Some time ago we shared an article about Li Ziqi. She is a post-90s girl in Mianyang, Sichuan Province, China. Her real name is Li Jiajia. Her father died when she was young and her life was difficult. She started to shoot short videos when she was 25 years old and became Li Ziqi, an antique food blogger. Her exquisite pastoral videos have spread all over the world, and Li Ziqi has even become an intangible cultural heritage ambassador. It took her three years to change from an Internet celebrity to Boss Li and do business in partnership with Hangzhou Weinian, the company behind her. She moved the food in the video to the online store, and the business became prosperous.

Today we mainly talk about the story between her and the Spirrali piain. The Spirrali piain and Li Ziqi have achieved each other. The Spirrali piain that most people try to stop but cannot have accelerated the realization of Li Ziqi, and the huge sales of Li Ziqi has also become the key to whether the Spirrali piain industry can develop a national brand.
Now Boss Li has one more title, and that is Director Li. Because Li Ziqi built a factory in Liuzhou specializing in the production of Spirrali piain. Originally, these Internet celebrity brands followed a light operation model, so just take the money and go to the foundry. Li Ziqi, who has extended his brand from Internet celebrities, suddenly changed his style and invested in a factory. It is certainly not because she has too much money but nowhere to spend it.

After careful study, Domatters discovered Li Ziqi’s ambition behind the Spirrali piain. What else can you discover?

“People give up a lot of necessities when the economy is not developing well, but never think of giving up their bad habits.” And lIking to eat river snails rice noodles is such a bad habit.

Spirrali piain has a very distinct taste and smell experience. The main taste of Spirrali piains is fresh, spicy and smelly.And it’s Sour Bamboo Shoot that makes the river snails rice noodle smelly. Some umami amino acids are produced during the fermentation of sour bamboo shoots, and the odor comes from this. This kind of magical experience of “smelling acid and fragrant smell” will make people who like it and try to stop but cannot.

From the point of view of repurchase rate and nationality, in 2018, the snail noodles, which became the top rice noodle category in Taoist e-commerce sales, seems to have completed the evolution from dark cuisine to national food. Although the snail noodles have become popular and many brands have emerged in the industry, the sales of Li Ziqi’s family have beaten other companies, and it is said that they occupy more than half of the industry market.

For Liuzhou City, the epidemic is a special opportunity. If it is not made into a big brand of snail noodles, the dividend may last very short. Therefore, by bundling top IPs like Li Ziqi, it is possible to further expand the influence of snail fans.

From another perspective, snail noodles have also accelerated the realization of Li Ziqi’s flow. It is this addictive and unstoppable product that has always been the best-selling item in Li Ziqi’s family. At its peak, its monthly sales volume exceeded 5 million bags, and it had to be restricted.

Li Ziqi is not the only one who sells snail noodles well. Li Jiaqi who is the Internet celebrity leader in china once set a historical record of selling 26,000 boxes of snail noodles within 2 minutes. Chinese star Chen He’s live streaming show in Tiktok sold 66,000 bags of snail noodles in just 8 minutes, with a turnover of 2.376 million.

During the epidemic, a hot topic in the Chinese social circle was that “When will my river snails rice noodles be shipped?”

According to the data provided by the Liuzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the output value of bagged snail flour reached 4.98 billion yuan in the first half of this year, and it is expected to reach 9 billion yuan for the whole year. The annual output value of the entire industry has exceeded the 2019 operating income of Uni-President instant noodles.
From January 9 to February 6, 2020, in the cereals, oils, rice noodles, north-south dry goods, and condiments, the top six in the sub-category sales data are convenient vermicelli/rice noodles/snail noodles, instant hot pot, With pasta, dumplings/wontons. From the data point of view, this is still a small category of food for the time being. From the perspective of growth rate, this is a good category.

In the food industry in China, you have to understand that consumers are “scumbags”,because there is no permanent taste, and change is the norm. What was unpalatable 10 years ago may now become a favorite. Houttuynia cordata, which the people of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan like, is a nightmare for the people of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Food innovation needs to conform to the social taste habits that have been formed for a long time. The unification of the old style sauerkraut noodles that year is to cater to the preferences of the sinking group for a long time-salty and salty. Although each brand will be born every year, the popular style of that year, but the foundation of maintaining the evergreen is based on the taste perception of a wide range of users. But only soft addictions, such as coffee, tea, chocolate, betel nut, wine, etc., are more likely to go through the long cycle of consumption changes. Because it is more addictive, so is snail noodles. Unconventionalism that deviates from the taste base may rise quickly, and the enthusiasm may recede quickly.

