What does Seesaw's new coffee brewing store change?
Seesaw Coffee opened its first pour-over themed store on Hengshan Road in Shanghai and launched an online "Pour-Over for All" campaign. Participants upload photos or videos of their own coffee brewing on Weibo or Xiaohongshu, using pour-over, French press, moka pot, AeroPress or drip bags, tag the official account and include the hashtag to join and compete for prizes.
Seesaw opened its first store on Yuyuan Road in 2012 and expanded faster after securing hundred-million-yuan funding, later testing Mini stores and city-inspired creative specialty drinks. The pour-over theme and open call reflect rising domestic coffee consumption and consumer expectations for cup quality, as local specialty brands keep rolling out new formats.
China's domestic coffee consumption market continues to heat up, with local specialty brands constantly rolling out new innovations. As one of the earliest chain brands to stake a claim in the specialty coffee space, Seesaw Coffee recently opened its first pour-over coffee-themed store on Hengshan Road in Shanghai, and launched an online "Pour-Over for All" campaign, inviting coffee enthusiasts to share their hands-on brewing creations in any form—pour-over, French press, moka pot, AeroPress, or drip bags. Looking back at Seesaw's development path, from its first store on Yuyuan Road in 2012 to accelerated expansion after securing hundred-million-yuan funding, and then to experimenting with Mini stores and city-inspired creative specialty drinks, the brand has consistently focused on experience and innovation. This article also draws on industry data to examine the growth potential and competitive landscape of China's coffee market.
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In recent years, domestic coffee consumption has continued to rise, a batch of local brands has grown rapidly, and consumers' expectations for quality in the cup have risen accordingly. Seesaw Coffee is one of the earlier domestic brands to enter the specialty coffee field and has built considerable recognition among the many coffee shops.
During this period, Seesaw has been making frequent moves, continuously sending out new signals with a creative flavor and creating a lot of freshness for the market.
Yesterday, Seesaw announced via its official Weibo that the brand's first pour-over coffee-themed store has officially opened on Hengshan Road in Shanghai. Around this themed store, Seesaw planned a "Pour-Over for All" campaign: participants only need to upload photos or videos of their own coffee brewing on Weibo or Xiaohongshu—pour-over, French press, moka pot, AeroPress, or even drip bags are all acceptable. As long as the content is related to making coffee by hand, includes the relevant hashtag, and tags the official account, they can join the campaign, and those who rank highly can receive corresponding prizes.
Seesaw is the earliest brand among domestic specialty coffee chains. Its first store landed on Yuyuan Road in Shanghai in 2012. The founders are the couple Zong Xinkuang and Wu Xiaomei. The brand centers on specialty coffee and pour-over coffee as its core selling points and mainly targets young consumers. In July 2021, Seesaw completed a 100 million yuan Series A+ financing round with participation from Heytea and Best Food Holding.
With the boost of capital, Seesaw, which had previously expanded at a slower pace, clearly sped up. Public information shows that as of now, the brand has successively entered multiple cities including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Nanjing, with more than 100 stores in total. After ten years of deep cultivation in the market, Seesaw has won the goodwill of many consumers through creative coffee as its innovative lever.
In terms of store formats, Seesaw mainly deploys three types: first, standard stores that integrate products with experience; second, themed stores that combine scenarios with innovative product experiences; and third, Mini stores, which were only launched this year. In January this year, in order to respond more quickly to consumers' actual experience needs in specific scenarios while exploring grab-and-go scenarios and online business for specialty coffee, Seesaw opened the country's first SeesawMini store on the 5th-floor lobby of Phase 1 of Nanjing IFC (Sun Hung Kai IFC).
Putting a store inside an office building is probably intended to serve office workers more conveniently. This store focuses on fast-consumption scenarios and highlights a takeaway model of "order online, buy and go." Consumers place digital orders through a mini program, then pick up in-store or choose delivery. The SeesawMini store is consistent with the "mini" in its name—the overall area is not large, but the location is quite good. There are no seats inside the store, yet the facilities are fully equipped.
Seesaw has always been good at building resonance with users through fashionable creative merchandise. In April this year, when Seesaw opened two first stores in Chengdu simultaneously, it also launched "dual-city creative specialty drinks" and "dual-city creative limited-edition merchandise," incorporating elements such as teapots, rattan chairs, and hot pot into the designs of eco-friendly bags, coffee cups, and trendy socks.
Public data shows that China currently has about 300 million coffee consumers, but total coffee consumption and per capita consumption are both significantly lower than in mature markets such as Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea. This means the domestic market has the potential to support a scale of hundreds of billions and possesses the potential to maintain rapid growth. According to Frost & Sullivan forecasts, China's coffee market will maintain a compound growth rate of nearly 26%, and its market size is expected to reach 180.6 billion yuan in 2023.
From this perspective, China's coffee consumption market still has broad space, and the entire industry can be said to have only just officially begun, with the competition in "creative coffee" still ongoing. For today's creative coffee to gain a firm foothold in the market, relying only on creativity in products and store style is far from enough. In the past two years, local coffee brands have risen very quickly, innovative methods have emerged one after another, and competition within the industry has become increasingly fierce.
Local companies are equally inventive in marketing, deploying innovative marketing methods such as livestream selling, cross-industry collaborations, content partnerships, and IP building to expand brand storytelling and achieve brand breakout. Facing the current opportunities in the coffee market, as well as the successive entry of a new batch of specialty coffee chain brands, how Seesaw will iterate and renew next and carve out its own differentiated path in brand, product, and marketing.
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
