The most basic and common egg ingredients on the people’s table are setting off a wave of consumption upgrading in China due to the emergence of a new category of raw eggs, which has become a new focus of venture capital.
According to the fresh data of jd.com, raw edible eggs have occupied nearly 50% of the medium and high-end egg market of more than 1.5 yuan / piece on jd.com platform, and the annual compound growth of category sales has reached 6 times. According to the data of tmall platform, raw edible eggs have become the fastest growing category of tmall eggs. In 2020, the number of consumers and sales scale increased by more than twice year-on-year, and contributed nearly 1 / 4 of the market share of tmall eggs.
The Yellow swan, founded less than four years ago, is a leader in the raw egg track. With more than 20 years of industry experience, its founder and team tried to “open up” a new situation with new types of raw edible eggs in the traditional egg market. They put such entrepreneurial ideas into practice, which not only quickly gained recognition on the consumer side, but also doubled the company’s revenue for two consecutive years. At the same time, the team itself has repeatedly received the support of investors.
It is understood that since its establishment, Huang Swan has successively obtained investments from proterra investment partners, CICC Huirong, China Construction and development emerging investment, Yiyuan capital and Yinshan capital. In January this year, even in the general cooling environment of consumption and investment, Huang Swan still completed a c-round financing of more than 600 million yuan, setting a record for the largest amount of egg brand financing in the field of basic ingredients in recent years. Fengshang capital and Huaying capital participated in this round of financing.
A person familiar with the matter disclosed to the 21st Century Business Herald that in the recent two rounds of financing of yellow swan, investors scrambled to invest and showed deep interest. “We hope to choose a relatively matching capital side at different stages of the company’s development. Only when entrepreneurs and investors agree with each other and uphold the thinking of long-term ism and Productism can they come together.” Liu Yong, partner of Huang Swan and head of the group’s strategic brand center, told the 21st Century Business Herald.
He said that at present, the edible raw egg market is gradually becoming the mainstream. It should be emphasized that “edible raw” is a standard, rather than purely advocating raw food. Compared with ordinary eggs, raw eggs are more safe, delicious and nutritious, and can meet the consumption needs of eggs in more non fully cooked scenes, such as loose eggs and one-sided frying. Yellow Swan hopes to bring consumers the experience of upgrading egg consumption through the launch of raw edible egg products, and continuously drive the egg industry to develop in a higher quality direction.
Professional teams cut into the raw egg market to meet the diversified needs of egg consumption of emerging people
China is the world’s largest egg producer and consumer, with an annual output of more than 31 million tons and a market scale of 300 billion yuan. However, the 100 billion level egg market is extremely fragmented, with brand eggs accounting for less than 5%. On the whole, it is in a state of category and no brand. In contrast, in developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan, the egg market presents the characteristics of high concentration, high branding and deep processing.
What new opportunities are pregnant with domestic egg consumption and what brands can stand out in the complex egg market? In order to clarify these problems, the founder of yellow Swan once led his team to conduct in-depth research on the egg market in Europe, America and Japan.
During the research, the team found that compared with Chinese consumers, the scenes of European, American and Japanese consumers using eggs are very different.
In China, consumers mainly eat fully cooked eggs, including boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, fried eggs and so on. In the European, American and Japanese markets, it is basically the use scene of non fully cooked eggs. Whether boiled eggs, scrambled eggs or fried eggs, they only make the eggs soft and loose, which leads to a variety of eating methods, such as loose eggs, one-sided fried eggs, hot spring eggs, Shuibo eggs, Benedict eggs and so on.
“The consumption of non fully cooked eggs makes the egg taste better and is conducive to the absorption of egg nutrition.” Liu Yong said. In the domestic market, with the upgrading of consumption, more and more mothers and cutting-edge white-collar groups are trying this diversified egg eating method.
However, the premise of non fully cooked eggs is that the eggs themselves do not contain Salmonella and meet the raw edible standard. In Japan and some developed countries, the absence of Salmonella is the most basic standard for the listing, circulation and sale of eggs. In China, according to the current national standards, raw edible eggs with safe, delicious and nutritional characteristics were basically blank in the domestic market, and the Yellow Swan team was acutely aware of this market situation.
It is worth noting that in the initial stage, general start-ups usually adopt a relatively light mode of development, such as looking for a OEM to produce products. Yellow Swan has spared no effort to invest heavily in assets. The team has adopted the mode of building its own production base and factory. In the past three or four years, it has invested more than 800 million yuan, opened up the whole chain from chicken seedlings, feed, R & D, production to brand construction and channel operation, and established the first enterprise standard of edible fresh eggs in China. In addition, under its leadership, the China Association for the promotion of international cooperation in agriculture initiated the project and formulated standards. Sichuan University, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu University, people’s culture and tourism, Jingdong, HEMA and other parties jointly participated in the formulation of group standards for raw eggs, and further optimized and upgraded the relevant standard requirements.
Liu Yong explained to the 21st Century Business Herald that this model was chosen because of the particularity of the egg industry itself. In the food and beverage processing industry, it mainly relies on automatic equipment to realize standardized production, and the difficulty of maintaining quality consistency is relatively low. However, in the egg industry, as a biological asset, eggs need to be strictly controlled from the source in all links such as chicken seedlings, feed, epidemic prevention and feeding, so as to ensure that raw edible eggs without Salmonella can be produced.
“We believe that at this stage, in order to effectively control the quality, we must first go through the whole chain management and control and invest heavily in assets. Moreover, at that time, there was no edible technology and experience in China, so we need to take the lead in introducing technology from abroad and explore and form a edible standard suitable for China’s national conditions in the process of building the whole link.” He said.
Continue to win the favor of investors with focus and learning
When the Yellow Swan team tries to use new types of raw edible eggs to bring quality to the 100 billion level egg market