“As long as you have eaten snail noodles three times, there is nothing that is not addictive.” It fits the characteristics of soft addiction. The manifestation in sales is high frequency and high repurchase rate.

Li Ziqi is a super IP in China, but IP is not a brand, and a brand needs long-termism.

Li Ziqi’s super IP is an atypical content IP. Generally speaking,after the content is made for a long time,one thing is to convert traffic into money.

There are two kinds of traffic conversion, namely receiving advertising and bringing goods. There is no essential difference between the two. Both are used as a marketing channel for the brand. They make quick money, which is the same way that TV stations make money.

But Li Ziqi took a more challenging and more imaginative path, and she became the brand directly.

In August 2018, Li Ziqi’s Tmall store of the same name officially opened. Without a bitter cold start, it was directly imported from the fan traffic accumulated by the video. The sales exceeded 10 million a week after the launch, and it ranked first in multiple vertical categories. In 2019, the number of fans in Li Ziqi’s flagship store reached 2.81 million, and the total annual sales of the store reached 71 million.

The epidemic has accelerated the emergence of “Li Ziqi”. Due to the stagnation of takeaway, the demand for convenience foods, including snail noodles, has risen rapidly.

As of press time, Li Ziqi has 5.07 million followers on Tmall, a year-on-year increase of 80%. Among them, the most popular snail noodles (3-packs) have a monthly sales of 1 million, a customer price of 40 yuan, and a monthly sales of 40 million. Simple arithmetic, rounded up, is a consumer product with a single product’s annual sales of 500 million.

Li Ziqi has made so many products, and the snail powder is the most popular one.

According to estimates from Tmall store data, other products such as lotus root powder, brown sugar ginger tea, black sesame walnut powder, and purple sweet potato steamed rice cakes can achieve annual sales of 20-80 million items, and cumulative sales of about 300-500 million. amount.
The right time and place are just right. Li Ziqi has become a “picking head” player who relies on snail powder to get out of the circle (ps: “picking heads” is a term in the game, and if you have sufficient skills, go down and kill enemies with residual blood).

The snail noodles allowed Li Ziqi to advance from tens of millions of sales to nearly 1 billion consumer goods players. This result defeated 20% of listed food companies in the A-share market. The food companies that were defeated included Jinhua ham brand “Golden Ham”.
This also prompted the acceleration of Li Ziqi’s branding. “Li Ziqi” has advanced from a pre-packaged food brand to a brand of “snail noodles”, a new category.

Brand is a kind of evaluation and cognition of a company and its products, after-sales service and cultural value by consumers, and it is a kind of trust. The super-big brands Apple, Dyson, and Uniqlo are such. And this kind of trust and even superstition requires long-term precipitation.
There is still a long way to go from IP to brand.

What IP provides to consumers is not the functional attributes of the product, but an emotional sustenance. The brand must be attached to one or one type of specific product. For example, Apple was initially trusted by consumers because the iPod completely exploded all MP3 products at that time. The design philosophy from aesthetics, functions to product delivery established Apple’s status as the king of electronic products.

The two steps of brand power are telling stories and finding speakers.
The storytelling is to allow consumers to bind their minds. The category is the brand. Whenever you eat hot pot, you will think of Wang Laoji who went to fire. When you think of natural water, it is Nongfu Spring. Therefore, Li Ziqi’s long-term goal also needs to be told to everyone, as long as you think of snail noodles, you must think of Li Ziqi. And not that as long as you think of snail noodles, you will think of Li Ziqi’s “unpalatable” snail noodles.

In Xiaohongshu, complaints about the taste of plum noodles are more common. The reason behind it is that Hangzhou Weinian, to which Li Ziqi belongs, has grown too fast, but it is still in a state of apprenticeship in R&D and quality control.

Self-built factories are an important part of the formation of brand power. After all, for food brands,high-quality food is the most important. If it is not tasty, you can only eat grass.

When all brands can easily sell snail noodles, Li Ziqi needs to be stronger in the supply chain, do quality control, research and development, and maintain product vitality.

