The new consumer wave driven by Gen Z, combined with the 'cultural confidence' and 'national confidence' leading the rise of 'guochao' culture, has opened a magnificent wave of new consumer brand creation. Genki Forest, as a representative of many new consumer brands, not only gained consumer recognition and the追捧 of top capital from 2019 to 2020, but also firmly occupied the leading position in the beverage market, truly becoming a direct competitor to established beverage brands like Coca-Cola and Nongfu Spring. Behind Genki Forest's beautiful growth curve, there is the assistance of an offline retail data monitoring company—Mashangying. How did this company help Genki Forest achieve rapid offline sales growth, and what value and industry insights does it provide?

  1. The 'rapid iteration methodology' commonly used in the internet and e-commerce industries is also applicable to offline commercial retail, allowing new consumer brands to cover in 1-2 years what traditional consumer brands take 3-5 years to achieve.
  2. What offline efficient growth did Genki Forest achieve using the 'rapid iteration methodology', and what insights can emerging brands gain? The following is a speech sharing from Wang Jieqi (Monkey Brother), CEO of Mashangying, at the China FMCG Conference held by New Distribution. To ensure a smooth reading experience, the speech content has been re-edited and organized based on the live recording. Enjoy: The acceleration of innovation in the FMCG industry under the rise of guochao We are now in the best era for FMCG. We are experiencing the rise of guochao, the emergence of new consumer brands, and the rapid iteration of FMCG products. Driven by the tide of cultural confidence, profound changes have taken place in society as a whole. China has the best industrial foundation, professional industrial talent, top digital talent, market-oriented venture capital, and strong national support. In the past, foreign brands accounted for a relatively large proportion of the FMCG industry, and there was no bottleneck technology; it was purely due to a lack of innovation and confidence among domestic enterprises that led to the phenomenon of 'worshipping foreign things'. Now, as this tide rises, a large number of emerging brands are rapidly rising, and the enthusiasm for innovation in the entire FMCG industry has been ignited. Excellent products are constantly emerging in various categories. For example, in the past, people drank 'Mizone' and 'Scream', but now they drink 'Alien Electrolyte Water'. After Genki Forest led the sparkling water category, Nongfu Spring and Coca-Cola were not willing to lag behind, successively launching Nongfu Spring Soda Sparkling Water and AHHA Small Universe. Under this trend, emerging brands continue to innovate, and mature brands accelerate innovation. While witnessing this surging wave of the era, can the new generation of FMCG achieve faster iteration with lower time and capital costs, and can they cover the path that mature brands took 3-5 years or even longer in 1-2 years? My answer is: Yes. The 'rapid iteration' methodology is sinking into retail Speaking of rapid iteration, there is a very important methodology here—'rapid iteration -> A/B testing -> data-driven decision-making', with this framework for cyclical improvement. This method is used very directly in the internet. The internet values speed, and speed is a very important competitive advantage. An APP company or a game company, after discovering a potential feature through market research, will immediately develop a version, find a group of seed users, and test quickly. They look at data every day to see if the feature can gain consumer favor and make them pay. If it's good, they strengthen it; if not, they stop losses in time. This way, the fast eat the slow, which happens every day in the internet industry. The rapid iteration methodology is also widely used in e-commerce. But in offline retail, which accounts for more than half of FMCG, it is just beginning. FMCG has a natural problem: after manufacturers produce products, they entrust them to distributors, who then supply chains, single stores, or secondary wholesalers. By the time supermarkets and convenience stores sell the products, manufacturers have not received any data feedback—they don't know their products, at what time, in what place, at what price, and with which products were sold to whom. All FMCG manufacturers may know quarterly about distributor inventory pressure, by asking peers or buying Nielsen data to see who did well last quarter. But by the time they know the results, it's already last quarter or even half a year ago. It's hard for everyone to quickly understand the dynamic sales situation of products in channels like they do with an APP or game product. Mashangying can fill the most critical link in the offline application of the 'rapid iteration methodology': 'data-driven decision-making'. This methodology has been confirmed in the services Mashangying provides to Genki Forest. Mashangying has built the largest real-time retail data monitoring network in the country, connecting with the ERP/POS of tens of thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores nationwide. There are cooperating stores in every province and prefecture-level city in China, including hypermarkets, large supermarkets, small supermarkets, convenience stores, and grocery stores, discovering tens of millions of products. Mashangying can obtain real-time sales data from each store at any time, knowing how each barcode is sold in each store at what price every day. In this way, it can quickly help companies achieve data-driven decision-making on a weekly basis, looking at the sales performance of their products and competitors in core cities, various channels, and various flavors. That is, implementing the 'rapid iteration -> A/B testing -> data-driven decision-making' that is used very skillfully in the internet into FMCG. Helping FMCG brands achieve rapid iteration with lower time and capital costs. If FMCG manufacturers can speed up at this weekly pace, with speed and momentum, they can obtain more venture capital and add more leverage. Now Mashangying serves dozens of FMCG brands in various vertical tracks, including mature well-known brands like Dongpeng Special Drink, Jinmailang, and Nanfu, as well as a large number of emerging brands represented by Genki Forest. Many teams of emerging brands have excellent talent, have received venture capital, and are very sensitive to and value data analysis and data-driven product iteration. Emerging brands: How to look at offline data, and how to extract effective information from data After solving the data feedback problem, the next question is: when data speaks, what data indicators should we look at? Many indicators in market research are very complex and professional, suitable for large companies with mature market research teams (especially foreign companies). After obtaining data, they can conduct complex research to adjust market placement and marketing strategies. Mashangying provides comprehensive data support for market research experts at large companies, but emerging brands may not have dedicated market research teams. How can business departments look at data simply and directly? The internet values simplicity, directness, and effectiveness. The solution