---
title: "2025 Consumption Review: 10,000 Stores No Longer Rare, 100 Billion Just Passing Grade"
description: "In 2025, China's consumer market saw moderate growth in total retail sales of consumer goods, while the baijiu industry underwent deep adjustment. Despite this, sectors like trendy toys, ancient gold jewelry, and 4-yuan lemonade attracted capital attention, with Pop Mart, Laopu Gold, and Mixue Bingcheng collectively surging in Hong Kong. Amidst this ice and fire, consumer companies are undergoing a quiet evolution."
author: "杨硕"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-02-13"
categories: "Capital, Earnings & M&A, Consumer & Categories, Industry Trends"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-consumption-review-10-000-stores-no-longer-rare-100-billion-just-pa-0c5a0abd/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-consumption-review-10-000-stores-no-longer-rare-100-billion-just-pa-0c5a0abd.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/r6jm1vVtWffBDUPYgS7UyQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/2025%E6%B6%88%E8%B4%B9%E5%A4%A7%E5%A4%8D%E7%9B%98-%E4%B8%87%E5%BA%97%E4%B8%8D%E7%A8%80%E7%BD%95-%E5%8D%83%E4%BA%BF%E6%89%8D%E5%88%9A%E5%8F%8A%E6%A0%BC-0c5a0abd.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-consumption-review-10-000-stores-no-longer-rare-100-billion-just-pa-0c5a0abd/"
citation: "杨硕. “2025 Consumption Review: 10,000 Stores No Longer Rare, 100 Billion Just Passing Grade.” New Distribution, 2026-02-13. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-consumption-review-10-000-stores-no-longer-rare-100-billion-just-pa-0c5a0abd/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# 2025 Consumption Review: 10,000 Stores No Longer Rare, 100 Billion Just Passing Grade

> In 2025, China's consumer market saw moderate growth in total retail sales of consumer goods, while the baijiu industry underwent deep adjustment. Despite this, sectors like trendy toys, ancient gold jewelry, and 4-yuan lemonade attracted capital attention, with Pop Mart, Laopu Gold, and Mixue Bingcheng collectively surging in Hong Kong. Amidst this ice and fire, consumer companies are undergoing a quiet evolution.

**Source** | Blue Shark Consumption
2025 will be remembered in history for China's consumer market.
This year, total retail sales of consumer goods grew moderately, the baijiu industry underwent deep adjustment, Feitian Moutai fell below its guidance price, and Wuliangye's quarterly revenue halved. Also this year, trendy toy blind boxes, ancient gold jewelry, and 4-yuan lemonade became the focus of capital, with Pop Mart, Laopu Gold, and Mixue Bingcheng—the "three sisters" on the Hong Kong stock market—collectively exploding, and Miniso's city park store saw daily foot traffic exceed 10,000...
Between ice and fire, consumer companies are undergoing a silent evolution. As the tide of low-price competition recedes, truly vibrant enterprises are extending their branches higher.
In 2025, which consumer tracks and companies are still "growing upward"?
** _Tea and Coffee: 10,000-Store Chains Accelerate_**
In 2025, new tea drinks were undoubtedly capital's "darling."
This year, four leading brands—Guming, Mixue Group, Chagee, and Shanghai Auntie—flocked to the capital market, staging an unprecedented "collective IPO." Mixue Bingcheng's market value exceeded HK$100 billion on its first day of listing in Hong Kong, and Chagee became the "first new tea drink stock on the US market." The six listed tea giants' combined net profit in the first half of 2025 exceeded RMB 5.5 billion, delivering impressive results.
Among them, Mixue Bingcheng, with 53,000 global stores and 57.6% in third-tier and below cities, built a scale moat of "extreme cost-effectiveness + full industry chain control." In the first half of 2025, this company selling 4-yuan lemonade achieved revenue of RMB 14.875 billion and net profit of RMB 2.718 billion, up 44.1% year-on-year. It is validating a model: controlling costs to the extreme in lower-tier markets is itself the most solid brand barrier.