To say so much is to tell everyone that China’s food industry is very developed. As long as you have a brand and channels in China, there is a high probability that you can create a brand that is popular with the people, such as Yuanqi Forest.

The rapid emergence of new brands comes from the excess capacity accumulated in the foreign trade era, the huge traffic pool of Amoy e-commerce, and the changes in the consumption habits of the new generation of consumers. So most of the new consumer brands that we are familiar with have not actually gone to the point of self-built factories. It’s easier to find someone to work as an OEM. If you can do it lightly, you can do it lightly. Cash flow is the most important. It is much better and easier to have money to stock up than to have money to buy a factory.
Against this background of knowledge, it is very puzzling to look at Li Ziqi’s self-built factory.

The epidemic has given us the answer, that is, the production capacity is insufficient, and Li Ziqi has not yet formed a strong negotiation ability with the foundry party.

Guangxi Zhongliu Food Technology Co., Ltd., the foundry found by Li Ziqi’s snail noodles, is one of the five major brands of snail noodles in Liuzhou and a supplier of Baicao flavor. Local media have reported that during the peak period of this foundry, nearly one-third of its production capacity was used to produce snail powder under the Li Ziqi brand.

However, Zhongliu also owns a “Liujiang Renjia” brand. The two snail noodles are similar in ingredients and taste. The sales of Liujiang Renjia is also growing rapidly.

Tmall’s flagship store shows that Liujiang’s snail noodles (three bags) are now sold at 100,000 plus a month. The key is that Liujiang people have raised prices a lot. Many netizens left a message. The Liuzhou snail noodles with 16.8 three packs at the beginning have now risen to 34.8 yuan, which is not much worse than Li Ziqi’s 39.7 yuan three packs.

When all brands can easily sell snail noodles, it is likely to be difficult to control the supply chain, so Li Ziqi started to build his own factory. Self-built factories can bring another change in the status quo, that is, better quality control and increased gross profit. At the same time, quality traceability is guaranteed. After all, food safety is the Damocles sword of the food industry.

On the Chinese e-commerce platform, Li Ziqi previously easily achieved 70 million annual sales, but compared with her huge fan base, we know that the online conversion rate is not high. Li Ziqi is a beneficiary of online channels. She herself is a super channel.

Brands and products go first, and if the channels can’t keep up, it’s no use. When other brands spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in pit fees for big anchors to bring goods, Li Ziqi does not seem to have this concern.

As a top Internet celebrity, Li Ziqi has 26.64 million fans in sina Weibo, 39.594 million  fans in Douyin, and 5.07 million  fans on Taobao. They are definitely the head of the head. The most difficult online channel itself is the basis for Li Ziqi’s debut.

So the only thing we worry about is that online channels will become popular forever? Because after all, offline channels are still promising.

Li Ziqi’s earliest product is Su Zaojiang, which is available in the Shanghai Hema Xiansheng store. This is the first time that Li Ziqi has launched offline channels.

But there is still a natural separation between content and e-commerce. On the e-commerce platform in China, Li Ziqi can easily complete 70 million annual sales, but compared with Li Ziqi’s huge fan base, we know that the online conversion rate is not high. The monthly sales volume of a single product is only a few thousand, which is not worth investing more energy online. There is no value for online traffic, and there is no rush to shop offline.

Relying on online channels and Taobao’s huge traffic pool may make you feel comfortable. But every consumer product that wants to be bigger has an independent heart.

Xiaomi’s ecological chain suppliers are desperately “de-milletizing” because they are worried that Xiaomi will get stuck in their necks. In the business world, there is no beautiful ecological chain. Xiao Xiami relying on big giants to obtain traffic is only a short-term pass.
And the most important point is that the cruelty of online traffic competition has surpassed offline. Most of Alibaba’s annual revenue growth comes from the traffic costs purchased by top players. If you don’t buy, there are new players, and you can’t catch the top traffic, which means a cliff-like market share decline. This is one of them.

Second, the spread of offline channels is also a manifestation of brand power and a disguised advertisement. Being within reach is the most real brainwashing propaganda.

The great promise of offline channels comes from the fact that “consumption” is essentially an experience, and contactless e-commerce shopping does not eliminate this essence. During the epidemic, many consumer products began to reflect on whether they paid too much attention to offline. But in fact there is no offline experience, and there is no exponential growth in e-commerce sales.

No consumption under wireless. If Li Ziqi wants to truly make the brand successful, this is the last step.