爱游戏

Saturnbird Coffee has completed a new round of funding of hundreds of millions of RMB, led by CPE Yuanfeng and followed by IDG, GGV and Inward Fund, with a valuation of 4.5 billion RMB. Tiantu Capital is the lead investor of the Series A and Series A+ rounds.

Founded in 2015 in Changsha, the brand focuses on freeze-dried instant coffee in small cups. Unlike traditional instant coffee that only dissolves in hot water, freeze-dried coffee powder can be dissolved in cold water and milk, which is more convenient and retains more flavor of coffee. Saturnbird Coffee has launched freeze-dried instant tea and oat milk this year, and plans to launch a coffee liquid product. Founder Wu Jun said that this round of financing will be used for the layout of multiple new product lines, brand and content upgrades, and attempts at new channels.

In this year’s 618 shopping festival, Saturnbird Coffee still topped the Tmall coffee and brewing categories, with sales exceeding the next three brands combined. According to third-party data, during the 618 shopping festival, the highest single-day sales of its Tmall was nearly 40 million RMB, with total sales of nearly 100 million RMB during the event.

According to Wu Jun, the first half of 2021 sales have already exceeded the whole year of 2020, and the annual revenue of Saturnbird Coffee in 2020 is nearly 400 million RMB. In the past three years, the brand basically maintains the rhythm of 2-3 times a year growth, the repurchase rate of nearly 50%, the current sales channels are still mainly Tmall and other e-commerce platforms, but also trying some offline channels.

Recently, Wu Jun, the founder of Saturnbird Coffee, was interviewed by LatePost for this round of financing.

Q: When did this round of financing start to brew, and what do you want to do with the money?

Wu Jun: The annual e-commerce node and return plan of Saturnbird Coffee is relatively fixed, we completed the upgrade of the supply chain, tens of thousands of participants in the return campaign last year, we also achieved more than 100 million sales in Double 11, we think we can enter the next stage of development, so we launched the financing. The current layout of multiple new product lines, brand and content upgrades, and attempts at new channels are all within the scope of the plan.

Q: This round of financing was extraordinarily popular in the primary market, and I heard that Saturnbird Coffee asked investors to write about their understanding of the company. How do you choose your investors?

Wu Jun: Personally, I don’t spend particularly much time on capital, but each round of financing is a very important partner for the company to choose, so I hope to get to know each other in a simple and efficient way. I have read carefully the suggestions of each institution and arranged communication with all of them. These investors did give a lot of inspiration to Saturnbird Coffee during the communication process, but from the perspective of financing, we are not able to introduce all the investors, at present, the core of the selection of investors still considers the financing efficiency, future development direction and other aspects to help our brand.

Q：What indicators do investors value more and what quantifiable indicators do you personally value more? It is said online that there is an important indicator “success rate” for your brand, what is this a criterion?

Wu Jun: Investors are more interested in the repurchase rate of Saturnbird Coffee, but I am more interested in the long-term value of users. If we want to quantify, user growth and how much coffee consumers are willing to consume in Saturnbird each year, whether it is constantly increasing the frequency of consumption, these are what I am more concerned about. We don’t have any “success rate”, we don’t speculate and design how users take pictures, but we do care about how consumers will recommend our brand to their friends.

Q: Before the so-called “new consumer wave”, consumer goods companies were rarely driven by venture capital. How do you think capital is driving the growth of consumer brands today?

Wu Jun: Consumer goods is a very long track, and short-term GMV and capital market valuation are not indicative of how far a company can go in the future. But capital does drive the development of the coffee industry, allowing the best companies to use less time, better resources, and attract better talent to accomplish what consumer goods companies used to take years to accomplish, and giving companies like Saturnbird Coffee more opportunities to explore various possibilities. Of course, this will inevitably bring about the effect of expelling good money from bad money and pushing up costs in all aspects in the short term, so a healthy operational logic and long-term strategic layout are the key.

Q: When did the Tmall 618 event start to be planned and how many people were on the planning team?

Wu Jun: This time, Tmall 618, Saturnbird Coffee is still the first place in coffee category and brewing category, sales exceeded the sum of the second, third and fourth place, of course, in addition to sales, we are also exploring new ways to play marketing activities, trying to develop more interaction with users. In addition to the 618 campaign, we also had to do offline activities such as the return flight program.

Q: New consumer brands are often perceived as burning money on marketing and relying on online channels. How do you think?