Mashangying provides is very direct and effective: the product you make definitely has a benchmark product, possibly in the same category or in a different category that solves the same need. Since everyone has a benchmark product, no comparison, no harm. Directly look at the ratio relative to the benchmark product. In beverages, we helped Genki Forest choose a simple and direct benchmark—500ML classic flavor Coke. Whether a beverage sells well can be compared with Coke. Because previously, without the fine-grained weekly sales data from Mashangying, such simple and direct rapid comparison was impossible. We use the sales volume of 500ML classic flavor Coke as the denominator, and any beverage single product or combination of products as the numerator. The value obtained by dividing is called the Coke Index. Through this index, we can see whether it sells better than Coke. This is the sales situation of Coke in Jiangsu sample stores from January to August. As the weather gets hotter, sales get better, roughly doubling. (Above chart) This is the ratio of Genki Forest's four SKUs to the benchmark SKU of Coke from January to August last year. The Coke Index of Genki Forest's four SKUs went from less than 0.2 at the beginning of the year to nearly 1 by mid-year. So, the Coke Index increased about 4-5 times. This product grew while Coke was growing. This chart basically witnessed Genki Forest's crazy growth from January to summer last year, transforming from a relatively niche brand to a popular brand. Since 2021, despite constant pursuit and counterattacks from large companies, Genki Forest's crazy growth momentum continues. After looking at successful cases, let's look at failures. In fact, concept products like sugar-free or fiber have been in Coke's product matrix for many years, and Coke's sugar-free sales have been increasing every year. But if you look at it with the Coke Index, the curve is flat. That is, its actual growth is the same as its classic flavor, reflecting the overall trend of Chinese people consuming more bottled beverages, but it did not achieve growth exceeding the overall market like Genki Forest did. Now a beverage company, food company, or daily necessities company can bring the very mature rapid iteration theory from the internet or e-commerce to guide offline product development and market promotion, running through the theory of 'rapid iteration -> A/B testing -> data-driven decision-making'. The data provided by Mashangying is weekly and city-level, telling everyone every week the sales performance of various categories, brands, flavors, and attributes in various cities, and the performance of the product relative to competitors. Key nodes in Genki Forest's offline high-speed growth When reviewing the entire stage of Genki Forest's offline high-speed growth, I noticed a key node: Wuhan Today Convenience. Wuhan Today Convenience is a nationally renowned chain convenience store brand that places great emphasis on digitalization and rapid iteration. It played a crucial role in the very early days of Genki Forest. At that time, Genki Forest placed a large number of new products in Today for testing, and Today sent data to Genki Forest weekly, including data on its own products and competitors. Everyone must note: many companies only look at their own product data in daily decisions, but whether you can achieve growth exceeding the overall market and competitors is the key. Genki Forest placed a large number of new products and new marketing activities in Today, conducted a large number of A/B tests, testing place, product, price, and promotion—the 4Ps. After data comes back weekly, they analyze whether this iteration was successful and whether there is improvement. By cycling and iterating weekly, they can cover the path that traditional companies took 3-5 years in just 1-2 years, producing several hit products, distributing them in more channels, planning marketing activities according to the 52-week MD marketing calendar of each province, rhythmically activating offline sales, and then amplifying with online marketing methods that emerging brands are good at. Now Mashangying has a deep strategic cooperation with Today, and the exclusive 'One Horse Leading' new product iteration service for Genki Forest will be opened to FMCG brands nationwide after the National Day holiday. This means that FMCG brands in all categories nationwide can use Mashangying to place new products and new marketing activities in Today, quickly test, and see weekly the sales data of their products and competitors in various stores, whether they meet expectations, whether they can outperform benchmark products, and faster explore rapid offline growth. Based on our experience, 30-45 days of continuous monitoring can quickly test the selling power of a product. If you can't outperform in 2 months, stop and suggest testing the next product. In this era, time cost is the biggest, and the capital cost associated with time cost is also very important. When an FMCG company can master this rapid iteration methodology, that is, using lower capital and time costs for rapid iteration, what is its competitive advantage over traditional manufacturers? This chart shows the innovation situation of emerging brand Genki Forest and mature brand Nongfu Spring in the second quarter of this year. Each column is 10 rows. For Genki Forest, in the second quarter of this year, it launched 20 new barcodes, 13 if large packaging is excluded. You can see a large number of flavors being tested. Genki Forest uses this low time cost, low capital cost method to quickly try in the user demand space. If it works, it uses its most skilled online methods to amplify. We can see a large number of ads, such as Xiaohongshu ads and seeding content. Genki Forest carefully calculates what to seed in each province. Let's look at Nongfu Spring. Nongfu seems to have 9, but if you exclude large packaging, there is actually only 1, which is the Dawn White Peach flavor of the Soda Sparkling Water launched this year. So you will see an emerging brand testing 13 products at low cost in one quarter. As long as one explodes, it makes a profit. In the past, traditional entrepreneurs placed heavy bets, doing a lot of research a year or years in advance, then signing factories, spokespersons, advertising, and traffic, possibly spending hundreds of millions, and looking at results at the end of the year. If successful, they became the economic figure of the year; if failed, they became the negative example of the year. This marketing method from the last century is being broken by a large number of emerging brands that master this low-cost rapid iteration. Now emerging brands don't need to raise so much money. They may start testing with a few million, and with tens of millions they can do very well. By the time they raise hundreds of millions, traditional brands can't stop them. When a brand truly reaches annual sales of 500 million or 1 billion, it's too late for mature brands to counterattack. The momentum that emerging brands gain at that time is far greater than that of a mature brand with good profits, because they have obtained venture capital from the capital market, and the team has mastered the 'rapid iteration-A/B testing-data-driven decision-making' new product iteration and rapid amplification methodology. Are you 'watching' me?