Chagee took a different path. With "Oriental tea positioning + national style aesthetics" as its differentiation label, this brand, founded only seven years ago, saw its store count surge to 7,038, up over 40% year-on-year. Overseas stores reached 208, covering 6 countries, with overseas GMV growing 77.4% year-on-year in the first half of 2025. It also seems to show that cultural premium can cross borders, and Chinese tea drinks have the ability to export aesthetic systems.
Going global has upgraded from a "trial" for brands to a "core strategy" for the future. This year, Mixue Bingcheng's overseas stores exceeded 4,800, with local procurement rates in Southeast Asia over 70%. Its Southeast Asian stores achieved average monthly GMV of RMB 512,000 per store, successfully replicating its development model on foreign soil.
While new tea giants like Guming and Shanghai Auntie break through the "10,000-store scale," coffee has also become a common strategic choice for tea giants.
Mixue Bingcheng opened independent stores under its brand "Lucky Cup," surpassing 8,000 stores, aiming to become the "Snow King of coffee." Guming integrated coffee into its existing store system, with over 8,000 stores offering coffee drinks; 30% of the 52 new products launched in the first half were coffee. ChaBaiDao quietly launched freshly ground coffee products priced at RMB 6.9-12.9 in Sichuan, Guangdong, and other regions.
But this hasn't hindered coffee giants' expansion—Luckin Coffee sits firmly at the top with nearly 30,000 stores, Cotti Coffee follows with 15,000, and Nowwa surged from 2,000 to 10,000 stores in 11 months, becoming the industry's biggest dark horse.
Luckin's expansion strategy shows a clear dual-track approach: in high-tier cities, it focuses on mass-market and mid-range shopping malls, prioritizing high-exposure, high-convenience locations like first floors to intercept immediate demand with higher store density. In lower-tier markets, franchise stores are the absolute main force, rapidly covering sinking markets at low cost to tap into county-level coffee dividends.
According to Luckin Coffee's Q3 financial report—RMB 15.287 billion in revenue, 50.2% year-on-year growth, and 112 million monthly average transaction customers—this company, reborn from financial fraud ruins, has completely redeemed itself.
Cotti, on the other hand, is attacking on all fronts in store formats and marketing scenarios. From "open wherever there's a crack" to "open like a convenience store," Cotti iterated its store strategy through trial and error. As of November 2025, Cotti had 15,791 stores nationwide, adding 2,784 in 90 days, covering 360 cities. Compared to 8,723 at the end of 2024, it added over 7,000 net stores in a year.
In marketing, Cotti is a "collaboration maniac"—WTT World Table Tennis, Wuhan Open, Tour of Guangxi, League of Legends World Finals, Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival... Cotti appears densely in sports, esports, and entertainment traffic hotspots.
As the biggest dark horse in the 2025 coffee track, from July to November 2025, Nowwa added 4,617 net stores in four months, with a peak of 1,800 stores in a single month, the fastest growth globally. This stems from Nowwa's complete reconstruction of coffee expansion logic.
What does it take to open a Nowwa convenience store format? RMB 10,000 equipment deposit (refundable), about RMB 6,000 initial materials, and 2-4 square meters of counter space. No dedicated barista needed; convenience store staff can be trained in two to three hours. No extra renovation; share the host store's business license and foot traffic. This low-threshold store-in-store model allowed Nowwa to cover in 11 months what others took three years to achieve.
With Luckin, Cotti, and Nowwa each reaching 10,000 stores via three distinct paths, the "Three Kingdoms" battle in the coffee track is intensifying.
** _Internet Giants' Battle Moves Offline_**
In 2025, China's retail industry finally bid farewell to the "online replacing offline" development path—with 70% offline share stable as a rock and 30% online penetration hitting the ceiling, new retail models are exploding.
