The second generation of Hollyland, who is on the hot search, is also behind the Internet celebrity cake

Trainee Reporter｜Wei Xianghui Edit｜Ya Han Xiang Internet celebrity Zhou Yangqing reported a new love affair and made hot searches, which also brought Luo Hao, the son of Luo Hong, chairman and president of Hollyland Group, into the public discussion. Luo Hao, who is in love with Zhou Yangqing, is the current CEO of Hollyland Group. According to the Tianyancha APP, Luo Hao is currently the legal representative, executive director and general manager of Hollyland Food Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. The company has a registered capital of 18 million yuan and was established in February 2018. Its business scope includes catering management; Sales of food; warehousing services (excluding hazardous chemicals); loading and unloading services, etc. Shareholder information shows that the company is jointly held by Luo Hao and Luo Yu, with a shareholding ratio of 60% and 40%. In addition to entertainment gossip, we can now see Hollyland’s brand changes in the market and the expansion of its communication volume, and Luo Hao is the hero behind the scenes. After Luo Hao took over, Luo Hong also commented that Hollyland’s store image and product innovation have made a qualitative leap. In 2019, Luo Hong said in an interview with Jiemian News: “I realize that companies cannot blindly expand, otherwise they will be’seeking death’, but how to upgrade products, how to compete in baking products such as 85°C, Bread New Language, and Wedome. I didn’t think clearly about finding Hollyland’s own advantage when the opponent was racing.” In 2014, Luo Hao, who was in his early twenties, and his brother Luo Cheng joined Hollyland, and found the answer for Luo Hong who was still in confusion. The most important change Luo Hao first made was the product. His method was to make explosive models. At that time, Japanese desserts were popular among the younger generation of dessert lovers with their refreshing and delicate taste and fresh and elegant appearance. Luo Hao launched the “semi-cooked cheese” at the right time, and it broke the sales of 100,000 boxes at the beginning of the market, and it is still the King Fried product of Hollyland today. The recipe and craftsmanship of the half-cooked cheesecake comes from the famous dessert craftsman Nakayama Mitsuo in Tsukuba, Japan. In 2014, Luo Hao and Luo Cheng went to Japan three times before persuading each other to help Holly develop this cake. Former Hollyland employees said that half-cooked cheese helped Hollyland a lot. “The popularity of half-cooked cheese has doubled the popularity of Hollyland.” Hollyland half-cooked cheese Subsequently, Hollyland introduced double-layer cheese, Otaru snowballs and other short-shelf-life products with a harmonious atmosphere. In the public comment, Hollyland’s half-cooked cheesecake, honey cake and rose double cheesecake topped the list of recommended dishes by netizens. The effect of these transformations was beyond Luo Hong’s expectations. In 2018, sales in the Beijing market, which has the largest number of Hollyland stores, tripled. At that time, Luo Hao and Luo Cheng were going to Japan twice a month, and they signed contracts with many famous Japanese masters to jointly develop new products. Afterwards, they opened up the East China market through the blasting strategy to help Haolilai. In 2019, Luo Hao and Luo Cheng noticed that Tmall’s backstage showed that the purchasing power of half-cooked cheese in East China is very strong. In May of that year, Hollyland opened its first store in Shanghai Qibao Plaza, which also broke the brand’s “ban” on not opening stores in new cities for the previous 12 years. In addition, the brothers decided on location and factory building. The strategy of opening a store in Shanghai has proven effective. After the first store opened, it achieved a daily sales of 70,000 yuan. The two brothers Luo Hao seem to be more keen on market awareness than their father. Excluding the products, the characteristics of the Shanghai store can be summarized as a bright spot: pink theme + high-value shop assistants. After entering Shanghai, Hollyland also changed the traditional store design and experience in the past. Its store in Shanghai uses pink as the main color, and its second store in Shanghai Metro City is directly called the Pink theme store. In addition to the pink elements, the employees also wear pink aprons, and they are all young male clerk with a height of 180 cm or more and young female clerk with good looks. This configuration has also gained a lot of traffic on social networks. Hollyland Pink Theme Store This strategy also worked for another Hollyland brand. “Black Swan” is an ultra-high-end brand founded by Luo Hong in 2009. The price of a cake ranges from 399 yuan to 2,999 yuan. R&D personnel are recruited from Yangmei and Lumei. In the past, the high-end of “black swan” was reflected in the price dimension, which limited the scale of the market. The black swan’s stores have experienced shrinking since 2016, until Luo Hao found another “high”, the high value of the store staff. Only then did the brand break the circle. Among the staff in the Black Swan store, women are taller than 172cm and men are taller than 180cm. They usually wear suits and bow ties at work, and they are even bilingual. The black swan became popular in Douyin because of the high-profile appearance of the takeaway staff, which also made the outside world have a strong interest in the brand and rushed to check in. At the level of product innovation, Luo Hao’s approach is to learn from new styles of tea, and Hollyland once became “tea-loving”. In 2020, Hollyland and HeyTea jointly launched a total of 9 hearts including Ovaltine Popcorn Ball, Ovaltine Snow Top Chiffon, Ovaltine Air Box, Ovaltine Pop Happy Cake, Ovaltine Cocoa Barley Cake, etc. product. These offline stores, Tmall and JD flagship stores are available at the same time. Ovaltine Bobo Ice is the first deep co-branded product of Hey Tea. After trying it out in stores nationwide in June 2019, it has now become a long-term product. Hollyland is the first reverse-licensed brand of Hey Tea. You can buy a series of co-branded products such as succulent grape snow melted cheese in Hollyland stores. Ovaltine Snow Top Chiffon Succulent Grape Snow Melt Cheese Whether it’s retro-inspired packaging and paper bags, or its promotional copywriting on social networks, Hollyland seems to be learning the common routines of Hey Tea, and the deep co-branding between food brands mainly lies in product-oriented innovation. Yu Jian, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel Greater China, said in an interview with Jiemian News that the popularity of single products is a trend, and baking brands also hope to launch some popular products, which are widely disseminated through social media, and co-branded products Can play such a role. The second-generation succession can always bring about different changes, and it also allows brands that have been slow to respond to the market in the past to keep up with the rhythm again. But market competition will not become easy because of the “second-generation” halo. There is still a lot of room for Chinese baked goods. According to data from market research company Euromonitor, the retail sales of baked goods in my country in 2019 was 231.7 billion yuan, and the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) reached 11.2% from 2013 to 2019. The global bakery market has exceeded 2.5 trillion yuan, and China is the second largest bakery market in the world after the United States. But the concentration of this industry is not high. According to the Frost&Sullivan report, from the perspective of industry concentration, the CR5 of domestic baked goods is only 11%, which is the sub-category with the lowest market concentration among snack foods. In other words, any brand has an opportunity. Hollyland’s opponent is not just his past self, and Luo Hao is not only interested in Xicha. Nowadays, many new brands have emerged in such subdivisions as bakery + coffee/tea, instant bread and Chinese bakery. After the second generation took over, they got a good start, and the next challenge still exists.