Seasoning, as a high-frequency and essential track, has always attracted much attention. In recent years, it has not only attracted many newcomers but also leading brands from certain tracks have entered the seasoning industry one after another. In early August this year, within just 5 days, 4 brands successively announced their entry into the seasoning industry, including meat product giants like Shuanghui and Longda. With rapid economic development, consumers' living standards are gradually improving, and basic single seasonings such as soy sauce, salt, and vinegar can no longer meet consumer needs. In addition, the sudden outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 has also increased consumers' demand for health. Whether in the food or beverage track, the momentum of "health" is strong. Product healthification has become a major trend for new consumer brands, which has also made the industry's development space broader, giving rise to many segmented tracks and increasing the industry's volume. In the single traditional seasoning field, leading brands like Haitian and Qianhe have a high market share, so the two key points to subvert these traditional giants are "upgrading" and "innovation." Recently, we had an in-depth exchange with Yi Zihan, founder of Songxianxian. As someone with 10 years of experience in 0-additive food, how did she apply 0-additive to seasonings? How did Songxianxian, established less than a year ago, stand out in the seasoning track crowded with giants? ▲Songxianxian founder Yi Zihan Defining a new category by user "needs" Songxianxian's founding originated from Yi Zihan's 4-year yoga study tour in India, where she was deeply influenced by environmental and health awareness. Before returning to China, her yoga mentor gave her an instruction—return to China to spread health! So, after returning to China, to fulfill her mentor's instruction, Yi Zihan started from setting up a stall selling real milk brewed, zero trans fatty acid milk tea, to opening a vegetarian restaurant that lost over a million, to making zero-additive hot pot base and working overtime until 2 or 3 a.m. every day, and in 2016, she made a zero-additive dumpling brand that lost another 1.7 million... From the end of 2011 to 2016, three entrepreneurial attempts, three failures, but Yi Zihan still did not change her original intention of making healthy food, and she still insisted on that original path: adhere to no additives, and integrate the mission she realized in India into actual products and operations in the form of products. Although multiple entrepreneurial attempts failed, during this process, she accumulated hundreds of thousands of very loyal fans who supported Yi Zihan's continuous entrepreneurship because these fans were also moved by her spirit of spreading health! From 2017 to 2019, Yi Zihan's career was on track, but the mission of spreading health to all Chinese people has never changed in her heart. It is not enough to spread it to only hundreds of thousands of people; she wants all Chinese people to eat healthy food! At the end of 2020, Yi Zihan moved her company to Hangzhou, summarized the failures and successes of the past 9 years, and re-searched for a suitable track to start a business again. This time, she chose the seasoning industry. The track has a high ceiling, obvious differentiation, and significant consumption upgrade demand, while most existing seasoning companies are relatively traditional. This gave Yi Zihan a major opportunity: since opening a restaurant, she had planned to develop a natural seasoning that could replace MSG, and finally succeeded in 2018. After 6 years of development, this matsutake seasoning can be used to replace MSG and salt, with zero additives, zero pesticide residues, and 0 sucrose, while also meeting the current national need for sodium reduction... Such obvious differentiation made Yi Zihan decide to re-establish a brand—Songxianxian—with the characteristic of using natural ingredients like matsutake to enhance freshness, re-entering the healthy seasoning track. She sold 2 houses and finally, with 20 million yuan, began her entrepreneurial journey in healthy seasoning. Unlike traditional seasonings, Songxianxian enters the healthy seasoning track, creating a matsutake seasoning segment within the large seasoning track. Yi Zihan told New Distribution that matsutake has natural social attributes and is easily spread and loved by consumers. In addition, basic seasonings, although essential, are used in small amounts and have low unit prices, so consumers' decision-making cost is low, making rapid spread easy. Coupled with the impact of the pandemic on people's health mindset, established middle-class, new moms, and even urban seniors have all started comprehensive food health upgrades. Songxianxian's matsutake seasoning uses 10 healthy vegetables and fruits, including matsutake, instead of additives to enhance flavor, and does not add white sugar. Its sodium content is also lower than MSG, meeting the daily needs of people with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high blood lipids, children, and pregnant women. Omnichannel operations: building barriers in channels, supply chain, and technology Currently, besides the main product matsutake seasoning, Songxianxian has over 30 SKUs of other products using matsutake as a freshness-enhancing ingredient, with over 1 million deep fans across the internet. Although seasonings are offline products, for new brands, the channel