On one side, "new forces" are surging—Sam's Club set a new record since entering China with 10 stores opened in a year, totaling 63 stores. Hema NB (Super Hema NB) surpassed 350 stores and officially opened franchising, racing toward 1,000 stores. JD 7FRESH and Meituan's Xiaoxiang Supermarket each added over 20 front warehouses in Tianjin in a year, while Sam's added 19 front warehouses. Meituan's "Happy Monkey" benchmarked Hema NB, hanging a huge billboard in Beijing's Xidan. Xiaoxiang Supermarket opened its first offline store in Beijing, competing closely with Hema Fresh and Wumart's "Pangdonglai-style" stores...
On the other side, traditional supermarkets are "actively adjusting"—Yonghui Superstores completed "Pangdonglai model" adjustments at 222 stores, with average foot traffic growth of 80%, and over 60% of adjusted stores surpassing their five-year profit peaks. Bubugao's 18 adjusted stores saw sales increase 5 times compared to pre-renovation, with Q1-Q3 net profit surging 357% year-on-year. Wumart's "Pangdonglai-style" stores saw product replacement rates over 70%, with new users accounting for 70% of sticky customers...
In this new retail landscape competition, each company has its own strategic plan:
For example, Hema Fresh's "one store, multiple warehouses" model leverages the supply chain and brand momentum of large stores, significantly diluting the marginal cost of front warehouses as fulfillment nodes. More importantly, Hema's front warehouses and Hema NB (community discount stores) form synergy: the former handles immediate demand, while the latter covers planned purchases and self-pickup scenarios, together weaving a dense community network.
Sam's also ran the "store + front warehouse" model, achieving synergy between large-store experience and online efficiency—stores carry brand mindshare and experience scenarios, while front warehouses cover surrounding immediate demand. This model is widely recognized as the "standard answer for instant retail."
JD 7FRESH accelerated this year. In 2025, JD 7FRESH pushed the "1 center store + N satellite stores" model in North China, targeting full coverage of Beijing and Tianjin by year-end. On October 1, a new store opened at Wangjing Kaide MALL, marking the latest milestone. The model's brilliance lies in "3-kilometer radius" coordinated operations: center stores carry richer SKUs and experience scenarios, while satellite stores serve as front-end fulfillment nodes, supporting half-hour-level instant delivery.
As an instant retail giant, Meituan's Xiaoxiang Supermarket entry pushed the "store-warehouse combination" model to a new stage. At the end of 2025, Xiaoxiang Supermarket opened its first offline store in Beijing's Wanliu, resembling a "hybrid species" blending Wumart's "Pangdonglai-style" experience details, Hema's private-label logic, and Meituan's fresh supply chain advantages.
Notably, whether it's the advance of "new forces" or the adjustment of old supermarkets, the underlying logic is using upstream supply chain advantages to rebuild product strength—a rich variety of imported products and an increasing number of "private labels," ultimately aiming to meet consumer needs, completely overturning the outdated model of traditional supermarkets charging suppliers channel fees.
Taking private labels as an example, major "new forces" are redefining them and achieving impressive results. For JD 7FRESH, as of October 2025, private-label product transaction value grew 445% year-on-year, with SKU count exceeding 600, covering all categories. More notably, penetration: in September, one in every two 7FRESH orders included a private-label product.
Additionally, Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan are "fighting on multiple fronts" in offline retail—Hema NB stores exceeded 350, doubling in half a year, with franchising officially opened at the end of November; Meituan's "Happy Monkey" opened 5 stores; JD Discount Supermarkets laid out 9 stores in Suqian, Zhuozhou, and other places... Hard discount has also become a battleground.
In early 2026, the hard discount war will spread from East China to North China and the Greater Bay Area—Hema NB has announced its first Shenzhen store and two Dongguan stores are about to open, JD Discount Supermarkets are entrenched in North China, and Meituan's Happy Monkey is piloting in Beijing. When "cost-effectiveness" shifts from marketing rhetoric to survival baseline, companies without efficiency moats will be driven off the table.
On the other side, China's snack discount track is reaching its peak in a grand "coronation of two kings."
