Tea and Beautification: The Brand's Path of Upgrading from Fresh Tea Drinks to Retail Innovation Going Abroad

Moving into 2025, two companies in the Hong Kong stock tea sector are experiencing a contrasting fate of triumph and baptism. The first tea stock, "Nayuki (02150)", which has been hovering around the breakeven line for many years, finally recorded an unprecedented 9 billion yuan "huge loss" in its 2024 full-year performance report submitted this May. The stock price also plummeted from the highest price of 18.9 Hong Kong dollars on the first day of listing to the current lowest price of 1.1 Hong Kong dollars, with an accumulated decline of 93.6%. On the other hand, the tea new favorite "Meixuebingcheng (02097)" which debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange on March 3 this year, reported a net profit of up to 4.45 billion yuan in the full year 2014. The stock price increased from the IPO offer price of 202 Hong Kong dollars to the closing price of 514 Hong Kong dollars yesterday, reaching a peak of 618 Hong Kong dollars on June 4th, achieving a 2.5~3 times increase. The financial performance comparison between Nayuki and Meixue reflects the industry facing the strategic choice between "scale efficiency" and "brand value". According to data from the China Chain Operation Association, there are over 550,000 new tea shops nationwide in 2024, leading to a gradual blurring of brand differences due to homogenized competition. Brands that rely on franchise expansion are facing the pressure of declining profits per store. As the industry is mired in "scale anxiety," Teaa Color suddenly announced its entry into the North American market through an e-commerce platform, expanding its retail business. This move has prompted the industry to consider whether cross-border retail will become a new path for the tea industry to break the cycle of intense competition. 1. Innovative lifestyle brand Since its inception, Tea Color has established an image of "strong innovation + high quality + deep content" and has continued to use a direct-operated model to create a unique product strength and brand presence in the tea industry. This has paved the way for Tea Color's innovative move to enter the overseas market via e-commerce, laying the foundation for brand exports with a light asset model. In December 2013, the first Tea Color store opened in Wuyi Business District, Changsha, Hunan Province. Different from traditional milk tea, Tea Color focuses on "new Chinese fresh tea", insisting on using high-quality ingredients and freshly-made tea blends to ensure the best taste. By innovatively incorporating ingredients such as milk, cream, and nut crumbs into the tea, the brand has created a unique product offering and a brand image with new concepts. This has enabled Tea Color to establish itself in the tea market as a brand known for its unique products and cultural identity. The essence of a brand is to shape preferences and even lead a lifestyle. Starting in Changsha, Tea Color has deeply operated in the local market, becoming one of the well-known brands among local consumers through product innovation, high quality, warm and interesting cultural connotations, and visual elements. Since the opening of the first store in Changsha in 2013, Tea Color has shaped a "new Chinese style" aesthetics from products and store designs to tea snacks and cultural products. The antique design of the stores, combined with cultural elements and creative products, has created a unique cultural consumption scene, making it a "cultural landmark" in Changsha, attracting a large number of out-of-town visitors. Data from Xiaohongshu shows that notes related to "checking in at Tea Color" have exceeded 2.8 million, with more than 40% of out-of-town visitors, forming a combination of "in-store consumption + quality, visual and content experience + self-spread social communication". Tea Color's success lies not only in product innovation and high quality but also in the unique charm created by deep cultural content and visual elements, which have led to a high frequency of repeat purchases by consumers. This has supported the brand's steady expansion. By 2024, the revenue from stores outside Changsha had reached 35%, with rapid expansion in new areas such as Wuhan and Chongqing. The average store efficiency and average customer effects of all stores are at the top of the industry, fully confirming the enduring vitality of its business model. According to public data for 2024, Tea Color's stores serve more than 500 people on average per day. This figure is close to the profit of the thin-profit, high-sales model of Meixuebingcheng, reflecting the multidimensional attributes that bring Tea Color better consumer trust. 2. Retail Expansion: Bold and Effective Cross-border Approach Since 2020, Tea Color has delved into studying and developing its retail product line. Focusing on high-frequency repurchase categories such as tea and snacks, the brand has insisted on the offline store as the main platform, using a "drink + retail" structure to attract more consumers to visit the store, building a brand ecosystem that spans from drinks to retail, from social to daily life. Tea Color focuses on tea and its core raw materials, actively engaging in cutting-edge basic research. This has led to the development of a full-chain technology system covering basic physical research such as raw material properties analysis and industrial application, ensuring the efficient conversion of research results into market value. As of May 2025, Tea Color had independently designed and launched over 500 SKUs, including tea, tea powder, snacks, stationery, and daily necessities. From the performance of e-commerce data, the retail business has become a key growth driver in Tea Color's business structure, with the online platform achieving high-frequency repurchases and breaking consumer barriers. Sales of Tea Color's snack e-commerce platform exceeded one billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 12 times, with Douyin accounting for over forty percent, a significant increase compared to Meixuebingcheng's over 47 million yuan. The topic of "#Tea Color Snack Review" on social platforms has accumulated over 1.6 billion views, creating a strong interactive content cycle. According to the brand's data, Tea Color's snack products have consistently ranked in the top ten of the Douyin mall's snack category for several months, with the flagship store's number of followers exceeding 1.8 million. 