strategy of Songxianxian is to first spread online, cultivate consumer awareness, then quickly lay out offline, and finally form online-offline complementarity. Songxianxian started with content marketing. Yi Zihan told New Distribution: "A few years ago, I created a self-media public account called 'Teach Vegetarian' mainly to teach users to make healthy food. In the private domain, there are hundreds of thousands of fans. In the past two years, public accounts have become increasingly difficult, and the content focus has now shifted to Douyin. Currently, the founder IP account: Yi Zihan Explains Ingredient Lists, just opened on Douyin, has already had hundreds of thousands of views." Songxianxian currently has up to 80% online sales, with Viya promoting it 1-2 times a month. Since the product launched, Viya has recommended it 8 times in a row. As a super KOL, Viya's live stream room has tens of millions of viewers each time, and through Viya alone, it can reach hundreds of millions of users. In the just-passed Tmall Double 11, in the MSG/chicken essence category, Songxianxian ranked second, with Totole first. Offline channels are the focus of Songxianxian in 2022. It has already entered supermarkets, mainly premium supermarkets (represented by Ole, AEON, Rainbow), new retail (represented by Hema), and KA stores (represented by NKA RT-Mart and Yonghui, LKA Jiajiayue, Century Mart, Suguo, etc.). Starting with KA points and lines, after KA forms brand influence, it gradually expands to BC and other channel sales, ultimately achieving full channel coverage. Matsutake seasoning is Songxianxian's main single product and future core product, with other series products forming brand power around this single product. It achieves a full product line solution for healthy kitchen seasoning. Offline sales mainly focus on consumption scenarios, with online forming brand power and offline product pull as the main operation direction. In terms of channels, Songxianxian has entered the "chicken essence area brand" in offline supermarkets, filling the consumption needs of people who do not eat chicken essence. Offline supermarkets have a positive attitude towards Songxianxian's entry. Once offline layout is completed, it will be difficult for homogeneous products to break through channel barriers in the future. In terms of supply chain, Songxianxian has strong control over the supply chain. It holds shares in the core product production factory and has reached an exclusive cooperation agreement, built its own purification workshop, and has stable suppliers for raw matsutake. In addition, the new factory jointly built by Songxianxian and the old factory is in commissioning, expected to start trial production in January, officially put into production in February 2022, with capacity expanded 10 times, meeting the performance growth needs for 2022-2024; product upgrade plans are also gradually advancing. Seasoning track China's seasoning market has many brands, which can be divided into three echelons based on 2020 total revenue. The first echelon is represented by Haitian, with revenue exceeding 15 billion; the second echelon is represented by Zhongju High-tech, Lee Kum Kee, and Laoganma, with revenue ranging from 3 to 15 billion; the third echelon is represented by Jiajia Food and other small and medium-sized enterprises, with total revenue not exceeding 3 billion. Currently, China's seasoning market is large and growing fast, with new categories and new channels having significant development space. But ultimately, the development of the seasoning industry is related to consumers' underlying consumption logic. Currently, traditional seasonings mainly based on soy sauce have high penetration and large volume. From the perspective of segmented tracks, after the pandemic, the two major segments of compound seasonings and healthy seasonings are rising rapidly. Currently, the compound seasoning and high-end soy sauce markets are growing at a CAGR of nearly 20%, and there is still much room for penetration and market concentration, especially after consumer education strengthened during the pandemic, it is expected to grow further. During the pandemic in 2020, compound seasonings and health-concept products became the leaders in the seasoning track. It is understood that Tianwei, a leading compound seasoning company, saw a year-on-year revenue increase of 36.9% during the pandemic in 2020, further accelerating compared to 2019; Qianhe, which focuses on "0 additives" and positions itself in the mid-to-high end, saw a year-on-year revenue increase of 25% in 2020, continuing the steady growth trend of 2019, growing faster than the two major head brands Haitian and Zhongju High-tech. As an innovative brand in the seasoning industry, Yi Zihan said: "Compared with traditional brands, innovative brands bring their own traffic. By forming core differences through product positioning and packaging positioning, and using online for brand exposure, offline can achieve rapid improvement from point to line to surface." Compared with traditional seasoning brands, innovative brands have stronger adaptability and can influence consumers in a shorter time cycle. However, the nature of the seasoning industry determines that the road must be walked step by step. Innovative brands in the seasoning industry can shorten the marketing cost of traditional brands from 10 to 5, but cannot shorten it to 1. Only with a clear understanding of this can every step be taken well." Are you "watching" me?