This year, Mingming Henmang topped the Hong Kong stock market with 21,000 stores and RMB 66.1 billion GMV, winning the title of "first stock of bulk snack food." Cornerstone investors included Tencent, Temasek, and BlackRock, with 44 times international subscription, the highest for a consumer IPO in Hong Kong in the past two years.
Haoxianglai's parent company, Wanchen Group, saw annual revenue exceed RMB 50 billion for the first time, with net profit attributable to parent up over 220% year-on-year. As the only A-share bulk snack concept stock, it filed for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, aiming for "A+H" dual listing.
Notably, facing the approaching era of stock, the two snack kings coincidentally locked their breakthrough direction on the same strategy: transforming from bulk snacks to full-category discount supermarkets.
In February 2025, Mingming Henmang released a dual-brand strategy: Snack Henmang continues to focus on the bulk snack track, while Zhao Yiming Snacks gradually transforms into a money-saving supermarket. By year-end, nearly 3,000 money-saving supermarkets had opened, adding 400 SKUs in daily necessities, stationery, trendy toys, bakery, and low-temperature frozen products.
Haoxianglai's store iteration shows two threads: first, "large store" exploration in high-tier cities like North China flagship stores and Inner Mongolia money-saving supermarket flagship stores, integrating IP trendy toys, immersive scenes, and membership services into spaces over 400 square meters; second, gradually introducing essential household categories like home cleaning, daily chemicals, rice, flour, and oil, giving back to consumers through extreme cost-effectiveness.
The snack duo's shift from "selling space" to "consumption scenarios" may eventually lead to a head-on competition with internet hard discount supermarkets.
** _Mining the Trillion-Blue-Ocean of Emotional Consumption_**
In 2025, China's consumer market is being repriced by a "currency" that cannot be weighed or quantified—"emotional value."
CCTV Finance data shows over 90% of young people recognize emotional value, and nearly 60% are willing to pay for it. CCTV.com reported that in the 2025 "happiness economy" boom, trendy toy category order numbers grew 100% year-on-year. Securities Times estimates China's emotional consumption market has exceeded RMB 2 trillion, with an average annual compound growth rate of 12% since 2013.
In this trillion-blue-ocean, three companies stand center stage with distinct postures.
Pop Mart turned a "crying doll" into a super IP with revenue exceeding RMB 1 billion in the first half, using an 800-square-meter tear ball pit to make young people queue to buy tickets to release emotions; Miniso's trendy toy brand TOP TOY officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; Tong Shifu was labeled by the capital market as "Pop Mart for middle-aged people," knocking on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange door for the second time...
On February 9, 2026, Pop Mart announced global sales exceeded 400 million units, with THE MONSTERS single series selling over 100 million units annually, which is actually the inevitable result of Pop Mart's explosive popularity in 2025.
Financial data shows in the first half of 2025, Pop Mart's revenue was RMB 13.88 billion, surging 204.4% year-on-year. Adjusted net profit was RMB 4.71 billion, up 362.8% year-on-year. Half-year performance fully surpassed the full year of 2024. Market value exceeded HK$400 billion in August 2025, hitting a historical peak. The capital market's label for it also changed from "blind box company" to "global IP full industry chain group."
Behind this, Pop Mart also sold explosively overseas in 2025—Americas revenue was RMB 2.265 billion, up 1142.3%; Europe and other regions revenue was RMB 478 million, up 729.2%; Asia-Pacific revenue was RMB 2.851 billion, up 257.8%...
Citi Research's "Global Consumer Survey" released at the end of 2025 showed 76% of respondents purchased Pop Mart products for the first time in the past year, with 45% being new buyers in the last three months. LABUBU is the absolute traffic driver—47% of respondents own LABUBU products, and nearly half first encountered Pop Mart through LABUBU.
For a long time, Miniso has developed IP through collaborations with international IPs (like Sanrio, Marvel), but its "lack of proprietary IP" shortcoming is being quickly addressed.
