Seesaw的最后一天 Manner的门店数近2500家

This article reviews the development of China’s new consumer sector from its capital-fueled boom to the full-scale retreat of investment, distilling key takeaways and lessons for general audiences.

1. Key industry milestones: 2021 marked the peak of new consumer investment, with 842 financing deals totaling 90.7 billion yuan. During this boom, countless brands earned billion-dollar valuations after opening just a dozen of stores, expanding by burning cash to hype up their narrative. By 2026, the vast majority of these brands have gone bankrupt – even Seesaw, once a leading benchmark for specialty coffee, has entered bankruptcy liquidation.

2. Patterns of success and failure: Brands that survived the bust and continue growing rapidly all reject the valuation-driven hype model, and focus instead on solid operational fundamentals. For example, Mixue Ice City operates 46,000 stores and generates 4.5 billion yuan in annual net profit, while Manner Coffee has built a stable market position with its high-value-for-money offering across nearly 2,500 locations.

3. Core takeaway: No venture should be blinded by hype and market bubbles. Long-term survival depends only on addressing real consumer needs and getting the basics right.

Drawing on a large collection of success and failure cases from China’s new consumer wave, this article summarizes key pitfalls to avoid and actionable development paths for brand operators.

1. Critical pitfall to avoid: Brands that pursue the "burn cash for scale + hype for valuation" growth model, and neglect core operational metrics like unit profitability, space productivity and customer retention, will eventually end up in bankruptcy from broken capital chains – even after securing multiple rounds of funding from top-tier investors. Seesaw and Tiger Head局 are two prominent examples.

2. Current consumer trends: As consumer expectations soften, shoppers increasingly favor high-value-for-money products with tangible performance. Marketing built on premium, abstract concepts has seen steep declines in effectiveness, and the overall market price point has shifted downward. Heytea’s price cut from above 30 yuan to 15+ yuan is a clear signal of this shift.

3. Recommended growth path: Brands should first validate a profitable unit economics model before expanding gradually. They can also move upstream to control their own supply chains and cut costs, aligning with today’s consumers’ pragmatic demands. Mixue Ice City’s in-house factory model is a strong reference case.

This article maps out the full cyclical shift of China’s new consumer industry, and outlines key risk warnings and growth opportunities for all types of retail and food service sellers.

1. Core risk warning: The old capital-driven "grow by burning cash for valuation" model is completely obsolete. Brands that rely on financing to stay afloat and have not validated a profitable unit model will eventually be eliminated by the market – no matter how well-known they are. Sellers should avoid blindly following the trend of financing-fueled expansion, and should never neglect building their own profitability capacity.

2. Shifting consumer demand: Against a backdrop of softening consumer expectations and rising household savings rates, today’s shoppers are far more pragmatic. They prioritize high value for money and tangible product performance, and marketing that builds premiums on abstract concepts no longer works.

3. Growth opportunities: The value-for-money mass consumption track still holds substantial room for growth. Sellers can learn from Mixue Ice City’s upstream supply chain control strategy and Manner’s small-store, low-price model: focus on validating profitable unit economics first, expand gradually, and avoid the risk of reckless overgrowth.

Drawing on the successes and failures of new consumer brands, this article outlines key development insights and business opportunities for consumer goods manufacturers.

1. Shifting demand on the production side: Today’s successful terminal brands increasingly prioritize supply chain autonomy and cost control. Leading brand Mixue Ice City’s decision to build its own factories to control raw material production means manufacturers can deepen partnerships with terminal brands to meet their upstream supply chain needs, lock in stable long-term orders by binding to mature brands, and expand their own business scope.

2. Shifting product design demand: As consumers grow more pragmatic and favor high-value-for-money offerings, manufacturers should focus more on quality improvement and cost control in product design and production, cut unnecessary spending on conceptual packaging, and align with terminal brands’ price positioning requirements.

3. Development takeaways for manufacturers: Manufacturers should prioritize steady, fundamentals-driven growth, lean into their competitive advantages in production, avoid blindly chasing expansion and hype, and focus on refining product quality and cost advantages. This approach will leave manufacturers well-positioned to capture more business opportunities after the new consumer boom.

This article maps out the cyclical shift of China’s new consumer industry, summarizes current industry pain points and trends, and outlines new business directions for industry service providers.

1. Overall industry trend: The new consumer sector has shifted from a capital-driven, hype-focused expansion phase to an operation-driven, profit-focused deepening phase. Industry-wide demand has shifted from growing traffic to improving profitability, so service providers need to adjust their business offerings to match this new market demand.

2. Core pain points for current brand clients: A large number of brands that expanded via financing never built a profitable unit model or stable, controllable supply chain capacity. They have extremely low risk resilience, and quickly suffered capital chain breaks when capital retreated, leaving them facing severe survival crises.

3. New service opportunities: Service providers can develop targeted solutions focused on helping brands optimize unit-store profitability, control supply chain costs, and improve repeat customer retention. This replaces the old business of serving brands’ financing and hype efforts, and aligns with the industry’s new development stage.

The cyclical shift of the new consumer industry offers multiple insights for platforms to adjust their merchant recruitment and operation strategies, helping platforms mitigate risks and capture new opportunities.

1. Shifting brand demand: Today’s brands no longer prioritize pure traffic expansion, and focus more on real profitability and supply chain efficiency improvements. Platforms need to adjust their service systems, shifting from the old model of traffic enablement to operational enablement to meet brands’ new core demands.

2. Adjustments to merchant recruitment strategy: Whereas platforms previously preferred high-valuation, high-hype viral brands, they should now prioritize brands that have already validated a profitable unit model and built solid product capabilities. This optimizes the platform’s merchant mix and reduces overall operational risk.

3. Risk mitigation guidance: Platforms should watch out for collaboration risks from high-valuation, low-profitability viral brands, avoid blindly chasing popularity, and prioritize reviewing real operational metrics – such as space productivity, repeat purchase rate, and unit-store profitability – during due diligence, rather than only looking at financing scale and valuation, to protect the platform’s operational security.

This article provides a complete account of China’s new consumer industry’s trajectory from capital-fueled boom to investment retreat, offering rich empirical cases and research conclusions for industrial studies.

1. Current new industry dynamics: The new consumer industry has ended its capital-driven expansion phase and officially entered a product-driven deepening phase. The core background for current industry development is retreating capital, softening household consumption expectations, and rising household savings rates.

2. New problems exposed by industry development: Excessive capital intervention allowed the "hype for valuation" model to distort industry development logic, leading to massive misallocation of social resources. Many brands that created no real value rose rapidly only to collapse just as quickly, inflicting losses on suppliers, employees and investors alike.

3. Research insights: This case study validates the traditional business truth that "consumers vote with their feet, and the core of business is turning a profit selling goods." The new sustainable business model centers on building cost advantages around real consumer demand, validating a profitable model before expanding. This study provides fresh empirical evidence for future industrial research and policy formulation.