Digital China has arrived. It has unicorns, huge market opportunities and a pervasive cultural impact. Everything is now at world-class scale. Unfortunately, the distorting impact of hot money and hype has also scaled up. And this appears to be increasing. But first…consider joining my executive education course Jeff’s Asia Tech Class for deeper insights into […]
In Part 1, I argued that Starbucks China most interesting competitor is not Luckin Coffee. It is HeyTea, an upscale Starbucks-type business focused on tea (something Chinese consumers really, really like). And to their credit, HeyTea appears to be mostly focusing not on digital (or financial engineering) but on product development and continually thrilling their […]
So Luckin Coffee has gone public and there are big questions about their revenue growth vs. operating losses. They are building an F&B business fast and aggressively against still unclear demand. But HeyTea is the Starbucks challenger I am keeping an eye on. They have long been referred to as the “Starbucks of tea”. And […]
The Luckin Coffee SEC filing is out. So we can finally see their numbers. This is Part 2 of what I think is being misunderstood about Luckin. Part 1 is here. #5: Luckin is not really about increasing mass-market coffee consumption in China. Luckin is engaged in a Herculean effort to get Chinese to drink […]
So Luckin has filed for an IPO and we finally got to see their numbers. And yes, there are red flags all over the place. Big operating losses, funky corporate structures, speculative revenue growth and so on. And this is not uncommon in a tech / internet ipo. But I don’t recall ever seeing this […]
The Luckin vs. Starbucks fight is accelerating, both in terms of stores opened and hype. Luckin has IPO’d. And Tim Horton’s is jumping into the China coffee biz. What is going on? Why is there so much activity in the previously sleepy business of Chinese retail coffee? Recall, a similar thing happened in bike-sharing […]
In Part 1 (here), I laid out how Alibaba has evolved in China. It was for a retail marketplace, but you can see a similar pattern in many of China’s digital giants. The next phase in this evolution is “new retail”, and it is changing this pattern in a big way (coming in Part 3). […]
This is Part 3 on my visit to the Meituan-Dianping headquarters in Beijing. Part 1 was my main take-aways. Part 2 was what I think people are getting wrong about Meituan. “Local services” has been a hot topic this year. And we have seen big local services moves by many of China’s digital giants. Tencent-backed […]
星巴克已经与阿里巴巴建立起一种“新零售”形式的战略伙伴关系。通过此种方式他们已经快速进入了数字中国和消费中国的前沿，为人称道，令人赞叹。然而，这对于瑞幸咖啡而言却真的是个坏消息。
Some thoughts on Starbucks vs. Luckin Coffee in China. Plus stuff around Beijing and Shanghai. Although the outlet number (I said 650) has been increasing rapidly. Link is here. ——— Music by Tobu, Wholm and Blume!https://tobumusic.comhttps://www.youtube.com/tobuofficialhttps://www.facebook.com/tobuofficialhttps://www.soundcloud.com/7obu.