--- title: "Li Qian: From Investor to Entrepreneur, Why I Entered the Leisure Snack Industry?" description: "Recently, a company called 'Youqingxu Snacks' has come into people's view. Unlike traditional snack business models, Youqingxu has taken a 'multi-brand development' path from the start, with brands such as 'One Person Drinks Alone', 'Fan Jianwen', and 'Pufferfish Fake Chips'. Moreover, each product's brand power is explosive, with striking design and emotionally resonant copy. In August, its Youzan store went live and created multiple sales phenomena." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-10-19" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/li-qian-from-investor-to-entrepreneur-why-i-entered-the-leisure-snack-in-d83a8df1/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/li-qian-from-investor-to-entrepreneur-why-i-entered-the-leisure-snack-in-d83a8df1.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/bbkprPsVW_aBUSscGW9enA" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%9D%8E%E5%80%A9-%E4%BB%8E%E6%8A%95%E8%B5%84%E4%BA%BA%E5%88%B0%E5%88%9B%E4%B8%9A%E8%80%85-%E6%88%91%E4%B8%BA%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E6%8A%95%E8%BA%AB%E4%BC%91%E9%97%B2%E9%9B%B6%E9%A3%9F-d83a8df1.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/li-qian-from-investor-to-entrepreneur-why-i-entered-the-leisure-snack-in-d83a8df1/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Li Qian: From Investor to Entrepreneur, Why I Entered the Leisure Snack Industry? > Recently, a company called 'Youqingxu Snacks' has come into people's view. Unlike traditional snack business models, Youqingxu has taken a 'multi-brand development' path from the start, with brands such as 'One Person Drinks Alone', 'Fan Jianwen', and 'Pufferfish Fake Chips'. Moreover, each product's brand power is explosive, with striking design and emotionally resonant copy. In August, its Youzan store went live and created multiple sales phenomena. Recently, a company called 'Youqingxu Snacks' has come into people's view. Unlike traditional snack business models, Youqingxu has taken a 'multi-brand development' path from the start, with brands such as 'One Person Drinks Alone', 'Fan Jianwen', and 'Pufferfish Fake Chips'. Moreover, each product's brand power is explosive, with striking design and emotionally resonant copy. The product selection clearly reflects careful market research. In August, its Youzan store went live and created multiple sales phenomena, with the pufferfish snack gift box being wildly popular among young consumers. From the creatively repurposed dog food bag as a pufferfish gift bag, to rice flowers replacing plastic foam as filler, to the 'One Person Drinks Alone' t-shirt, every detail from product to gift makes young consumers eager to spread the word. Every visitor to Youqingxu's office can't stop taking photos. Li Qian, founder of Youqingxu and a well-known brand expert, defines Youqingxu as follows: **'Delicious, fun, and good value are the standards. Youqingxu is a food company with brand connection capabilities. On one hand, it connects the production side, balancing and curating products; on the other hand, it discovers and fulfills needs from a brand perspective. Youqingxu acts as a brand connector in the food sector.'** In April 2017, Li Qian, then Managing Director of Tsing Capital, officially resigned to enter the leisure snack market as an entrepreneur, a brave move against the tide. Li Qian was an investor focused on the consumer sector and an excellent post-investment manager. She invested in and served consumer companies like the weekly flower delivery brand 'Huadian Shijian' (Flower Time), and acted as a 'matchmaker' to connect celebrity Gao Yuanyuan with Huadian Shijian. Beyond post-investment management, she helped 300 companies build their brands and marketing on 'Zaihang', China's largest one-on-one knowledge payment platform, becoming a benchmark mentor in the brand marketing field with the most students, highest ratings, and highest consultation fees. Her brand and consumer column on 36Kr reaches tens of thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs and brand professionals. After quietly resigning for six months, Li Qian and 'Pufferfish Youqingxu' stormed back into the market. Recently, she completed three large-scale brand lectures in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, proposing that 'emotional marketing is the next marketing trend' and launching the first batch of over 30 snack products. 'If a brand can extract the scenario and emotion of a product, that emotion becomes a powerful marketing tool,' she said. **What is 'Youqingxu Snacks'?** 'In the past, snack categories were based on traditional production-side logic, classified by processes like puffed, nuts, preserved fruits, etc. This is factory-thinking classification. From the consumer's perspective, they don't care about such classification; they care more about scenarios and emotions, and their actual needs. Mixed nuts and dried fruits sell so well—under the old classification, which category do they belong to?' Li Qian said. In fact, this way of thinking comes from her eight years at Tencent, where she developed an 'internet product mindset' that emphasizes user needs. 'I saw long lines of Chinese people at airport tax refund counters abroad, very crazy. As long as this situation exists, there is great opportunity for consumer entrepreneurship in China. Snacks are a growing market. China has strong snack production capabilities, but brand capabilities are too weak. This brand capability is not just about packaging design or distribution, but a connection capability under a product mindset. Chinese snack brands are in an awkward phase: on one hand, there are countless tacky, low-quality brands; on the other, over-packaged, over-marketed brands are overcharging under the guise of consumption upgrade. Neither is the ultimate direction. Consumers want delicious, good-looking, and good value.' Li Qian explained her entrepreneurial motivation. 'The contradiction between the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development—unbalanced and inadequate is a clear reality in the food sector: unbalanced supply and demand, inadequate branding.' Li Qian's latest column articulates her view. 