3. Overseas Expansion: Product Development + Product Innovation Strength With the continuous enrichment of innovative product combinations in retail research, and an increasing number of Chinese brands expanding their overseas reach, the recognition of Chinese products' "emotional value + quality value" is on the rise. Yesterday, Tea Color officially announced its entry into the North American market through e-commerce platforms to expand its retail business. According to recent reports from Galaxy Securities, the world is currently experiencing a trend of "dualization of consumption structure," namely, "rationalization of material consumption and luxury of spiritual consumption." This trend is deeply restructuring the trend of Chinese and global consumer markets, providing a good market opportunity for Tea Color to tap into the overseas market and prompting it to expand its "1+N" model. Specifically, Tea Color's core overseas strategy focuses on the dual drive of "brand value of visual content interaction + innovative high-quality product value". As mentioned earlier, Tea Color is one of the few tea brands that adheres to a direct-operated store expansion model in the current Chinese tea market. To expand store networks in overseas markets would involve significant costs. To capitalize on its advanced "trendy drinks, trendy food, trendy lifestyle" product matrix and consumer recognition, venturing into overseas markets through online retail is undoubtedly Tea Color's advantageous way to explore the overseas market. With strong product innovation and technological research and development, combined with the brand's expertise in visual content and consumer interaction, Tea Color can establish a rapid iteration mechanism to ensure the adaptability of new markets. However, Tea Color's e-commerce overseas layout is not without challenges. From China to North America, understanding local market demands and integrating into local consumers' lifestyles is a major challenge. Tea Color is well aware of these challenges and, in the process of exploring overseas markets, will engage in deep local learning and build local product and marketing teams to enhance its operational capabilities. In terms of channels, Tea Color has built its e-commerce shop on Shopify and established brand-operated stores on platforms such as Amazon, TikTok shop, Walmart, Weee, and Azami Network, which were gradually launched in July to introduce retail products such as snacks, stationery, and daily necessities, becoming the first to achieve a full online retail product and brand output in overseas markets. The global deployment of the tea drink industry is in line with the current trend of Chinese companies shifting from "product output" to "consumer value output" in their overseas ventures. Tea Color's uniqueness lies in the fact that its retail business is not simply about product sales but a scene presentation of "emotional interaction + product interaction". As shown by Amazon market research, when North American consumers purchase freeze-dried tea points, they are provided with a "Chinese afternoon tea brewing guide" with a QR code link, which has increased the product's premium by 30%-50%, far exceeding the 15% premium level of ordinary cross-border food products. In terms of regional layout, the North American market is the key focus area at the current stage, with a report from the third-party research firm Global Market Insights showing that the total size of the US food retail market in 2023 was approximately 1.67 trillion US dollars, with the online food retail market size reaching about 90 billion US dollars, accounting for 5.4% of the total food retail market and growing annually at a rate close to 20%. According to research data from CapitalOne Shopping Research, the compound annual growth rate of the online beverage and food market size is expected to reach 22.1% from 2023 to 2027, the second-highest growth sector among all categories. Surveying the entire Chinese tea drink industry, Tea Color stands out with its dual drive advantage of "tea + retail", utilizing the hard power of product research and innovation to build a retail model of "1 product research innovation center + N overseas sales channels". At this point, we look forward to seeing Tea Color take a different path in the tea drink sector. 4. Conclusion In the pre-epidemic era, the tea drink industry, often associated with "consumption upgrading", was once the darling of the capital market. After the baptism of three years of the epidemic, with the rationalization of consumer attitudes, it has become the leader of "market sinking" stories. The discourse system of scale expansion and the "three-year ten thousand stores" concept are nothing but traditional wisdom dressed in modern attire. In fact, the core contradiction the industry faces now is that the construction of product and brand value sought by consumers, capital, and brands conflicts with the highly capitalized and fast-paced industry environment. Tea Color's ability to construct a differentiated capability and strategic approach reflects the feasibility of achieving this goal. Tea Color's first step into overseas exploration is actually a test of its business model in a larger market space. Based on the long-termism operating strategy the brand has adhered to for many years, as well as the continuous cultivation of product innovation and content creation capabilities, the author believes that Tea Color is likely to export brand value and product value to the global market, achieving a larger commercial territory.