Data shows as of June 30, 2025, TOP TOY's global store count reached 293, with 283 in mainland China, and overseas markets gradually forming a network since expansion began in 2024. In July 2025, TOP TOY completed a Series A financing of up to USD 59.4262 million (approximately RMB 427 million), with a post-investment valuation of about RMB 9 billion. In September, TOP TOY officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The prospectus shows its first-half 2025 revenue was RMB 1.36 billion, with net profit of RMB 180 million, making it China's largest and fastest-growing "trendy toy collection brand."
Meanwhile, TOP TOY, known for "strong channels but weak IP," also established a joint venture "Guoran Youqu" (TOP TOY holds 51%) with Haichuang Culture in May last year, acquiring quality trendy toy IPs like "Nommi" and "Maymei." Relevant data shows "Nommi" is expected to generate revenue of RMB 250 million in 2025, potentially rising to RMB 600 million in 2026, effectively filling TOP TOY's long-standing proprietary IP gap.
As "Pop Mart for middle-aged people," Tong Shifu has focused on combining traditional craftsmanship with modern design and usage scenarios to develop copper cultural and creative products. According to Frost & Sullivan, for the year ended December 31, 2024, the company ranked first in China's copper cultural and creative craft product market by total revenue, with a market share of 35.0%, demonstrating its strong position in this segment (approximately 6.3%) of the metal cultural and creative craft product market.
According to the prospectus, for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2023, 2024, and the six months ended June 30, 2024 and 2025, Tong Shifu's revenue was RMB 503 million, RMB 506 million, RMB 571 million, RMB 284 million, and RMB 308 million, respectively. Gross margins for the same periods were 32.2%, 32.4%, 35.4%, 36.0%, and 35.1%, showing stable performance in business expansion and operational efficiency.
On February 6, 2026, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Tong Shifu passed IPO filing. Soon, Tong Shifu will officially enter the capital market.
The business of IP-driven emotional value seems never to distinguish by age or demographic, and it has made many related companies earn handsomely.
** _Summary_**
On the last trading day of 2025, the closing bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange sounded no different than usual. But this bell, passing through the glass curtain walls of Central, reached a distinctly different consumer world.
We see new consumption giants becoming more "mature": Mixue Bingcheng didn't continue sprinting after 10,000 stores but grew Lucky Cup to 8,000, horizontally reusing supply chain capabilities; retail "new forces" like Hema, after continuous experimentation, successively ran through instant retail and community discount models; Pop Mart, when secondary market premiums collapsed, didn't forcibly control the market but actively increased volume and reduced scarcity, betting on a healthier long-tail ecosystem...
We also see traditional giants not willing to stay silent: Nongfu Spring achieved revenue of RMB 25.622 billion in the first half of 2025, up 15.6% year-on-year; net profit was RMB 7.622 billion, up 22.1%. Behind this achievement, tea beverage business revenue (39.4%), centered on Oriental Leaf, surpassed packaged water (36.9%), showing initial results of the "water + beverage" dual-engine strategy.
Another beverage giant, Dongpeng Beverage, also achieved impressive results for its second major product in 2025. In the first half of 2025, electrolyte beverage "Dongpeng Bujiao La" achieved revenue of RMB 1.493 billion, matching the full-year 2024 total, up 213.7% year-on-year. In the first three quarters, this product's revenue further climbed to RMB 2.847 billion, accounting for 16.91% of total revenue. From zero to 3 billion scale, this product took less than two years.
From this perspective, 2025 is not the end of the consumer golden age but the beginning of the consumer value era.
**【Moving Toward the C-End】The 11th China FMCG Conference**
**Time: March 16-18, 2026**
**Location: Chengdu, China**


---

## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 杨硕
- Published: 2026-02-13
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-consumption-review-10-000-stores-no-longer-rare-100-billion-just-pa-0c5a0abd/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/r6jm1vVtWffBDUPYgS7UyQ

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671