'Youqingxu' products break the traditional snack classification, with **'delicious, good-looking, good value'** as the core consumer brand experience. Upstream, it deeply curates and partners with the first batch of over 30 snack production factories, upgrading from demand discovery, new product development, innovative design, and innovative packaging, initiating **emotional, scenario-based, and omnichannel snack consumption.** She and her team conducted months of user research and testing to understand the 'core emotional points' of urban youth, such as 'anxiety', 'sang' (a Chinese internet slang for pessimism), 'self-deprecation', and 'mutual teasing'. They combine these emotions with snack consumption scenarios, continuously turning various emotions into popular culture that influences young consumers' consumption context, amplifying the emotional influence of snacks, and helping consumers express emotions through snack consumption and convey group identity. Li Qian has a community of thousands of readers and students who serve as the initial feedback source for Youqingxu snacks. Whether it's delicious, fun, or expensive becomes the specific issues discussed in their brand practice, and also the laboratory for the first batch of Youqingxu snacks to be criticized and improved. Recently, the new snack brands 'Fan Jianwen' and 'Fake Chips' developed by 'Youqingxu' are about to be launched to the market. The 'Fan Jianwen' brand precisely captures the 'mutual teasing' emotion popular among younger consumers, using this emotional point as a key foundation, combined with snack products, selecting 'meat dates', 'yam chips', and 'dried fruits' as core products, which is worth looking forward to. **Building a Company with 'Brand Connection Capability'** On October 18, Li Qian posted on WeChat Moments: **In the future, a batch of companies with 'brand connection capability' will emerge. This connection capability is the ability to connect production imbalances and help meet market demands.** Discovering truly good products, building truly good brands, and constructing omnichannel sales channels—the future of Youqingxu is to build brand connection capability in the snack industry and become a powerful channel brand. We need to stand with excellent producers and excellent distributors, open to cooperation. Unlike many companies, Youqingxu has been open from the start. 'Professionals do professional things', 'Everyone connects to improve efficiency', Li Qian says. Doing such things excites her. Transitioning from investment to entrepreneurship, from internet to physical, completely stepping out of her comfort zone, without enough exciting points to support her, she would hardly make such a change. Currently, Youqingxu's team is full of talent, including managers from major internet and consumer goods companies, food designers and product operators from different countries, and top community operations and experience R&D personnel. They are continuously curating and enriching snack brands and categories. **Who Loves 'Youqingxu' Most?** In the new round of consumption upgrade, people have more and more consumption choices, and brand differentiation has entered the emotional competition stage. Li Qian mentioned: **'Emotional marketing' has also become a major trend in brand marketing in 2017.** From the viral popularity of 'Sang Tea' and 'Heytea', to NetEase Cloud Music's subway heart-wrenching copy, young people increasingly prefer brands with emotional attachment. 'Youqingxu' enters from high emotional points in all aspects from snack product development to packaging, visual design, production, sales, marketing, and after-sales service. Products like 'Glass Heart Potato' mochi, 'Mouth Cannon' dried fruits, 'One Night Ten Episodes' vegetable chips for binge-watching, 'Boyfriend Power' rice crackers, and 'Pass the CET-4/6' sweet potato chips have been selling well since launch. Meanwhile, the 'Dabaojian' gift box, with its cute and stylish design and popular delicious snacks, sold out 10,000 units within 30 minutes of launch. To date, the six-month-old 'Youqingxu' snack brand has accumulated over 300,000 loyal fans online, and it continues to grow. Over 70% of fans are young people aged 18-25. In August 2017, the '2017 China Leisure Snack Industry Research Report' released by Yidu Think Tank described the main characteristics of leisure snacks: emphasizing consumption scenarios and incorporating more emotional value into ready-to-eat foods. According to the report's forecast, **from 2006 to 2020, the cumulative sales scale of the leisure snack market will reach 2 trillion yuan.** 'The snack market is huge and extremely fragmented; efficiency and brand power are the keys to winning,' Li Qian also revealed that she had studied this market long ago. When investing, she always wanted to find suitable entrepreneurs to 'pool' such a project to invest in, but after searching for a long time, she couldn't find the right person. Then she thought, maybe she herself is the most suitable person, so at this opportune moment, she entered the market. 'Many things, if you think clearly but don't do them, it's the same as not thinking. Thinking a thousand times is not as good as doing once.' Li Qian's execution is evident to many. This entrepreneur, known in the circle as a 'transformation expert', once led the Tencent News team from the bottom of the four major portals to the top in influence, and also single-handedly brought fame to the AI company Glint. After a brilliant transition to investor, she invested in a batch of representative consumer projects. This time, 'Youqingxu' is a bigger battle. At the 'New Forces * New Ecology' FMCG + Internet Conference held by New Distribution during the Chongqing Autumn Sugar Fair on November 8, Li Qian, founder of Youqingxu, will also be invited as a speaker. She will deliver a keynote speech on 'From Channel Power to Brand Power'. If you have questions, ideas, or cooperation intentions for her and 'Youqingxu', you are welcome to join us for exchange and discussion! For cooperation and distribution matters regarding Youqingxu snacks, please contact Zhao Wanlei, Marketing Director of Youqingxu: **The 2017 (3rd) FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme 'New Forces, New Ecology', inviting **1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to explore new chapters of cross-border integration! Click the link below to review the highlights of the 1st and 2nd FMCG + Internet Conferences: [2016 'FMCG + Internet' Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## 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