In 2020, due to the impact of the pandemic, domestic beverage companies were "hurt." However, Genki Forest was not among them. According to industry insiders, this year Genki Forest's monthly sales once exceeded 400 million yuan, and the annual sales target of 2.5 billion yuan is basically no problem. -01- Genki Forest's Ambition Moreover, Genki Forest quietly extended its "hand" of expansion under such circumstances. According to media reports, Genki Forest recently welcomed a new head of human resources: Ran Hao, former HRD of Luckin Coffee. According to public information, Ran Hao joined Luckin Coffee in 2017 and single-handedly built Luckin's human resources management system. Ran Hao can be considered the top person in Luckin Coffee's human resources. For this behavior, the outside world naturally speculated that Genki Forest must be going to make coffee. In fact, Genki Forest's ambition has long gone beyond sparkling water. Tang Binsen, the head of Genki Forest, stated at the distributor conference at the end of October that Genki Forest still has 95% of its products not yet launched, and 2021 will be Genki Forest's "big product year," with R&D expenses and R&D personnel both tripling from 2020. "We are still the brand that gives everyone the highest gross profit and the most space in this industry. We will always maintain this; you don't have to worry," he said to the distributors on site. Almost at the same time, on October 26, Genki Forest shareholder Challenger Capital invested in bottled ready-to-drink coffee Never Coffee. Looking further back, in August this year, Genki Forest also launched a new coffee latte milk tea, starting to approach the ready-to-drink coffee market. Genki Forest's foray into coffee is not really sudden. Internally, Genki Forest has long established an R&D center and continuously launched new products. Currently, besides sparkling water, the Genki Forest family also includes product lines such as burnt tea, energy drinks, milk tea, yogurt, and sparkling juice, with dozens of flavors, and the products are promoted under the slogan of sugar-free and healthy. According to market feedback, in winter, sales of milk tea sometimes exceed those of sparkling water. It is not difficult to see that Genki Forest is striving to break out of the consumption scenario of a single hit product and move towards a multi-category development. -02- Genki Forest's Confidence Make sparkling water, and sparkling water becomes popular; make milk tea, and milk tea becomes popular; make coffee, can it also become popular? Presumably, Genki Forest may not have 100% confidence, but it certainly has its own confidence. Unlike internet-famous brands such as Perfect Diary and Three Squirrels, which first focus on online channels, Genki Forest focused on offline from the beginning. They believe that their user profile is between 15 and 35 years old, who pay attention to food health and like to try new products, and the cold cabinets of chain convenience stores are very compatible with their potential users. Currently, Genki Forest's offline channels cover 30 provinces in China, 477 convenience store systems, 53,000 convenience stores, and 130,000 traditional offline stores. In the early stage of brand development, Genki Forest relied well on convenience stores for channel layout. According to data released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, in 2019, China's convenience stores achieved sales of 255.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%, still higher than the 8% growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods in 2019. But Genki Forest's rapid explosion in just four years is also attributed to online channels. Data shows that Genki Forest entered Tmall in May 2017, and in the second year's Double 11, it rushed to the ninth place in Tmall's water beverage category, with total sales of 2.6 million yuan. Data shows that this year, Genki Forest ranked first in water beverage sales on Tmall Double 11 and in JD.com's food and beverage Double 11 speed ranking, taking only 4 years from establishment to becoming a hit. At the same time, Genki Forest is also a frequent guest in Li Jiaqi's live streaming room. This year's March 8th Festival, 150,000 bottles of new milk tea were instantly sold out in Li Jiaqi's live streaming room. In addition to Tmall and JD.com flagship stores, Genki Forest has also opened a Xiaohongshu official store and a WeChat Yuanqi Research Institute mini-program, combining with the graphic and text functions of Xiaohongshu and WeChat, interpreting concepts such as low-carb diet and healthy life through product reviews, linking them with its product features, and creating a screen-brushing effect. On Xiaohongshu, searching for "sugar control" and "sugar-free" yields more than 80,000 and 360,000 posts respectively sharing related science and recommending sugar-free foods. In addition, Nielsen reports show that 41% of consumers want snacks with less sugar. Obviously, "sugar control" has become a new trend for the public to express a healthy lifestyle. Genki Forest has always followed this route, from sparkling water to milk tea, all with the "signboard" of low sugar or sugar-free, quickly gaining fans. However, regarding the "health" that Genki Forest has always claimed, some people have also raised different views. Genki Forest sparkling water mainly uses sucralose and erythritol to adjust sweetness. These are not sugar substances and meet the national standard for sugar-free, but these sugar substitutes also imply other health risks and are not suitable for long-term consumption. In addition, Genki Forest has gained countless fans with its Japanese style, but it inevitably falls into the controversy of "fake Japanese goods." Genki Forest is an authentic domestic product, but from the packaging, Genki Forest uses the Japanese "気" instead of the Chinese "气" character, and the back of the bottle also has words like "Japan Genki Forest Co., Ltd.", full of Japanese style, making it easy for people to define it as a Japanese brand at first impression. Obviously, it is an authentic domestic product, but it is wrapped in a "foreign packaging" to improve its grade. Genki Forest's "Japanese card" inevitably makes consumers feel antipathy. Although all this has not stopped Genki Forest from continuing to become popular. -03- Genki Forest's Capital Story From the capital level, Genki Forest is also a "hot commodity." Genki Forest's valuation was 4 billion yuan in November last year, and jumped to 14 billion yuan in July this year, an increase of 10 billion yuan in 8 months. "Money makes things easy," Genki Forest's rapid growth naturally cannot be separated from abundant capital. In fact, the story between Genki Forest and the capital market is not only this. Genki Forest's founder Tang Binsen came from a gaming background but loves consumption very much. In 2016, when capital was frantically pouring money into shared bikes and shared power banks, Tang Binsen had the foresight to establish Genki Forest. But Tang Binsen's ambition is by no means limited to beverages. More precisely, Genki Forest is just a small piece of Tang Binsen's consumption map. In 2014, before founding Genki Forest, Tang Binsen established Challenger Capital. As of now, Challenger Capital manages a total asset scale of 5 billion yuan, mainly investing in consumption and TMT directions, and has invested in more than 100 startups including Tiger Brokers, Home Game, Vitality 28, Lamian Talk, Panda Brewing, Guan Yun Baijiu, and Haowangshui. It can be said that in the consumption track, Challenger Capital behind Genki Forest can be regarded as a hit harvester. Or, in Genki Forest's genes, it is far more than sparkling water and milk tea. After seeing all this, is Genki Forest's entry into the coffee industry not surprising? Source: Finance Breakfast (ID: Femorning) Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once the tip is adopted.