Wu Jun: Any brand needs marketing, the difference is just that the marketing purpose, form and degree are different. For Saturnbird, the marketing purpose is to make users build brand awareness. Whether it is the media content placement and innovation, online product delivery and experience, or offline event communication, the future can influence users’ consumption decisions in the coffee scene and bring long-term brand value, which will also make more people become lovers of coffee and its lifestyle. In terms of data, the UE (single store economy) model is also very healthy, with the purchase ratio of regular users reaching over 50% at each e-commerce promotion node.

Q: At present, the product range has been expanded to new categories such as freeze-dried tea and oat milk, how do you decide on the expansion of new categories internally and what is the future plan for new products?

Wu Jun: The category strategy in the brand’s initial period has been planned more clearly, we strive to create a new young people’s coffee scene, around this scene to expand new categories, while requiring structural products have innovative technology and independent production lines, super instant tea powder and oat milk is the basic products under this framework. In the future, we will launch coffee liquids with real technological innovation and technical barriers, all based on the consistent strategy of product expansion.

Q: At present, more and more freshly ground coffee brands or traditional instant coffee brands are launching freeze-dried coffee, how do you see this trend?

Wu Jun: Freeze-drying is not a new technology, but it is a combination of convenience and quality, which is in line with the user consumption habits under the trend of coffee culture popularity, so we think this technology can bring new opportunities to the coffee industry, just like when Starbucks saw the opportunity of espresso scene. Our focus on freeze-drying is more importantly on what differentiation and systematic support it can bring to product innovation and user experience, thus creating more user value.

Q: Compared with other freeze-dried beverage brands, what are the barriers in the supply chain of your brand?

Wu Jun: Saturnbird Coffee has never limited itself to the word freeze-dried beverage, we focus on what differentiated supply the freeze-drying technology can bring to product innovation and user experience. Therefore, we spent a lot of human and material resources into factories and R&D to complete the industrial upgrade of the supply chain, to be able to achieve personalized adjustments in coffee roasting, extraction, freeze-drying and other aspects, which can theoretically restore the realization of an unlimited variety of coffee flavors, and also provide users with more diverse choices, which can provide room for brand inclusiveness. In addition, our new oat milk and to be launched coffee liquid and other product lines, are hoping to solve the problem of product innovation from the bottom, solve the problem of user experience, and then use the unified brand content to provide users with a full-scene coffee solution, providing a new coffee lifestyle. The moat of consumer products needs to be built in every link of the whole chain, from R&D, production, sales, delivery to after-sales, we hope to make users perceive the consistency of three and a half meals from every link, and users can perceive the “extreme Saturnbird style” at every touch point.

Q: Nowadays, new consumer goods are talking about new scenarioses, is there any special feature of the consumption scenario of Saturnbird? From one scenario to another new scenario, what does your brand do to guide consumers?

Wu Jun: Saturnbird hopes to create a convenient coffee consumption culture for users, from the most basic homemade to the office sharing scene to the outdoor functional scene, to the future offline scene, all around this point, we need to deliver innovative products to users, but also need to create more fresh and interesting events and content, so that the user's understanding and experience of the scene is more complete, so as to guide more people to become coffee lovers.

Q: What is the percentage of revenue between online and offline now? How are the offline channels rolled out? What is the significance of offline channels to Saturnbird?

Wu Jun: At present, the online channel is still the main focus, and the offline channel is doing diversified attempts and explorations, and the first strictly offline store is expected to land in Anfu Road in August. Our offline channel is still the brand communication and content bearing, but also the future of the membership growth system as the core of the new online and offline retail starting point.

Q: What is the current level of the repurchase rate of Saturnbird? Do you think it is a product with “product power”?

Wu Jun: The annual repurchase rate is close to 50%. From visual to quality, the super instant coffee series should be very recognizable and memorable to users, and at the same time, it solves the needs of users’ coffee consumption scenarioses, and it builds a system combining product and content, which gives us more methods and confidence for future exploration.

Q: How do you see the current capital favored freshly ground coffee track, besides the “Starbucks model” and “Luckin model” which focus on scene and consumer transaction respectively, are there any other opportunities possible?

Wu Jun: We hope to become the third existence outside of these two models. Coffee is like listening to music, people always have their own customary style and playing scenes, and the future coffee consumption field will also be divided into more vertical needs and scenes, we are not in direct competition with the business scene and operational efficiency, but to provide a more lifestyle-oriented possibilities.

Q: How do you evalsuate what kind of company you are now, and what kind of company do you hope to be in the future?

Wu Jun: Saturnbird is a very young but dynamic company, just like the blue area in the nebula, constantly creating new stars and breeding infinite possibilities, I hope it still retains this vitality in the future, bravely exploring different possibilities, connecting more partners, giving users a sense of security and providing enough freshness.

Source: LatePost