in China, but also created the Robust miracle that is widely praised in the industry. In 1998, it invested heavily in hiring McKinsey for senior management strategic consulting and introduced the world's most advanced SAP management information system. In 1999, it was selected as a teaching case at Harvard University. In the same year, Today Group was renamed Robust Group. In 2000, it entered into a joint venture with Danone of France.
The capital investment of 100 million, coupled with the blessing of the Robust brand, should be a double blessing for the newly renamed Heytea.
After getting the expert's reply, Wang Xing, who is exactly 12 years older than Nie Yunchen, but a powerful figure in the world, invested RMB 400 million in Heytea with his Longzhu Capital.
With the injection of 400 million yuan in capital, Heytea is like taking off with wings and singing all the way.
Heytea has begun a comprehensive layout in the national and overseas markets.
In 2020, the production of Heytea products consumed more than 5,800 tons of grapes, nearly 2,000 tons of strawberries, more than 4,700 tons of mangoes, more than 3,200 tons of coconuts, and nearly 3,000 tons of peaches... It has generated an income of more than 7.5% for farmers in the upper reaches of the supply chain. billion yuan.
On September 1, 2020, Heytea and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation signed an industrial poverty alleviation plan for the next three years, and will donate 3 million yuan to industrial poverty alleviation projects in different regions across the country. The first donation of 1 million yuan has been used to support the development of the tea industry in Leishan County, Guizhou in 2020.
On February 1, 2020, Heytea released "Tea's 2020 Annual Report". Data shows that as of the end of 2020, Heytea has opened 695 stores in 61 cities at home and abroad. At the same time, Heytea’s exploration of innovative business formats has also achieved initial results. Its new sub-brands Heytea and Heytea have been loved and recognized by consumers as always. As the brand potential of HEYTEA continues to increase, store scale expands steadily, and urban layout continues to improve, HEYTEA is continuing to lead the development of the new tea beverage industry.
As of the end of 2020, the Heytea Bring Your Own Cup campaign has reduced the use of more than 30,000 disposable plastic cups, and the green paper straw campaign has reduced the use of 12 million non-degradable plastic straws. Nearly half a year before the country’s latest “plastic restriction” requirements were implemented, Heytea was the first to apply polylactic acid (PLA) straws in the new tea drinking industry, taking into account environmental protection and consumer experience, and leading the entire industry’s environmental protection practices.
Hurun Research Institute released the "2020 Hurun Billionaires List". The 29-year-old Heytea founder Nie Yunchen made the list for the first time with a wealth of 4.5 billion, becoming the only "post-90s" on the list. Self-made entrepreneur.
Born in the 1990s, self-made, worth over 100 million... It is not strange to pick out these characters individually, but if they are combined, it is enough to shock everyone. If you add the label "milk tea", it will be even more surprising and surprising. With the blessing of these labels, the word "inspirational" is no longer enough to describe Nie Yunchen's Heytea story. "A life of cheating" seems to be more in line with the evaluation of online viewers.
A college graduate, less than 30 years old, started from scratch, and in 9 years he built a company up to RMB 16 billion, with a personal net worth of RMB 4.5 billion. What inspiration will Nie Yunchen, a famous business figure in the business world released by No. 1 Documentary today, bring to us?
Enlightenment 1:
Heroes do not ask where they come from. 29-year-old Nie Yunchen has become a successful example of self-made entrepreneurs born in the 1990s.
Nie Yunchen studied at a vocational college. According to the requirements of the recruitment APP, units and positions with higher incomes generally require full-time undergraduate graduation, and even 211 and 985 colleges.
If Nie Yunchen followed the conventional approach and applied for a job in a company, it would generally be difficult for him to get into a good company, because his first education was only a college degree, and he was excluded by the human resources department, without even a chance for an interview. , let alone talk about high salary in the unit.
After Nie Yunchen graduated, he did not follow the conventional approach of applying for jobs at work. Instead, he directly chose to start a business. He started by opening a mobile phone store to sell mobile phones, and later opened a milk tea shop.
Enlightenment 2:
Ability to find business opportunities in everyday life.
When most people buy something that tastes bad or tastes bad, they will just complain, have a quarrel with the merchant, or feel that they are unlucky to encounter such a merchant.
After Nie Yunchen bought the unpleasant milk tea, he was in a bad mood. However, he did not go to the merchant to argue with him. Instead, he found business opportunities from this unpleasant milk tea.
At that time, his mobile phone store was not easy to run, and he had been thinking about transformation. Unexpectedly, a cup of unpleasant milk tea gave him business thinking, and then he created a nationally famous milk tea brand - Xi. Tea, his life has been singing all the way since then, creating a legend in the business world.
Enlightenment three:
Be diligent in thinking, good at pondering, and develop your own milk tea.
After Nie Yunchen thought of making milk tea, he focused all his energy on product development, because the milk tea shop at the beginning of his business was actually a small workshop.
As a small shop owner like him, it is indeed a miracle that he can become obsessed with developing milk tea products from an outsider and create products that sell well all over the country and even overseas.
After all, he majored in administration in college, which has little to do with his milk tea industry.
Moreover, he is not a hands-off shopkeeper. He is very familiar with every aspect from milk tea production to sales.
Enlightenment 4:
Strong brand awareness, spend 700,000 to buy the Heytea trademark.
Many start-ups and even some old companies have had trademark disputes, which have had a negative impact on the company and its products, and even led to disasters.
Nie Yunchen attaches great importance to trademarks. He spent 700,000 yuan to buy the Heytea trademark in the early days of his business. This was a very good move. Otherwise, it would be very detrimental to the development of the company.
Enlightenment 5:
Good at market operations and attracting investment from big guys.
Because of the high brand awareness, IDG Capital and He Boquan later invested 100 million yuan, and Meituan founder Wang Xing invested 400 million yuan...